5 ms·

China's reporting in no way made it seem less urgent. The reported fatality rate hasn't significantly changed from their reports.

by tensor 7y ago

viklove 7y ago
They're reporting 2.5k deaths in Wuhan, while most estimates and other sources put it closer to 20k+. A factor of 10 isn't much of a change?
- tensor 7y ago
  I don't deal in speculation and rumours sorry. The 2-3% assuming you have medical treatment has held true. The 10+% hospitalization has held true. The lack of response from the US is in no way due to China's reporting, it's due to the US propaganda and incompetence.
  - viklove 7y ago
    > I don't deal in speculation and rumours sorry. But you trust a known liar (the Chinese government)? Sounds like you're a bit biased here. > US propaganda So the US spreads propaganda, but not China? I don't understand how an educated individual could spout this nonsense anywhere. edit: Am I getting downvotes because HN thinks the Chinese government doesn't have a history of lying? Anyone remember Tiananmen Square, the country of Taiwan, the country of Tibet, or the Uyghur Muslims?
    - mikem170 7y ago
      Both the U.S. and China spread propaganda. Both governments do bad things. Both do good things. The world is not black and white. You don't need to pit the two against each other. The world is a big place, with a varied history. We're all people.
      - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
        The US doesn't have an Ai Fen [1] as far as I can tell. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu...
    - dirtyid 7y ago
      They both propagandize but people in the west are less trained to identify US propaganda than Chinese propaganda. The reverse is also true in China. Useful idiots everywhere. > an educated individual An educated individual =/= a qualified one. There are qualified experts in government with experience managing the US-China relationship. They would not fixate on Chinese statistics in an case like this. What happened in China was not opaque like secret CPC politburo meetings. It was an incredibly, transparently, urgent crisis - the country was locked down, that alone should sound louder than any statistics coming out of China in dealing with a virus we still don't have good understanding of. China's neighbors - all the countries with experiencing managing responses to movements in China, particularly SARS, acted appropriately. The US - who has/had cultivated decades of relationships with China has many back channels to privileged information most countries don't have. Also instead of fixating on numbers, fixate on indicators on the Chinese response because that's much more useful given where countries are. China is reopenning schools, factory are spinning backup according to expats, the same expats who can comment on the conditions of the quarantine are also attesting that no locals on their team contracted the virus. Look at imported statistics from countries repatriating citizens. Most Chinese imported cases are from returning students from NA and EU. Singaporean, Taiwanese and Canadian data shows similarly, there's virtually no positive tests coming out of China at the moment. Facts on the ground and external numbers comport that ridiculously aggressive Chinese quarantine works. The question should then be, what amount of half measures is sufficient.
      - iateanapple 7y ago
        > China's neighbors - all the countries with experiencing managing responses to movements in China, particularly SARS, acted appropriately. Yes, because they all knew the official narrative from China could not be trusted. They ignored the words and looked at the actions. I suspect our intelligence folk knew as well. The emotional response we are seeing all over the country is because the average person feels like an idiot for listening to China and to the experts at the WHO.
    - dntbnmpls 7y ago
      > But you trust a known liar (the Chinese government)? Sounds like you're a bit biased here. All governments lie. China isn't special, no matter how desperately you want them to be. And no offense, but you seem quite biased yourself. > So the US spreads propaganda, but not China? They both do. You just seem to accept US propaganda as gospel. > Anyone remember Tiananmen Square, the country of Taiwan, the country of Tibet, or the Uyghur Muslims? What about it? Why not list the atrocities of both sides? Using your logic, nobody's data is valid. Now what? What about korea's data? They have even less deaths than predicted. Are they lying? Is Japan lying? If you have any proof, then provide it rather than posting propaganda - nationalreview, newsweek, etc. Or may I suggest taking a break from reading/watching news/propaganda for a bit. It can be toxic.
- dboreham 7y ago
  Everything I've seen matches up with the Chinese data (when adjusting for test coverage for mild symptom patients). Where are you seeing this 10x higher number?
  - viklove 7y ago
    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wuhan-residents-dismiss-official-coronavirus-death-toll-the-incinerators-have-been-working-around-the-clock/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wuhan-residents-dismiss-... > Wuhan residents are increasingly skeptical of the Chinese Communist Party’s reported coronavirus death count of approximately 2,500 deaths in the city to date, with most people believing the actual numbers is at least 40,000 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-covid-19-death-toll-may-tens-thousands-data-cremations-shipments-urns-suggest-1494914 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-covid-19-death-toll-may-tens-... > Some Wuhan residents estimate that the coronavirus death toll could be 26,000, based on the amount of urns being delivered and distributed across the city. Citizens on Chinese social media have said that seven Wuhan funeral homes will likely distribute 3,500 urns per day on average from March 23 to April 4, which marks Qing Ming, the traditional tomb-sweeping festival. By that estimate, 42,000 urns would be given out in the 12-day period. Just a few sources, you can find many others if you look though.
    - rfoo 7y ago
      The two links seems to point to the same source, and: > Trucks dropped off roughly 2,500 urns on Wednesday and again on Thursday local time to one of the eight local funeral homes, a driver told Chinese media outlet Caixin. The news site also published another photo showing 3,500 urns stacked inside the facility. The number of urns that arrived in that one funeral home was far greater than the city's official overall death COVID-19 toll. Note that the numbers given are for EMPTY urns. > Some Wuhan residents estimate that the coronavirus death toll could be 26,000, based on the amount of urns being delivered and distributed across the city. Citizens on Chinese social media have said that seven Wuhan funeral homes will likely distribute 3,500 urns per day on average from March 23 to April 4, which marks Qing Ming, the traditional tomb-sweeping festival. Note that this is based on "some random Wuhan residents playing numbers on social network".
droopyEyelids 7y ago
In December, China's influence caused the WHO -not- to report human to human transmission. This was despite the known infection of healthcare workers, and counter to the reports made from Taiwan. Human-human transmission is one of the fundamental elements used to determine the urgency of an outbreak.
- rfoo 7y ago
  Hello, would you please link us to the report made from Taiwan which reports H2H transmission in Dec 2019? My Google-fu failed me on this, thanks!
  - homarp 7y ago
    https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... Taiwan says WHO failed to act on coronavirus transmission warning: relationship with Beijing blamed for not sharing alert over human-to-human infection without paywall: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-24/taiwan-says-who-ignored-its-coronavirus-questions-at-start-of-outbreak https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-24/taiwan... "We asked them whether there's a possibility of human-to-human transmission. We indeed asked them and reminded them of the matter," Chou said. He said the WHO confirmed it had received the letter but did not respond to it.
    - rfoo 7y ago
      Thanks for the non paywall-d link, that's an interesting read, also previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22712971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22712971 Kudos to Taiwan for reminding WHO an unknown virus, just like any other virus, may possibly be H2H-transmissible!
- rovolo 7y ago
  I'm looking at the timeline on wikipedia, and it looks like you should be saying 'January' instead of 'December': Dec 30: The Wuhan Municipal Health Committee reported to the WHO that 27 people had been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown cause. Dec 31: China contacts the WHO and informs them of "cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan". Jan 4: The WHO waited for China to release information about the "mysterious new pneumonia virus".[51] The United Nations agency activated its incident-management system at the country, regional and global level and was standing ready to launch a broader response if it was needed. Jan 9: The WHO confirmed that the novel coronavirus had been isolated from one person who had been hospitalised. The WHO also reported that Chinese authorities had acted swiftly, identifying the novel coronavirus within weeks of the onset of the outbreak, with the total number of positively tested people being 41. The first death from the virus occurred in a 61-year-old man who was a regular customer at the market. Jan 14: Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of WHO's emerging diseases unit said that there had been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus, mainly small clusters in families, adding that "it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission" Jan 20: After two medical staff were infected in Guangdong, China announced that the virus was human-to-human transmissible … the WHO has said [it] is deeply concerning and could signal evidence of a much larger outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_in_November_2019_%E2%80%93_January_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932... China probably could have informed people earlier, but it seems easier to not tell the WHO than to pressure the WHO to keep a secret. Also, there's a difference between possible human-to-human and confirmed human-to-human transmission.

China's reporting in no way made it seem less urgent. The reported fatality rate hasn't significantly changed from their reports.

by tensor 7y ago

China's reporting in no way made it seem less urgent. The reported fatality rate hasn't significantly changed from their reports.

viklove 7y ago

They're reporting 2.5k deaths in Wuhan, while most estimates and other sources put it closer to 20k+. A factor of 10 isn't much of a change?

tensor 7y ago
I don't deal in speculation and rumours sorry. The 2-3% assuming you have medical treatment has held true. The 10+% hospitalization has held true. The lack of response from the US is in no way due to China's reporting, it's due to the US propaganda and incompetence.
- viklove 7y ago
  > I don't deal in speculation and rumours sorry. But you trust a known liar (the Chinese government)? Sounds like you're a bit biased here. > US propaganda So the US spreads propaganda, but not China? I don't understand how an educated individual could spout this nonsense anywhere. edit: Am I getting downvotes because HN thinks the Chinese government doesn't have a history of lying? Anyone remember Tiananmen Square, the country of Taiwan, the country of Tibet, or the Uyghur Muslims?
  - mikem170 7y ago
    Both the U.S. and China spread propaganda. Both governments do bad things. Both do good things. The world is not black and white. You don't need to pit the two against each other. The world is a big place, with a varied history. We're all people.
    - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
      The US doesn't have an Ai Fen [1] as far as I can tell. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu...
  - dirtyid 7y ago
    They both propagandize but people in the west are less trained to identify US propaganda than Chinese propaganda. The reverse is also true in China. Useful idiots everywhere. > an educated individual An educated individual =/= a qualified one. There are qualified experts in government with experience managing the US-China relationship. They would not fixate on Chinese statistics in an case like this. What happened in China was not opaque like secret CPC politburo meetings. It was an incredibly, transparently, urgent crisis - the country was locked down, that alone should sound louder than any statistics coming out of China in dealing with a virus we still don't have good understanding of. China's neighbors - all the countries with experiencing managing responses to movements in China, particularly SARS, acted appropriately. The US - who has/had cultivated decades of relationships with China has many back channels to privileged information most countries don't have. Also instead of fixating on numbers, fixate on indicators on the Chinese response because that's much more useful given where countries are. China is reopenning schools, factory are spinning backup according to expats, the same expats who can comment on the conditions of the quarantine are also attesting that no locals on their team contracted the virus. Look at imported statistics from countries repatriating citizens. Most Chinese imported cases are from returning students from NA and EU. Singaporean, Taiwanese and Canadian data shows similarly, there's virtually no positive tests coming out of China at the moment. Facts on the ground and external numbers comport that ridiculously aggressive Chinese quarantine works. The question should then be, what amount of half measures is sufficient.
    - iateanapple 7y ago
      > China's neighbors - all the countries with experiencing managing responses to movements in China, particularly SARS, acted appropriately. Yes, because they all knew the official narrative from China could not be trusted. They ignored the words and looked at the actions. I suspect our intelligence folk knew as well. The emotional response we are seeing all over the country is because the average person feels like an idiot for listening to China and to the experts at the WHO.
  - dntbnmpls 7y ago
    > But you trust a known liar (the Chinese government)? Sounds like you're a bit biased here. All governments lie. China isn't special, no matter how desperately you want them to be. And no offense, but you seem quite biased yourself. > So the US spreads propaganda, but not China? They both do. You just seem to accept US propaganda as gospel. > Anyone remember Tiananmen Square, the country of Taiwan, the country of Tibet, or the Uyghur Muslims? What about it? Why not list the atrocities of both sides? Using your logic, nobody's data is valid. Now what? What about korea's data? They have even less deaths than predicted. Are they lying? Is Japan lying? If you have any proof, then provide it rather than posting propaganda - nationalreview, newsweek, etc. Or may I suggest taking a break from reading/watching news/propaganda for a bit. It can be toxic.
dboreham 7y ago
Everything I've seen matches up with the Chinese data (when adjusting for test coverage for mild symptom patients). Where are you seeing this 10x higher number?
- viklove 7y ago
  https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wuhan-residents-dismiss-official-coronavirus-death-toll-the-incinerators-have-been-working-around-the-clock/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wuhan-residents-dismiss-... > Wuhan residents are increasingly skeptical of the Chinese Communist Party’s reported coronavirus death count of approximately 2,500 deaths in the city to date, with most people believing the actual numbers is at least 40,000 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-covid-19-death-toll-may-tens-thousands-data-cremations-shipments-urns-suggest-1494914 https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-covid-19-death-toll-may-tens-... > Some Wuhan residents estimate that the coronavirus death toll could be 26,000, based on the amount of urns being delivered and distributed across the city. Citizens on Chinese social media have said that seven Wuhan funeral homes will likely distribute 3,500 urns per day on average from March 23 to April 4, which marks Qing Ming, the traditional tomb-sweeping festival. By that estimate, 42,000 urns would be given out in the 12-day period. Just a few sources, you can find many others if you look though.
  - rfoo 7y ago
    The two links seems to point to the same source, and: > Trucks dropped off roughly 2,500 urns on Wednesday and again on Thursday local time to one of the eight local funeral homes, a driver told Chinese media outlet Caixin. The news site also published another photo showing 3,500 urns stacked inside the facility. The number of urns that arrived in that one funeral home was far greater than the city's official overall death COVID-19 toll. Note that the numbers given are for EMPTY urns. > Some Wuhan residents estimate that the coronavirus death toll could be 26,000, based on the amount of urns being delivered and distributed across the city. Citizens on Chinese social media have said that seven Wuhan funeral homes will likely distribute 3,500 urns per day on average from March 23 to April 4, which marks Qing Ming, the traditional tomb-sweeping festival. Note that this is based on "some random Wuhan residents playing numbers on social network".

droopyEyelids 7y ago

In December, China's influence caused the WHO -not- to report human to human transmission. This was despite the known infection of healthcare workers, and counter to the reports made from Taiwan. Human-human transmission is one of the fundamental elements used to determine the urgency of an outbreak.

rfoo 7y ago
Hello, would you please link us to the report made from Taiwan which reports H2H transmission in Dec 2019? My Google-fu failed me on this, thanks!
- homarp 7y ago
  https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68 https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6... Taiwan says WHO failed to act on coronavirus transmission warning: relationship with Beijing blamed for not sharing alert over human-to-human infection without paywall: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-24/taiwan-says-who-ignored-its-coronavirus-questions-at-start-of-outbreak https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-24/taiwan... "We asked them whether there's a possibility of human-to-human transmission. We indeed asked them and reminded them of the matter," Chou said. He said the WHO confirmed it had received the letter but did not respond to it.
  - rfoo 7y ago
    Thanks for the non paywall-d link, that's an interesting read, also previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22712971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22712971 Kudos to Taiwan for reminding WHO an unknown virus, just like any other virus, may possibly be H2H-transmissible!
rovolo 7y ago
I'm looking at the timeline on wikipedia, and it looks like you should be saying 'January' instead of 'December': Dec 30: The Wuhan Municipal Health Committee reported to the WHO that 27 people had been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown cause. Dec 31: China contacts the WHO and informs them of "cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan". Jan 4: The WHO waited for China to release information about the "mysterious new pneumonia virus".[51] The United Nations agency activated its incident-management system at the country, regional and global level and was standing ready to launch a broader response if it was needed. Jan 9: The WHO confirmed that the novel coronavirus had been isolated from one person who had been hospitalised. The WHO also reported that Chinese authorities had acted swiftly, identifying the novel coronavirus within weeks of the onset of the outbreak, with the total number of positively tested people being 41. The first death from the virus occurred in a 61-year-old man who was a regular customer at the market. Jan 14: Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of WHO's emerging diseases unit said that there had been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus, mainly small clusters in families, adding that "it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission" Jan 20: After two medical staff were infected in Guangdong, China announced that the virus was human-to-human transmissible … the WHO has said [it] is deeply concerning and could signal evidence of a much larger outbreak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_in_November_2019_%E2%80%93_January_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932... China probably could have informed people earlier, but it seems easier to not tell the WHO than to pressure the WHO to keep a secret. Also, there's a difference between possible human-to-human and confirmed human-to-human transmission.