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My coworker's whole family lives in Beijing. Her father died recently. He suddenly was having a hard time breathing, was brought to hospital, and by then his
by JPKab 7y ago
My coworker's whole family lives in Beijing. Her father died recently. He suddenly was having a hard time breathing, was brought to hospital, and by then his blood oxygen was far below normal.
They refused to test him for COVID19. She told me this. Her facial expression was utter shock, and she told me her mom's grief has been multiplied by the fact that the government doesn't want to be honest about his real cause of death.
People who believe the data coming from China is accurate are ignoring the recent history on transparency around this disease from the CCP. I just don't understand it. Sure, the country where police arrested the first doctors to publicly state it was human to human transmissible is being completely honest. Wow.
Two things can be true at the same time:
Trump administration has done poorly AND the CCP is culpable, lying, and made the situation much worse.
But in the US political system, there is no tolerance for distraction from hating the opposition party. You can only blame Trump, and saying bad things about China is "just racist and mean. They did such a great job, they say they have contained it. We didn't because the bad orange man didn't do his job."
Yeah, meanwhile, those of us living in reality know that Trump and the CDC/FDA suck, AND the CCP does too. And yeah, maybe, just maybe, if the US news media had dedicated 1/20th the coverage they gave to the impeachment to the virus, the government would have been held accountable to start acting then. I was travelling internationally, and when I got back home in early February, I was shocked at how little CNN and MSNBC were talking about the virus. Basically zero. And Fox only talked about it in the context of the impeachment distracting from it.
When governments fail, we hope that the free press will hold them accountable, and there's no reason they couldn't have done that earlier. No, the red vs. blue team sports are just too good for ratings to talk about things that actually matter.
- RickJWagner 7y agoI don't think you're being fair. Remember how Trump was roundly criticized as 'racist' and 'xenophobic' for stopping flights? The Democrats have to own that one, their answers were flawed and would have cost lives as well. But really-- nobody has all the optimal answers. War is hell.
- yodon 7y agoTrump reacted late, and by the time he acted he was slamming the barn door after the horse had left (or more accurately after the horse was inside the barn). The virus came across on flights from Europe just as fast and just as damagingly as it did from China. You can't stop a pandemic like this at your borders. Trying to do so just prevents the flow of critical people and materials and distracts resources from more effective responses. Testing and social distancing were the steps that were needed on day one. They didn't happen fast enough and aren't happening fast enough. It is not politicizing things to state the fact that his responses have been slow and poorly informed.