4 ms·

Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease after a 60day lockdown so it shouldn't take more than that. Unless of course there's an age

• SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > Well the Chinese have been able to successfully contain the disease in 60days so it shouldn't take more than that. Though they did seem to delay action, when they took it they went hard. Some of the US is past the point that China threw the brakes on, and the rest of the country continues to accelerate. We can't expect the timeline to align in any way.
• leeoniya 7y ago
  did they contain the disease or the information?
  • jlmorton 7y ago
    The disease, obviously. When the disease was running rampant through Hubei, there were innumerable reports of it on social media. The WHO has had a large team of disease experts, public health experts and others in China since late January, and they say China has been totally transparent. The unfortunate truth is that authoritarian regimes are better suited to dealing with a pandemic, particularly competent, technocratic regimes like China's.
    • BatFastard 7y ago
      They were well suited AFTER the two months of trying to bury it. Once the cat got out of the bag, when keeping it in the bag was the whole point.
      • jlmorton 7y ago
        Not really a fair accounting at all. Everyone points to local efforts to control information about the disease, but that lasted a couple days, not two months. Genetic analysis indicates a single index patient sometime around mid-November. In late December, there was a large cluster of pneumonia cases with multiple patients at the same hospital in Wuhan, which were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Market. And this is exactly what you would expect. One case in mid-November, 2-3 cases a week later, 4-9 cases by early December, 16-81 cases by mid December, and maybe a couple hundred cases by late December. And among these cases, only a minority are going present to a hospital for treatment. Most will get sick, but simply stay home. On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission became aware of the Huanan Seafood Market cluster and issued a notice to local hospitals. That same day, Li Wenliang made a statement to friends about the unknown pneumonia cases, which was shared by friends to social media. Local authorities arrested Li Wenliang and made him sign a statement acknowledging a misdemeanor, and ordered him not to talk about the illness publicly. Later that same day, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause. On January 1st, local authorities closed the seafood market. On January 7th, Chinese researchers identified SARS-CoV-2 as the causative agent in the outbreak. On January 12th, Chinese researchers shared the viral genome with the world health community. On January 22nd, with about 500 confirmed cases, China locked down Wuhan, and all of Hubei Province the next day. There were clearly some local efforts at suppressing information about the virus, but at a time that very little was known about it, and apparently all at the local level. Somehow this is seen by some in the West as state-sanctioned efforts at suppression, but the President of the United States saying it's just the flu, nothing to worry about, there are very few cases, most of them are getting better, it's totally under control - that's not suppressing information, just efforts to project calm. The reality is that China's response to this novel virus represents a new gold standard for emergent disease response. In terms of both speed and efficacy, it was the best response the world has ever seen.
        • redis_mlc 7y ago
          I agree this started in Nov., but dont have a source. Do you have a link? As I've written before, "a powerful flu like corona" was circulating in SE Asia already by Dec. 10. So the Dec. 31 WHO notification was pretty slow. I'm lukewarm on congratulating China since they were the epicenter for SARS-1 in 2002/2003, and various bird flus since. I wonder how many hospital staff Wuhan lost in Dec. 2019? Must have been dozens - did that make the press?
          • jlmorton 7y ago
            Here's a genetic analysis that was widely shared last month, which points to an index patient in late November around Wuhan: https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/ https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/ Here's an article from Feb 11th in the SCMP which notes 500 health care workers in Wuhan were infected with the virus: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050077/least-500-wuhan-medical-staff-infected-coronavirus https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050077/leas...
• turbohz 7y ago
  The question is how long will it remain contained?
• mcormier 7y ago
  The chinese are also using mass surveillance to keep the problem under control. You need to show a qr code on your phone that proves you are allowed out at many checkpoints.
• pstrateman 7y ago
  There's some question of how successful they have actually been.
• dhritzkiv 7y ago
  There is nothing close to a lockdown currently in place anywhere in the US or Canada. Not to say that that's what's needed, just pointing out that China's policy was more extreme.
• Leary 7y ago
  Mild cases in America are being told to quarantine at home where they'll infect their families. Americans are not wearing masks universally. There are no bans on movements between hotspots like New York and the rest of the country. And Americans expect to successfully contain the disease in weeks.
• im3w1l 7y ago
  Western leaders aren't even trying to contain the disease, and they readily admit that. It's all about flattening the curve, and a flat curve stays flat a long time.
• tathougies 7y ago
  This is a lie. China now has another outbreak, and several country's intelligence agencies have suggested that their original numbers were completely made up.
  • zabana 7y ago
    Would you mind providing proof ?
    • vkou 7y ago
      Anonymous non specific leaks from the most reputable, apolitical of sources, that has no vested interest in this - the White House.
    • tathougies 7y ago
      Here is a good overview: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871783 Proof: 1. China's numbers simply do not match models that take all their measures into account. 2. China only tested syptomatic people, and did not classify pneumonia sufferers as COVID: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-asymptomatic/china-to-focus-on-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-as-public-fears-grow-idUSKBN21I0VC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... 3. Wuhan crematoriums are seeing way more deaths than reported: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematoriums-are-filling-thousands-of-urns-with-coronavirus-remains-each-day https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/88435z/wuhans-crematorium... http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of-coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ash... China's new outbreak: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covid-19-outbreak-200402143711728.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-fears-wave-covi...
• adrianN 7y ago
  You might want to compare the strictness of the Chinese lockdown to what western countries are doing. The goal of the lockdown must be getting the case numbers low enough that contact tracing works again. To do that you need to get the replication number well below 1 and hold it there for two months or so. The measures we're currently taking are totally insufficient for that. R is still closer to 3 than to 0.5.
• Tade0 7y ago
  My take is that if my government managed to successfully lie about the number of deaths (assigning COVID-19 as the reason only in cases where the patient had no chronic illnesses) then China is more than capable of doing the same and has a major incentive to do so.
• danans 7y ago
  China's can more effectively control people's movements than the US, which helps with containment. But at the same time, as in the US, reported infection rates are probably much lower than the actual rates, since both countries' administrations have an interest in minimizing the reported rates, or when that fails, minimizing the timeline for normalization of life. Public health authorities are the only people who have no incentive to exaggerate or suppress information.
  • gowld 7y ago
    US has some incentive to undercount, but US has lots of semi independent state/local governments and non government epidemiologists. In China, province/local government leaders would be jailed for speaking against the party line.
    • danans 7y ago
      I agree that the saving grace in the US is that we have independent state and local officials. Kudos especially to Ohio's governor for bucking the party line and declaring a lockdown in a timely way. Local officials have credibility right now from being the actual local boots on the ground. Their voices have cornered the administration into admitting, however begrudgingly, the scale of the problem. Given the administration's incentives, it's good that the institution aggregating the numbers right now is John's Hopkins, and not the administration's VP-led task force.
• ChrisClark 7y ago
  With mass surveillance and literally welding some people into their homes. The US isn't even near that level of containment. I'm scared for your guys. I'd also be scared if you were welding people into homes too. For a different reason. There really isn't a great solution here other than masks for all, and people behaving responsibly. Which isn't going to happen. :(
• spuz 7y ago
  The Chinese lockdown is much more severe than anything being enforced in the US. They track everyone's movements with their phones, large areas of the cities where cases have been reported are sealed off with checkpoints at the exit points. Your temperature is checked almost everywhere you go, the temperature of anyone working in food production is checked every 30mins, to board the subway you must scan the QR code in the specific carriage. It's very hard to explain just how drastically different the measures China are taking compared to the rest of the world but here is a good video that gives some insight: https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM Can you imagine this happening in the US? What happens if this is what it takes to avoid the 60-80% infections required before herd immunity kicks in?
• stouset 7y ago
  Let’s say this is true. So what? The rest of the world is still a hot zone. As soon as one infected person slips through your net—tomorrow or six months in the future—you have an outbreak again.