4 ms·

I look at it a bit differently. If someone's pushing the line "just listen to the experts," then it should be acknowledged that experts do get it wrong and have

I look at it a bit differently. If someone's pushing the line "just listen to the experts," then it should be acknowledged that experts do get it wrong and have massively dropped the ball on COVID-19. The signs of how lethal and contagious the virus is were there in China for anyone to read by early January. Of course, "experts (in particular our experts) don't know what they're doing" is different from "... and therefore you should listen to any yahoo who says it's 5G."

gamblor956 7y ago
In hindsight, it is obvious that COVID19 was worse than SARS or MERS. But at the time, especially given China's clampdown on information outflow, it didn't appear to be significantly different from SARS, which didn't effect the West much, or MERS, which had almost no impact outside of the Middle East. But as another commenter noted, the timing matters a lot. Everyone except Fox News thought back in January that COVID19 was going to be big, but based on prior coronaviruses not something that would significantly impact the West. They've all done 180s and are pulling out the stops to fix their earlier error. Fox News is still saying that today (i.e., April 6). One of their talking heads just said that COVID19 is overblown just a few minutes ago.
- Khaine 7y ago
  I'm sorry, its not even in hindsight. All you needed to do is look at what China was doing. It became very apparent that there was a major viral outbreak on-going in china around Luna New Year
- acqq 7y ago
  > but based on prior coronaviruses not something that would significantly impact the West. If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Which just shows how stupid some global agendas are. Media don't do that in vaccuum, but they are the reflection of the power of the interest groups that want to push the agenda.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Amazing how apparently all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad, especially when much of the reporting was commenting on how much worse the situation must actually be compared to what was being reported by China, given the severity of China's response.
    - acqq 7y ago
      > all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad It's like 'memes': very little journalists today do their own research. I can see that whatever Trump says today then follows the "echo" of "media around world" (those that have U.S. sources) that last weeks. It's a total disaster of false information, and a lot could be traced directly to Trump or the U.S. in general (there are other "sources" that are establishment but produce falsehoods, it's not that he's alone). But enough people remain confused believing it is true, including people very close to me.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  "especially given China's clampdown on information outflow" Come on. By late December, China's response was so drastic (including when measured against all previous coronavirus outbreaks) that the question of "suppressing" information about it was completely moot. The CDC completely dropped the ball on this. Yes, in part because Trump slashed their pandemic response budget, but they did a piss-poor job even for the resources at their disposal. Fox News and Trump being a source of constant disinformation and incompetence is, to me, kind of a constant of the universe. The same ought not to be true of the rest of our institutions, and yet it seems that it is.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    Your memory is highly selective and simply wrong. On Dec 31, China informed WHO about a mysterious cluster of respiratory ailments clustered around a seafood market in Wuhan. China didn't even close the seafood restaurant until 2020. The first confirmed death wasn't reported until January 11. China didn't begin a lockdown of Wuhan until January 23. Yes, the CDC dropped the ball, but evidence coming out in March indicates that China knew about COVID19 in early December and didn't bother to tell the rest of the world about it for another month, and even then downplayed the seriousness of the virus until the end of January. To this day China is still blocking the release of information about the severity of COVID19. WaPo reported last week that there may have been more than 40,000 COVID19 fatalities in Wuhan alone (based on manually counting the number of urns distributed by morticians) which is at more than 13x the official number of deaths reported for the entire country. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemic-timeline-history-major-events-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemic-timelin...

gamblor956 7y ago

In hindsight, it is obvious that COVID19 was worse than SARS or MERS. But at the time, especially given China's clampdown on information outflow, it didn't appear to be significantly different from SARS, which didn't effect the West much, or MERS, which had almost no impact outside of the Middle East. But as another commenter noted, the timing matters a lot. Everyone except Fox News thought back in January that COVID19 was going to be big, but based on prior coronaviruses not something that would significantly impact the West. They've all done 180s and are pulling out the stops to fix their earlier error. Fox News is still saying that today (i.e., April 6). One of their talking heads just said that COVID19 is overblown just a few minutes ago.

Khaine 7y ago
I'm sorry, its not even in hindsight. All you needed to do is look at what China was doing. It became very apparent that there was a major viral outbreak on-going in china around Luna New Year
acqq 7y ago
> but based on prior coronaviruses not something that would significantly impact the West. If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Which just shows how stupid some global agendas are. Media don't do that in vaccuum, but they are the reflection of the power of the interest groups that want to push the agenda.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  If we talk about a lot of media, they simply had the priority of making Chinese look bad in any possible way, including blaming them for "misinterpreting numbers" and ridiculing them for implementing lockdowns or wearing masks. Amazing how apparently all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad, especially when much of the reporting was commenting on how much worse the situation must actually be compared to what was being reported by China, given the severity of China's response.
  - acqq 7y ago
    > all of the media around the world was united in a conspiracy to make China look bad It's like 'memes': very little journalists today do their own research. I can see that whatever Trump says today then follows the "echo" of "media around world" (those that have U.S. sources) that last weeks. It's a total disaster of false information, and a lot could be traced directly to Trump or the U.S. in general (there are other "sources" that are establishment but produce falsehoods, it's not that he's alone). But enough people remain confused believing it is true, including people very close to me.
AndrewBissell 7y ago
"especially given China's clampdown on information outflow" Come on. By late December, China's response was so drastic (including when measured against all previous coronavirus outbreaks) that the question of "suppressing" information about it was completely moot. The CDC completely dropped the ball on this. Yes, in part because Trump slashed their pandemic response budget, but they did a piss-poor job even for the resources at their disposal. Fox News and Trump being a source of constant disinformation and incompetence is, to me, kind of a constant of the universe. The same ought not to be true of the rest of our institutions, and yet it seems that it is.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  Your memory is highly selective and simply wrong. On Dec 31, China informed WHO about a mysterious cluster of respiratory ailments clustered around a seafood market in Wuhan. China didn't even close the seafood restaurant until 2020. The first confirmed death wasn't reported until January 11. China didn't begin a lockdown of Wuhan until January 23. Yes, the CDC dropped the ball, but evidence coming out in March indicates that China knew about COVID19 in early December and didn't bother to tell the rest of the world about it for another month, and even then downplayed the seriousness of the virus until the end of January. To this day China is still blocking the release of information about the severity of COVID19. WaPo reported last week that there may have been more than 40,000 COVID19 fatalities in Wuhan alone (based on manually counting the number of urns distributed by morticians) which is at more than 13x the official number of deaths reported for the entire country. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemic-timeline-history-major-events-2020-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemic-timelin...