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This is something that has really struck me during the Corona crisis: the misplaced Western believe of superiority towards Asian countries. I am European and I

This is something that has really struck me during the Corona crisis: the misplaced Western believe of superiority towards Asian countries. I am European and I feel embarrassed about how much arrogance is displayed by some people and governments. It started already in the beginning, when the virus was spreading rapidly in China. Reports about the failing Chinese authority were all over the place, but nobody seemed to worry that when the virus would eventually reach Europe, we would be in trouble as well. After all how could we, with our superior health system and our governments that would react quickly and rationally on such a trivial threat as this. When the virus had reached Europe, it had already reached South Korea and Taiwan as well. These countries had learned from the earlier SARS outbreak how to deal with it and thoroughly tested everyone that could possibly have the virus, symptoms or not. The reaction I saw in the media was mostly about the breach in privacy that these measures brought. Surely this was not something that we, as enlightened Western societies, would want. And anyway, what were we frightened of. This virus could never spread so fast in Europe as it did in China, because .. Well because of what actually. Now that the pandemic has wrecked havoc in the entire Western world and most people are realising that a strategy of first constraining the virus (like in Wuhan) and then testing everybody to contain in (like in South Korea) is the only realistic way to deal with it, one might think that a bit of humbleness towards Asia would be in place. Think again. What we're seeing more and more instead is denial. Investigations are started if the Covid virus was manifactured in a laboratory in Wuhan for instance.

gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
China’s first response to doctors reporting the virus was to send police to them and shut them up. I’ll gladly believe I live in a better country.
- mikem170 7y ago
  I had the impression, based on news articles at the time, that local officials were behind the initial coverup in Wuhan, lasting until national officials rectified the situation.
  - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    I'm not sure local officials would be behind all the censorship and police abuse that's happened like this: > Three Chinese citizen journalists have also gone missing after they uploaded videos showing a critical view of the situation in Wuhan to YouTube and Twitter. https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-censored-coronavirus-story/ https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-ce... > Cai Wei, a Beijing-based man who participated in one such project on GitHub, the software development website, was arrested together with his girlfriend by Beijing police on April 19. The couple were accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a commonly used charge against dissidents in China, according to Chen Kun, the brother of Chen Mei, another volunteer involved with the project. https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-coronavirus-memories-page/ https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor...
    - mikem170 7y ago
      Both of the articles you linked to mention local police, in Wuhan and Beijing.
  - khuey 7y ago
    This is a common political trope in China used to shift responsibility away from the center and should not be taken at face value.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > I had the impression, based on news articles at the time, that local officials were behind the initial coverup in Wuhan, lasting until national officials rectified the situation. CPP propaganda strategically concentrates blame for any kind of domestic problem on local officials in order make the central authorities seem trustworthy and competent by comparison. While the local Wuhan officials definitely had an independent hand in the mismanagement, the central government had its role, too. It's also arguable that the central government is responsible for the coverup activities by the Wuhan officials, because they're the ones who've created and sustained the system those local officials operate in.
vbezhenar 7y ago
There was some interesting article about possibility that this virus is artificial. Author came to conclusion that it's possible, but there's no way to prove that (other than insider leaking strong proofs, of course). Modern virusology laboratory can create such a virus indeed and it'll be indistinguishable from a wild virus. Unfortunately this article is in Russian, I'll provide google translate link, but it probably will be translated with errors. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fhabr.com%2Fru%2Fpost%2F497956%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...
rezeroed 7y ago
I've not seen this - which country are you in? I've seen acknowledgement of South Korea's success, and criticism of China's failings.
- new2628 7y ago
  How about acknowledgement of success in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, India, China, etc? GP is right, that you hardly hear it in the news.
vmception 7y ago
Right, we can't have it both ways: Either Asian countries are lying because they are extremely advanced in their population centers and also authoritarian, which would be the only way for it to be news. or Asian countries are lying because they have the exact same organizational dysfunction as every country in 'the west', and also authoritarian, in which case it isn't news. so which is it folks, superior technology cohesive culture and leadership, or organizational dysfunction no different from the west.
TooKool4This 7y ago
I agree with you and I’ve made the same observation but I don’t think it’s due to some misplaced sense of superiority. I think it’s simply because it has been a while since disease and pestilence was a worry for the average Western country so the average citizen (and therefore the leaders) are complacent in a sort of “It can’t happen here” way. There have been outbreaks such as the AIDS epidemic or swine flu but nothing as impactful, infectious, and at the scale of COVID. Whereas Asian countries have grappled with issues of SARS, Malaria, AIDS, Polio, and many more in the not so distant past and have learned the importance of taking public health seriously. The experience of the outcome of mismanaging a response to a previous epidemic is still “fresh” so to say in many of these countries. I think a good example of this is how South Korea dealt with SARS and evolved their response to COVID based on the learnings from that. Lastly I wonder if the prevalence of more communal societies in Asian cultures make a difference. I can imagine it could make the problem worse but it could also be beneficial in the sense of providing strong societal pressures to quarantine/hand wash/social distance/etc. Edit: And of course the misguided leaders in particular Western countries are not helping. Maybe the US this particular time is just a statistical outlier due to some mismanagement and there is nothing more to read into further than that?
- exolymph 7y ago
  > I think it’s simply because it has been a while since disease and pestilence was a worry for the average Western country so the average citizen (and therefore the leaders) are complacent in a sort of “It can’t happen here” way. There have been outbreaks such as the AIDS epidemic or swine flu but nothing as impactful, infectious, and at the scale of COVID. I agree that this is the main factor. Consequently I proposed the concept of the "civilization immune system" to explain how it works: https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/civilizational-immune-systems/ https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/civilizational-immune-system...

gnusty_gnurc 7y ago

China’s first response to doctors reporting the virus was to send police to them and shut them up. I’ll gladly believe I live in a better country.

mikem170 7y ago
I had the impression, based on news articles at the time, that local officials were behind the initial coverup in Wuhan, lasting until national officials rectified the situation.
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  I'm not sure local officials would be behind all the censorship and police abuse that's happened like this: > Three Chinese citizen journalists have also gone missing after they uploaded videos showing a critical view of the situation in Wuhan to YouTube and Twitter. https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-censored-coronavirus-story/ https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-ce... > Cai Wei, a Beijing-based man who participated in one such project on GitHub, the software development website, was arrested together with his girlfriend by Beijing police on April 19. The couple were accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a commonly used charge against dissidents in China, according to Chen Kun, the brother of Chen Mei, another volunteer involved with the project. https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-coronavirus-memories-page/ https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor...
  - mikem170 7y ago
    Both of the articles you linked to mention local police, in Wuhan and Beijing.
- khuey 7y ago
  This is a common political trope in China used to shift responsibility away from the center and should not be taken at face value.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > I had the impression, based on news articles at the time, that local officials were behind the initial coverup in Wuhan, lasting until national officials rectified the situation. CPP propaganda strategically concentrates blame for any kind of domestic problem on local officials in order make the central authorities seem trustworthy and competent by comparison. While the local Wuhan officials definitely had an independent hand in the mismanagement, the central government had its role, too. It's also arguable that the central government is responsible for the coverup activities by the Wuhan officials, because they're the ones who've created and sustained the system those local officials operate in.

vbezhenar 7y ago

There was some interesting article about possibility that this virus is artificial. Author came to conclusion that it's possible, but there's no way to prove that (other than insider leaking strong proofs, of course). Modern virusology laboratory can create such a virus indeed and it'll be indistinguishable from a wild virus. Unfortunately this article is in Russian, I'll provide google translate link, but it probably will be translated with errors. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fhabr.com%2Fru%2Fpost%2F497956%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...

rezeroed 7y ago

I've not seen this - which country are you in? I've seen acknowledgement of South Korea's success, and criticism of China's failings.

new2628 7y ago
How about acknowledgement of success in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, India, China, etc? GP is right, that you hardly hear it in the news.

vmception 7y ago

Right, we can't have it both ways: Either Asian countries are lying because they are extremely advanced in their population centers and also authoritarian, which would be the only way for it to be news. or Asian countries are lying because they have the exact same organizational dysfunction as every country in 'the west', and also authoritarian, in which case it isn't news. so which is it folks, superior technology cohesive culture and leadership, or organizational dysfunction no different from the west.

TooKool4This 7y ago

I agree with you and I’ve made the same observation but I don’t think it’s due to some misplaced sense of superiority. I think it’s simply because it has been a while since disease and pestilence was a worry for the average Western country so the average citizen (and therefore the leaders) are complacent in a sort of “It can’t happen here” way. There have been outbreaks such as the AIDS epidemic or swine flu but nothing as impactful, infectious, and at the scale of COVID. Whereas Asian countries have grappled with issues of SARS, Malaria, AIDS, Polio, and many more in the not so distant past and have learned the importance of taking public health seriously. The experience of the outcome of mismanaging a response to a previous epidemic is still “fresh” so to say in many of these countries. I think a good example of this is how South Korea dealt with SARS and evolved their response to COVID based on the learnings from that. Lastly I wonder if the prevalence of more communal societies in Asian cultures make a difference. I can imagine it could make the problem worse but it could also be beneficial in the sense of providing strong societal pressures to quarantine/hand wash/social distance/etc. Edit: And of course the misguided leaders in particular Western countries are not helping. Maybe the US this particular time is just a statistical outlier due to some mismanagement and there is nothing more to read into further than that?

exolymph 7y ago
> I think it’s simply because it has been a while since disease and pestilence was a worry for the average Western country so the average citizen (and therefore the leaders) are complacent in a sort of “It can’t happen here” way. There have been outbreaks such as the AIDS epidemic or swine flu but nothing as impactful, infectious, and at the scale of COVID. I agree that this is the main factor. Consequently I proposed the concept of the "civilization immune system" to explain how it works: https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/civilizational-immune-systems/ https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/civilizational-immune-system...