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And on January 17th the US started screening passengers from China (here’s a great source for that: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/timeline-the-trump-admini

And on January 17th the US started screening passengers from China (here’s a great source for that: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/timeline-the-trump-administrations-decisive-actions-to-combat-the-coronavirus/ https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/timeline-the-trump-admini...). Screening only makes sense if you believe the disease is contagious. So that’s what.. 3 days of misdirection? Before that, on January 6th, the CDC issued a “Level 1 travel warning” and “established an incident management system”. And according to https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-... the virus (and it’s true extend) was discussed dozens of times in the president’s daily briefings, starting in early January. Not that any of it matters: Two months after the first warnings, and more than a month after the Wuhan shutdown that ended any possible efforts to hide anything, the President was publicly forecasting that the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” That’s from February 26th. Check his own timeline above to see how much use he made of that month. He’s very proud of mentioning it in the SoU and chatting about it with the Indian PM, and various groups being briefed.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Thanks for the detailed info. FYI: corona was apparently everywhere by Dec. 10, but the "January 6th, the CDC issued a Level 1 travel warning” is interesting as it's one of the earliest US references. So the CDC was still 4 weeks behind the ball, and about 2.5 months behind the likely patient zero (Oct./Nov.)
ehvatum 6y ago
> So that’s what.. 3 days of misdirection? Oh! So, China only intentionally lied to the entire world for a 3 days. Or, at least that's all your prepared to acknowledge, while bizarrely attempting to minimize it. In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese central authorities. You invite the reader to assume the opposite. Why?
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  > In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese central authorities You're arguing for China's culpability by simply asserting they are always dishonest. That's just circular reasoning! Look, I don't particular like dictatorships. I'll grant you all the standard complaints about China's human rights abuses, lack of freedom of the press, and their military leaders' terribly old-fashioned banana-republic-style oversized hats. But the attempt here is to shift responsibility for 70,000+ US deaths onto them. In terms of causality, I believe that is wrong. As in: even if they were dishonest, it didn't make a difference. It's also wrong for the single purpose responsibility actually has, to avoid repetition: not only is it the US governments' (in)action that primarily influences the outcomes here, that government is also far more responsive to any sort of pressure the US public can create. A even if you can somehow browbeat China into handling the next such situation in a way that is more helpful, that only protects against a more-or-less exact repeat of this crisis. But if the US government improves, that improvement also applies if the next virus is the Canadian Maple-Fever. Or an earthquake, or whatever. There probably was some Chinese obfuscation. But it seems to be entirely of the superficial, nationalism-inspired attempt at window-dressing many other, ostensibly more open, transparent, and democratic government engaged in. Florida, for example, doesn't (or didn't, at the beginning) count out-of-state visitor's deaths in its statistics. Trump famously didn't want cruise ship passengers disembarking because it would ruin his numbers. Many countries were rather slow to start counting out-of-hospital deaths, etc. Even the exact same no-(local)-transmission lie China is accused of was recycled by Trump! If you look at the graphs of cases and deaths, you'll note that China's data fits in rather nicely with that in other countries. Since they were always a few weeks ahead of everyone else, it seems their data was, by-and-large, credible. Or they are extremely good at guessing. All this is such a transparently obvious attempt to whip up a bit of xenophobic furore to yet again ride a nationalistic wave to an election victory, it wouldn't be acceptable as the background plot for a politics-themed porn movie. To see it succeeding is just...sad
  - downvoteme1 6y ago
    Thank you for writing this. You put exactly my thoughts in words. Just because China delayed telling the world about H2H transmission for 6 days from Jan 14 to Jan 20 does not make them culpable for 70000 US deaths. It is not that once the US learnt of H2H transmission on Jan20th and knew that the virus was in US, it shut down all public events. The US still proceeded to have the Chinese New Years parade in Manhattan, the LA marathon still happened on March 8th.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Thanks for the detailed info. FYI: corona was apparently everywhere by Dec. 10, but the "January 6th, the CDC issued a Level 1 travel warning” is interesting as it's one of the earliest US references. So the CDC was still 4 weeks behind the ball, and about 2.5 months behind the likely patient zero (Oct./Nov.)

ehvatum 6y ago

> So that’s what.. 3 days of misdirection? Oh! So, China only intentionally lied to the entire world for a 3 days. Or, at least that's all your prepared to acknowledge, while bizarrely attempting to minimize it. In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese central authorities. You invite the reader to assume the opposite. Why?

IAmEveryone 6y ago
> In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese central authorities You're arguing for China's culpability by simply asserting they are always dishonest. That's just circular reasoning! Look, I don't particular like dictatorships. I'll grant you all the standard complaints about China's human rights abuses, lack of freedom of the press, and their military leaders' terribly old-fashioned banana-republic-style oversized hats. But the attempt here is to shift responsibility for 70,000+ US deaths onto them. In terms of causality, I believe that is wrong. As in: even if they were dishonest, it didn't make a difference. It's also wrong for the single purpose responsibility actually has, to avoid repetition: not only is it the US governments' (in)action that primarily influences the outcomes here, that government is also far more responsive to any sort of pressure the US public can create. A even if you can somehow browbeat China into handling the next such situation in a way that is more helpful, that only protects against a more-or-less exact repeat of this crisis. But if the US government improves, that improvement also applies if the next virus is the Canadian Maple-Fever. Or an earthquake, or whatever. There probably was some Chinese obfuscation. But it seems to be entirely of the superficial, nationalism-inspired attempt at window-dressing many other, ostensibly more open, transparent, and democratic government engaged in. Florida, for example, doesn't (or didn't, at the beginning) count out-of-state visitor's deaths in its statistics. Trump famously didn't want cruise ship passengers disembarking because it would ruin his numbers. Many countries were rather slow to start counting out-of-hospital deaths, etc. Even the exact same no-(local)-transmission lie China is accused of was recycled by Trump! If you look at the graphs of cases and deaths, you'll note that China's data fits in rather nicely with that in other countries. Since they were always a few weeks ahead of everyone else, it seems their data was, by-and-large, credible. Or they are extremely good at guessing. All this is such a transparently obvious attempt to whip up a bit of xenophobic furore to yet again ride a nationalistic wave to an election victory, it wouldn't be acceptable as the background plot for a politics-themed porn movie. To see it succeeding is just...sad
- downvoteme1 6y ago
  Thank you for writing this. You put exactly my thoughts in words. Just because China delayed telling the world about H2H transmission for 6 days from Jan 14 to Jan 20 does not make them culpable for 70000 US deaths. It is not that once the US learnt of H2H transmission on Jan20th and knew that the virus was in US, it shut down all public events. The US still proceeded to have the Chinese New Years parade in Manhattan, the LA marathon still happened on March 8th.