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> 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 ack

> 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.

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.