> There is no indication that there's a lab in that location, much less that they work on bats.
What do you expect, the bat sign at the front door?
> The WHCDC is primarily a community health organization, and some tiny satellite office is not where they're doing research, if they even do any significant research in their own labs.
Listen to yourself, Mr. Science. This claim is speculation. You do not know how the WHCDC works, you couldn't even find their facility on map, you couldn't figure out that they are doing research on bats, that they have a major bat researcher on their staff, who co-authored papers along with Shi Zhengli.
Note that I never claimed they were doing research at that facility, because I don't know. I was merely correcting your claims that they authors of that "document" got the location wrong and that there is no bat research at the WHCDC.
> You're promoting a conspiracy theory that has zero evidence (someone online claiming they have bats in a building that doesn't even appear to be a lab is not evidence), I think for political reasons that you've made quite clear - your views on China.
Why are you conflating my views on China and my views on the government and ruling party?
> About your use of the phrase "CCP," I say you're using it for shock value because I don't think you're actually specifically talking about the CCP.
What's the "shock value" in that?
> You're talking about the actions of government officials, policemen, etc. What is added by alluding to the political party?
All government in Mainland China is subordinate to the CCP and its political philosophy. A common CCP strategy is to defer responsibility for mistakes down the chain of command. That's how the local officials in Wuhan got purged, while the higher-ups got away scot-free. It would be ridiculous for me to blame the policemen, which are at the very bottom of the chain of command, for what they have been ordered to do.
This is in stark contrast to the US, where the political parties do not actually rule the entire legislature, executive and judiciary parts of the government. Yet you have no problem blaming the situation in the US on Trump and its administration, even though they have far less power.
> I think it would have been nearly impossible to contain, even with the most aggressive early response.
It was effectively contained in Hong-Kong and Taiwan, both of which are China, but neither of which are ruled by the CCP. I guess we'll never know.
> The US and Mexico were unable to contain H1N1 in 2009, which is a less transmissible disease than CoVID-19.
Sure, but it only was discovered after it had already spread for a while in both countries, whereas the CCP had a golden opportunity to inform the community and quell the spread early. Instead, it chose to destroy evidence and silence whistle blowers.
> There was community spread in California in mid-January, and there is now a paper claiming the existence of a case in France in late December, before the virus was even discovered.
If that's true, fair enough, the cat was already out of the box.
> I am sure that the government in Wuhan resisted taking measures that could have slowed the spread of the virus early on, because they worried about the effects those measures would have on the economy.
They didn't just "resist taking measures", they arrested people for "spreading the rumor" that there was another SARS-like outbreak even though they knew there was an outbreak. If the government didn't suppress information, people could've taken measures for themselves.
> In Wuhan, there was about a week of downplaying, before the central government stepped in and forced extreme measures on the city, which turned out to be highly effective.
You don't know that they were effective, none of the numbers published are independently verifiable and they are statistically suspicious. Also, you can issue curfews without forcing people into internment camps - that probably made the situation worse, not better.
> You're criticizing those measures ("Draconian"), while also severely mischaracterizing them
How exactly?
> Months in, most of the US still hasn't suppressed the outbreak properly, and now the President and much of the political establishment is suggesting that maybe it's better to let people die than to harm the economy.
While I agree that a re-opening seems premature, the decision is up to the states, which are affected quite differently. As for "letting people die", that's always a tradeoff. It's not just the economy, it's our lives. We could prevent tens of thousands of Influenza deaths a year by socially isolating 100% of the time. We could prevent car accidents by banning cars. We could prevent heart disease and obesity and cancer by banning unhealthy food or smoking. The tradeoff is personal freedom.
> In the end, I think one would have to be blind, or blinded by political ideology, to deny that China handled the outbreak better than the US did.
The handling of the initial outbreak was unforgivable and the measures taken in Wuhan were human rights violations. In that sense, no they didn't handle it better, even if their questionable numbers are accurate.
On the more benign side, due to rapid technology adoption and due to a lack of civil rights, China can more effectively trace infection and immunity. You can't go anywhere without a smartphone and a green checkmark. However, even those measures would not work in the US, Donald Trump can't just force everyone to use a smartphone app.
> What do you expect, the bat sign at the front door?
I expect any evidence whatsoever. One piece.
> you couldn't even find their facility on map
I correctly pointed out that the WHCDC is located 3 km away.
> you couldn't figure out that they are doing research on bats
I still haven't seen any evidence that any WHCDC lab keeps bats, much less that they keep bats at a small satellite office away from the main campus. The papers on sample collection state that samples are brought back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
> they have a major bat researcher on their staff, who co-authored papers along with Shi Zhengli.
He collects samples in the countryside. That isn't evidence that he's keeping live bats 300 m from the seafood market. The fact that he's co-authoring papers with Shi Zhengli actually suggests that the samples are going to the WIV, which would make perfect sense. From everything I've seen, they're the ones that store samples of bat coronaviruses.
> What's the "shock value" in that?
Because it plays into American anti-Communist hysteria, a very powerful force going back to the McCarthy era in the 1950s.
> All government in Mainland China is subordinate to the CCP and its political philosophy.
Which is what? Honestly, do you think that even 1% of the people who have suddenly, in the last month or so, started going on about the CCP can even name one member of the Politburo, other than Xi Xinping? What percentage of these people know who Deng Xiaoping or Zhou Enlai was? I think people are just using this phrase because it sounds ominous ("the Communists are coming!").
> Sure, but it only was discovered after it had already spread for a while in both countries
When H1N1 was discovered, it was still geographically isolated to part of Mexico and the Southwestern US. It took a month for the first confirmed cases to pop up in Europe. Chinese labs only discovered the existence of SARS-CoV-2 in late December, by which point the virus had already been circulating for at least a month, and was possibly already spreading internationally (see the claimed French case).
> the CCP had a golden opportunity to inform the community and quell the spread early.
Again with the "CCP." What specific actions should have been taken by which specific Party organs in order to contain the outbreak at the source? I'm interested in your detailed knowledge of how the Party organs function.
> Instead, it chose to destroy evidence and silence whistle blowers.
It alerted the WHO the day after doctors first posted information about cases to social media. Two things can be true at once: local authorities cracked down on doctors for what they considered rumor mongering, and they also sent an official notification to the WHO.
As for "destroyed information," I can guess what you're alluding to, but I think you're going out on a limb. The reports were that once they discovered that patient samples contained a SARS-like coronavirus, the government ordered low-security labs to either transfer their samples to high-security labs or to destroy them. They also quickly shared the genome with the international scientific community, which doesn't align with your depiction of their behavior.
> If the government didn't suppress information, people could've taken measures for themselves.
The government alerted the public on 31 December, which is before the doctors were ordered to stop posting to social media. I think the local government downplayed its seriousness in mid-January, out of fear of the economic consequences. That appears to have ended once Zhong Nanshan visited Wuhan. Then the hammer came down.
> How exactly?
This is what the quarantine centers looked like: [1][2]. That's where people with mild cases were sent. Describing that as "open-floor internment centers where people had no protection" strikes me as inaccurate and really just an attempt at demonization. These are not luxurious conditions, but this is what a middle-income country was able to organize on short notice, with enormous effort. Central quarantines dramatically reduced the reproductive number of the virus. In other words, that effort saved the lives of many thousands of people.
> You don't know that they were effective, none of the numbers published are independently verifiable and they are statistically suspicious.
I'm not going to indulge the conspiracy theory that the virus is actually raging in Wuhan, that the numbers are all faked, etc. China is not a black box. The volume of information that comes out of China, transmitted by everyday people, makes it obvious that the epidemic was suppressed there months ago.
> Also, you can issue curfews without forcing people into internment camps - that probably made the situation worse, not better.
Centralized quarantine was very important. Many countries have locked down, but still have R ~ 1, because there is continued transmission within families. Dad gets it, then Mom a week later, then the kids a few days later, then grandma a week later. Centralized quarantine of the sick cuts a lot of those transmission chains. Coupled with universal symptom checks, centralized quarantine is very effective at reducing the reproductive number of the virus. That's how they got down to R ~ 0.3 in Wuhan. Other measures that they took, such as widespread delivery of groceries, so that people didn't have to go out, also helped. This is an area that you could actually talk about the Communist Party, as opposed to the government more generally, because much of this community-level effort was organized by Party organizations.
> The handling of the initial outbreak was unforgivable and the measures taken in Wuhan were human rights violations. In that sense, no they didn't handle it better, even if their questionable numbers are accurate.
I think the country whose leadership decided to sacrifice 70,000+ of its citizens' lives to the economy has no moral standing to criticize others' handling of the outbreak. The strongest condemnation one can make of the response in China, in my opinion, is the decision by the government in Wuhan to prioritize the economy over health during the week in mid-January in which they downplayed the scale of the outbreak. That has been the most salient aspect of the US government response, for months now. While China shut down hard, crushed the epidemic and opened up with minimal transmission, the US government is throwing in the towel, and the President is fine with people dying. The most important thing is that the Dow Jones goes up.
1. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/02/06/world/06china-briefing2sub/merlin_168458046_7c81452c-4df6-4b69-8636-1367aea71560-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/02/06/world/06china-bri...
2. https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2020/02/AP20049181310953.jpg https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2020/02/AP20049...