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But that's not what we've seen is it, China has worked hard to minimize the number deaths by going really hard on a heavy lockdown early, while the US with 1/4

But that's not what we've seen is it, China has worked hard to minimize the number deaths by going really hard on a heavy lockdown early, while the US with 1/4 the population has dithered and not really mobilized the resources of its state and has 24 times as many people die as China has. I think it's more that modern China has been prepared to do everything it can to minimize death in this case and by doing a serious lockdown along with serious contact tracing they've come out early and are able to reopen their economy Some countries in the West have done the same and are in a similar state. Others have fiddled why their countries have burned.

0xy 6y ago
>has 24 times as many people die as China has This is predicated on the CCP numbers being accurate, which according to multiple intelligence sources is false. [1] They also made systematic attempts to withhold information from the WHO. [2] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/02/china-withheld-data-coronavirus-world-health-organization-recordings-reveal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/02/china-withheld...
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  This getting downvotes makes me question the authenticity of the comments above it.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Word. I'm getting pissed off at even verifiable facts getting smacked down because someone doesn't like it.
  - Taniwha 6y ago
    I made the comment above it - I am a real person FWIW I got my numbers by googling "worldwide covid numbers by country" and picked the first entry https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ I got population numbers by googling "us population" and "china population" Feel free to repeat my experiment - people are still dying, all these numbers will change
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      In that case it would appear the numbers used for your comments are very susceptible to the widely reported attempts by China to manipulate what is externally reported.
      - Taniwha 6y ago
        If China had deaths on the same per-capita as the US has had so far they would have had almost half a million - do you really think they are hiding that many?
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Given the way the country tries to control so much, I don't think it's possible to answer that question either way. tl;dr IDK.
        mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        It doesn’t matter what I think, this is a widely reported possibility with recent articles from both the Times and the Guardian. Serious reporters at least believe there’s evidence of interference and possible data manipulation by China. Basically the only thing we can conclude is that the numbers from China are suspect & not comparable with those reported by western nations until more investigation is done. Maybe it will turn out China was right all along, we just don’t have reason to think that right now.
- scarmig 6y ago
  I wouldn't put too much stock in their exact numbers, but it's not realistic to think that China has had 24 or 12 or even 6 times as many deaths as publicly reported, let alone on a per capita basis.
  - ac29 6y ago
    China has 18.7% of the world's population and 0.00018% of the current coronavirus cases [0], if you believe their reported numbers. So yes, I'm willing to believe there are vastly more deaths than reported as well. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Why is it not realistic? The CCP numbers are essentially propaganda and have no basis in reality. The CCP claims ~4,600 deaths, while there are reports like 5,000 urns being delivered to a single mortuary in Wuhan alone (Wuhan has at least eight mortuaries). According to some reports 40,000 urns were distributed in the span of just 10 days. That's one city!
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I'm talking from a societal philosophy. If you absolutely insist on dragging stats into it, well, here goes: China is incredibly monolithic in time (50 centuries of similar style of government, at least). The west is far more variable. The current US gov't acted like fuckwits, so deaths are unnecessarily high. Speaking as a brit, we've been even more fuckwitted. I don't believe china's done as well as you claim. The fucked up early, downplayed covid, twisted the WHOs arm and plain lied about their infection and death stats. Whether they reopen the economy early is of less-then-100% benefit if the rest of the world is not buying. If their economy isn't as healthy as they like to claim, this will hurt them. But the bottom line is western governments can and do change. How china will fare I don't know. I remain where I started, I don't know which is better in these situations. The west may collapse, china may collapse, I can't see the future.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
While data from China is difficult to find (and transparency always questionable), a key issues in comparing the two populations is: - General health. Covid-19 rarely acts alone, at least in The West. Preexisting conditions play a key role. For example, obesity and its "side effect" diseases pair well with C19. - How it cares for its elderly. People in nursing homes in the US have been significant contributors to the death count. Is that true in China? It helps to get into the details a bit. While the proof has vet to be studied, anecdotally, cultural differences appear to contribute to the success (or failure) of a given government's decisions.
- Taniwha 6y ago
  And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly. I live in NZ - we've had no new cases nationwide for 2 weeks, we have (AFAWK) 1 active case in the whole country. Our borders are largely closed, anyone coming in is subject to mandatory quarantine. When we went into lockdown it was fast and deep, and people honored it, we started quarantining visitors from China early, as a result many of our cases came from the US. Now we're coming out, carefully step by step, I went for a drink at the pub on Friday night, then went out to dinner - there's still mandatory social distancing and collection of contact tracing data - that may all go away next week. My hardware hacker friends in Shenzhen describe similar careful steps - apparently street markets may be back this week. But when they arrive they have similar mandatory quarantines as we have in NZ - does the US do any? As far as nursing homes I think it's traditional for older people to live with their kids they don't get warehoused as much as we do in the West. As I understand it one of the big worries in China was that it was CNY, the whole country was on the move visiting family (those grandparents) they locked everyone down before they could return and then moved people back, directly into lockdown
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    > And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly. Shocking stuff indeed. You've set the world of epidemiology on fire. What's your point? That in managing a dangerous epidemic communism/authoritarianism does better, or relatively liberal western government styles do better, or that governmental styles are not relevant? Because that was the original question.

0xy 6y ago

>has 24 times as many people die as China has This is predicated on the CCP numbers being accurate, which according to multiple intelligence sources is false. [1] They also made systematic attempts to withhold information from the WHO. [2] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/02/china-withheld-data-coronavirus-world-health-organization-recordings-reveal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/02/china-withheld...

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
This getting downvotes makes me question the authenticity of the comments above it.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Word. I'm getting pissed off at even verifiable facts getting smacked down because someone doesn't like it.
- Taniwha 6y ago
  I made the comment above it - I am a real person FWIW I got my numbers by googling "worldwide covid numbers by country" and picked the first entry https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ I got population numbers by googling "us population" and "china population" Feel free to repeat my experiment - people are still dying, all these numbers will change
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    In that case it would appear the numbers used for your comments are very susceptible to the widely reported attempts by China to manipulate what is externally reported.
    - Taniwha 6y ago
      If China had deaths on the same per-capita as the US has had so far they would have had almost half a million - do you really think they are hiding that many?
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Given the way the country tries to control so much, I don't think it's possible to answer that question either way. tl;dr IDK.
      - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        It doesn’t matter what I think, this is a widely reported possibility with recent articles from both the Times and the Guardian. Serious reporters at least believe there’s evidence of interference and possible data manipulation by China. Basically the only thing we can conclude is that the numbers from China are suspect & not comparable with those reported by western nations until more investigation is done. Maybe it will turn out China was right all along, we just don’t have reason to think that right now.
scarmig 6y ago
I wouldn't put too much stock in their exact numbers, but it's not realistic to think that China has had 24 or 12 or even 6 times as many deaths as publicly reported, let alone on a per capita basis.
- ac29 6y ago
  China has 18.7% of the world's population and 0.00018% of the current coronavirus cases [0], if you believe their reported numbers. So yes, I'm willing to believe there are vastly more deaths than reported as well. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
- 0xy 6y ago
  Why is it not realistic? The CCP numbers are essentially propaganda and have no basis in reality. The CCP claims ~4,600 deaths, while there are reports like 5,000 urns being delivered to a single mortuary in Wuhan alone (Wuhan has at least eight mortuaries). According to some reports 40,000 urns were distributed in the span of just 10 days. That's one city!

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

I'm talking from a societal philosophy. If you absolutely insist on dragging stats into it, well, here goes: China is incredibly monolithic in time (50 centuries of similar style of government, at least). The west is far more variable. The current US gov't acted like fuckwits, so deaths are unnecessarily high. Speaking as a brit, we've been even more fuckwitted. I don't believe china's done as well as you claim. The fucked up early, downplayed covid, twisted the WHOs arm and plain lied about their infection and death stats. Whether they reopen the economy early is of less-then-100% benefit if the rest of the world is not buying. If their economy isn't as healthy as they like to claim, this will hurt them. But the bottom line is western governments can and do change. How china will fare I don't know. I remain where I started, I don't know which is better in these situations. The west may collapse, china may collapse, I can't see the future.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

While data from China is difficult to find (and transparency always questionable), a key issues in comparing the two populations is: - General health. Covid-19 rarely acts alone, at least in The West. Preexisting conditions play a key role. For example, obesity and its "side effect" diseases pair well with C19. - How it cares for its elderly. People in nursing homes in the US have been significant contributors to the death count. Is that true in China? It helps to get into the details a bit. While the proof has vet to be studied, anecdotally, cultural differences appear to contribute to the success (or failure) of a given government's decisions.

Taniwha 6y ago
And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly. I live in NZ - we've had no new cases nationwide for 2 weeks, we have (AFAWK) 1 active case in the whole country. Our borders are largely closed, anyone coming in is subject to mandatory quarantine. When we went into lockdown it was fast and deep, and people honored it, we started quarantining visitors from China early, as a result many of our cases came from the US. Now we're coming out, carefully step by step, I went for a drink at the pub on Friday night, then went out to dinner - there's still mandatory social distancing and collection of contact tracing data - that may all go away next week. My hardware hacker friends in Shenzhen describe similar careful steps - apparently street markets may be back this week. But when they arrive they have similar mandatory quarantines as we have in NZ - does the US do any? As far as nursing homes I think it's traditional for older people to live with their kids they don't get warehoused as much as we do in the West. As I understand it one of the big worries in China was that it was CNY, the whole country was on the move visiting family (those grandparents) they locked everyone down before they could return and then moved people back, directly into lockdown
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly. Shocking stuff indeed. You've set the world of epidemiology on fire. What's your point? That in managing a dangerous epidemic communism/authoritarianism does better, or relatively liberal western government styles do better, or that governmental styles are not relevant? Because that was the original question.