14 ms·

Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools

85 points by dazhbog 6y ago

tristanj 6y ago
I'm confident Wuhan does not have community spread of Coronavirus. To eliminate the virus, China tested all 11 million residents of Wuhan for coronavirus in just 14 days [1]. That's more than 500,000 people per day. Dozens of asymptomatic carriers were found, who were then quarantined. Wuhan hasn't had new cases in weeks. China used a similar mass testing strategy in Beijing. When an outbreak appeared at the Xinfadi wholesale market in June [2], the government had a short (several weeks long) lockdown and tested more than half the city's population. Some days they did ~400,000 tests per day [3]. This was possible because they sent in testing resources from across the country to Beijing. The outbreak was eliminated within a month. I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. It's impossible to have a widespread outbreak if you preemptively test and isolate all carriers. [1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-pacific/science-health-asia-pacific/china-testing-coronavirus-wuhan/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-pacific/sc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbre... [3] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Day-How-Beijing-stemmed-new-COVID-19-outbreak-RXqRcu3r4k/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Da...
- finnh 6y ago
  > I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. Yep - and then wait for the rest of the world to catch up =(
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  An additional measure that is effective at keeping people isolated but that would be unthinkable in the West where even tracing apps raise issues: Everyone has an app that displays a QR code to identify them. Then, they put people at the entrance of buildings, buses, etc. whose job is to scan everyone. This is not only a track and trace technique because the tablets of the people doing the scanning are linked to a central database in real-time: If you're listed at risk, when they scan you their screen will display an alert, they will prevent you from getting in the building, on the bus, etc., and the authorities will immediately know that you are not self-isolating as told. Basically, if you're told to self-isolate you have no choice.
  - floren 6y ago
    I'm sure the CCP will appreciate the ease with which this system can be adapted for use with social credit scores--just swap out the backend database!
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    Taiwan also quickly put a very extensive location tracking system into place for quarantined invdividuals and they also seem to have very impressive results. "The monitoring system in Taiwan is described as a “digital fence,” whereby anyone required to undergo home quarantine has their location monitored via cellular signals from their phones. Venturing too far from homes triggers the alert system, and calls and messages are sent to the confinee to ascertain their whereabouts. Anyone caught breaching their quarantine can be fined up to NT$1 million ($33,000). As the National Communications Commission, which was involved in setting up the tracking system, put it: “They’ll find you and fine you.” https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors-55000-under-coronavirus-quarantine/ https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors...
    - aantix 6y ago
      Is this individual tracking legal in the United States?
      - mikepurvis 6y ago
        No, but your wireless carrier has all the information, and if you have an Android phone with location services turned on, then Google has it all too.
        gruez 6y ago
        So don't bring your phone during your excursions?
        snovv_crash 6y ago
        They regularly call to check you have it with you.
- makomk 6y ago
  Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work. We know that these kinds of swab tests have a fairly substantial false negative rate - initially from Chinese research, and then I think confirmed pretty much everywhere else - especially when trying to detect pre-symptomatic carriers of the disease. (Also, based on other results elsewhere, I think we'd expect to see a few people out of a Wuhan-sized outbreak testing positive even if they'd long since recovered from the disease and were no longer infectious.)
  - jquery 6y ago
    > Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work. Are you suggesting China is putting out propaganda?
  - simonh 6y ago
    Antibody tests like this are very limited. They only detect positive after you've had the virus for several days and they have a significant false negative rate. They are very poor at identifying if this person right here has the virus. However if what you're doing is trying to assess the prevalence of the virus in a population of hundreds of thousands, or millions, they could be very useful. They will help identify clusters of infection so you can then use the PCR test on known associates to pinpoint cases. I think this is what the Chinese government did in Beijing, they used mass antibody testing, but PCR testing of everyone in the food market where they knew there were cases.
    - nelaboras 6y ago
      You test as much as possible and for any positive you ask the candidate and all associates to self-isolate. Maybe X who is infected gives you a false negative, but if you also test X's mother, husband and son you are likely to get a positive and just isolate the whole household. Similarly a false positive just means you isolate one for no reason - no harm to the community.
    - James_Henry 6y ago
      I think that the commenter you are responding to is not talking about antibody tests but rather rt-pcr test (swab tests) as have been used in China.
- sitkack 6y ago
  They should still be wearing masks and distancing until it has been removed everywhere. It is most certainly in China proper and could re-infect the city. I only play an epidemiologist on the internet, but this is highly improper dancing.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  They apparently did some cover up attempts but was there virus denialism like in the west? I hear that among the older people there’s denial of germ theory and general distrust to western medicine but they seem to be able to tackle down the Sars-Cov-2 spread very well. The west, especially USA denied the Covid-19 at highest level until there were too many victims to deny, which is very disappointing. The west was supposed to be the one acting on reason.
  - peacefulhat 6y ago
    Alternstive medicine is big business in China...but not like it doesn’t have a big hold here in America too. Administration of the coronavirus vaccine will be a big hurdle since so many Americans are afraid of vaccines.
    - umvi 6y ago
      > Administration of the coronavirus vaccine will be a big hurdle since so many Americans are afraid of vaccines. Source? Afaik anti-vaxxers are a loud minority and in no way representative of the majority of Americans.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Polls suggest that about a third of Americans don't want to get a coronavirus vaccine. (https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-08-14/one-third-of-americans-wont-get-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-finds https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-08-14/...) Note that this probably isn't measuring something else like "I think the virus isn't real", because similar polls show significantly higher support for things like masks and social distancing.
        umvi 6y ago
        Well yeah, I don't want one yet either. I'll take a flu vaccine any day of the week, but who wants to be first in line for a new type of vaccine? Makes you feel like a guinea pig. I'm going to wait until other people try it out first.
- Budabellly 6y ago
  Probably not an advisable strategy because there are many ways it would adversely affect certain groups, but as a thought experiment, what if a pre-requisite for future COVID stimulus checks in the U.S. (individuals or businesses) was taking a covid test or antibody test?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - brendoelfrendo 6y ago
    This plan assumes that tests in the US are readily available, cheap, and fast. I can assure you they are not, with public testing facilities in short supply, private tests costing hundreds of dollars, and test results taking upwards of a week. Maybe an incentive would mean that people would actually go get tested instead of ignoring contact tracers, but as with anything healthcare in the US, they'd probably be more concerned with taking time off work.
- dustingetz 6y ago
  Is there a single democratic country that was able to respond like this?
  - AnotherGoodName 6y ago
    Melbourne Australia is taking this approach right now. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12354763 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj... Everything closed except food retail. Unlike the US where essential was defined slightly more broadly to include hardware stores and such. Contact tracing every individual who tests positive. The highest testing rates in the world. etc. It even gets into the extent where some sections of the city have buildings locked down completely. No one in or out. This is enforced with armed police. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491177/Victorians-donated-250K-24-hours-public-housing-residents-locked-Melbourne-towers.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491177/Victorians-... Americans might look at this in horror but in Australia the policy is popular and most people are accepting it as a necessity. There's also healthy competition between Australia and New Zealand here. We can't let the Kiwis embarrass us on this!
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Sadly, we Americans look in horror at anything that might briefly inconvenience us. Heaven forbid we're prevented from going to Olive Garden, getting our hair done, and buying khakis. Which is why real lockdowns were never tried here, stay-at-home "suggestions" were not successful here, and we've become the epicenter.
  - gruez 6y ago
    taiwan, japan, south korea?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Japan specifically chooses not to do mass testing because they don't think it's effective.
- deleted 6y ago
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- foobarian 6y ago
  > I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. Prerequisite: unarmed population. Testing is not enough, you have to lock down the positives too.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Europe has an unarmed population and raigning in the virus during the summer proves impossible as everyone wants to go on vacation or suffer the FOMO of watching their friends' beach photos on Instagram instead so nobody gives two shits about the virus anymore.
  - sadfklsjlkjwt 6y ago
    So if you own a gun you suddenly don't care that your actions will kill your parents/grandparents?
    - gruez 6y ago
      More like, there's always going to be a certain % of the population who believes the virus is overblown, and the measures the government are taking is too strict and/or bad for the economy. If those people also have guns, the situation gets much more dangerous.
    - bitwize 6y ago
      If you own a gun, you might be inclined to use it when the G-men come round to weld the doors to your home shut, as the Chinese government did as part of its very effective containment measures.
  - tim333 6y ago
    So they are unable to lock people up in the US due to arms?
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  Its not unlike China to hid details of disasterous death tolls that can reach hundreds of thousands. See 1975 Banqio Dam Failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
  - FooBarWidget 6y ago
    While past coverups did happen, I think it's unfair to compare current administrators with past ones because past administrators from the 70s have long retired.
    - animal_spirits 6y ago
      Very true. Thanks for bringing that up
- ecf 6y ago
  Meanwhile I was exposed to a known positive carrier and the only option I have to get tested is a chain-pharmacy like a CVS/Walgreens. Even then, it would take over a week for me to get my results back. I’m not stepping into one of those places when I only potentially have the virus because that’s an easy way to make sure I actually do contract it. The government handling of this and the overwhelming show of people being proud for not wearing masks makes me realize I want nothing to do with the United States and I’m actively looking to move away in less than 10 years.
  - meowface 6y ago
    The issue is the US is so big and has so many different parts. I live in a metropolitan area and I see zero complaints about masks or vaccines. If I read certain kinds of news stories that come across as very absurd to me, I definitely start thinking about maybe moving someday. But if I look at the people around me and who I associate with, I have no reason to want to get away from any of them. This just happens to be a time where the (in)action of some can affect others on a national scale. I'm not saying I would want this, but in 100 years from now I wonder if the US is still going to contain all of the states it has now. I feel like the division we're feeling now may not ever go away and may ultimately end up in some (very hopefully peaceful) agreement where there are now two countries instead of one. I really don't know if this would be good or bad, but just practically speaking, it seems plausible.
    - calmworm 6y ago
      How is it plausible? The division isn’t on state lines. It’s rural and urban areas. You have many “red” states with multiple “blue” cities in it. How would this work?
      - meowface 6y ago
        I was going to address that in the post but I didn't want to make it too long. Basically in this hypothetical scenario I think state lines may possibly be redrawn, maybe with some splitting and some merging, and maybe people moving around to be near their respective red/blue tribe. And as a result, some of the blue cities may start to turn red, and/or there may be some divisions drawn close to some big cities.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  1) They do pooled tests, so 500,000 tests per day aren't needed. 2) the packed testing lineups likely spread corona!
alphabettsy 6y ago
It seems as if an aggressive and extended lockdown at the start has worked?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
save_ferris 6y ago
We're starting to see just how misguided the US was by not taking lockdown seriously early on and pushing to keep the economy going despite the long-term risks to mortality and commerce. Here we are months later, and ground zero for the epidemic seems to largely be operating business-as-usual while the US is still seeing ~1k deaths per day as we approach flu season. I was watching an Aussie rules football game the other day and they're allowing fans back in the stands. I couldn't dream of going to a sports event in many areas of the US right now.
- briffle 6y ago
  It is entirely feasible to keep things going on, as long as you have a high enough level of testing (not just people with symptoms) and strong contact tracing. We have neither.
  - xur17 6y ago
    And we don't seem to be making very rapid progress towards having significantly higher levels of testing in most of the US.
    - tgb 6y ago
      On top of that, I got tested last month and it took 6 days to get the results, 7 from day of scheduling the appointment. Doesn't matter how many tests we perform if they're rendered nearly-useless by being out-of-date by the time they come back. In fact, I worry about "security theater" use of these that falsely give a sense of confidence.
    - makomk 6y ago
      You have higher levels of testing than pretty much any other major country on the planet, from all the figures I've seen. The easiest demonstration is just going to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and sorting by tests per capita. (The UK is similar and Russia is better on paper but their figures have been extremely fishy even by global standards. China's testing seems to be heavily concentrated on high-profile stuff like testing all of Wuhan and Beijing; they've tested less overall, and there's been weird incidents like patients hospitalized with symptoms in a region already known to be a hotspot not getting tested promptly and entirely missing an outbreak elsewhere until it spilled over into Beijing.) The reason you don't seem to be making progress is that no matter how much progress there is, your press has worked very hard to convince you that the necessary level of testing is always much higher than you currently have and you're uniquely failing to achieve it because of Trump. They use techniques like carefully only comparing the amount of testing to countries you're worse than, not comparing overall testing levels at all and instead falsely claiming test positivity levels were a measure of overall testing (by that point it mostly measured infection levels - the number of tests required to test, say, everyone with symptoms is almost entirely unaffected by the number of Covid infections unless you have so many of them your healthcare system is collapsing), and most recently literally using the fact that you've tested more to make it look like you're doing worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/coronavirus-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/coronavirus-us.html For context, the big reason the US has "five times as many cases as in all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia, combined" is because you've been testing massively more than Europe, Japan and South Korea did during their outbreaks, and people are only counted if they're tested. European testing was particularly bad - from what I could tell, the countries with big outbreaks basically only tested people who were hospitalized, and the much higher test positivity rates and hospitalization and death rates amongst confirmed cases seemed to confirm this. That won't show up so well on more recent overall stats because everyone did plenty of testing after the outbreaks had died down, though still not at US levels. Though with the way European and South Korean cases are picking up that might change. (For bonus points, the other thing that article uses to prove that the US is a unique failure is the length of its outbreak... after everyone had been pushing for "flatten the curve" which literally extends the length of the outbreak.)
umvi 6y ago
Is there any way to independently confirm China's claims? AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.
- wnevets 6y ago
  Is there any way to independently confirm Florida or Texas' claims?
  - drcongo 6y ago
    Not while the "president" bans independent journalists from asking questions.
    - michaelgiba 6y ago
      Thankfully you don't need to go through the president to get this information. Troves of independent, even international, journalists have written stories on COVID responses within US states, including TX and FL. It is wholly misleading to compare the claims of these two countries.
      - wnevets 6y ago
        > Thankfully you don't need to go through the president to get this information. Hospitals are sending their data directly to the white house bypassing the CDC. [1] https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-bypass-cdc-report-covid-19-data-directly-hhs https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-...
  - jquery 6y ago
    Pretty sure journalists from around the world have free reign to examine any of Florida or Texas’s claims. Can you say the same about Wuhan?
    - michaelgiba 6y ago
draw_down 6y ago
Over here in the US we're stuck in the stage where we get really mad at everyone but ourselves for how badly we've blown it. I saw the video of the party, it looked fun (though someone should really teach those kids how to dance). Meanwhile, we're just watching social media videos where people scream at each other for wearing masks, or not wearing masks.
1MachineElf 6y ago
If the US had taken the same approach as China, it would have been both 1) effective and 2) unconstitutional.
- xboxnolifes 6y ago
  There is a pretty large landscape between what the US has done in response and what would have been unconstitutional.
- matz1 6y ago
  >1) effective Maybe if the virus is as deadly as anthrax or ebola, but for covid its not worth it.
- James_Henry 6y ago
  If we had the political will, we would have had weekly mass testing by now. The US has spent trillions to try and keep people afloat when they could have used that money to try and keep people safe by stopping the virus. A combination of ignorance (throughout society), what seems to be FDA incompetence, and of political games is what is killing the economy and thousands of lives.
hotz 6y ago
Anyone that trusts or believes what China says is gullible beyond belief.
- jquery 6y ago
  It seems we have learned very little. How quickly people forget that China’s extraordinary lies and distortions were in large part responsible for this pandemic in the first place.
rossdavidh 6y ago
None dare call it herd immunity.
parserman 6y ago
good job
dehrmann 6y ago
> there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province since mid-May. I'm somewhat suspicious of this when New Zealand wasn't able to keep it to zero. China might be able/willing to impose stricter policies, but New Zealand is an island.
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  I have no doubt New Zealand will get back to 0 cases since they reached 0 from a far higher rate earlier in the year. It's currently ~10 cases per day they are detecting. They haven't identified the gap in the quarantine that allowed this current outbreak but it looks like an edge case regardless since they stayed at 0 cases for almost 6 months now.
- flukus 6y ago
  China hasn't been able to keep it to zero, new cases have been imported and there have been flare ups but they keep them from growing with mass testing and lockdowns, the same as New Zealand is doing now. > but New Zealand is an island Every country can effectively be an island if they want.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    Not really. The US has more than 7,000 miles of land borders, not to mention sea crossings. Closing European borders to that extent is equally impractical.
michaelgiba 6y ago
I'm honestly pretty disappointed in the BBC for covering this like it is fact and not calling into question the data integrity issues China is infamous for. Nevertheless, I do think China, at least before re-opening, had less community spread than most other countries due to the severity of their lock-down. Authoritarian countries are able to impose measures like this much more quickly than democracies, for better or for worse.
- bllguo 6y ago
  so where are the mountains of dead bodies? where are the macro indicators? what I'm disappointed in is even in the face of evidence that much of the nonsense about fake data and coverups was exaggerated, Westerners will continue to believe it
- system2 6y ago
  I think we can call this authoritarian silver lining. I wonder what is actually happening in North Korea.
- peacefulhat 6y ago
  How many people do you think have died from covid in China? America has 200x deaths per capita according to official numbers.
  - dole 6y ago
    Last time I checked about a month ago, China reported ~6,700 total deaths, I would guess ~8,000 now. I'm still surprised this isn't a more publicized, aggravating, and/or disputed figure, even given China's questionable reporting.
- chillacy 6y ago
  I've been treating the covid death count like GDP out of China. It's probably padded (e.g. you can count a death as "pneumonia" instead of covid), but it's probably not an order of magnitude off. The reality is that surveillance states and collectivist societies like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc will have an advantage when it comes to coordination. China is very much one of these types of societies.
nelaboras 6y ago
It might well be true that Wuhan currently has no known community transmissions but this is also pretty obviously a propaganda/public relations move. Weird that the BBC covers it so uncritically.
tamaharbor 6y ago
Can you say "propaganda"?
xster 6y ago
> Wuhan went into a then unprecedented lockdown on 23 January - at a time where the virus had killed 17 people and affected more than 400. It hasn't been that long ago but I almost feel like I forgot how to count this low now.

85 points by dazhbog 6y ago

I'm confident Wuhan does not have community spread of Coronavirus. To eliminate the virus, China tested all 11 million residents of Wuhan for coronavirus in just 14 days [1]. That's more than 500,000 people per day. Dozens of asymptomatic carriers were found, who were then quarantined. Wuhan hasn't had new cases in weeks. China used a similar mass testing strategy in Beijing. When an outbreak appeared at the Xinfadi wholesale market in June [2], the government had a short (several weeks long) lockdown and tested more than half the city's population. Some days they did ~400,000 tests per day [3]. This was possible because they sent in testing resources from across the country to Beijing. The outbreak was eliminated within a month. I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. It's impossible to have a widespread outbreak if you preemptively test and isolate all carriers. [1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-pacific/science-health-asia-pacific/china-testing-coronavirus-wuhan/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-pacific/sc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbre... [3] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Day-How-Beijing-stemmed-new-COVID-19-outbreak-RXqRcu3r4k/index.html https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Da...

finnh 6y ago
> I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. Yep - and then wait for the rest of the world to catch up =(
mytailorisrich 6y ago
An additional measure that is effective at keeping people isolated but that would be unthinkable in the West where even tracing apps raise issues: Everyone has an app that displays a QR code to identify them. Then, they put people at the entrance of buildings, buses, etc. whose job is to scan everyone. This is not only a track and trace technique because the tablets of the people doing the scanning are linked to a central database in real-time: If you're listed at risk, when they scan you their screen will display an alert, they will prevent you from getting in the building, on the bus, etc., and the authorities will immediately know that you are not self-isolating as told. Basically, if you're told to self-isolate you have no choice.
- floren 6y ago
  I'm sure the CCP will appreciate the ease with which this system can be adapted for use with social credit scores--just swap out the backend database!
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Taiwan also quickly put a very extensive location tracking system into place for quarantined invdividuals and they also seem to have very impressive results. "The monitoring system in Taiwan is described as a “digital fence,” whereby anyone required to undergo home quarantine has their location monitored via cellular signals from their phones. Venturing too far from homes triggers the alert system, and calls and messages are sent to the confinee to ascertain their whereabouts. Anyone caught breaching their quarantine can be fined up to NT$1 million ($33,000). As the National Communications Commission, which was involved in setting up the tracking system, put it: “They’ll find you and fine you.” https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors-55000-under-coronavirus-quarantine/ https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors...
  - aantix 6y ago
    Is this individual tracking legal in the United States?
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      No, but your wireless carrier has all the information, and if you have an Android phone with location services turned on, then Google has it all too.
      - gruez 6y ago
        So don't bring your phone during your excursions?
        snovv_crash 6y ago
        They regularly call to check you have it with you.
makomk 6y ago
Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work. We know that these kinds of swab tests have a fairly substantial false negative rate - initially from Chinese research, and then I think confirmed pretty much everywhere else - especially when trying to detect pre-symptomatic carriers of the disease. (Also, based on other results elsewhere, I think we'd expect to see a few people out of a Wuhan-sized outbreak testing positive even if they'd long since recovered from the disease and were no longer infectious.)
- jquery 6y ago
  > Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work. Are you suggesting China is putting out propaganda?
- simonh 6y ago
  Antibody tests like this are very limited. They only detect positive after you've had the virus for several days and they have a significant false negative rate. They are very poor at identifying if this person right here has the virus. However if what you're doing is trying to assess the prevalence of the virus in a population of hundreds of thousands, or millions, they could be very useful. They will help identify clusters of infection so you can then use the PCR test on known associates to pinpoint cases. I think this is what the Chinese government did in Beijing, they used mass antibody testing, but PCR testing of everyone in the food market where they knew there were cases.
  - nelaboras 6y ago
    You test as much as possible and for any positive you ask the candidate and all associates to self-isolate. Maybe X who is infected gives you a false negative, but if you also test X's mother, husband and son you are likely to get a positive and just isolate the whole household. Similarly a false positive just means you isolate one for no reason - no harm to the community.
  - James_Henry 6y ago
    I think that the commenter you are responding to is not talking about antibody tests but rather rt-pcr test (swab tests) as have been used in China.
sitkack 6y ago
They should still be wearing masks and distancing until it has been removed everywhere. It is most certainly in China proper and could re-infect the city. I only play an epidemiologist on the internet, but this is highly improper dancing.
mrtksn 6y ago
They apparently did some cover up attempts but was there virus denialism like in the west? I hear that among the older people there’s denial of germ theory and general distrust to western medicine but they seem to be able to tackle down the Sars-Cov-2 spread very well. The west, especially USA denied the Covid-19 at highest level until there were too many victims to deny, which is very disappointing. The west was supposed to be the one acting on reason.
- peacefulhat 6y ago
  Alternstive medicine is big business in China...but not like it doesn’t have a big hold here in America too. Administration of the coronavirus vaccine will be a big hurdle since so many Americans are afraid of vaccines.
  - umvi 6y ago
    > Administration of the coronavirus vaccine will be a big hurdle since so many Americans are afraid of vaccines. Source? Afaik anti-vaxxers are a loud minority and in no way representative of the majority of Americans.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Polls suggest that about a third of Americans don't want to get a coronavirus vaccine. (https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-08-14/one-third-of-americans-wont-get-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-finds https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-08-14/...) Note that this probably isn't measuring something else like "I think the virus isn't real", because similar polls show significantly higher support for things like masks and social distancing.
      - umvi 6y ago
        Well yeah, I don't want one yet either. I'll take a flu vaccine any day of the week, but who wants to be first in line for a new type of vaccine? Makes you feel like a guinea pig. I'm going to wait until other people try it out first.
Budabellly 6y ago
Probably not an advisable strategy because there are many ways it would adversely affect certain groups, but as a thought experiment, what if a pre-requisite for future COVID stimulus checks in the U.S. (individuals or businesses) was taking a covid test or antibody test?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  This plan assumes that tests in the US are readily available, cheap, and fast. I can assure you they are not, with public testing facilities in short supply, private tests costing hundreds of dollars, and test results taking upwards of a week. Maybe an incentive would mean that people would actually go get tested instead of ignoring contact tracers, but as with anything healthcare in the US, they'd probably be more concerned with taking time off work.
dustingetz 6y ago
Is there a single democratic country that was able to respond like this?
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  Melbourne Australia is taking this approach right now. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12354763 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj... Everything closed except food retail. Unlike the US where essential was defined slightly more broadly to include hardware stores and such. Contact tracing every individual who tests positive. The highest testing rates in the world. etc. It even gets into the extent where some sections of the city have buildings locked down completely. No one in or out. This is enforced with armed police. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491177/Victorians-donated-250K-24-hours-public-housing-residents-locked-Melbourne-towers.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491177/Victorians-... Americans might look at this in horror but in Australia the policy is popular and most people are accepting it as a necessity. There's also healthy competition between Australia and New Zealand here. We can't let the Kiwis embarrass us on this!
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Sadly, we Americans look in horror at anything that might briefly inconvenience us. Heaven forbid we're prevented from going to Olive Garden, getting our hair done, and buying khakis. Which is why real lockdowns were never tried here, stay-at-home "suggestions" were not successful here, and we've become the epicenter.
- gruez 6y ago
  taiwan, japan, south korea?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Japan specifically chooses not to do mass testing because they don't think it's effective.
deleted 6y ago
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foobarian 6y ago
> I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. Prerequisite: unarmed population. Testing is not enough, you have to lock down the positives too.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Europe has an unarmed population and raigning in the virus during the summer proves impossible as everyone wants to go on vacation or suffer the FOMO of watching their friends' beach photos on Instagram instead so nobody gives two shits about the virus anymore.
- sadfklsjlkjwt 6y ago
  So if you own a gun you suddenly don't care that your actions will kill your parents/grandparents?
  - gruez 6y ago
    More like, there's always going to be a certain % of the population who believes the virus is overblown, and the measures the government are taking is too strict and/or bad for the economy. If those people also have guns, the situation gets much more dangerous.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    If you own a gun, you might be inclined to use it when the G-men come round to weld the doors to your home shut, as the Chinese government did as part of its very effective containment measures.
- tim333 6y ago
  So they are unable to lock people up in the US due to arms?
animal_spirits 6y ago
Its not unlike China to hid details of disasterous death tolls that can reach hundreds of thousands. See 1975 Banqio Dam Failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  While past coverups did happen, I think it's unfair to compare current administrators with past ones because past administrators from the 70s have long retired.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Very true. Thanks for bringing that up
ecf 6y ago
Meanwhile I was exposed to a known positive carrier and the only option I have to get tested is a chain-pharmacy like a CVS/Walgreens. Even then, it would take over a week for me to get my results back. I’m not stepping into one of those places when I only potentially have the virus because that’s an easy way to make sure I actually do contract it. The government handling of this and the overwhelming show of people being proud for not wearing masks makes me realize I want nothing to do with the United States and I’m actively looking to move away in less than 10 years.
- meowface 6y ago
  The issue is the US is so big and has so many different parts. I live in a metropolitan area and I see zero complaints about masks or vaccines. If I read certain kinds of news stories that come across as very absurd to me, I definitely start thinking about maybe moving someday. But if I look at the people around me and who I associate with, I have no reason to want to get away from any of them. This just happens to be a time where the (in)action of some can affect others on a national scale. I'm not saying I would want this, but in 100 years from now I wonder if the US is still going to contain all of the states it has now. I feel like the division we're feeling now may not ever go away and may ultimately end up in some (very hopefully peaceful) agreement where there are now two countries instead of one. I really don't know if this would be good or bad, but just practically speaking, it seems plausible.
  - calmworm 6y ago
    How is it plausible? The division isn’t on state lines. It’s rural and urban areas. You have many “red” states with multiple “blue” cities in it. How would this work?
    - meowface 6y ago
      I was going to address that in the post but I didn't want to make it too long. Basically in this hypothetical scenario I think state lines may possibly be redrawn, maybe with some splitting and some merging, and maybe people moving around to be near their respective red/blue tribe. And as a result, some of the blue cities may start to turn red, and/or there may be some divisions drawn close to some big cities.
redis_mlc 6y ago
1) They do pooled tests, so 500,000 tests per day aren't needed. 2) the packed testing lineups likely spread corona!

alphabettsy 6y ago

It seems as if an aggressive and extended lockdown at the start has worked?

deleted 6y ago
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save_ferris 6y ago

We're starting to see just how misguided the US was by not taking lockdown seriously early on and pushing to keep the economy going despite the long-term risks to mortality and commerce. Here we are months later, and ground zero for the epidemic seems to largely be operating business-as-usual while the US is still seeing ~1k deaths per day as we approach flu season. I was watching an Aussie rules football game the other day and they're allowing fans back in the stands. I couldn't dream of going to a sports event in many areas of the US right now.

briffle 6y ago
It is entirely feasible to keep things going on, as long as you have a high enough level of testing (not just people with symptoms) and strong contact tracing. We have neither.
- xur17 6y ago
  And we don't seem to be making very rapid progress towards having significantly higher levels of testing in most of the US.
  - tgb 6y ago
    On top of that, I got tested last month and it took 6 days to get the results, 7 from day of scheduling the appointment. Doesn't matter how many tests we perform if they're rendered nearly-useless by being out-of-date by the time they come back. In fact, I worry about "security theater" use of these that falsely give a sense of confidence.
  - makomk 6y ago
    You have higher levels of testing than pretty much any other major country on the planet, from all the figures I've seen. The easiest demonstration is just going to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and sorting by tests per capita. (The UK is similar and Russia is better on paper but their figures have been extremely fishy even by global standards. China's testing seems to be heavily concentrated on high-profile stuff like testing all of Wuhan and Beijing; they've tested less overall, and there's been weird incidents like patients hospitalized with symptoms in a region already known to be a hotspot not getting tested promptly and entirely missing an outbreak elsewhere until it spilled over into Beijing.) The reason you don't seem to be making progress is that no matter how much progress there is, your press has worked very hard to convince you that the necessary level of testing is always much higher than you currently have and you're uniquely failing to achieve it because of Trump. They use techniques like carefully only comparing the amount of testing to countries you're worse than, not comparing overall testing levels at all and instead falsely claiming test positivity levels were a measure of overall testing (by that point it mostly measured infection levels - the number of tests required to test, say, everyone with symptoms is almost entirely unaffected by the number of Covid infections unless you have so many of them your healthcare system is collapsing), and most recently literally using the fact that you've tested more to make it look like you're doing worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/coronavirus-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/coronavirus-us.html For context, the big reason the US has "five times as many cases as in all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia, combined" is because you've been testing massively more than Europe, Japan and South Korea did during their outbreaks, and people are only counted if they're tested. European testing was particularly bad - from what I could tell, the countries with big outbreaks basically only tested people who were hospitalized, and the much higher test positivity rates and hospitalization and death rates amongst confirmed cases seemed to confirm this. That won't show up so well on more recent overall stats because everyone did plenty of testing after the outbreaks had died down, though still not at US levels. Though with the way European and South Korean cases are picking up that might change. (For bonus points, the other thing that article uses to prove that the US is a unique failure is the length of its outbreak... after everyone had been pushing for "flatten the curve" which literally extends the length of the outbreak.)

umvi 6y ago

Is there any way to independently confirm China's claims? AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.

wnevets 6y ago
Is there any way to independently confirm Florida or Texas' claims?
- drcongo 6y ago
  Not while the "president" bans independent journalists from asking questions.
  - michaelgiba 6y ago
    Thankfully you don't need to go through the president to get this information. Troves of independent, even international, journalists have written stories on COVID responses within US states, including TX and FL. It is wholly misleading to compare the claims of these two countries.
    - wnevets 6y ago
      > Thankfully you don't need to go through the president to get this information. Hospitals are sending their data directly to the white house bypassing the CDC. [1] https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-bypass-cdc-report-covid-19-data-directly-hhs https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-...
- jquery 6y ago
  Pretty sure journalists from around the world have free reign to examine any of Florida or Texas’s claims. Can you say the same about Wuhan?
  - michaelgiba 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

Over here in the US we're stuck in the stage where we get really mad at everyone but ourselves for how badly we've blown it. I saw the video of the party, it looked fun (though someone should really teach those kids how to dance). Meanwhile, we're just watching social media videos where people scream at each other for wearing masks, or not wearing masks.

1MachineElf 6y ago

If the US had taken the same approach as China, it would have been both 1) effective and 2) unconstitutional.

xboxnolifes 6y ago
There is a pretty large landscape between what the US has done in response and what would have been unconstitutional.
matz1 6y ago
>1) effective Maybe if the virus is as deadly as anthrax or ebola, but for covid its not worth it.
James_Henry 6y ago
If we had the political will, we would have had weekly mass testing by now. The US has spent trillions to try and keep people afloat when they could have used that money to try and keep people safe by stopping the virus. A combination of ignorance (throughout society), what seems to be FDA incompetence, and of political games is what is killing the economy and thousands of lives.

hotz 6y ago

Anyone that trusts or believes what China says is gullible beyond belief.

jquery 6y ago
It seems we have learned very little. How quickly people forget that China’s extraordinary lies and distortions were in large part responsible for this pandemic in the first place.

rossdavidh 6y ago

None dare call it herd immunity.

parserman 6y ago

good job

dehrmann 6y ago

> there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province since mid-May. I'm somewhat suspicious of this when New Zealand wasn't able to keep it to zero. China might be able/willing to impose stricter policies, but New Zealand is an island.

AnotherGoodName 6y ago
I have no doubt New Zealand will get back to 0 cases since they reached 0 from a far higher rate earlier in the year. It's currently ~10 cases per day they are detecting. They haven't identified the gap in the quarantine that allowed this current outbreak but it looks like an edge case regardless since they stayed at 0 cases for almost 6 months now.
flukus 6y ago
China hasn't been able to keep it to zero, new cases have been imported and there have been flare ups but they keep them from growing with mass testing and lockdowns, the same as New Zealand is doing now. > but New Zealand is an island Every country can effectively be an island if they want.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Not really. The US has more than 7,000 miles of land borders, not to mention sea crossings. Closing European borders to that extent is equally impractical.

michaelgiba 6y ago

I'm honestly pretty disappointed in the BBC for covering this like it is fact and not calling into question the data integrity issues China is infamous for. Nevertheless, I do think China, at least before re-opening, had less community spread than most other countries due to the severity of their lock-down. Authoritarian countries are able to impose measures like this much more quickly than democracies, for better or for worse.

bllguo 6y ago
so where are the mountains of dead bodies? where are the macro indicators? what I'm disappointed in is even in the face of evidence that much of the nonsense about fake data and coverups was exaggerated, Westerners will continue to believe it
system2 6y ago
I think we can call this authoritarian silver lining. I wonder what is actually happening in North Korea.
peacefulhat 6y ago
How many people do you think have died from covid in China? America has 200x deaths per capita according to official numbers.
- dole 6y ago
  Last time I checked about a month ago, China reported ~6,700 total deaths, I would guess ~8,000 now. I'm still surprised this isn't a more publicized, aggravating, and/or disputed figure, even given China's questionable reporting.
chillacy 6y ago
I've been treating the covid death count like GDP out of China. It's probably padded (e.g. you can count a death as "pneumonia" instead of covid), but it's probably not an order of magnitude off. The reality is that surveillance states and collectivist societies like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc will have an advantage when it comes to coordination. China is very much one of these types of societies.

nelaboras 6y ago

It might well be true that Wuhan currently has no known community transmissions but this is also pretty obviously a propaganda/public relations move. Weird that the BBC covers it so uncritically.

tamaharbor 6y ago

Can you say "propaganda"?

xster 6y ago

> Wuhan went into a then unprecedented lockdown on 23 January - at a time where the virus had killed 17 people and affected more than 400. It hasn't been that long ago but I almost feel like I forgot how to count this low now.