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Do you really think China is being truthful? I don’t trust their government to be honest about anything, let alone something that makes them look bad to a globa

Do you really think China is being truthful? I don’t trust their government to be honest about anything, let alone something that makes them look bad to a global audience.

davidw 6y ago
No, but the other countries are well worth looking at. They seem to be getting something right.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
China is not sufficiently insular that they could hide widespread COVID infection if that were happening. It is not a situation like North Korea where very few foreigners visit and most of the local population has zero access to the public internet. If they do have any spread of COVID, they are keeping it well suppressed.
- tomohawk 6y ago
  They already did. That's why it's all over the place now. They went so far as to force doctors to recant their statements that it was human-human transmissible. For example, the hero doctor Li, who eventually died of the disease. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor-Li-Wenliang-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor...
  - iso1210 6y ago
    Li's first statemen† was 30th Dec, the WHO also found on on 30th Dec, and had set up an incident management team by Jan 1st. Before 30th Dec nobody knew this was a new disease, they were still trying to identify it. By Jan 10th the WHO was warning people of person-person transmission. Western leaders ignored the warnings.
    - tomohawk 6y ago
      Not so. On 14 Jan, WHO was still saying it was not person-person transmissible. https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 Chinese authorities knew about the disease at least by 6 Dec. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... And were punishing doctors for talking about it on 3 Jan, probably later, too. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavirus-virus-lands-in-the-u-s-after-killing-17-and-taking-eight-to-prison/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavi...
      - iso1210 6y ago
        Sigh. The WHO said that China had found no clear evidence of human-human transmission but based on similar diseases it's certainly possible and health care systems should be prepared. That is a responsible scientific response. Your link says "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection" 4 days after the first cases were identified. Clearly there would be unidentified cases before that. Hindsight is very powerful.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I don't deny that they'd be able to hide transmission for a period. But they would not be able to hide thousands of cases a day. Since the virus has logistic transmission properties when not suppressed, if what they are doing were not sufficient we would quickly see them having too many cases to keep under wraps.
fakedang 6y ago
According to Caixin Global, a state-sponsored yet more critical media authority in China, cases were extremely high in the beginning and there was some effort to hide the number of actual deaths. But it seems now China has controlled Covid due to being able to repress the population into it. They were able to withstand the heavy economic fallout (which was noticeably shortened due to the repressive measures), and get back up to normalcy in other parts of the country much earlier. I'm currently in the UAE and it's a similarly interesting story. The UAE is divided into 7 Emirates, with Abu Dhabi as the wealthiest, Dubai as the next wealthiest but heavily in debt, and the northern Emirates under the financial leash of Abu Dhabi. The difference between Dubai and the other Emirates is night and day - Abu Dhabi dictated very harsh terms (by fines, and even prison time for those voluntarily spreading the disease by licking groceries, etc) and rigorous testing, and the 5 northern Emirates followed suit. Dubai was hurting (because it's a tourism economy), and opened up much sooner, leading to a very heavy spike in cases - most of the current cases in the UAE are in Dubai, which like Europe could not afford to stay closed. Even now, travel between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is only allowed under exceptional circumstances.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  > for those voluntarily spreading the disease by licking groceries What? Was this kind of behaviour common?
  - fakedang 6y ago
    In the beginning, there were folks who did that iirc, and folks who hosted parties and large weddings. Masks are mandatory, but Dubai has a lax attitude towards them, while Abu Dhabi has been fining people like its their God-given mandate.

Do you really think China is being truthful? I don’t trust their government to be honest about anything, let alone something that makes them look bad to a global audience.

davidw 6y ago

No, but the other countries are well worth looking at. They seem to be getting something right.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

China is not sufficiently insular that they could hide widespread COVID infection if that were happening. It is not a situation like North Korea where very few foreigners visit and most of the local population has zero access to the public internet. If they do have any spread of COVID, they are keeping it well suppressed.

tomohawk 6y ago
They already did. That's why it's all over the place now. They went so far as to force doctors to recant their statements that it was human-human transmissible. For example, the hero doctor Li, who eventually died of the disease. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor-Li-Wenliang-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/asia/chinese-doctor...
- iso1210 6y ago
  Li's first statemen† was 30th Dec, the WHO also found on on 30th Dec, and had set up an incident management team by Jan 1st. Before 30th Dec nobody knew this was a new disease, they were still trying to identify it. By Jan 10th the WHO was warning people of person-person transmission. Western leaders ignored the warnings.
  - tomohawk 6y ago
    Not so. On 14 Jan, WHO was still saying it was not person-person transmissible. https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://mobile.twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 Chinese authorities knew about the disease at least by 6 Dec. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... And were punishing doctors for talking about it on 3 Jan, probably later, too. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavirus-virus-lands-in-the-u-s-after-killing-17-and-taking-eight-to-prison/ https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/the-2019-coronavi...
    - iso1210 6y ago
      Sigh. The WHO said that China had found no clear evidence of human-human transmission but based on similar diseases it's certainly possible and health care systems should be prepared. That is a responsible scientific response. Your link says "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection" 4 days after the first cases were identified. Clearly there would be unidentified cases before that. Hindsight is very powerful.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I don't deny that they'd be able to hide transmission for a period. But they would not be able to hide thousands of cases a day. Since the virus has logistic transmission properties when not suppressed, if what they are doing were not sufficient we would quickly see them having too many cases to keep under wraps.

fakedang 6y ago

According to Caixin Global, a state-sponsored yet more critical media authority in China, cases were extremely high in the beginning and there was some effort to hide the number of actual deaths. But it seems now China has controlled Covid due to being able to repress the population into it. They were able to withstand the heavy economic fallout (which was noticeably shortened due to the repressive measures), and get back up to normalcy in other parts of the country much earlier. I'm currently in the UAE and it's a similarly interesting story. The UAE is divided into 7 Emirates, with Abu Dhabi as the wealthiest, Dubai as the next wealthiest but heavily in debt, and the northern Emirates under the financial leash of Abu Dhabi. The difference between Dubai and the other Emirates is night and day - Abu Dhabi dictated very harsh terms (by fines, and even prison time for those voluntarily spreading the disease by licking groceries, etc) and rigorous testing, and the 5 northern Emirates followed suit. Dubai was hurting (because it's a tourism economy), and opened up much sooner, leading to a very heavy spike in cases - most of the current cases in the UAE are in Dubai, which like Europe could not afford to stay closed. Even now, travel between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is only allowed under exceptional circumstances.

yoz-y 6y ago
> for those voluntarily spreading the disease by licking groceries What? Was this kind of behaviour common?
- fakedang 6y ago
  In the beginning, there were folks who did that iirc, and folks who hosted parties and large weddings. Masks are mandatory, but Dubai has a lax attitude towards them, while Abu Dhabi has been fining people like its their God-given mandate.