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>If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a differen
by barnacled 6y ago
>If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.
I don't think you've been following much of the recent news about brexit or the trade wars with China. Of course countries can condemn and criticise others for their actions. Nearly the entire western press corps have been non-stop criticising your sitting president for the past 4 years. So I think we live in the same world. Why can't the press at the very least be honest and consistent about China?
>And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.
https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en https://twitter.com/who/status/1217043229427761152?lang=en
Jan 14th - as reported by China. They repeatedly lied (demonstrably) about their death figures and the nature of the disease. Evidence emerged that actually China NEVER reported the pandemic nature of the disease but rather it was (still rather complicit) WHO staff on the ground who reported it.
They also permitted international flights but not domestic ones once that virus was known about, hoarded PPE and spread a conspiracy theory about the US having originated the virus.
I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.
>China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.
The contention that delayed lockdowns (delayed due to China lying up until January and continuously lying about their death figures) would have saved all these lives is honestly laughable. The trade off between lockdowns and the economy is very difficult as is contact tracing in a non-totalitarian state.
>If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.
Apples and oranges. Centres of European trade who have considerably wider travel arriving at them and no culture of e.g. mask-wearing and governments ill-adopted to authoritarian measures vs. a communist country with considerably less is not the same at all. And we mustn't forget the impact of climate (hotter climate = considerably less impact).
China had a warning in 2003 to shut down their wet markets and arrogantly ignored it. They reopened the wet markets shortly after covid-19 broke out and covered up the outbreak. This is not even getting into the quite plausible walked-out-of-the-lab theories and it's still clear they're responsible for the pandemic.
The CCP are a dreadful totalitarian government who should be held to account. Instead they sabre-rattle, lie, spread misinformation and attack any country that dares question their narrative threatening economic consequences (see e.g. Australia).
Chinese people are the biggest victims of them. Many more millions will die before that awful group get overthrown. But their time will come.
- tsimionescu 6y ago> I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification. In no way do I think China should be lauded. They should obviously be condemned for failing to contain this while it was a localized epidemic and not a pandemic, and for actively hurting and silencing the doctors that tried to do so. The CCP is a despicable regime that has caused much harm to its own citizens and to the world in general, in this crisis and in others. However, I can do little to change the regime in China. However, I have much more power to influence and change the regime in my own country, and so I am much more interested in how they handled the crisis at least once information got out, and it is hear where I think the press should also focus, as they rightly have. China's reputation for covering up should have been ample reason to start pandemic preparation in December or at least January, as Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries with successful responses did. European countries and the US instead chose to believe China's early lies. They then added their own lies on top once China started telling (some of) the truth, claiming that masks are not useful, claiming that the disease is not that bad, claiming that it will go away in the summer and myriad other lies. They then avoided as long as possible to take any serious measures that could have curtailed the spread of the disease early on extremely effectively, with some more serious but very short term economic impact, leaving the rest of the year for growth. Instead, they chose lukewarm 'lockdowns' where many stores remained opened, they chose to only do contact tracing for direct contacts (serious countries were contact tracing and isolating up to 3 levels of contact), they chose to not even recommend masks until the second half of the year (particularly stupid regimes like the one in Sweden have only recommended them last week!) etc. These are all things for which we can hold our politicians accountable. We can't hold the CCCP accountable. By the way, I'm neither a citizen nor a resident of the USA, Trump is not 'my president' in any sense of the word.
- smdyc1 6y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted. Everything you've said is true. Only the brainwashed CCP brigade would disagree. Right now, China is using trade as a tool to bludgeon Australia with in retaliation for us calling for an investigation into the source of the virus.