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About 13 months ago, there was this conspiracy theory about a pandemic in China. Conspiracy theorists and untrustworthy alternative news outlets were trying to

About 13 months ago, there was this conspiracy theory about a pandemic in China. Conspiracy theorists and untrustworthy alternative news outlets were trying to sow dangerous misinformation about the Chinese government doing mass lockdowns and roundups of its own citizens. Even if this pandemic does exist, it isn't transmissible human to human. And wanting to close our borders and prepare is just xenophobic alarmism. The tens of thousands of Chinese people pouring into our airports are just tourists. The preponderance of video evidence of Chinese soldiers in hazmat suits rounding people up was just created by Russians in a sound stage somewhere, and can be dismissed without watching them. There was even more elaborate fake news, like expat Facebook groups in China coordinating getting foreign citizens out of the country -- all carefully choreographed lies. Luckily, I was banned in late January for telling people that they should wear masks as a precaution. Facebook and Twitter protected you. In all seriousness, I am actually sure that a year ago there were smug academics and journalists having meetings about how they could counter these "lies".

swader999 6y ago
And in February I was getting a lot of flack for suggesting it would be prudent to wear a mask despite what WHO CDC and other authorities were saying.
dhbsbd636 6y ago
Maybe I inhabit a different world from others, but this was not a conspiracy theory - at least if you had at least one friend from mainland China. However, I think that people were right to push back against strong claims about a novel virus. At the time it was unclear whether this was another SARS or MERS, not quite as bad, or something worse. We didn’t even know for sure whether it bound ACE2 or DPP4 before mid February. Hindsight is 2020 and I am very skeptical of anybody who claims they knew anything about the SARS-CoV-2 virus with any degree of certainty back in January.
- apostacy 6y ago
  The fact that the Chinese government was reacting to is so severely was all the evidence required. And all I wanted was temporary travel moratorium while data could be gathered, and some temporary mask mandates. We ended up doing it anyway, but we did it the hard way, after it was far too late. I had no real idea of the nature of the virus, but I knew full well in December 2019 that we should be closing the borders and stockpiling supplies. Things would surely have turned out better for all of us if we hadn't tolerated big tech interfering in the news. But sadly, for so many people, they trusted the debunkers and really believed it was all fake news. I can't imagine what a shock it must have been for them.

swader999 6y ago

And in February I was getting a lot of flack for suggesting it would be prudent to wear a mask despite what WHO CDC and other authorities were saying.

dhbsbd636 6y ago

Maybe I inhabit a different world from others, but this was not a conspiracy theory - at least if you had at least one friend from mainland China. However, I think that people were right to push back against strong claims about a novel virus. At the time it was unclear whether this was another SARS or MERS, not quite as bad, or something worse. We didn’t even know for sure whether it bound ACE2 or DPP4 before mid February. Hindsight is 2020 and I am very skeptical of anybody who claims they knew anything about the SARS-CoV-2 virus with any degree of certainty back in January.

apostacy 6y ago
The fact that the Chinese government was reacting to is so severely was all the evidence required. And all I wanted was temporary travel moratorium while data could be gathered, and some temporary mask mandates. We ended up doing it anyway, but we did it the hard way, after it was far too late. I had no real idea of the nature of the virus, but I knew full well in December 2019 that we should be closing the borders and stockpiling supplies. Things would surely have turned out better for all of us if we hadn't tolerated big tech interfering in the news. But sadly, for so many people, they trusted the debunkers and really believed it was all fake news. I can't imagine what a shock it must have been for them.