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What you're saying is true. Having observed how the Chinese government responded to SARS, our health & national security systems should never have taken what th
by gen220 6y ago
What you're saying is true. Having observed how the Chinese government responded to SARS, our health & national security systems should never have taken what they said at face value. That we did not respond with more intensity is on us.
However, this does not excuse the Chinese Government's active (and ongoing!) attempts to downplay what they knew about the initial severity of the outbreak. I don't think it's fair to blame the botched first two months of response on the provincial government.
- jacobolus 6y agoThe provincial government is operating in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion under the Xi regime, where local officials try to fly under the radar, suppress bad news, and deflect blame. This is a systemic national problem which will be hard to fix without large-scale reform (I am not holding my breath). But concretely the provincial government did what it could to hide and cover up the epidemic, silencing local doctors, cooking the statistics, etc., hoping it would go away by itself and they could avoid blame or conflict.
- gen220 6y agoI believe that we agree. The Chinese government completely dropped the ball on providing an objective warning of the situation. The US federal government completely dropped the ball on preparing an adequate and timely response, even granted the handicap of officially sanctioned misinformation coming from Chinese Government. I agree that the first problem does not make the second problem any more forgivable, and we should disregard narratives that try to push that idea. Neither misdeed should be tolerated or go un-shamed.