4 ms·

The problem is people saw China bring the situation under control in under six weeks and thought that containment rather than management was also an achievable

The problem is people saw China bring the situation under control in under six weeks and thought that containment rather than management was also an achievable goal here. They therefore interpreted the term "flatten the curve" in that context and assumed it would lead to containment. What they didn't see (and what was never really talked about) is just how extreme China's eventual response to COVID was relative to the constraints placed on Americans. The Chinese were placing everyone under house arrest, mandating mask use, monitoring everyone's movements at checkpoints, temperature checking anyone who left their house when possible, banning people from going outside more than X times per week, forcibly quarantining, arresting non-compliant people, shuttering every non-essential business under the strictest interpretation of "essential", blocking internal travel, physically isolating cities, requiring quarantine when returning from traveling abroad, etc. The US government didn't really do any of that. To anyone aware of the contrast in national responses, it was very obvious that we would not be able to replicate China's success and that COVID would be around until we got a vaccine.

cullinap 6y ago
Any sources showing that china brought it under control?
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-mission-briefing-on-covid-19---26-february-2020 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-dir... https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/world/asia/china-covid-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/world/asia/china-covid-ec... I am also getting anecdata from people living in Shanghai and Beijing. Life has largely returned to normal outside of people wearing masks.
  - cullinap 6y ago
    Was there a reliable test in Feb 2020 at the time of the WHO article?. Who is to say that they are reporting the numbers correctly? For most of Jan 2020, china claimed covid was mild and wasn't spread human to human (and the WHO backed them up for some time as well).
    - OminousWeapons 6y ago
      If your response to me posting sources is going to be "I don't believe any data that emerges from China" then why did you ask for sources?
      - bingohbangoh 6y ago
        I guess there aren't any non-chinese sources then? OP was likely asking because he wanted to see non-Chinese sources on this.
        toyg 6y ago
        There likely aren’t non-American sources for American data either, or non-European sources for European data. The only people with access to a given country’s data are the authorities of that country. Health statistics are not like election monitoring.
- caeril 6y ago
  I see what you're getting at here. On one hand, yes, obviously China's numbers cannot be trusted, at all. On the other hand, most of their neighbors, whose numbers are substantially more trustworthy, also managed to get it under some semblance of control. Given the latter point, I'm guessing they mostly got it under control.
rtkwe 6y ago
They didn't have to maintain the draconian initial lockdown the whole year though. A few months in they were opening things back up and thoroughly testing everyone that came into the country to keep it from being reintroduced while maintaining the monitoring to catch new cases. To all outward appearances it worked. The failure in the US wasn't inevitable, the US didn't even implement the basic versions of fever monitoring and test and trace, this whole time there have been two places that have temperature checked me; the courthouse and an store for a shared glass blowing studio. We have a lot of the same tools, medical quarantines, food distribution so people don't have to leave their houses, etc, there's just a massive difference in the attitude towards collective action in the US.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nradov 6y ago
  Fever monitoring is a pointless waste of effort. Those thermometer guns are generally inaccurate, most infected people don't have a significant fever, and those who do have a fever often knock it down using OTC medication.
bingohbangoh 6y ago
That's if you buy the numbers from China at all. For all we know, China just stopped counting and is accepting whatever new cases or deaths come up. We know they fake other numbers. There's not reason not to think they aren't faking them here. If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group.
- OminousWeapons 6y ago
  Show me the data. All existing data points to the fact that the Chinese largely beat this and have handled it in a way that is orders of magnitude more effective than the Americans. That includes anecdata I have coming from internal sources who have no reason to lie. If there was ANY data suggesting otherwise, you would have heard about it: they couldn't contain news about the original outbreak or any follow on outbreaks. A few months into this, basically every single American media outlet was tripping over themselves to defend American values when it was abundantly clear that they were impeding our ability to successfully respond to this crisis. There was a huge appetite for bashing China / authoritarianism and pointing out the universal superiority of our system. The fact that we have largely heard nothing about the Chinese response (no criticism, no praise, no critique, not even general acknowledgement that it was much different than ours) from the government or the media suggests that it was a success whereas our efforts were a colossal failure and we don't want to talk about it or admit it: this situation doesn't align with the story we tell ourselves ((freedom and democracy) > authoritarianism, always). > If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group We are basically a year into this with 500K dead and counting. How many citizens need to die before people stop feeling the need to create throwaway accounts to announce that this whole thing is overblown.
  - bingohbangoh 6y ago
    > Show me the data. What data am I gonna show you? the only available data says "they defeated it" and it comes from the state government. >We are basically a year into this with 500K dead and counting. How many citizens need to die before people stop feeling the need to create throwaway accounts to announce that this whole thing is overblown. Like I said, I literally only know one soul who got this. They recovered in two days. My Aunt & Uncle are emergency room nurses and say that it's overblown _now_ (last April? was definitely bad). I also don't know anybody who dies from the seasonal flu that claims a lot of people too.

cullinap 6y ago

Any sources showing that china brought it under control?

OminousWeapons 6y ago
https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-mission-briefing-on-covid-19---26-february-2020 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-dir... https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/world/asia/china-covid-economy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/world/asia/china-covid-ec... I am also getting anecdata from people living in Shanghai and Beijing. Life has largely returned to normal outside of people wearing masks.
- cullinap 6y ago
  Was there a reliable test in Feb 2020 at the time of the WHO article?. Who is to say that they are reporting the numbers correctly? For most of Jan 2020, china claimed covid was mild and wasn't spread human to human (and the WHO backed them up for some time as well).
  - OminousWeapons 6y ago
    If your response to me posting sources is going to be "I don't believe any data that emerges from China" then why did you ask for sources?
    - bingohbangoh 6y ago
      I guess there aren't any non-chinese sources then? OP was likely asking because he wanted to see non-Chinese sources on this.
      - toyg 6y ago
        There likely aren’t non-American sources for American data either, or non-European sources for European data. The only people with access to a given country’s data are the authorities of that country. Health statistics are not like election monitoring.
caeril 6y ago
I see what you're getting at here. On one hand, yes, obviously China's numbers cannot be trusted, at all. On the other hand, most of their neighbors, whose numbers are substantially more trustworthy, also managed to get it under some semblance of control. Given the latter point, I'm guessing they mostly got it under control.

rtkwe 6y ago

They didn't have to maintain the draconian initial lockdown the whole year though. A few months in they were opening things back up and thoroughly testing everyone that came into the country to keep it from being reintroduced while maintaining the monitoring to catch new cases. To all outward appearances it worked. The failure in the US wasn't inevitable, the US didn't even implement the basic versions of fever monitoring and test and trace, this whole time there have been two places that have temperature checked me; the courthouse and an store for a shared glass blowing studio. We have a lot of the same tools, medical quarantines, food distribution so people don't have to leave their houses, etc, there's just a massive difference in the attitude towards collective action in the US.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nradov 6y ago
Fever monitoring is a pointless waste of effort. Those thermometer guns are generally inaccurate, most infected people don't have a significant fever, and those who do have a fever often knock it down using OTC medication.

bingohbangoh 6y ago

That's if you buy the numbers from China at all. For all we know, China just stopped counting and is accepting whatever new cases or deaths come up. We know they fake other numbers. There's not reason not to think they aren't faking them here. If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group.

OminousWeapons 6y ago
Show me the data. All existing data points to the fact that the Chinese largely beat this and have handled it in a way that is orders of magnitude more effective than the Americans. That includes anecdata I have coming from internal sources who have no reason to lie. If there was ANY data suggesting otherwise, you would have heard about it: they couldn't contain news about the original outbreak or any follow on outbreaks. A few months into this, basically every single American media outlet was tripping over themselves to defend American values when it was abundantly clear that they were impeding our ability to successfully respond to this crisis. There was a huge appetite for bashing China / authoritarianism and pointing out the universal superiority of our system. The fact that we have largely heard nothing about the Chinese response (no criticism, no praise, no critique, not even general acknowledgement that it was much different than ours) from the government or the media suggests that it was a success whereas our efforts were a colossal failure and we don't want to talk about it or admit it: this situation doesn't align with the story we tell ourselves ((freedom and democracy) > authoritarianism, always). > If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group We are basically a year into this with 500K dead and counting. How many citizens need to die before people stop feeling the need to create throwaway accounts to announce that this whole thing is overblown.
- bingohbangoh 6y ago
  > Show me the data. What data am I gonna show you? the only available data says "they defeated it" and it comes from the state government. >We are basically a year into this with 500K dead and counting. How many citizens need to die before people stop feeling the need to create throwaway accounts to announce that this whole thing is overblown. Like I said, I literally only know one soul who got this. They recovered in two days. My Aunt & Uncle are emergency room nurses and say that it's overblown _now_ (last April? was definitely bad). I also don't know anybody who dies from the seasonal flu that claims a lot of people too.