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I am not sure if it would have been unprecedented but the Chinese government knew what the reality of the virus was from what they observed in Wuhan - they just

I am not sure if it would have been unprecedented but the Chinese government knew what the reality of the virus was from what they observed in Wuhan - they just didn’t let the rest of the world know, and the WHO didn’t want to contradict the CCP’s claims (see the Business Insider link in parent comment). This delayed travel bans issued by other nations, such as Trump’s ban (issued on Jan 31). China didn’t stop international flights themselves until late March (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how-china-locked-down-internally-for-covid-19-but-pushed-foreign-travel/ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...).

whimsicalism 5y ago
China was warning about the virus pretty early on. When you compare the timescales that China is being criticized on with the timescales for the US or Europe to react, it's laughable. People criticize China for taking days to release information when it took weeks if not months for most of the developed world to do absolutely anything. I was in China in early-mid january, there were warnings about the Wuhan virus all over all of the airports, it was not being hidden.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, did they actually call it the "Wuhan virus" in the warnings you are referencing? How do you reconcile the transparency you saw on the ground with the fact that early reports were suppressed or downplayed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...), or that a journalist was arrested and sentenced to years of jail for reporting on COVID (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zhan-covid-convicted.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zh...), or that China may have misled the world and hoarded COVID supplies (https://abc7news.com/china-misled-world-coronavirus-us/6147033/ https://abc7news.com/china-misled-world-coronavirus-us/61470...). Is it possible that China was trying to walk a fine line by being transparent in those settings where it would be futile to lie, while acting differently in other settings to serve their own interests as much as possible? I'm genuinely curious to hear the opinion of someone who was in the middle of all this.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > Out of curiosity, did they actually call it the "Wuhan virus" in the warnings you are referencing? The warnings were definitely addressed to travelers from Wuhan, and mentioned a virus or pneumonia, I don't think they called it the "Wuhan virus" however. Look, I think responding to a lot of these reports will make me seem like a China apologist, and to the extent that I think that China's early failures were less the cause of the outbreak in the US than the US' failure to react quickly once information was public, I guess I am. That said, of course all of this is in the context of China being a repressive, authoritarian state, which is obviously bad. We know that there was a period of 5 days where Chinese leaders knew (or should have known) that the virus was airborne yet did not release this information publicly. I am not claiming they were fully transparent, it's clear that they weren't. But this was a delay on the order of days, it took weeks-month for the United States to mount anything that looked even remotely like a real policy response after they learned it was airborne. I do not think that those 5 days would have made a substantive difference to US policy. Now onto your points: 1. Your wikipedia article about Covid-19 misinformation hits on the point about the 5 day delay, absolutely. Many of the other misinformation efforts cited are by individual politicians or smaller government apparatus, not necessarily the central government's stance. You can see similar misinformation promulgated in the United States among top politicians. I certainly buy, as per the wiki page, that somewhere like the 'Economic and Commercial Office of the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan' tweeted out misinformation about coronavirus, I am somewhat more skeptical that that had a serious impact on the coronavirus response. 2. Zhang Zhan arrived in Wuhan in February and was highly critical of lockdowns. While reprehensible, I do not think her arrest had a serious impact on people being aware of the reality of the virus, which was already public knowledge by then. Much more impactful in my view was the early suppression of reports from doctors in December conducted by the local (not central) government. So early in the pandemic, this could have had a size-able impact. Governments like to save face. In Florida, state authorities fired and then arrested someone for revealing that true death counts were higher than reported. 3. I had not heard of this report. I've tried to do a bit more research on these claims, but haven't really been able to find much. I think it is important to note that, at the time, we were in the midst of a trade war with China, so there was a general decline in exports. I would like to hear more about this though. > Is it possible that China was trying to walk a fine line by being transparent in those settings where it would be futile to lie, while acting differently in other settings to serve their own interests as much as possible? Definitely, at least to some extent. If they were exclusively serving their interests, they probably didn't need to notify the WHO when they did and they probably could have suppressed a little longer, but it's clear they were manipulating the informational landscape for their own benefit. Really, my only claim is that the root of the pandemic in most of the West falls more on failure in Western nations to respond forcefully and less in the 5 day delay between knowledge of spread and disclosure.

whimsicalism 5y ago

China was warning about the virus pretty early on. When you compare the timescales that China is being criticized on with the timescales for the US or Europe to react, it's laughable. People criticize China for taking days to release information when it took weeks if not months for most of the developed world to do absolutely anything. I was in China in early-mid january, there were warnings about the Wuhan virus all over all of the airports, it was not being hidden.

throwawaysea 5y ago
That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Out of curiosity, did they actually call it the "Wuhan virus" in the warnings you are referencing? How do you reconcile the transparency you saw on the ground with the fact that early reports were suppressed or downplayed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...), or that a journalist was arrested and sentenced to years of jail for reporting on COVID (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zhan-covid-convicted.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zh...), or that China may have misled the world and hoarded COVID supplies (https://abc7news.com/china-misled-world-coronavirus-us/6147033/ https://abc7news.com/china-misled-world-coronavirus-us/61470...). Is it possible that China was trying to walk a fine line by being transparent in those settings where it would be futile to lie, while acting differently in other settings to serve their own interests as much as possible? I'm genuinely curious to hear the opinion of someone who was in the middle of all this.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > Out of curiosity, did they actually call it the "Wuhan virus" in the warnings you are referencing? The warnings were definitely addressed to travelers from Wuhan, and mentioned a virus or pneumonia, I don't think they called it the "Wuhan virus" however. Look, I think responding to a lot of these reports will make me seem like a China apologist, and to the extent that I think that China's early failures were less the cause of the outbreak in the US than the US' failure to react quickly once information was public, I guess I am. That said, of course all of this is in the context of China being a repressive, authoritarian state, which is obviously bad. We know that there was a period of 5 days where Chinese leaders knew (or should have known) that the virus was airborne yet did not release this information publicly. I am not claiming they were fully transparent, it's clear that they weren't. But this was a delay on the order of days, it took weeks-month for the United States to mount anything that looked even remotely like a real policy response after they learned it was airborne. I do not think that those 5 days would have made a substantive difference to US policy. Now onto your points: 1. Your wikipedia article about Covid-19 misinformation hits on the point about the 5 day delay, absolutely. Many of the other misinformation efforts cited are by individual politicians or smaller government apparatus, not necessarily the central government's stance. You can see similar misinformation promulgated in the United States among top politicians. I certainly buy, as per the wiki page, that somewhere like the 'Economic and Commercial Office of the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan' tweeted out misinformation about coronavirus, I am somewhat more skeptical that that had a serious impact on the coronavirus response. 2. Zhang Zhan arrived in Wuhan in February and was highly critical of lockdowns. While reprehensible, I do not think her arrest had a serious impact on people being aware of the reality of the virus, which was already public knowledge by then. Much more impactful in my view was the early suppression of reports from doctors in December conducted by the local (not central) government. So early in the pandemic, this could have had a size-able impact. Governments like to save face. In Florida, state authorities fired and then arrested someone for revealing that true death counts were higher than reported. 3. I had not heard of this report. I've tried to do a bit more research on these claims, but haven't really been able to find much. I think it is important to note that, at the time, we were in the midst of a trade war with China, so there was a general decline in exports. I would like to hear more about this though. > Is it possible that China was trying to walk a fine line by being transparent in those settings where it would be futile to lie, while acting differently in other settings to serve their own interests as much as possible? Definitely, at least to some extent. If they were exclusively serving their interests, they probably didn't need to notify the WHO when they did and they probably could have suppressed a little longer, but it's clear they were manipulating the informational landscape for their own benefit. Really, my only claim is that the root of the pandemic in most of the West falls more on failure in Western nations to respond forcefully and less in the 5 day delay between knowledge of spread and disclosure.