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Could China have handled this better? Hell yes. The thing is though, I seriously doubt the end result would have been any different if the virus has first come

Could China have handled this better? Hell yes. The thing is though, I seriously doubt the end result would have been any different if the virus has first come about in any other country. Imagine that the virus has first been discovered in Atlanta (first US city that came to mind) - would officials really be brave enough to have a hard, immediate lockdown, with all the economic hardships that would entail, and with all the problems of getting a doubting populace on onboard? (keeping in mind that Trump's initial reaction was to denounce the very notion of a serious virus as a "hoax")

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
> would officials really be brave enough to have a hard, immediate lockdown To ask the question is to know the answer. Just imagine a public health official trying to convince the mayor or governor to quarantine a city of millions of people, based on a small number of pneumonia cases.
LatteLazy 5y ago
I wasn't really referring to their reaction to covid, rather their creation of covid. Leaving aside the Lab origin theories, Covid 19 never would have happened if China had hygienic food supply-chains and banned wet markets. That's where other zoonotic diseases have come from in recent years from China (SARS is the biggest example). They closed the markets, new viruses stopped happening and everything was fine. Then they opened the markets again and we got covid 19. China is like a drink driver who already hit someone and refused to stop drunk driving and hit another person. Right now no one wants to make them stop driving. So I guess we'll just keep getting pandemics? Covid 19 is really just SARS 2.0. That's what really gets me here (sorry, I'm ranting now). China knew this would happen. Everyone did. And they did it anyway. And now everyone is pretending like it was bad luck or something!? This is literally why every other major, industrial country has food hygiene laws and minimal "Bush meat". Thanks for listening to me shout into the wind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... Edit: I wonder if one of the reasons china is so unwilling to engage is to encourage people to think it was a bio-weapon accident (we'll never stop that happening) rather than just "the CCP is too weak and lazy to say no to old people who want bat soup". Conspiracy within the conspiracy! But I'm an idiot so probably not...

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago

> would officials really be brave enough to have a hard, immediate lockdown To ask the question is to know the answer. Just imagine a public health official trying to convince the mayor or governor to quarantine a city of millions of people, based on a small number of pneumonia cases.

LatteLazy 5y ago

I wasn't really referring to their reaction to covid, rather their creation of covid. Leaving aside the Lab origin theories, Covid 19 never would have happened if China had hygienic food supply-chains and banned wet markets. That's where other zoonotic diseases have come from in recent years from China (SARS is the biggest example). They closed the markets, new viruses stopped happening and everything was fine. Then they opened the markets again and we got covid 19. China is like a drink driver who already hit someone and refused to stop drunk driving and hit another person. Right now no one wants to make them stop driving. So I guess we'll just keep getting pandemics? Covid 19 is really just SARS 2.0. That's what really gets me here (sorry, I'm ranting now). China knew this would happen. Everyone did. And they did it anyway. And now everyone is pretending like it was bad luck or something!? This is literally why every other major, industrial country has food hygiene laws and minimal "Bush meat". Thanks for listening to me shout into the wind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... Edit: I wonder if one of the reasons china is so unwilling to engage is to encourage people to think it was a bio-weapon accident (we'll never stop that happening) rather than just "the CCP is too weak and lazy to say no to old people who want bat soup". Conspiracy within the conspiracy! But I'm an idiot so probably not...