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China Medicine

Chinese Government Authorities Criticized For Stifling Early Response To Coronavirus (msn.com) 88

Posted by EditorDavid from the Communist-communications dept.
A coronavirus has now infected over 14,380 people worldwide and killed at least 304 people in China, reports the New York Times. But they also note that when the first symptoms appeared in December, Chinese authorities "silenced doctors and others for raising red flags." They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city's 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn't broadly curb the wildlife trade.

Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.

By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic. "This was an issue of inaction," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. "There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat."

The first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat.

It is now a global health emergency.
The Times also reports on the last day of 2019, the police even announced "that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak."

And days later Wuhan's mayor spoke to the Communist Party-run legislatures, promising that his city would soon host a World Health Expo.
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Chinese Government Authorities Criticized For Stifling Early Response To Coronavirus More

Chinese Government Authorities Criticized For Stifling Early Response To Coronavirus

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  • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • China is a low-trust society (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @12:47PM (#59681768)

    China is a low-trust society [wikipedia.org]. Their default behavior is to hoard information and only share knowledge when they can leverage it to their advantage.

    I worked in Shanghai for several years and it was frustrating to see co-workers scheme against each other. The amount of backstabbing and office politics in China is far worse than anything I have seen in America. Their inability to cooperate and trust each other is a major impediment to further improvements in productivity.

    The initial coverup of the virus was not part of a nefarious plot. It was just business as usual in China.

    • Well, no surprise there. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @01:10PM (#59681834)

      I talked to an ex-Iranian, a few years ago, and he told me how people in his country became deceitful and fake compared to before the Shah. And another Iranian vivdly told be how dangerous is is to do certain things in public. Like flirt, drink, talk openly, etc. If a woman puts her hand on the leg of a man she isn't married to, him and her are practically dead, if anyone tells the aurhorities. Everything happens in back rooms.

      This is very similar to what I experienced when my family traveled to the GDR once. (I have no clue how my mom eben managed that.) The feeling was just... strange. Anyone could be the Stasi (secret police). Or a snitch.

      And to how my grandma described Nazi Germany, with the Gestapo.

      Soviet Russia must have been similar.

      You just become that way, in such an environment. Can't trust anybody anymore. Not even your own child.

      And they all didn't have the tech that China has.
      So now you can't even trust mundane *things* anymore.
      It is insanely scary to me. Like, "dystopic nightmare" doesn't even say it anymore. Imprisoned minds.

      But don't hate. My grandma didn't hate Hitler Youth kids either, despite them being as close to real-world Daleks as you can get, just more sneaky. Because they grew up in and had to actually survive in that world. It had been their normal. As a kid, you literally, neurally, do not have a choice.
      And I'm sure most Chinese people agree with you more than with theory government.
      So I'm just sad and feel helpless. Soo much wasted lives and potential.

      • Both you and bill are spot on. The problem is NOT the CHinese ppl. They are really not much different than you or me. The vast majority just want to have a nice life. Problem is, that governments are leaders and they will cause changes in societies. In totalitarians like China, RUssia, Iran, North Korea, etc, the leaders are ONLY the ones in governments.
        In normal democracies/democratic republics (i.e. America), it is normal ppl that rise up to become leaders (many of them not really seaking to be such).
      • The Shah was a cruel dictator whose Savak secret police was one of the world's worst human rights violators. Why do you think Jimmy Carter greenlighted his overthrow?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          No. Fascism is only one form of totalitarianism.

          Fascism is Industry and The State working together to strengthen each other without necessarily caring what it does to the populace. Free speech is a (nearly) orthogonal constraint.

          For that matter, is suspect there could be an anarco-fascism, though I've never encountered such an ideology. Most anarchists want to decouple business from government.

          Fascism deserves it's bad name, because it always subverts the checks and balances that are supposed to keep bot

      • I talked to an ex-Iranian, a few years ago, and he told me how people in his country became deceitful and fake compared to before the Shah. And another Iranian vivdly told be how dangerous is is to do certain things in public. Like flirt, drink, talk openly, etc. If a woman puts her hand on the leg of a man she isn't married to, him and her are practically dead, if anyone tells the aurhorities. Everything happens in back rooms.

        This is very similar to what I experienced when my family traveled to the GDR once. (I have no clue how my mom eben managed that.) The feeling was just... strange. Anyone could be the Stasi (secret police). Or a snitch.

        And to how my grandma described Nazi Germany, with the Gestapo.

        Soviet Russia must have been similar.

        Shit, no need to go back to Nazis and Soviet Russia, modern day Morocco and Saudi Arabia are in the same boat, along with many other countries. The religious police might look the other way, in tourist areas... for tourists... but that's all.

        It's horrible, but this is all today, not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

    • "The initial coverup of the virus was not part of a nefarious plot. It was just business as usual in China."

      So it WAS a nefarious plot?

      • It's not even a Chinese problem, refusing to believe what sounds like over-the-top bad news initially is normal human nature. The plot of every disaster and monster movie ever consists of the first half, or even three-quarters, of the film being our hero trying to convince anyone that the disaster he/she is predicting is for real. This is normal human nature, you (a) want to avoid unnecessary panic as much as possible and (b) are sceptical of everyone who turns up crying wolf until you're pretty certain t

        • And for a global example of this: Climate change. There are still hundreds of millions of people, including national governments, sitting there repeating "lalalalala I'm not listening lalalalalala". So it's not some evil Chinese thing, it's normal behaviour.

          Wrong behaviour, granted, but expected.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      This may be true, but the fact is that the actions of officials were irrational even when judged by the standards of self-interest. This is not a good outcome for them, so they *must* have been hoping to get lucky.

      I think what we're looking at is something that is pretty much universal in human societies: denial. Denialism is by definition the refusal to face facts that are psychologically uncomfortable [wikipedia.org]. So the question is, why would government officials be uncomfortable with facing what in effect was a

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 )
        in china, it is not denialism. It is their government is trying hard to keep control of their nation, along with expand further to controlling other nation
        To do this, they make heavy use of paid informants, trolls, etc. People like Caffeinated Bacon is a good example of such trash, but I am guessing that there are others here that are also paid informants/trolls.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Would corporate main stream media lie about all that is going on to hype fears and get more people seeking very profitable medication, yes. Would some bureaucrats lie about what is going of in they were partly responsible, yes. So trying to get truth in this ears, nearly impossible. Keep in mind autocratic governments would ramp up controls to keep people safe as the excuse at every opportunity.

        Does the coronoavirus seem like less of a threat than the regular flu season looking at the numbers, yes. https:// [scientificamerican.com]

  • Right off the bat the bodies were cremated? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by magusxxx ( 751600 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {0002_xxxsugam}> on Sunday February 02, 2020 @12:47PM (#59681770)

    Isn't that the international sign you're destroying the evidence?

    • Evidence? No. They were stopping the spread since it was obvious that China's government was lying (right Caffeinated Bacon?). Fact is, that when you have dead bodies in hallways of multiple hospitals, then it is a sign that you have a LOT more than 40 dead. Even now, when the truth comes out, China will probably acknowledge that they had over 1000 die.

    • Or, we could spend about three seconds coming up with a very sensible reason why you might want to cremate the bodies of people who died due to a new highly infectious disease.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      What's the normal way that they dispose of dead bodies in China? I suspect it's cremation. Just as my parents bodies were cremated.

      It may be better, in some sense, to feed dead bodies to the birds and the beasts, but when there's a dense population that doesn't work very well, and burying them uses land inefficiently.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A nations is free to do what it wants inside its own nation.
      Thats why some many nations joined the UN.

      Only so much room in any large hospital...
      Then the options are less and less once the numbers start to go way up.
      Cremation also takes time per body... so that has to be a factor.
      Only so many approved cremation locations...
      So once a nations hospital storage system is "full" the call goes out to start cremation work...
      "Cremation" is not instant... Cremation has to be done at approved locations...
      Tha
    • Cremation is the default burial custom in China. Now of course they are cremating all dead with no funeral services at all and of course, if they have an un-diagnosed corpse, they are not going to diagnose it after the fact. While it somewhat helps hide the seriousness of the situation this is done out of necessity, the situation especially in epicenter is up shit creek, generating statistics for you to look at is nobody's priority.

  • Events lead to arrests (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @12:49PM (#59681784)

    Anyone can get arrested anytime something happens. Low level government officials are not immune. The clear incentive is to make sure nothing happens. And if it does, make sure no one says anything interesting about it until high level government officials say it’s interesting.

    So no crisis can ever be stopped at a low level because no one dares to take action early. A problem has to grow to national significance before it's remotely safe to take any action that might be noticed.

    The exception is for finding and arresting people. They're great at that. Very efficient.

  • ... these virus scares of the last two decades are massively over-hyped, and that is because somebody massively profits from that? And not just media companies.

    • The problem is the political risks for not acting on a potential threat is great - the cost of overhyping is small.

      Recently I looked at the US life expectancy chart to verify Melania Trump's recent tweet that the life expectancy jumped 4 years due to her bebest program (eye roll - just more disinformation from this admin)

      https://www.disabled-world.com... [disabled-world.com]

      Nevertheless. what is interesting though is the huge drop in the teens of the last century which I suspect is the 1918 flu pandemic. So you don't want to b

    • Actually, had more action been taken earlier, fewer ppl would have died. As it is, probably the biggest spread of a none 'virus scare' is Hiv. Had reagan actually given CDC the money (50Million) to stop/slow down the spread, they asked for back in 81, we would have set back the # of Hiv deaths in America by 5-10 years. Could not have stopped it, but could have slowed it way down.
      Now, with this virus, if a vaccine is NOT able to be made, then it will be just like Hiv. But, I suspect that we will have a va

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        This is an RNA virus, like the common cold. That means it mutates like mad. I wouldn't bet on a vaccine that's effective one year remaining effective the next. And it may be worse than that.

        OTOH, if the vaccine could attack the reason for it being dangerous (i.e. the site of the dangerous mode of attack), that would be a powerful evolutionary push to get it to become less dangerous.

        • First, this one is VERY much like the common cold, because they are both corona virus.
          Secondly, RNA virus do NOT necessarily mutate wildly. For example. HIV, a retro virus does not mutate madly. It is actually a slow to moderate mutating virus. It remains to be seen how stable this one is. However, I do have to agree that this one looks like it does mutate since it was from the same branch as SARS/MER.
          Third, Corona Virus are hard to do vaccines (in spite of idiots spouting off on /. with zero knowledge o
      • Do you still think medical technology is the same as back then? Or have you finally accepted reality?
      • There is no way vaccine will be ready in time, this pandemic will resolve itself one way or another in matter of weeks to couple months.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "over-hyped"
      Once in a USA, Australia, UK, France... it gets hard to stop...
      All that freedom, travel, rule of law...lawyers ... and lack of hospital space.
      How will US gov, mil, charity, private and other gov hospitals work once "most" people get the feeling they want a new health issues looked at?
      Got just enough staff and bed space for seasonal issues....at best per 24/7 work day.
      Ask the mil to set up a big tent? Want to wait be treated by the US mil in a tent near the hospital or wait to see a doct
    • No, they were not over-hyped, they all had a potential to become a global disaster like the current epidemic is. They didn't due to good luck and fast response. This time the luck has quite possibly ran out and no amount of effort might be able to put that genie back in the bottle. Near weeks will tell how this will play out, don't be over confident it'll be fine, so far there has been nothing to indicate it will.

  • Classic maneuver by paranoid authoritarian governments - meanwhile in the US we have an authoritarian movement (aka Republican Party) that gaslights its citizens daily.

  • Universal health care (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alvian ( 6203170 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @01:15PM (#59681854)
    Pandemics like this is a great case for universal health care among many other reason. Even if the rich got the cure and poor were just left to die, poor will be the incubation hosts for further mutation with no cure.
  • A number of us have been pointing this stuff out about how badly the Chinese government has lied about it. Sadly, we have liars/paid trolls like Caffeinated Bacon (who is also crimson tsunami and several other IDs ) who run around trying to stop telling the truth about this.

    Ppl like this would rather kill ppl than simply tell the truth about what is going on by corrupt governments.
    • Go fuck yourself WindBourne. The only liar is you.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • It's an expression.
          It's also a game we play. WindBourne is all but hurt because I always point out his lies, so he often calls me a liar as a form of revenge/obfuscation.
          I tell him to go fuck himself and go about my day. Usually I just can't be bothered linking to a handful of his lies. He has no shame and just denies them anyway, so there is little point.
          Now you're all caught up. Carry on.

  • NYC Mayor is Also Lying About How it Spreads (Score:4, Informative)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @02:18PM (#59682052)

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=af9-z-OAbyo [youtube.com]
    At about 3:30 De Blasio says THAT YOU CAN'T get Coronavirus from surfaces or temporary contact with an infected person, which is incorrect.

    http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus... [cdc.gov]

    Most often, spread from person-to-person happens among close contacts (about 6 feet). Person-to-person spread is thought to occur mainly via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how influenza and other respiratory pathogens spread. These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs. It’s currently unclear if a person can get 2019-nCoV by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes.

    Typically, with most respiratory viruses, people are thought to be most contagious when they are most symptomatic (the sickest). With 2019-nCoV, however, there have been reports of spread from an infected patient with no symptoms to a close contact.

    The patient who is undergoing testing in NYC may have taken the subway or bus to the hospital.

    The patient potentially infected a bunch of other people by close contact and leaving the virus on handrails.

    The mayor lied to the public about the potential for getting the virus in the mass transit system, and the health authorities stood there in agreement.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Last I heard it was not clear how well the virus survived on surfaces...and I have a strong suspicion that it depends on the nature of the surface. From the general case, metal and unfinished wood surfaces probably quickly inactivate the virus (though that may only be bacteria...I'm not an expert in the field).

      OTOH, I'm told that the micro-droplets can hang in the air for up to 10 minutes. Whoops!

  • Live wild animals in close proximity (Score:5, Informative)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Sunday February 02, 2020 @03:08PM (#59682180) Homepage

    After SARS, selling of palm civets was temporarily banned in China [nationalgeographic.com], because the virus originated in that species. However, there is a trade in civets and other exotic species for food underground.

    Kerry Bowman, a researcher who visited the Wuhan wet market before the outbreak, counted over 50 species of live animals there. He says 2/3rd of them were wild animals, and that feces and urine were being sprayed. He says it was only a matter of time that a virus will jump from one species to another.

    Source: CBC [www.cbc.ca].

    Until there is a total ban on capturing and selling wild animals, and enforcement of said ban, this is going to happen again.

    There are many Chinese scientists and citizens are calling for such a ban [nytimes.com].

  • Itâ(TM)s fake news, just ask the (Chinese) President.

  • Meanwhile... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Compare the Chinese performance with the American CDC, arguably the top infectious disease research agency in the world, with an $11 billion annual budget and 11,000 employees. During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 – considered a maximum urgency, and facing a virus with a 90% fatality rate – the CDC took no less than two months from getting the first patient sample to identifying the complete genomic sequence. The Chinese did it in a few days. During the swine flu in the US in 2009
    • Don't underestimate how much biochemistry has developed in last five years or so - it's leaps and bounds. So it's not entirely fare to compare this to 5-10 year old efforts. That being said, the Chinese sure had a fire lit under them, even more so after they did identify it as a new virus. Now they are just throwing everything and a kitchen sink at the problem and it's still not enough.
  • The Chinese government also built isolation hospitals in 9 days. Tell me with a straight face the US would do any such thing. We don't even treat people who are dying here unless they bankrupt themselves or are wealthy. I think the US criticizing another nation's healthcare is clickbait for fools. How about y'all watch how the U.S. responds to not only any Coronavirus outbreaks in the US, but also the thousands who dies from flu every year and all kinds of preventable shit? So far, it's panic and racis

  • "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it" --Einstein

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