China's Aggressive Measures Reversed the Course of Coronavirus Outbreak (sciencemag.org) 175
hackingbear writes: According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, Chinese hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now have empty beds. Trials of experimental drugs are having difficulty enrolling enough eligible patients. And the number of new cases reported each day has plummeted from thousands per day to 125 cases on March 2. The report is unequivocal. "China's bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic," it says. "This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real."
The WHO team traveled to several cities including Wuhan, the hardest hit city. They visited hospitals, laboratories, companies, wet markets selling live animals, train stations, and local government offices. "Everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, there was a sense of responsibility and collective action, and there's war footing to get things done," says WHO's Bruce Aylward. The question now is whether the world can take lessons from China's apparent success -- and whether other countries can imitate the massive lockdowns and electronic surveillance measures imposed by an "authoritarian" government (an assertion which real Chinese may not necessarily agree with from their daily experiences).
The WHO team traveled to several cities including Wuhan, the hardest hit city. They visited hospitals, laboratories, companies, wet markets selling live animals, train stations, and local government offices. "Everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, there was a sense of responsibility and collective action, and there's war footing to get things done," says WHO's Bruce Aylward. The question now is whether the world can take lessons from China's apparent success -- and whether other countries can imitate the massive lockdowns and electronic surveillance measures imposed by an "authoritarian" government (an assertion which real Chinese may not necessarily agree with from their daily experiences).
And we could reduce crime this way too (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re: And we could reduce crime this way too (Score:2)
What kind of fantasy scenario have you spun up? And why?
It's called reality, outside of that heap of sand (Score:2, Offtopic)
... you blackeyer stuck your head in.
Sorry, this shit really happens.
I've got four golden cobblestones in front of my apartment building here in Germany, of deported people, to prove it.
And two in front of the neighboring building. And more down the street. (Called "Stolpersteine".)
Yeah, I have no doubt that such behavior is reasonable to assume in any police state with a SS/Gestapo-like "service".
(Certainly in China, North Korea, etc. And in the USA, the PATRIOT Act made this completely legal. I suspect it
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But would we want to?
Isn't basically a just a prison?
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Oddly enough, this hasn't worked for crime in China... starting with the party itself.
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The problem is that criminals don't "get better" in prison. They weren't perfectly fine citizens who, through no fault of their own, were infected with crime.
The only fix for the majority of criminals is death. That's basically how it worked with Australia. All of the original criminals sent there died long ago. They didn't just wake up one day, and say, "G'day mate!"
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You're right they don't "get better" though, well, some do but it's not really comparable is it. Although I guess when someone gets better it doesn't stop them getting sick again so maybe it is.
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What?! They're still alive after 153 years? Really? Gotta get me some of whatever it was that let them live 170+ years down there....
In other words, yes, they DID die. Their children did also. And grandchildren. But the children weren't criminals, nor the grandchildren (well, no more so than any other population sample)....
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I heard an interview with a former parole officer. The basic problem is that we are not funding alternative programs instead of locking them up. The reason why this makes sense is that even though we have some meagerly funded programs for helping them avoid prison, only the sharper ones are capable of working the system to get into those programs. And being sharp little criminals, they merely milk the programs. The rest of the proles have mental health and other issues that can even make it difficult for th
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They didn't just wake up one day, and say, "G'day mate!"
No, it took generations to bastardize the language that much.
Pro tip: criminals are usually perfectly normal people outside of the context of their crime. A bank robber might still return your lost wallet, for example; simply because they didn't intend to steal it, so they did the normal thing instead.
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Darn whippersnappers stole my idea! I thought of that years ago!
Precisely. And since totalitarianism is a crime .. (Score:2)
Amazing logic there, as is expected from you: "Evil can't destroy our freedoms if we first destroy all of them ourselves!"
Yeah, going by that logic, you can protect yourself from being murdered, by stabbing yourself 1024 times. With a spoon. :P
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You'll continue to like it 'til you take out the trash in your morning coat, a gust of wind shows off that you wear no underpants and you're on a sex offender list now for indecent exposure.
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The easiest way to accomplish this is to lock people up as a precaution and keep them monitored 24/7, including their whereabouts on their way to and from work and of course during all of their leisure time activities, including but not limited to coitus.
This absolutely ensures that nobody can break the law. Please sign here.
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Me. Why should we live with crime?
A society without crime is a society without freedom. You can only abuse freedom if you have it. And some people will always do that.
Incidentally, societies without freedom are not really without crime in any real-world implementation either. They just stop reporting it.
Hence you may want to rethink that...
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Yeah, and the correllate that with poverty. (Score:2)
Yeah, people commit more crimes if they are in desolate and desperate situations more often. And if they grew into a world where that is normal. Thank you, Captain Obvious!
And when they are more easily arrested and punished simply because, in an act of circular reasoning you have just shown a textbook example of, police "expects" it. Aka prejudice.
Turns out if you improve their lives, they stop committing crimes. Woah! What an insight!
So keep "punishing"! Aka making lives worse! That will *definitely* impro
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That ain't a fact.
If you control for age and poverty, the differences in crime rates between white males and black males are small. If you also control for neighborhood factors and family history, the differences are minuscule. (The correlations don't seem to hold for females, but their crime rates are low in general)
Re: Yeah, and the correllate that with poverty. (Score:2)
What's the crime rate in Russia compared to Ghana?
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I would definitely feel safer walking down a street at night in Liberia than in Albania.
And it isn't a close call.
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Black men? I thought he meant Trump.
LOL, ya beat me to it. That was my first thought too.
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Unless of course you mean property crime - which you basically can't leave a bike anywhere in a west coast city at this point. But west coast cities have decided they won't investigate or prosecute these crimes.
So crime has gone down!
Of course, if you live somewhere like Singapore, which has real laws, and enforces them - you realize how much freedom you can have when no one is breaking the law. You have to be the sort of person that doesn't steal bikes, or tag cars, obviously.
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The reason you heard about bike theft being a bigger problem on the west coast than other areas is that bikes are a normal commuter vehicle out here; people actually ride bikes, and they ride them when they're going to a destination where they spend time before returning. So they have to lock it up, so theft is a thing.
In some place with no bike lanes, and no car culture of respecting bicycles, then people don't use them for transportation; they use them for entertainment or exercise. They don't get stolen
Among other lessons to be learned from China... (Score:4, Funny)
Not needed (Score:2, Troll)
China's approach was needed because they had a huge, growing epidemic before they started. Most of the rest of the countries get to deal with a quarantine of a few dozen people.
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South Korea, Italy, and Iran are already in the thousands, with number quickly increasing. [worldometers.info] Sounds like they need China's approach as well...
Riiight... (Score:2)
Thousands of potential ones with mild flu symptoms, quarantined out of panic.
Presented by your for-profit fearmongering Ferengi propaganda media in a way that makes you feel as it they were deaths. --.--
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Re:Not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the Korea and Italy numbers went up so fast is that Korea and Italy had public health officials search out anyone at risk for the virus and test them. This approach works. When you quarantine individual sick people early enough, you don't need broader, more drastic measures.
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Maybe if those people were tested America's numbers might be similar. It sure keeps people calmer if they don't know the true numbers. For a little while anyway...
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America decided to just monitor 8400 Californians [google.com] Since they didn't have enough tests to go around (only 200).
Maybe if those people were tested America's numbers might be similar. It sure keeps people calmer if they don't know the true numbers. For a little while anyway...
You can imagine big numbers of unknown cases if you want. Where are the hospital admissions from them though? If about 1% die, where are those 1%? I'm not into artificial drama. Maybe a couple of those 8400 people have it — there must be a non-zero chance if they are being monitored — but even a dozen cases isn't a widespread outbreak.
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America decided to just monitor 8400 Californians [google.com] Since they didn't have enough tests to go around (only 200).
Maybe if those people were tested America's numbers might be similar. It sure keeps people calmer if they don't know the true numbers. For a little while anyway...
You can imagine big numbers of unknown cases if you want. Where are the hospital admissions from them though? If about 1% die, where are those 1%? I'm not into artificial drama. Maybe a couple of those 8400 people have it — there must be a non-zero chance if they are being monitored — but even a dozen cases isn't a widespread outbreak.
Wouldn't it be better to know which dozen? Then monitor/test their close contacts.
If you wait until they start needing to be hospitalized how many other people did they spread it to in the meantime? Only some of those people are going to need hospitalization anyway. You think the rest should just be free to carry on infecting people?
The time to slow it down is early. We don't want another China situation where they waited too long to do anything about it and then had to get drastic.
The more data we can
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Perfection is indeed better than imperfection.
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Perfection is indeed better than imperfection.
This is false 100% of the time. Perfection does not exist, imperfection does exist.
Things that exist are better than things that don't, for any context with relevance to anything.
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I hope so. The number of cases in China has stabilized and decreased (unless they are pulling off a giant lie which is sure to be exposed soon), while Korea's and Italy's numbers are rising rapidly with no end in sight.
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China is largely opaque, there is no reason to expect giant lies to be "exposed" at all, even if a few people become aware of them.
How many people in the world even know where Chinese hospitals get their transplant organs? Even though some people know, the giant lie remains mostly safe, because even western media is scared to speak the truth and never get access again.
This giant lie could easily be big enough to cover the problem, and yet be smaller than the other giant lies that they're currently getting a
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I wouldn't trust Korea or Italy numbers, they are different so far from each other, and there is no explanation of that. Take 5000 total cases, 27 critical and 34 deaths for South Korea, vs 2500 cases, 229 critical and 79 deaths for Italy. How is that even possible, Italy should be having pretty good medicare, and so should South Korea.
Iran is understandably underreported.
Unfortunately i don't see any reliable way how to find actual numbers and working methods.
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Unless they're testing everyone who flies, sails, drives or walks across the border they're getting hit.
Quarantines of sick people don't work perfectly. They do work well though. You get 100 cases instead of 100,000.
Nice try, selling totalitarianism. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, totalitarian control helps with totalitarian control of pathogens.
Yes people grown into a certain reality distortion bubble, will think that is normal, and even "right". (Just look at our own.)
Too bad we can see you are deliberately hiding the other side of the coin of thos broken window fallacy.
All the things the Chinese citizens *can't* do. All the ways they are harmed and crippled in developing their full potential. All the suffering and death of fellow humans on the other side of the planet.
It's no
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One of the few justifiable reasons for governments to exist is to exert totalitarian control over their country's borders. Without a border it ceases being a country.
As far as separating families, it kills me how a parent can toss their kid over a fence and then blame the President for "separating" their family. Same with the hyperbolic "kids in cages" nonsense. Blame the parents for putting those kids in that situation.
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Re: Nice try, selling totalitarianism. (Score:2)
Turns out if you improve their lives, they stop committing crimes.
Damn, that sounds horrible! Of course, I'm still waiting to hear about the nation that doesn't do that when someone's arrested... oh, wait: that was just a hollow talking-point to justify Corporate Anerica's hunger to flood the job market with desperate laborers; nevermind.
Re: Nice try, selling totalitarianism. (Score:2)
Separating kids from parents
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The legal justification was established in the Shrub mAdministration. According to Fatherland Security everything within 200 miles of the border is considered a rights-free zone where they may operate with impunity. How far do you live from the border? (They even declared that the Canadian border ran down the middle of Lake Michigan so that they could include Chicago.)
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Note that international airports count as borders for the purpose of these zones.
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Ah, that's right, "international ports" are considered borders, just like coastlines. I had forgotten, that's why they can operate in places like St. Louis and Nashville
Kids in cages under Obama/Biden admin (Score:2)
Trump has done some pretty unethical stuff. Kids in cages. Separating kids from parents.
You realize that those famous pictures of kids in cages were taken during the Obama/Biden administration?
Trump increased the number of family separations by he did not start the policy. Obama/Biden separated children too.
And around the country children are separated from their parents every day when the parent is arrested. When no legal guardian is available they are placed in a state system. Not a cage but still separation.
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Yes people grown into a certain reality distortion bubble, will think that is normal, and even "right". (Just look at our own.)
It's not like we don't have enough of that here (USA PATRIOT Act anyone?)... and you are arguing for MORE of that? With some cheap "think of the children" excuse? Like we could not keep people healthy *without* totalitarianism...?
And right in this post we have the reason why people here are apathetic to the ramblings of people like you. Equating the PATRIOT Act to totalitarianism is part of the problem. People stop listening to tinfoilhattery. While you made good points about totalitarianism you destroyed your argument by equating the PATRIOT act to totalitarianism. People just tune out. They know better. We don't see the Gestapo kicking down doors of people in the USA and hauling them away because of what they believe or f
China is WHO's hero now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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China's political corruption lead to the disease being hidden from residents and the world since September.
That's an interesting assessment given the first cases declared as simple pneumonia only came to light in December. Why not just stick with the facts, they look quite bad for China as it is without you having to make up dates.
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Enough reported cases in early/mid December to identify it as a new virus. Incubation time of up to 3 weeks. Carry the 2.
The disease was spreading in November.
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Re:China is WHO's hero now? (Score:4, Insightful)
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False. A proposed budget included cuts to the CDC. The actual approved budget resulted in funding increases.
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That initial spread may very well have been essential to creating the support base for the actual lock down. Also, containing a virus with such an exceptionally long incubation period is next to impossible without such a lock down so even if they'd have acted sooner, it would already have been too late.
It's probably going to require a world-wide lockdown to stop this before the majority of humanity catches it. And that's simply not going to happen; we're not China.
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Re:China is WHO's hero now? (Score:5, Insightful)
. Praising China for their delayed containment efforts is like praising an arsonist for putting out a fire he started.
OK, now the US has a great opportunity to prove their superior containment abilities in the US.
The WHO doesn't praise China for the delays. It praises China for what it did after it realized they couldn't just let the virus spread.
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This just continues WHO's brown-nosing of China.
Outbreaks such as this perfectly demonstrate shortcomings of China's political system. What happened is a typical scenario for totalitarian regimes, that's bound to repeat over and over again:
A problems crops up. You, a local communist party apparatchik, have a strong incentive and a lot of powers to keep sweeping it under the carpet, because you don't want to be a bearer of bad news, lest someone would decide it's your fault and replace you. Better try to see
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It's the bio equivalent of Chernobyl. The party is behaving the exact same way. The results are disastrous. Anyone who believes the official numbers is mentally retarded.
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China is authoritarianism done by smart people. That's what makes it such a formidable rival to Western liberalism [wikipedia.org].
Obviously I'm not talking about every provincial party official and policeman. But it's a mistake to assume that because somebody is wrong, that they're *stupid* and *incompetent*. They have effectively unrestricted state power. Eventually they'll shoot themselves in the foot with it, but in a situation like this it's an advantage.
Re: China is WHO's hero now? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not, but you're a complete fucking moron. Officials in Hubei province not only covered up news of the disease but promoted a 40,000 family Lunar New Year Hot Pot.
Re: China is WHO's hero now? (Score:2)
...but promoted a 40,000 family Lunar New Year Hot Pot.
That's a big bat.
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He's not
He is. He's exaggerating China's incompetence by lying about the dates. There was no Corona virus in September. Hell there was no Corona virus identified at all in 2019, the government didn't even start covering anything up until mid way through January when the virus was identified.
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Hell there was no Corona virus identified at all in 2019, the government didn't even start covering anything up until mid way through January when the virus was identified.
I'm gonna just put this right here [wikipedia.org]. Cases in December 2019, Chinese government suppressing reports on Jan 3.
bold? (Score:3)
euphamisms intended to add a glint of nobility and/or to hide or distract from the true machinations and motivations behind their actions
WHO is a pack of liars (Score:3)
The WHO response is literally being run by a guy famous for covering up Cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia. See the Peak Prosperity YouTube channel for plenty of cases of documented WHO malfeasance on nCov-19 and China.
Anyway, China is starting to see cases creep back up ("boomerang effect"). Listen to an NYC ER doc explain on CNBC: https://youtu.be/0Wg_OTTzUv8 [youtu.be]
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LOL. "Peak Prosperity YouTube channel". I don't even know what that is, but I guarantee it is a bunch of narcissistic freaks who are anti-gubmint. Grow up kids, you are almost 60 now. Not everyone is out to get you.
Turns out, no one even wanted them.
Skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been extremely skeptical of China's drastically slowed infectious rate country-wide. My reasoning is extremely simple. Yes, they did lock down the epicenter, but as evidenced by the fact that this is now spreading globally, we should expect the rest of China, outside the locked down epicenter, to also see significant viral activity. There is no "cure" and no vaccine yet, so really the only way to stop it is practically a complete lockdown where no one can go anywhere, not even within their own city. Since China has not done this country-wide, it makes no sense to me that this isn't flaring up in many of their other massive cities.
I believe that this is a simple "if we don't test then we don't get positives", and there is much more going on in China than reported. Doctors now know the mortality rate, which is "acceptable", and what does not work (AIDS drugs or whatever) so there is no point wasting time and money on certain treatments. So more than likely China is letting this play out like a bad case of the flu and just not reporting outside of the previously known areas.
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The Chinese have also reported a IV vitamin C has cured those with pneumonia and now published a protocol for its use.
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Since China has not done this country-wide, it makes no sense to me that this isn't flaring up in many of their other massive cities.
Except that they have done and are doing exactly that -- locking down all cities, towns and villages across the country. and they just start reopening slowly [nytimes.com].
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What's the point though? You don't have any better data to replace the data you don't trust.
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Trustworthy? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report
Given how heavily the Chinese government controls access to facilities and information, it's difficult to trust even a WHO report on the subject. I wouldn't put it past the government to hide bodies/patients or shift them around just to fool the WHO. All you have to do is look at how they covered up the initial outbreak, silenced doctors and virologists who tried to sound the alarm, and have consistently under-reported their own infection and death numbers.
"Everywhere you went, anyone you spoke to, there was a sense of responsibility and collective action, and there's war footing to get things done," says WHO's Bruce Aylward.
Again, you have to take this with an exceedingly large grain of salt. Chinese citizens know they're being monitored. Speaking out against the party line results in severe punishment. In such an environment is it any shock that these "random citizens" are speaking positively about the government's efforts? Is it realistic to expect they'd be even slightly critical? Is it reasonable to think the Chinese would allow a WHO report to be created and published that in any way reflects badly on the party?
Remember folks...this is the same government that routinely censors movies for content that might reflect badly on China or contradict Chinese Communist Party doctrine. This is the same government that pretends the Tiananmen Square killings never happened. The same government that's been only too eager to crush Hong Kong protesters and silence journalists who dare to report it. To believe they'd allow a WHO report to exist that shows anything other than the unqualified success and justification of the authoritarian quarantine measures is being dangerously naive.
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Indeed. But then you also need to pass the pub test. With the entire population of the province effectively in lockdown in their own homes it stands to reason that the infection rate would go down rather than up.
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You make an excellent point. Still, the infection rate going down is a long way from saying China handled this properly from the beginning. From here it looks like the CCP did everything it could to deny, delay, and obfuscate right up to the point where it could no longer be denied, delayed, or obfuscated. When the charade could no longer be maintained, the immediate government response was fragmented, contradictory, and counterproductive. Finally, once the tragedy had reached epidemic levels, massive s
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Still, the infection rate going down is a long way from saying China handled this properly from the beginning.
Absolutely. I think at this point it is well known they screwed it from the get go. But no one is claiming they did it right from the beginning.
This is what authoritarian regimes do.
That however is silly. If there's one thing that is perfectly clear in the past few weeks it's that authoritarian vs non-authoritarian seems to have had no impact on how government's have responded to the virus initially. Actually I'd probably argue the opposite. The heavy handed approach that we see in China is really only possible in a strong authoritarian regime.
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That however is silly. If there's one thing that is perfectly clear in the past few weeks it's that authoritarian vs non-authoritarian seems to have had no impact on how government's have responded to the virus initially. Actually I'd probably argue the opposite. The heavy handed approach that we see in China is really only possible in a strong authoritarian regime.
I think you may have missed my point. Pre-epidemic, an open society where the press operates freely and there is ample scrutiny of government, it stands to reason information on outbreaks would be more rapidly disseminated (along with incorrect information, but that's another topic). The Chinese response to the initial stage of the virus was to conceal, misrepresent, and shut down inquiry. This allowed it to spread. A more "Western" approach might've produced more needless panic (if there's one thing we
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Never trust Chinese. Ever.
The average Chinese citizen I would trust. It's their government I'm skeptical of.
China handled it like the bubonic plague (Score:2)
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What, they started a fire that lasted for days and burned down entire cities, killing hundreds of thousands?
Ah yes.. The real chinese.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Real Chinese people love oppression, it's those fake Chinese who deserve to locked up and tortured.
All true scotsmen know this.
The ends often do not justify the means (Score:2)
The Chinese government being what it is, we'll likely never know how much they intially fucked up, including whether or not they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing with the coronavirus or not (like bioweapons research), but regardless of that you can't point to how draconian the Chinese government is towards it's people and say it's a good thing even in this case. You can still be bad and do something good or do something right, but that doesn't nullify the bad things.
One Thing it Did... (Score:2)
It stopped the Hong Kong protests cold... coincidence ?
Worked as DESIGNED (Score:2)
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Chen Qiushi is still MIA. His "quarantine" for 24 days ended 1.5 days ago.
/shock (Score:2)
Draconian centralized governments are inherently more efficient at responding to crises.*
News at 11.
*setting aside corruption, nepotism, ass-covering, obfuscation, toadying, and a general lack of transparency at every. single. level. of the process such that we don't know to this day much of what's going on in China aside from what they're choosing to tell us, which may be true or false according to what they would like us to know.
China's Still Lying. (Score:2)
Based on the spread around the globe, there's absolutely no way there arn't outbreaks going on in other chinese cities right now.
Millions of people travelled to everwhere for the holidays prior to the quarantine taking effect.
China is still lying.
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It's a "Pyrrhic victory" and the Chinese leaders don't give a fuck who dies, so long as it's not them. They don't need money - they have power. The Chinese people long ago demonstrated their complete inability to raise a shit about being ruled by people like this; I think they like it, to be honest.
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They were. They had to get approval from Xi to visit, then they were toured around in specific places only. Then they came out praising China's response and transparency. China's so great for locking down entire cities, literally barring doors from the outside, and disappearing anyone caught sneaking out of their homes!
But the risk is so low we don't recommend travel restrictions that could hurt China's economy or image.