China Has Been Trying To Avoid Fallout From Coronavirus. Now 100 Countries Are Pushing for an Investigation (cnn.com) 197
Russian President Vladimir Putin once called Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, a "lone warrior." Putin was joking, but that description is starting to look more and more accurate. Russia has joined about 100 countries in backing a resolution at the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA), calling for an independent inquiry into the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: The European Union-drafted resolution comes on the back of a push by Australia for an inquiry into China's initial handling of the crisis. That was met with an angry response from Beijing, which accused Canberra of a "highly irresponsible" move that could "disrupt international cooperation in fighting the pandemic and goes against people's shared aspiration." While the resolution to be presented at the annual meeting of World Health Organization (WHO) members, which begins on Monday in Geneva, does not single out China or any other country, it calls for an "impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation" of "the (WHO)-coordinated international health response to Covid-19."
The wording of the resolution is weak compared to Australia's previous calls for a probe into China's role and responsibility in the origin of the pandemic. This may have been necessary to get a majority of WHO member states to sign on -- particularly those, such as Russia, with traditionally strong ties to Beijing. But that doesn't mean China's government should rest easy. The potential for an independent probe, even one not initially tasked with investigating an individual country's response, to turn up damning or embarrassing information is great. Australian government sources told the ABC, the country's public broadcaster, that the resolution's language was sufficiently strong to "ensure that a proper and thorough investigation took place."
The wording of the resolution is weak compared to Australia's previous calls for a probe into China's role and responsibility in the origin of the pandemic. This may have been necessary to get a majority of WHO member states to sign on -- particularly those, such as Russia, with traditionally strong ties to Beijing. But that doesn't mean China's government should rest easy. The potential for an independent probe, even one not initially tasked with investigating an individual country's response, to turn up damning or embarrassing information is great. Australian government sources told the ABC, the country's public broadcaster, that the resolution's language was sufficiently strong to "ensure that a proper and thorough investigation took place."
Yes, unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
according to public news owned by giant corporations with billion dollar interests in producing media for the Chinese market, noticing where pandemics come from is now racist.
Re: Yes, unfortunately (Score:2)
Actually, it is nationalist. But in the US, that word has strangely lost its bad connotation.
Instead, "racist" has become the catch-all term, so much so, that I would bet money that only a hand full of Americans knows what the word actually means.
Let't test that: Racism is defined as the idea that there is such a thing as human races. A former scientific hypothesis, with no particularly positive or negative connotation per se, that has now been debunked for about 100 years. (Because genetic variation inside
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But in the US, that word has strangely lost its bad connotation.
It's only strange if you haven't noticed the globalist clown/shitworld we've allowed our establishment to foist on us.
Not that that sort of ignorance is rare. Yay groupthink.
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Actually, it is nationalist. But in the US, that word has strangely lost its bad connotation.
That's because we are not German. To you, nationalist => national socialist => NAZI => world domination & genocide.
To us, nationalist is self care. First you take care of your self, then your family, your friends, your neighbors, your tribe, your countrymen, the world. This is the basis for "Think global, act local", and "Charity begins at home".
Don't forget the mistakes of your past... but grow beyond them.
Re: Yes, unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I understand my European history, nationalism was first made to be 'thing' after the first the French Revolution. They weren't particular about ethnicity and for example granted honorary citizenship to a wider range of ethnicities. What made people "French" in their eyes were their actions rather than their parents.
But still today most Germans seem to know only one type of nationalism - ethnic nationalism.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's the same scam as capitalism, just with capitalism the scam is more insidious and personal. Both fail. Spectacularly. At least for most people. Both are systems that are rigged to ensure that a small portion of the population can abuse and sponge off a larger amount that works for them.
The key difference is that it's harder to see through in capitalism. In socialism, when (not if, when) the system fails you, you can blame the system. Because it's supposed to give wealth to everyone equally. And nobody w
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> Both fail. Spectacularly.
Says the guy typing on systems all invented by capitalists while living in more luxury than has been seen at any time prior to this in human history. You remind me of the socialist guy in this video [youtube.com].
Yeah, let's compare, say, North & South Korea and see how that goes. Or heck, just point out that even China required capitalist reforms to avoid starving so badly.
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Nationalism is about dividing the world into two groups: in and out. The definitions are arbitrary, a line on a map or a racial group, the only requirement is that they can easily be identified and the out group blamed for everything that is wrong.
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You are falling into a globalist self-destructive trap over your guilt that a couple centuries ago your nation was "The British Empire".
You won't improve the world by destroying your home.
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You won't improve it by arbitrary include and exclude people by something as ridiculous as what cunt they plopped out of. Being born to someone is not by any stretch of imagination an achievement or something that should include or exclude you from a group.
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For the sake of discussion, let assume you are correct for the moment. What's the word for what the person your were replying to was describing? `Cause that's what he means when he refers to socialism. Would you please teach us the correct word for that?
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Socialism isn't a focus on self care, it's about working together for social good. The clue is in the name.
What the GP describes is a spin put on nationalism to try to make it sound acceptable. Just looking our for your family doesn't seem like a bad thing until you start looking at what that actually means in practice.
Re: Yes, unfortunately (Score:2)
What? I'm not German and Nationalism does not equal "self-care" to me. Isolationism does, but isolationism and Nationalism are not the same. They can overlap, certainly, but they are distinct.
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You're that Time Cube guy aren't you?
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Truth, America never enslaved people based on race and never stole land from a race full of savages due to nationalism in the form of manifest destiny.
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Ah, I see I got two -1 disagree moderations, so let me cite a few sources:
Fascist politicians in Europe:
https://isj.org.uk/fascism-in-... [isj.org.uk]
Racism in Europe:
https://psmag.com/news/hiring-... [psmag.com]
https://www.jta.org/2018/04/25... [jta.org]
For good measure: https://www.quora.com/Is-racis... [quora.com]
Gender inequality in Europe:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/a... [bbc.com]
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As for racism: racist people are racist. They're not hard to spot anymore, they've had a lot of encouragement and have gotten
This is literally part of the CCP strategy (Score:2)
conflating race with the country to shut down conversation.
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according to public news owned by giant corporations with billion dollar interests in producing media for the Chinese market, noticing where pandemics come from is now racist.
[Citation please] Where has the public news said this? You may have misinterpreted it because you think it's right to call a virus Wuflu or Chinese virus rather than its official name. If so you're no different than someone who calls a black person "niger" [sic because Slashdot is lame] because they are black instead of saying calling them ... Anthony.
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Is what I said, both sides have their supporters, Republicans wouldn't win any elections of they didn't have some media on their side.
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CNN by itself gave Trump $5 billion worth of advertising. Compare to Ron Paul who the MSM skipped over when mentioning votes, so and so came in third and so and so came in fifth with no mention of 4th place.
Trump attracts eyeballs, which sells ads and now the MSM has chosen the weakest competition it could to ensure Trumps election win. They're interested in one thing, and it is not the good of the country.
Pot calling kettle black? (Score:5, Insightful)
On Friday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman accused those countries who back Taiwan's participation as seeking "selfish political gains even at the expense of hijacking the WHA and undermining global anti-pandemic cooperation." He predicted that the proposal would be "firmly rejected by the vast majority of the international community."
So the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman is accusing countries supporting Taiwan's inclusion as pursuing "selfish political gains".... even while the only real opposition to their inclusion is pushed by China? Seems a bit disingenuous, at best, to be making claims like these. Taiwan has been universally acclaimed for their handling of the coronavirus situation, so I don't see any clear reason why they shouldn't be involved with the international health community, other than it being hurtful to China's pride.
Ground Zero (Score:5, Interesting)
After the world is thrown into semi-Armageddon, of course many are quite curious to know how it actually started.
China should grow up, admit they fucked up, and come clean. I know it's against dictator habit, but this won't die. Similar applies to responses by many other nations' leaders.
Perhaps make a deal with China that if they come clean, there will be no sanctions and punishment for it, or at least limit it.
Why is it so hard for many just to admit they screwed up? I trust somebody who admits to mistakes more so than somebody with an apparently clean record. We are all human and nothing can hide that.
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But could they have stopped it in its tracks completely? I doubt it. The experts in WHO are going to come to a conclusion and if it's the one I suggest here, some in other countries are not going to be happy about it, because they seek to attach blame to someone.
Re:Ground Zero (Score:5, Informative)
But could they have stopped it in its tracks completely? I doubt it. The experts in WHO are going to come to a conclusion and if it's the one I suggest here, some in other countries are not going to be happy about it, because they seek to attach blame to someone.
Well, there is handling a pandemic outbreak in a way that may be seen later as not the best, but it was done in good faith, and then there is Locking up and threatening the doctor who identified the outbreak and forcing him to confess his “crimes” against the state for raising the alarm [nytimes.com] while doing nothing for a month level of fuck up. So even if this wasn’t engineered (vast consensus was it is not engineered) nor escaped from a lab (experts all say this seems unlikely at best) then the real issue here is China has its authoritarian head so far up its own ass it not only screwed itself, but the world at large. If we had containment started back in late December when Dr. Wengliang first realized what was happening at the very least we would have pushed the whole thing back and slowed it’s spread and thus lessened the damage to blood and treasure of just about every last other country on the planet. It may even have been containable if a complete lockdown of Wuhan happened in December, though the asymptomatic nature of many who are sick does make that a long shot.
China vs USA (Score:2)
Sure, China fucked up at the beginning. We might also have been slow to react -- it was not obvious in the beginning that Covid-19 would be so bad.
But by early January the Covid-19 story was widely known.
Yet somehow the USA ended up with over 10 times as many cases per million than China. And they had a good month's warning.
That is the really amazing part of this story, and one that I would not have expected. And that part was not China's fault.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
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The doctor was never locked up (Score:2)
Your source says no such thing. After signing a statement on Jan 3 agreeing not to "spread rumours", he went home that same day, and straight back to work (where he contracted Covid-19 from an asymptomatic glaucoma patient on Jan 8). He was not detained or even fined.
Linked from the NYT article, in his own words [oeeee.com]:
Li Wenliang: At 5:00 pm on December 30, 2019, I posted a text in the WeChat group of university classmates, “7 SARS diagnosed in the South China Seafood and Fruit Market”. I also sent a message in the follow-up group to emphasize that the virus typing is in progress, everyone should not pass it on, and let family members and relatives pay attention to prevention. On January 3, I was informed that the police station filled out an admonition.
The disciplinary book shows that the illegal behavior is the publication of untrue statements on the Internet. At that time, I thought that it would be good not to be detained, so I signed it directly.
After this happened, I still work normally in the hospital.
I saw someone online saying that I was "revoked for a license". I need to clarify this. I had been working in the hospital until I was sick, and my revoked license was untrue.
The Chinese government notified the WHO on December 31st [who.int], one day after Li sent his messages. At that time there were only the 7 known cases Li refers to, no deaths, no knowledge of cause, and no in
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There is a disproportionate responsibility on the first people to discover a virus to take action to stop its spread. Stopping it can only happen very early on before it becomes endemic in the population.
While the initial 6 week screw up by the US executive branch shows a miserable failure, it is not nearly as harmful as even 2 weeks lost in China early on.
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The WHO publicly reported the outbreak back on Jan 5 [who.int] (Jan 4 on Twitter) - back when there were still only 44 known cases, all in Wuhan, and no deaths. Would you declare a pandemic then?
They reported [who.int] the first case in another country, a traveler from Wuhan, 8 days later, and one day after China shared the genome of the newly identified virus. Is it a pandemic yet?
On Jan 14 they warned of possible human to human transmission, which could presage a wider outbreak. This was confirmed a week later by a delegatio [who.int]
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Part of the problem is their live meat markets though. It's not just by chance that the China is the source for a disproportionate number of the modern pandemics (avian flu, SARS, COVID-19).
They have to regulate the health and safety practices of their markets to a better degree to keep these things from cropping up in the first place.
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It didn't escape from a lab, that's a discredited conspiracy theory.
Don't join the likes of Infowars by spreading it.
The correct term is debunked (Score:2)
Try and keep up.
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Perhaps make a deal with China that if they come clean, there will be no sanctions and punishment for it, or at least limit it.
And then....
Why is it so hard for many just to admit they screwed up?
I think you sorta answered it yourself - ego.
They don't want to admin to anything (just look at G.W.B, or Trump), especially if it's going to make them look weak(er), or get them any sort of sanctions.
Ground Zero Where? (Score:2)
The virus was first discovered in Wuhan by Chinese doctors at December 27. Just like the Spanish flu pandemic [wikipedia.org] was mistakenly attributed to Spain due to the USA suppressing reporting of epidenic in order to fight World War I, it is wrong to assumed that the virus was originated there. And there are growing evidences pointing other possibilities:
1. Two Seattle area residents tested positive for COVID-19 and were sick (only) in last December [seattletimes.com]
2. Italian scientists investigate possible earlier emergence of corona
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typo: "corrected from December" => "collected from December"
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f) There was a World Military Games event in Wuhan in October, 10.000 people from all around the world were there, any of them could have brought the virus to Wuhan.
Blaming China for Corona would be the same as blaming Sweden for Chernobyl radiation. (They detected it first.)
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If this theory was true, we would see lots of cases in military bases all around the world. I guess we didn't see that, so this is nothing more than a stupid conspiracy theory that is wrong.
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Sanctions are only for little countries. For big countries it's called a trade war because if you put sanctions on them they can hurt you as much or more in retaliation.
If you want China to cooperate you need to rule out assigning blame and any kind of punishment. In most legal systems the accused is not obliged to assist with their own prosecution, is unreasonable to expect them to.
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It didn't play out well for them (Score:3)
China plan years ago:
1) Install a puppet in the WHO that caters to you:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/1/world-health-organization-and-its-leader-play-chin/ [washingtontimes.com]
2 ) Control the information (don't want to look bad)
3) Profit
Plan that was implemented:
1) Install Puppet (check)
2) Control information, horde supplies (just in case), don't let other countries know how bad it is
3) Make the whole world distrust you.
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1) Install a puppet in the WHO that caters to you
Ooooh I know the answer to this one: America! Yeah USA the country which supported the WHO's primary charter to only be able to report on facts presented by official government bodies.
As we've been over this 100 times already, please learn what the WHO is, does, it's purpose, and it's limitations before declaring them some kind of sock-puppet. Otherwise you just look ignorant.
It's not over, for China (Score:2)
Over 100 Million in China’s Northeast Face Renewed Lockdown [bloomberg.com]
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In over their head (Score:5, Insightful)
China is in over their head. They are used to having absolute dictatorial control inside China. They are used to buying off or blackmailing individuals outside their country. Want access to their market? You had better appease the CCP and their official worldview. Want to keep your family members back in China alive and make sure they do not disappear? The Chinese government uses mob tactics against people they don't like.
The problem they have is they unleashed the Wuhan virus (that is what the Chinese people in China call it) on the world. They covered it up and lied about it thinking that they could control the narrative outside their borders based on their experience with multi-billion dollar corporations. The problem is that they cannot do that at scale. They CCP fucked over the entire world's economy with their greed and their lies.
They have discovered that the threat to withhold access to the world's largest market does not mean anything to small businesses or the unemployed. Their are a whole lot more people employed by small businesses than multi-billion corporations. Then you have all of the unemployed that have lost family members. They can never stand against the world, or even a fair chunk of it.
The problem is that they miscalculated how much economic damage would be done and how many lives would be taken. China has well over a billion people, they can afford to sacrifice a few hundred thousand of their own. They failed to understand that other countries value their citizens much more than China does.
They caused trillions of dollars in economic damages worldwide through their lies. They killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many more will be killed. It's past time to hold the CCP accountable. China lied, people died. Demand reparations, reforms and stop buying things made in China!
Lightning rod issue (Score:3)
Pointing fingers at a WHO inquiry will probably make countries feel better, but hopefully this pandemic taught countries that strategic levels of manufacturing should be kept domestically so they can be called upon in an emergency.
I live in NY, and from Day 1 the biggest concern was that NYC would have all 11 million people ignoring the request to stay away from each other, spreading this far and wide, causing a mini version of Part 1 of The Stand. Fortunately the worst of the chaos they thought would happen didn't, but priority one was finding enough medical supplies to deal with the possibility that we'd need to warehouse hundreds of thousands of hospital patients. The one thing that isn't bound up in all the blame game was the fact that China is almost the sole source for some of the basic supplies.
From an IT perspective, since we're nerds and stuff...the idea of lessons learned and putting in systems in place to make sure issues never happen again is out of fashion. That was ITIL, now we're Agile. But, we can't be so Agile that we just throw out the safeties and margins of error. The Agile folks chafe at the ITIL people because they don't want to go through the hoops required to get things done. "Why do I have to certify that I checked the SQL statement because Bob dropped the production database last year?" Having at least some sort of investigation and finding of facts might at least make people think about how to make things less crazy next time...and yes, put in some sort of mitigation plan.
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Personally, I hope that is not the lesson. Supplies were never the issue* in the NY mess, lack of early action at the state and local levels was.
*PPE for healthcare workers is a different category IMO. Hospital supply strategies clearly are not well suited for a pandemic, and I think a big part of that is single-use equipment for maintaining sterile conditions. When you run through that many masks because they are only used for 30 minutes each, you are bound to have a problem if there are any supply disr
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Pointing fingers at a WHO inquiry will probably make countries feel better
They should feel worse given it's precisely "countries" which signed on to the WHO's charter that prevents the WHO being political, which in this case means the WHO is only able to comment on and pass on analysis on official government data.
People like blaming the WHO forgetting how they are setup, and ignoring that the WHO made the only comments they could given the data they were allowed to use.
China Bully (Score:4, Insightful)
China has shown its true colours buy bullying Australia over calling for an investigation by banning meat imports and threatening trade sanctions.
The point of the inquiry is not to assign blame, but find out how the world should best practice deal with disease outbreaks..... now if China was found to have leaked this from a lab, then there be some negligence consequences but I would say all tracks are now destroyed or covered up. If China wants to save face with the world, they should be open and transparent. Their current behaviour will alienate them from future trade.
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China has shown its true colours buy bullying Australia over calling for an investigation by banning meat imports and threatening trade sanctions.
Latest news is, of course, that they've gone from "threatening" to full-on sanctions. Comes in the form of an 80% tariff on Australian barley... about $1B in trade. Punishment for instigating the inquiry. I suspect the punishment will not stop there, either.
chernobyl then (Score:2)
wuhan today
people with more history knowledge will certainly have more examples
what i'm trying to say is this won't change. I'm afraid it can not change. "Our" best bet is to operate under this assumption.
So far, one could say we're somewhat lucky it was this bad, not worse. Lucky... fortunate? Those are synonyms, aren't they?
European Virus? (Score:2)
“If you had said when we started this, yes we have more cases than anyone else, yes we had this European virus attack us, and nobody expected it, but we are not only going to change our trajectory, we're going to change the trajectory more dramatically than anyplace else in the nation”.
Re: European Virus? (Score:2)
Cuomo is desperate to avoid his own investigation into how many old people his policies are responsible for killing.
That's weird (Score:3)
All the best and brightest have told me that it's Trump who's trying to focus blame on China in order to distract from his total failures here at home (which, oddly, are on par with the rest of the world).
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Do you have ESP? [whohasesp.com]
It's really hard to find the memory cell holding the correct card, you need to make it more obvious, at least say where the server is. But even then it's tough, searching through all those memory cells to find the right one.
Re: That's weird (Score:2)
I'm a bastard. I use rot-13 encoding, so even if you find the memory cell, it won't help.
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Oh great, now I have to do math in my mind? The ESP is easy, but the math is going to kill me. Maybe if I used a pencil and paper I might be able to do it.....
By the way, on a serious note one of the funny things about that site is that there have been around 235,000 guesses over the years, and the average correct is 19.93%. Oddly, the square is guessed correctly the least (19.22%), and the circle is guessed correctly the most (20.36%).
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China trying to avoid Fallout? (Score:2)
A fake headline that is not representive of the actual resolution.
“Initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment, and in consultation with Member States, 1 a stepwise process of impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation
I do know it isn't the best cours
China's response was irrelevant to the outcome (Score:3)
The recent discovery that someone in France had it and was at the pneumonia stage on December 27th and that he had to have gotten it in France indicates that the virus was out of China by some point likely in early December. It is very likely we'll find earlier cases assuming we keep looking (authorities might not want to find them).
So Wuhan's handling of the virus in the three weeks or so before the Chinese government took over and stomped all over the local efforts to conceal it is irrelevant. The virus already escaped containment.
Many experts think that we'll likely trace it back to an origin in September or so with community spread escaping both Wuhan and China before anyone even suspected an issue.
In looking forward, we should first ask ourselves why we care whether another country gave us any warning. Why would we be dependent on other country's warnings to protect our citizens? If they had hit every panic button possible on the 1st of January, would the outcome have been any different?
I think it very unlikely that we would have locked down anything other than Asian travel. Most of the cases we have, especially the ones in NYC, are from a variation that probably came in from France.
I can't imagine the current administration doing anything other than reacting after the fact when it is too late just as they did.
Chernobyl (Score:2)
And then what? (Score:2)
So let's imagine we find out that they are "guilty", whatever that means? Then what? Freeze their international assets until they cough up some kind of "punishment money"? Knowing China they'll simply cash in every single foreign corporate asset in their country (which as you might imagine is quite a bit). How long you think 'til our governments cave in to the demands of various corporations to drop the bullshit so they can get their stuff back?
Not to mention that China basically holds everyone's economy ho
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Maybe we should hold them accountable, and I'm not intrinsically against that, but how about fucking worrying about pointing fingers and holding China accountable *AFTER* the world has dealt with this crisis?
Since there is no reason to think this could happen again? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
It isn't blame to me, but a question of can we do a better job of containing something like this quicker? Maybe not, but it still seems worth considering.
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It isn't blame to me, but a question of can we do a better job of containing something like this quicker? Maybe not, but it still seems worth considering.
Regardless of whether it could be "contained quicker", you could argue that a free flow of information would have allowed other countries to at least better prepare for when COVID-19 made landfall.
I doubt it would have changed anything here in the US ("it's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control"), but maybe it would've helped other countries.
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It isn't blame to me, but a question of can we do a better job of containing something like this quicker? Maybe not, but it still seems worth considering.
Regardless of whether it could be "contained quicker", you could argue that a free flow of information would have allowed other countries to at least better prepare for when COVID-19 made landfall.
I doubt it would have changed anything here in the US ("it's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control"), but maybe it would've helped other countries.
Kind of what I was thinking, probably stated better.
Re:Why are people so fricken preoccupied.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If it is found that they did something wrong, China does need to be called out on it and accept that they screwed up. Other nations do, too.
You're right that the focus shouldn't be on assigning blame. The focus should be on making sure everybody (not only China) screws up less next time, and personally I'm disinclined to believe that a totalitarian regime is going to behave any differently next time without first being embarrassed a bit, if history is any indication. We can't improve the way situations like this are handled in the future without publicly acknowledging the mistakes we made this time.
If we wait to do these things, the issues will be glossed over and forgotten in the same way the world has mostly ignored the arrest of many of the major figures in the Hong Kong democracy movement since the COVID crisis began. The attention span of people is, in general, pretty short.
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If there is any chance of blame China won't cooperate. And there is going to be blame so it's a non starter.
All the people wanting to assign blame do is make sure we can't investigate and learn from this. That's the political realty.
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What are you going to learn from an authoritarian government that silences and disappears anyone trying to warn the world?
Good luck learning much less investigate anything.
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China has done plenty wrong but it's also undeniable that they have also been a lot more open and cooperative than they were with previous outbreaks.
Just getting in a huff won't improve things, you are going to have to be patient and work slowly of you want progress.
Re:Why are people so fricken preoccupied.... (Score:5, Insightful)
> a lot more open and cooperative than they were with previous outbreaks.
Oh, just arresting select scientists, doctors, and journalists instead of every one in ear shot. So much better. Surely they will see the error of their ways and stop disappearing wrongthinkers.
>to be patient and work slowly of you want progress.
China has been given enough patience and all we have gotten is bullshit Chinese money and propaganda infecting media and institutions. It's well past time to hold hands singing about rainbows and unicorn farts. How many academics spying for China have to be arrested? How many institutions must abandon western ideals and bend to China's will? How many politicians be funded by Chinese firms do we allow? Sorry, it's well past time for wishful naive thinking about "progress" with China. Grow up.
I don't know what your idea of progress is and if it has anything related to Chinese "progress" then you are full of shit.
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They accepted what was happening relatively early, worked with the WHO, released the genome, shared clinical data on treatment.
They didn't do that before. They still need to do more but just getting pissy about it isn't going to move them in the right direction. You should take your own advice and grow up, accusing and blaming is not how you convince the Chinese to improve.
If you push for blame and punishment you ensure it will be worse next time. Not just in this case, in many areas of life. The best engin
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>isn't going to move them in the right direction.
Apparently being nice and opening up trade and investment doesn't help them "move in the right direction" either. I guess we just have to accept their bullshit propaganda as truth now for any "investigation" into what happened.
>accusing and blaming is not how you convince the Chinese to improve.
Accusing and blaming, as in pointing out what they are doing that is anathema to things like human rights and international relations. Oh dear. Are the Chinese t
This is actually a gift to China vs USA (Score:2)
An international probe into how Covid-19 was handled around the world? Three countries to focus on
* The country where it started: China.
* The country that did the best job: Taiwan.
* The country that did the worst job: USA.
Wow, An independent investigation into the USA would be devastating.
China wants Trump to win in November, but I doubt if they think that deeply.
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Quite good response from China:-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
I would blame the Chinese for many things, like their dismal human rights record, but not for this one.
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So much better.
Erm. Yes. Literally.
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Re:Why are people so fricken preoccupied.... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the fact of the matter is that error in judgement is in the past, and squabbling about how China ought to be held accountable for the damages that this has caused doesn't do shit for actually dealing with the pandemic.
That's not the point of the investigation. We want to understand what went wrong (and right) so we can handle it better next time. You know, that old thing about learning from your mistakes.
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Because it wasn't an error in judgement. It was SOP for China - suppress anything that might make them look bad.
Western democracies have tried two different models for dealing with dictatorships. The Cuba model (so
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Democracies thrive on transparency and openness.
Just ask Edward Snowden!
Oh, wait....
Oh, wait (Score:2)
is just so last century.
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... with assigning blame?
Nobody said this investigation was about assigning blame. It's about knowing your history, so as not to make the same mistakes. E.g., it starts in the US next time. We might do a better job knowing what China did right, and wrong.
Maybe we should hold them accountable, and I'm not intrinsically against that, but how about fucking worrying about pointing fingers and holding China accountable *AFTER* the world has dealt with this crisis?
We just might learn something that will help us deal with the current situation. Also, there are enough people on earth to do both at the same time.
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Those who love to use a scapegoat to shift blame from their own incompetent response to the situation, will feel validated and can say: "I told you so!" even louder than before.
There would be some paying lip service and virtue signalling from other countries, who officially might not like it, but think that trade relations with China are just too important.
And hopefully there would be also some countries that reevaluate their trade relations with China. Think twice if they
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I wonder if it's coincidence that the worst three countries by deaths (US, UK, Italy) all have populist governments who blame others for their own failings.
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It will enable the entities from the rest of the world to sue the Chinese government for the monetary damage the virus has caused.
Sue them in what court? Under what law?
Re: what would happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Like that is going to happen.
Sure, ... everbody's gonna be totally reasonable about it, and only about clearing it up. :)
It's totally not a scapegoat hunt for venting the missing closure from never being able to fully explain how it could have happened that is needed to be able to know how to prevent ot the next time so we can sleep safely again.
Especially our very reasonable and fair world leaders! ;)
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But the reality is China should face a large political blowback f
a lot of americans here should point to their own kleptocracy first.
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Re:What do you want? (Score:5, Informative)
Next time, it may originate in the US. And then?
If we get a repeat of the 1918 flu epidemic that may have originated in America, and instead of identifying, tracing, and containing it while alerting the world, America did nothing for a month except torture the doctor who identified the outbreak into confessing his or her crimes against the state then yes, America should pay a hefty world political price for that obvious FK up.
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What are you talking about? Nobody "tortured the doctor who identified the outbreak". Li Wenliang [wikipedia.org], who was an opthamologist, notified his colleagues of a suspected SARS outbreak he'd seen internal reports of on December 30 - the same day the Wuhan CDC alerted local hospitals, and one day before China alerted [who.int] the WHO.
For "spreading rumours", Li was "admonished" by police on Jan 3, and required to sign a statement saying he would desist - then he went home the same day and straight back to work, where he cont
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You wouldn’t happen to be a Chinese national be any chance?
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Any such scientific, medical investigation would necessarily entail a very thorough on-site examination of every cubic inch of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
To have any meaning at all in such an investigation, such an examination would have to be conducted by non-Chinese personnel who knew what they were doing and what they were looking at and for.
China appears to be very, very, VERY frightened of what such an examination might find and reveal to the world.
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A political which hunt by triggered idiot Trump, echoed by idiots..
Obamagate!