Again, Trump did a COMPLETE 180 on China. This is, verbatim, what he said on about China and it's President on January 24th. This was LONG after he had received multiple intelligence reports about the threat of the virus that he either a.) didn't read or b.) didn't care about:
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
While there may be people on the left who aren't particularly interested in blaming China given how much of a head's up there was (again, 60 days, at least), there is NO ONE who has heaped the kind of unbridled praise we are seeing from Trump in this quote. Now someone will tell me why what he said doesn't matter. So we'll do more. Here's February 7th:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
Three days later on February 10th:
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
February 29th:
“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good. We just did a big trade deal. We’re starting on another trade deal with China — a very big one. And we’ve been working very closely. They’ve been talking to our people, we’ve been talking to their people, having to do with the virus.”
There are more, but they are so repetitive it isn't worth putting them all in this post. Point being, while being given the REAL skinny from our intelligence agencies, he's HEAPING praise on China for the ENTIRE MONTH of February. He was, without question, the biggest China apologist in the country right up until the moment it was convenient not to be. These are his real quotes, that he actually said. And no amount of Ministry of Truthing is going to change that.
If China deserves blame for failing in the initial stages, don't the governments of the US and Western Europe now deserve blame for continuing to abet the virus' spread?
I'm not defending China here. They've clearly lied about their case load, death totals, and silenced a key whistleblower.
And here’s the thing, the US has done all this as well.
But nope China bad and the only one to blame.
The whistleblower who was one of the people in charge of coming up with a vaccine, and who was pushed out for not signing off on Trump's snake oil show. As for the numbers, the Administration is flat-out telling the CDC to revise their numbers downward, and Florida has been caught red-handed manipulating their numbers. I have NO doubt other GOP-led states are doing so as well. But no one is getting their data on this from the CDC. I'm someone who checks the stats daily in my bookmarks, and the CDC hasn't been on that list since March. Nothing coming from the Executive Branch of our current government is trustworthy. It will all be manipulated.
You seem to be wanting to spin a conspiracy theory about what China "did" and also tossing in the WHO. I mean, have the courage to state your arguments clearly, instead of relying on insinuation. Because China is not to blame for the high case loads and death counts in places like the US and the UK. That would be as stupid as blaming the US for 1918 flu deaths.
@MaleficentOne you've said repeatedly that China is to blame, but haven't said what for. If you're going to keep on posting the same argument, it would be really helpful to know the basis for that. As I said before, it's easy to accuse someone in such a vague way that the accusation can't be responded to, but it doesn't make for a quality discussion.
The main arguments against China I'm aware of have already been responded to. In summary:
1) China delayed in informing the world there was community transmission of the disease
The potential delay most talked about is between 31/12/19 and 21/1/20, i.e. the dates when China first informed the WHO of a new disease and when they confirmed there was community transmission of that disease. Unless you believe that China actually knew what this disease was ahead of that time (and either deliberately or accidentally released it themselves), I can't see how it's possible to expect no delay between these dates. However, that gives an absolute maximum of a 3 week delay, which is itself pretty short in the context of actions taken by other countries.
2) China tried to silence a whistleblower
I posted a while ago about this. There were numerous reports posted on social media about this virus in its early stages, so why was it that the Chinese warned this particular doctor? The reason for that was that one of his posts (this was to a group of other doctors and Dr Wenliang asked them to keep the report confidential - but they did not do so) said that the disease had been identified by a laboratory as SARS. Previous outbreaks of SARS were worrying because of the high death rate for those infected (about 15%) and the possibility that a mutated version of that would be both highly contagious and so often fatal would have been even more scary than the reality we now see.
3) China subsequently amended its case and death totals well after the end of its outbreak
This is true, but misleading, as it suggests China has done something unusual or under-handed. China for a long time only counted confirmed cases in its statistics, but that's the case with most countries. It's only a few weeks ago that the UK started properly publishing statistics of Covid-suspected cases outside hospital - and most US states still have not done this. Practice in the rest of Europe varies, but the majority of countries still only publish partial data. There are good reasons for this: it's easier to collect data just from hospital and in the rush associated with the early stages of the disease it shouldn't be a surprise if countries go with what's easy (with the side-benefit this reduces the embarrassment associated with higher numbers). It's probably going to be a minimum of a year yet before we are able to look at excess death rates for different countries in order to get a more genuinely comparable set of data about how the disease has impacted across the world.
On all the above China can certainly be criticized, but so can most other countries. I think the point is though that it's not helpful or appropriate at this stage to be blaming each other, particularly when international cooperation to defeat the disease is still so important. It's the same issue as in health care generally. To get the best possible outcomes, it's important to have a culture of openness and share knowledge and experience (of both what's gone right and gone wrong). However, there's a natural human tendency to conceal information which shows mistakes, so it's not easy to maintain this type of culture - and playing the blame game makes what is difficult in any event practically impossible.
Are there other areas where you think China's response has been particularly deficient, or do you believe that China manufactured or released the virus themselves? If the latter, why do you believe that?
@MaleficentOne you've said repeatedly that China is to blame, but haven't said what for. If you're going to keep on posting the same argument, it would be really helpful to know the basis for that. As I said before, it's easy to accuse someone in such a vague way that the accusation can't be responded to, but it doesn't make for a quality discussion.
The main arguments against China I'm aware of have already been responded to. In summary:
1) China delayed in informing the world there was community transmission of the disease
The potential delay most talked about is between 31/12/19 and 21/1/20, i.e. the dates when China first informed the WHO of a new disease and when they confirmed there was community transmission of that disease. Unless you believe that China actually knew what this disease was ahead of that time (and either deliberately or accidentally released it themselves), I can't see how it's possible to expect no delay between these dates. However, that gives an absolute maximum of a 3 week delay, which is itself pretty short in the context of actions taken by other countries.
2) China tried to silence a whistleblower
I posted a while ago about this. There were numerous reports posted on social media about this virus in its early stages, so why was it that the Chinese warned this particular doctor? The reason for that was that one of his posts (this was to a group of other doctors and Dr Wenliang asked them to keep the report confidential - but they did not do so) said that the disease had been identified by a laboratory as SARS. Previous outbreaks of SARS were worrying because of the high death rate for those infected (about 15%) and the possibility that a mutated version of that would be both highly contagious and so often fatal would have been even more scary than the reality we now see.
3) China subsequently amended its case and death totals well after the end of its outbreak
This is true, but misleading, as it suggests China has done something unusual or under-handed. China for a long time only counted confirmed cases in its statistics, but that's the case with most countries. It's only a few weeks ago that the UK started properly publishing statistics of Covid-suspected cases outside hospital - and most US states still have not done this. Practice in the rest of Europe varies, but the majority of countries still only publish partial data. There are good reasons for this: it's easier to collect data just from hospital and in the rush associated with the early stages of the disease it shouldn't be a surprise if countries go with what's easy (with the side-benefit this reduces the embarrassment associated with higher numbers). It's probably going to be a minimum of a year yet before we are able to look at excess death rates for different countries in order to get a more genuinely comparable set of data about how the disease has impacted across the world.
On all the above China can certainly be criticized, but so can most other countries. I think the point is though that it's not helpful or appropriate at this stage to be blaming each other, particularly when international cooperation to defeat the disease is still so important. It's the same issue as in health care generally. To get the best possible outcomes, it's important to have a culture of openness and share knowledge and experience (of both what's gone right and gone wrong). However, there's a natural human tendency to conceal information which shows mistakes, so it's not easy to maintain this type of culture - and playing the blame game makes what is difficult in any event practically impossible.
Are there other areas where you think China's response has been particularly deficient, or do you believe that China manufactured or released the virus themselves? If the latter, why do you believe that?
So not putting blame on a tyrannical government, even though it's warranted, is not helpful. gotcha. Not gonna argue or debate this, not even for fun. Believe as you wish.
I will state this, the main reason Italy and Iran where hit so hard is because of the very close ties in trade. The U.S. I do agree dropped the ball.
@MaleficentOne you've said repeatedly that China is to blame, but haven't said what for. If you're going to keep on posting the same argument, it would be really helpful to know the basis for that. As I said before, it's easy to accuse someone in such a vague way that the accusation can't be responded to, but it doesn't make for a quality discussion.
The main arguments against China I'm aware of have already been responded to. In summary:
1) China delayed in informing the world there was community transmission of the disease
The potential delay most talked about is between 31/12/19 and 21/1/20, i.e. the dates when China first informed the WHO of a new disease and when they confirmed there was community transmission of that disease. Unless you believe that China actually knew what this disease was ahead of that time (and either deliberately or accidentally released it themselves), I can't see how it's possible to expect no delay between these dates. However, that gives an absolute maximum of a 3 week delay, which is itself pretty short in the context of actions taken by other countries.
2) China tried to silence a whistleblower
I posted a while ago about this. There were numerous reports posted on social media about this virus in its early stages, so why was it that the Chinese warned this particular doctor? The reason for that was that one of his posts (this was to a group of other doctors and Dr Wenliang asked them to keep the report confidential - but they did not do so) said that the disease had been identified by a laboratory as SARS. Previous outbreaks of SARS were worrying because of the high death rate for those infected (about 15%) and the possibility that a mutated version of that would be both highly contagious and so often fatal would have been even more scary than the reality we now see.
3) China subsequently amended its case and death totals well after the end of its outbreak
This is true, but misleading, as it suggests China has done something unusual or under-handed. China for a long time only counted confirmed cases in its statistics, but that's the case with most countries. It's only a few weeks ago that the UK started properly publishing statistics of Covid-suspected cases outside hospital - and most US states still have not done this. Practice in the rest of Europe varies, but the majority of countries still only publish partial data. There are good reasons for this: it's easier to collect data just from hospital and in the rush associated with the early stages of the disease it shouldn't be a surprise if countries go with what's easy (with the side-benefit this reduces the embarrassment associated with higher numbers). It's probably going to be a minimum of a year yet before we are able to look at excess death rates for different countries in order to get a more genuinely comparable set of data about how the disease has impacted across the world.
On all the above China can certainly be criticized, but so can most other countries. I think the point is though that it's not helpful or appropriate at this stage to be blaming each other, particularly when international cooperation to defeat the disease is still so important. It's the same issue as in health care generally. To get the best possible outcomes, it's important to have a culture of openness and share knowledge and experience (of both what's gone right and gone wrong). However, there's a natural human tendency to conceal information which shows mistakes, so it's not easy to maintain this type of culture - and playing the blame game makes what is difficult in any event practically impossible.
Are there other areas where you think China's response has been particularly deficient, or do you believe that China manufactured or released the virus themselves? If the latter, why do you believe that?
So not putting blame on a tyrannical government, even though it's warranted, is not helpful. gotcha. Not gonna argue or debate this, not even for fun. Believe as you wish.
I will state this, the main reason Italy and Iran where hit so hard is because of the very close ties in trade. The U.S. I do agree dropped the ball.
Putting blame on a tyrannical government in relation to a specific issue, solely because it's tyrannical and without regard to its actions, does not seem sensible to me. I've posted numerous times over the years criticizing China for things it's doing, e.g. in relation to trade policy (in particular forced IP transfer), the re-education camps in Xinjiang, the social controls it's steadily reinforcing (in particular through tie-ups with social media), the faking of statistics on things like GDP, its international sabre rattling (particularly in relation to Taiwan and the islands being built in the South China Sea), the hacking and espionage activities (especially in relation to technology) and controlling vulnerable economies by giving them loans for dubious purposes. No doubt I've forgotten other things I've posted about as well.
However, that's all criticism relating to their actions, rather than the nature of their government and China has done good things as well, e.g. the massive reductions in extreme poverty, the huge strides in internal R&D activity, the increasing level of education, the opening up of the country in relation to both trade and tourism and the world leadership in promoting solar generation.
In relation to their type of government, I've made it clear many times that I'm not in favor of this autocracy and I think the increasing concentration of power on Xi Jinping is a particular cause for concern given the high potential for instability when he eventually dies or is forced to retire. Specifically in relation to Covid-19 though, I think in principle an autocratic government is not as well-placed as a democratic one to be transparent during this type of crisis. That's why I've said I've been so surprised by the fact that China has in fact been so transparent. I suspect the reason for my surprise is that China (and neighboring countries) have had recent experience of how dangerous epidemics can be and how best to react to mitigate the effects of those. While people in the US and UK may have read stories about the impact of diseases like SARS, the reality is that left us virtually unaffected - and hence less likely to take this type of thing seriously until our noses are rubbed in it (and even then many people still don't take it seriously despite the overwhelming evidence of the problems it can cause).
In relation to the articles you link, I agree it is likely that countries with strong trade links with China will have been affected earlier than those with less direct links. However, I don't think that has any particular relationship with how badly they are affected - that is down to how quickly the particular governments have acted (and all governments had plenty of warning about the potential problems and the need to address those early). To give you a concrete example, let's consider South Korea and Italy. The former has imports from China of 21% of their total and exports of 25% - with total reported Covid-19 cases of 11k and deaths of 262 in a population of 51m. The latter has imports of 7% and exports of 3% - and total reported cases of 225k and deaths of 32k in a population of 60m. The difference in the impact of the disease is not to do with the nature of the governments, but the speed of their actions. The Italian government ignored early signs of infections and only acted after the disease was well established, while the Korean government put in place a national system of tracking and tracing as soon as their first cluster of infections arose and managed as a result to hugely reduce the rate of future infections.
None of your linked articles are about solar generation. China produces about 60% of the world's solar panels, which is the main reason I talked about them being world leaders in promoting solar generation - although they do also have more installed solar capacity than any other country.
I agree that their overall green credentials are much more mixed - in particular they have a lot of reliance on coal-powered electricity generation, which is a major reason for their high CO2 production. The recent US stance on encouraging the use of coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation has been unhelpful in trying to improve China's overall record on emissions.
I referred in my last post to the fact I've posted previously on the problem of China using economic power as a colonial tool.
As for the article saying that many Chinese millionaires want to leave China, I think the same sort of thing applies to the rich in many countries. The article says that Chinese millionaires hold on average 11% of their wealth in overseas assets. I didn't find properly comparable figures to that in a quick search, but I doubt very much that figure is unusually high. This chart shows the proportion of investment for different countries split between investment inside and outside your own country - on this measure China is in line with most other countries.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
Now if you can show me hard proof that the WHO did not say that COVID is not transferred from Human to Human and China did not try to keep COVID under wraps in its initial spread we can have a debate. if not then you know what you can do with those solar panels
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
This was the great unknown when things like human to human transfer and air travel (by everyone, not just Chinese nationals) helped spread the disease.
The destroying of samples was already explained in this thread on why it was done.
The tribalism of racism happened all over the world, not just in China when it came to blaming people that were different for the spread of the virus. Highlighting only one incident is cherry picking.
And who says the rest of the world is letting them get away with it? The crisis isn’t over yet. Once it’s over, humanity as a whole can look back and see what we can do better. Doing it now, is counterproductive.
A world pandemic was going to happen eventually. Every medical expert in the field stated this to the point where every major country has a pandemic protocol. Blaming where it originated wasn’t and isn’t the problem because it could have originated from anywhere.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
OK. Thanks a lot for the full response - that provides a much better basis for discussion. In replying I'm going to assume you don't believe that China actually released the virus itself, given you've referred to the Wuhan wet market as the genesis of the pandemic. Thus the various factors where China is potentially to blame that you've referred to directly, or are covered in the articles you've linked, are as follows:
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified.
2) Destroying samples of the virus.
3) Silencing whistleblowers.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease.
Responses
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified
I posted about the early indications there was a novel virus circulating here. Up to 29th December there were 5 patients known with novel symptoms. Sequencing the virus from one of those identified on 27th December the virus was similar to SARS. The Wuhan hospital convened a meeting on the 29th and reported to the CDC the same day there was a new disease. This was reported to the WHO on 31st December. There seems very little room for improvement in the speed of reaction in that timeline.
Where the problems start is in the next 2 weeks. Although information about the potential new disease had been made available, new cases were not being reported to the CDC. This seems to have been the result of a desire at local levels not to be seen as the bearer of bad news. Later reviews of information showed that there had been a continuing growth in cases during this period, but it was only when a positive case from Thailand was identified on Jan 13th that major emergency action was prompted at a national level. That included instituting a search of records for potential cases, distributing testing kits, setting up widespread temperature checks, issuing protective equipment and opening isolation facilities in local hospitals for any identified cases. A teleconference with local officials on Jan 14th made it clear that community transmission was now expected, though it wasn't until Jan 20th that this was said publicly on national TV (and reported to the WHO the next day).
There are thus 2 potential delays that can be criticized. First the failure up to Jan 14th to recognize that there was a growing problem and second the 6 day delay in making that recognition publicly known. While it's certainly true that a delay of even a few days had a major impact in the final number of cases, I think it's unrealistic to expect there would be no delays at all. It's almost inevitable that it will take a while for a new priority to be implemented in busy institutions and it's also fair to point out that the difference for 6 days between the seriousness of the situation as recognized by government and the public message being given out is something common to most countries at some point in the epidemic cycle - and often for periods of far longer than 6 days.
2) Destroying samples of the virus
This was covered recently. Once the disease was recognized as a dangerous pathogen it would have been quite wrong for it to have continued to be held in labs which were not properly equipped with bio-safety measures.
3) Silencing whistleblowers
This was also covered recently, but I'll amplify a bit on what was said. As far as I know the only accusation that has been made about silencing people is in relation to either Dr Wenliang as an individual, or the group of 8 doctors that shared the social media group he posted in. Despite the tight controls that China normally operates on social media, thousands of posts referring to the emergence of a new virus were posted on social media during January - without being censored. That is highly unusual for China and is not consistent with the idea that there was some general conspiracy to suppress information. As I said before, what caught the attention about this specific post, was that it said new cases of SARS had been found.
I'll also note that if you look at the newspaper articles linked above, you will see references to lots of information that would typically have been kept secret, but has been made available to the media. During January and February there were also large numbers of foreign scientists and epidemiologists invited to China to study what was happening on the ground. That open availability of information has lessened more recently, back closer to what might be expected of an authoritarian country. However, I would certainly argue that in the early stages of the disease China was extremely open in the information being shared - more so than the US has been for instance.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected
The Chinese would have been on very dodgy ground if they had attempted to intern foreign nationals as a result of the potential for disease. For their own citizens they instituted a full lockdown of Wuhan from Jan 23rd and that was extended the following day to most of the rest of Hubei province.
In relation to travel safety procedures, the Chinese were doing mass screening of temperature checks at airports. However, health checks are normally the responsibility of the receiving country - in the old days when I was travelling things like immunisation certificates were checked on arrival, not departure and that's still the standard practise. The WHO from early on was telling governments to institute a program of tracking and tracing, but few countries did this.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger
I don't understand this point at all. China gave a public warning via the WHO on Jan 21st. The WHO have held very prominent public briefings on the situation every day from that date. No country can possibly claim to have been ignorant of the potential for infection from travellers.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus
I have sympathy with this point and have posted about it myself previously. However, I don't think it's relevant to whether or not China should be blamed for their action or inaction in the early stages of the epidemic.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease
While judgments about what is reasonable can be applied to all the points, this is the only one where I think the judgment is likely to be influenced by an individual's political convictions. It's certainly the case that the potential danger of transfer of disease from wild animals has been understood for many years and therefore it can be argued that everything possible should have been done to reduce that risk. Potentially that would have included forbidding the sale and consumption of wild animals. I can think of several arguments against such action though.
One practical one is that it would not necessarily have stopped the sale of wild animals, but just driven it underground - that's a rationale often used in similar situations in Africa. It's an analogous situation to the WHO telling countries not to forbid foreign travel, but monitor it instead - to avoid the situation where people find a way round the proscribed action and then have an incentive not to report what they've done if they feel ill (this seems to be one of the main reasons why the disease in north Italy took so long to be recognized).
A second is an economic one that preventing people from earning a living is unreasonable. Allied to this there is also a more overtly political libertarian argument - that's the sort of argument raging in parts of the US at the moment over whether it is reasonable to prevent people from working (or require them to wear masks) in order to protect others.
Personally I would be quite happy to see consumption of wildlife banned, but I don't think that would be easy to enforce. Nor would that mean there was no possibility of a new infectious disease emerging. Therefore it seems to me that one of the learning points arising from Covid-19 is a need for all countries to be far more prepared to deal with epidemics in future. Things done to reduce the chances of those would be helpful, but we will always need to be prepared for the possibility.
I've addressed each point individually in the spoiler sections. My overall response though is to do with the nature of blame. I don't think it's reasonable to blame someone or some country for actions which represent normal behavior, i.e. most other countries would have done the same. It's not clear to me that China has deviated from those norms and therefore I don't agree that it's reasonable to blame them for their actions. That does not of course mean they haven't made lots of mistakes and I hope that there will be a future period of reflection and learning for all countries to consider the mistakes made and how to improve responses to the next crisis.
Of the articles you linked, the second and third seem to me balanced. They point out that China made mistakes, but also explain that China did also take strong action at an early stage in the progression of the disease. They also refer to conflicting opinions among epidemiologists as to whether there was in fact any unreasonable or unexpected delay by China given the lack of information available at the time decisions were being taken. I'm not sure whether the fourth one (that you refer to as posting for giggles) is intended to be serious, but it appears to assume we live in a world of perfect information and where any regulation imposed on the grounds it might protect your health should be done irrespective of the cost or intrusiveness of that. I would describe the first article as a political hatchet job. It contains misleading information about when the disease was first known about, seems to suggest that China should be the policeman for viruses on behalf of the world and implies that China's response to Covid-19 should be criticized because China has an authoritarian government, irrespective of its actions.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
OK. Thanks a lot for the full response - that provides a much better basis for discussion. In replying I'm going to assume you don't believe that China actually released the virus itself, given you've referred to the Wuhan wet market as the genesis of the pandemic. Thus the various factors where China is potentially to blame that you've referred to directly, or are covered in the articles you've linked, are as follows:
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified.
2) Destroying samples of the virus.
3) Silencing whistleblowers.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease.
Responses
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified
I posted about the early indications there was a novel virus circulating here. Up to 29th December there were 5 patients known with novel symptoms. Sequencing the virus from one of those identified on 27th December the virus was similar to SARS. The Wuhan hospital convened a meeting on the 29th and reported to the CDC the same day there was a new disease. This was reported to the WHO on 31st December. There seems very little room for improvement in the speed of reaction in that timeline.
Where the problems start is in the next 2 weeks. Although information about the potential new disease had been made available, new cases were not being reported to the CDC. This seems to have been the result of a desire at local levels not to be seen as the bearer of bad news. Later reviews of information showed that there had been a continuing growth in cases during this period, but it was only when a positive case from Thailand was identified on Jan 13th that major emergency action was prompted at a national level. That included instituting a search of records for potential cases, distributing testing kits, setting up widespread temperature checks, issuing protective equipment and opening isolation facilities in local hospitals for any identified cases. A teleconference with local officials on Jan 14th made it clear that community transmission was now expected, though it wasn't until Jan 20th that this was said publicly on national TV (and reported to the WHO the next day).
There are thus 2 potential delays that can be criticized. First the failure up to Jan 14th to recognize that there was a growing problem and second the 6 day delay in making that recognition publicly known. While it's certainly true that a delay of even a few days had a major impact in the final number of cases, I think it's unrealistic to expect there would be no delays at all. It's almost inevitable that it will take a while for a new priority to be implemented in busy institutions and it's also fair to point out that the difference for 6 days between the seriousness of the situation as recognized by government and the public message being given out is something common to most countries at some point in the epidemic cycle - and often for periods of far longer than 6 days.
2) Destroying samples of the virus
This was covered recently. Once the disease was recognized as a dangerous pathogen it would have been quite wrong for it to have continued to be held in labs which were not properly equipped with bio-safety measures.
3) Silencing whistleblowers
This was also covered recently, but I'll amplify a bit on what was said. As far as I know the only accusation that has been made about silencing people is in relation to either Dr Wenliang as an individual, or the group of 8 doctors that shared the social media group he posted in. Despite the tight controls that China normally operates on social media, thousands of posts referring to the emergence of a new virus were posted on social media during January - without being censored. That is highly unusual for China and is not consistent with the idea that there was some general conspiracy to suppress information. As I said before, what caught the attention about this specific post, was that it said new cases of SARS had been found.
I'll also note that if you look at the newspaper articles linked above, you will see references to lots of information that would typically have been kept secret, but has been made available to the media. During January and February there were also large numbers of foreign scientists and epidemiologists invited to China to study what was happening on the ground. That open availability of information has lessened more recently, back closer to what might be expected of an authoritarian country. However, I would certainly argue that in the early stages of the disease China was extremely open in the information being shared - more so than the US has been for instance.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected
The Chinese would have been on very dodgy ground if they had attempted to intern foreign nationals as a result of the potential for disease. For their own citizens they instituted a full lockdown of Wuhan from Jan 23rd and that was extended the following day to most of the rest of Hubei province.
In relation to travel safety procedures, the Chinese were doing mass screening of temperature checks at airports. However, health checks are normally the responsibility of the receiving country - in the old days when I was travelling things like immunisation certificates were checked on arrival, not departure and that's still the standard practise. The WHO from early on was telling governments to institute a program of tracking and tracing, but few countries did this.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger
I don't understand this point at all. China gave a public warning via the WHO on Jan 21st. The WHO have held very prominent public briefings on the situation every day from that date. No country can possibly claim to have been ignorant of the potential for infection from travellers.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus
I have sympathy with this point and have posted about it myself previously. However, I don't think it's relevant to whether or not China should be blamed for their action or inaction in the early stages of the epidemic.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease
While judgments about what is reasonable can be applied to all the points, this is the only one where I think the judgment is likely to be influenced by an individual's political convictions. It's certainly the case that the potential danger of transfer of disease from wild animals has been understood for many years and therefore it can be argued that everything possible should have been done to reduce that risk. Potentially that would have included forbidding the sale and consumption of wild animals. I can think of several arguments against such action though.
One practical one is that it would not necessarily have stopped the sale of wild animals, but just driven it underground - that's a rationale often used in similar situations in Africa. It's an analogous situation to the WHO telling countries not to forbid foreign travel, but monitor it instead - to avoid the situation where people find a way round the proscribed action and then have an incentive not to report what they've done if they feel ill (this seems to be one of the main reasons why the disease in north Italy took so long to be recognized).
A second is an economic one that preventing people from earning a living is unreasonable. Allied to this there is also a more overtly political libertarian argument - that's the sort of argument raging in parts of the US at the moment over whether it is reasonable to prevent people from working (or require them to wear masks) in order to protect others.
Personally I would be quite happy to see consumption of wildlife banned, but I don't think that would be easy to enforce. Nor would that mean there was no possibility of a new infectious disease emerging. Therefore it seems to me that one of the learning points arising from Covid-19 is a need for all countries to be far more prepared to deal with epidemics in future. Things done to reduce the chances of those would be helpful, but we will always need to be prepared for the possibility.
I've addressed each point individually in the spoiler sections. My overall response though is to do with the nature of blame. I don't think it's reasonable to blame someone or some country for actions which represent normal behavior, i.e. most other countries would have done the same. It's not clear to me that China has deviated from those norms and therefore I don't agree that it's reasonable to blame them for their actions. That does not of course mean they haven't made lots of mistakes and I hope that there will be a future period of reflection and learning for all countries to consider the mistakes made and how to improve responses to the next crisis.
Of the articles you linked, the second and third seem to me balanced. They point out that China made mistakes, but also explain that China did also take strong action at an early stage in the progression of the disease. They also refer to conflicting opinions among epidemiologists as to whether there was in fact any unreasonable or unexpected delay by China given the lack of information available at the time decisions were being taken. I'm not sure whether the fourth one (that you refer to as posting for giggles) is intended to be serious, but it appears to assume we live in a world of perfect information and where any regulation imposed on the grounds it might protect your health should be done irrespective of the cost or intrusiveness of that. I would describe the first article as a political hatchet job. It contains misleading information about when the disease was first known about, seems to suggest that China should be the policeman for viruses on behalf of the world and implies that China's response to Covid-19 should be criticized because China has an authoritarian government, irrespective of its actions.
The reason I put those articles in was to show that even though they are different in political leanings they all say that China did not act when it is required most. At the beginning. Every country has rules and steps to take guided by the WHO for what to do if there is a potential of a mutated virus/flu strain. China did not take those early action thus endangering the planet.
South Korea's response was swift because of their own experience with a infectious virus running through their population. They acted and also made changes to better their response for the future. Canada also acted quickly because of their battle with SARS 18 yrs ago. China, who was also at the heart of SARS, did not take the steps needed early a second time in two decades.
I understand to a degree that you don't wish to criticize or blame China because of your political leanings but we must remember that the Communist Party of China is not the people.
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
This was the great unknown when things like human to human transfer and air travel (by everyone, not just Chinese nationals) helped spread the disease.
The destroying of samples was already explained in this thread on why it was done.
The tribalism of racism happened all over the world, not just in China when it came to blaming people that were different for the spread of the virus. Highlighting only one incident is cherry picking.
And who says the rest of the world is letting them get away with it? The crisis isn’t over yet. Once it’s over, humanity as a whole can look back and see what we can do better. Doing it now, is counterproductive.
A world pandemic was going to happen eventually. Every medical expert in the field stated this to the point where every major country has a pandemic protocol. Blaming where it originated wasn’t and isn’t the problem because it could have originated from anywhere.
-Incubation period as in like SARS? They knew, even Family Physicians knew what it was. Need creditable citation.
- The destruction of samples was their explanation, not what was investigated to be true.
- Tribalism also pertains to Political Affiliation. I'll assume added for American Liberal flavor.
- Yes I agree it would be counter productive to let China have it now, when the smoke clears is much more likely.
- But it didn't originate from somewhere else, it originated in China. SARS 2.0.
I will also be posting this short video in the COVID thread for those that do not venture here...
Vaccine creation time. 00:1:48 runtime.
TLDW: There Has never been a successful vaccine created for Coronavirus, SARS or MERS
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
OK. Thanks a lot for the full response - that provides a much better basis for discussion. In replying I'm going to assume you don't believe that China actually released the virus itself, given you've referred to the Wuhan wet market as the genesis of the pandemic. Thus the various factors where China is potentially to blame that you've referred to directly, or are covered in the articles you've linked, are as follows:
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified.
2) Destroying samples of the virus.
3) Silencing whistleblowers.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease.
Responses
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified
I posted about the early indications there was a novel virus circulating here. Up to 29th December there were 5 patients known with novel symptoms. Sequencing the virus from one of those identified on 27th December the virus was similar to SARS. The Wuhan hospital convened a meeting on the 29th and reported to the CDC the same day there was a new disease. This was reported to the WHO on 31st December. There seems very little room for improvement in the speed of reaction in that timeline.
Where the problems start is in the next 2 weeks. Although information about the potential new disease had been made available, new cases were not being reported to the CDC. This seems to have been the result of a desire at local levels not to be seen as the bearer of bad news. Later reviews of information showed that there had been a continuing growth in cases during this period, but it was only when a positive case from Thailand was identified on Jan 13th that major emergency action was prompted at a national level. That included instituting a search of records for potential cases, distributing testing kits, setting up widespread temperature checks, issuing protective equipment and opening isolation facilities in local hospitals for any identified cases. A teleconference with local officials on Jan 14th made it clear that community transmission was now expected, though it wasn't until Jan 20th that this was said publicly on national TV (and reported to the WHO the next day).
There are thus 2 potential delays that can be criticized. First the failure up to Jan 14th to recognize that there was a growing problem and second the 6 day delay in making that recognition publicly known. While it's certainly true that a delay of even a few days had a major impact in the final number of cases, I think it's unrealistic to expect there would be no delays at all. It's almost inevitable that it will take a while for a new priority to be implemented in busy institutions and it's also fair to point out that the difference for 6 days between the seriousness of the situation as recognized by government and the public message being given out is something common to most countries at some point in the epidemic cycle - and often for periods of far longer than 6 days.
2) Destroying samples of the virus
This was covered recently. Once the disease was recognized as a dangerous pathogen it would have been quite wrong for it to have continued to be held in labs which were not properly equipped with bio-safety measures.
3) Silencing whistleblowers
This was also covered recently, but I'll amplify a bit on what was said. As far as I know the only accusation that has been made about silencing people is in relation to either Dr Wenliang as an individual, or the group of 8 doctors that shared the social media group he posted in. Despite the tight controls that China normally operates on social media, thousands of posts referring to the emergence of a new virus were posted on social media during January - without being censored. That is highly unusual for China and is not consistent with the idea that there was some general conspiracy to suppress information. As I said before, what caught the attention about this specific post, was that it said new cases of SARS had been found.
I'll also note that if you look at the newspaper articles linked above, you will see references to lots of information that would typically have been kept secret, but has been made available to the media. During January and February there were also large numbers of foreign scientists and epidemiologists invited to China to study what was happening on the ground. That open availability of information has lessened more recently, back closer to what might be expected of an authoritarian country. However, I would certainly argue that in the early stages of the disease China was extremely open in the information being shared - more so than the US has been for instance.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected
The Chinese would have been on very dodgy ground if they had attempted to intern foreign nationals as a result of the potential for disease. For their own citizens they instituted a full lockdown of Wuhan from Jan 23rd and that was extended the following day to most of the rest of Hubei province.
In relation to travel safety procedures, the Chinese were doing mass screening of temperature checks at airports. However, health checks are normally the responsibility of the receiving country - in the old days when I was travelling things like immunisation certificates were checked on arrival, not departure and that's still the standard practise. The WHO from early on was telling governments to institute a program of tracking and tracing, but few countries did this.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger
I don't understand this point at all. China gave a public warning via the WHO on Jan 21st. The WHO have held very prominent public briefings on the situation every day from that date. No country can possibly claim to have been ignorant of the potential for infection from travellers.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus
I have sympathy with this point and have posted about it myself previously. However, I don't think it's relevant to whether or not China should be blamed for their action or inaction in the early stages of the epidemic.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease
While judgments about what is reasonable can be applied to all the points, this is the only one where I think the judgment is likely to be influenced by an individual's political convictions. It's certainly the case that the potential danger of transfer of disease from wild animals has been understood for many years and therefore it can be argued that everything possible should have been done to reduce that risk. Potentially that would have included forbidding the sale and consumption of wild animals. I can think of several arguments against such action though.
One practical one is that it would not necessarily have stopped the sale of wild animals, but just driven it underground - that's a rationale often used in similar situations in Africa. It's an analogous situation to the WHO telling countries not to forbid foreign travel, but monitor it instead - to avoid the situation where people find a way round the proscribed action and then have an incentive not to report what they've done if they feel ill (this seems to be one of the main reasons why the disease in north Italy took so long to be recognized).
A second is an economic one that preventing people from earning a living is unreasonable. Allied to this there is also a more overtly political libertarian argument - that's the sort of argument raging in parts of the US at the moment over whether it is reasonable to prevent people from working (or require them to wear masks) in order to protect others.
Personally I would be quite happy to see consumption of wildlife banned, but I don't think that would be easy to enforce. Nor would that mean there was no possibility of a new infectious disease emerging. Therefore it seems to me that one of the learning points arising from Covid-19 is a need for all countries to be far more prepared to deal with epidemics in future. Things done to reduce the chances of those would be helpful, but we will always need to be prepared for the possibility.
I've addressed each point individually in the spoiler sections. My overall response though is to do with the nature of blame. I don't think it's reasonable to blame someone or some country for actions which represent normal behavior, i.e. most other countries would have done the same. It's not clear to me that China has deviated from those norms and therefore I don't agree that it's reasonable to blame them for their actions. That does not of course mean they haven't made lots of mistakes and I hope that there will be a future period of reflection and learning for all countries to consider the mistakes made and how to improve responses to the next crisis.
Of the articles you linked, the second and third seem to me balanced. They point out that China made mistakes, but also explain that China did also take strong action at an early stage in the progression of the disease. They also refer to conflicting opinions among epidemiologists as to whether there was in fact any unreasonable or unexpected delay by China given the lack of information available at the time decisions were being taken. I'm not sure whether the fourth one (that you refer to as posting for giggles) is intended to be serious, but it appears to assume we live in a world of perfect information and where any regulation imposed on the grounds it might protect your health should be done irrespective of the cost or intrusiveness of that. I would describe the first article as a political hatchet job. It contains misleading information about when the disease was first known about, seems to suggest that China should be the policeman for viruses on behalf of the world and implies that China's response to Covid-19 should be criticized because China has an authoritarian government, irrespective of its actions.
The reason I put those articles in was to show that even though they are different in political leanings they all say that China did not act when it is required most. At the beginning. Every country has rules and steps to take guided by the WHO for what to do if there is a potential of a mutated virus/flu strain. China did not take those early action thus endangering the planet.
South Korea's response was swift because of their own experience with a infectious virus running through their population. They acted and also made changes to better their response for the future. Canada also acted quickly because of their battle with SARS 18 yrs ago. China, who was also at the heart of SARS, did not take the steps needed early a second time in two decades.
I understand to a degree that you don't wish to criticize or blame China because of your political leanings but we must remember that the Communist Party of China is not the people.
We all have our preferences of course, though if you think I'm sympathetic to authoritarian governments I have obviously not been expressing myself very well . I think I understand your position better now and hopefully others reading the thread will have enough information to make their own judgments about the issues.
I don't expect to convince you, but will make some final points before I go to bed:
- as I said in my last post I don't think 2 of the 3 main articles you linked do take a particularly critical line on China's actions. With the benefit of hindsight of course they could have acted a few days earlier - and such earlier action would certainly have saved significant numbers of Chinese lives (though I see no reason to believe it would have had any effect on other countries as their speed of action was not related to what China did). The point is though that China had to act based on what it knew at the time.
- the reason S. Korea was able to react was that they did so based on the knowledge they already had from China. As at 17th February S. Korea had identified a total of 30 cases and those limited numbers had allowed them to undertake detailed tracking and tracing on every individual. That system only broke down somewhat as a result of the cluster of cases in the Shincheonji church, where the higher numbers and some communication problems made individual tracing more difficult. That resulted in S. Korea expanding their tracing system and using automatic proximity alerts and targeted closures in addition to individual tracing.
- China did not have the advantage of knowing in advance what to expect, so I think it's a lot to expect for them to have been able to identify there was a new disease and discover its nature sufficiently quickly to be able to use the same sort of individualized tracing that S. Korea did. Once they were properly aware of the threat though, they took very strong measures to counter it - and did that very successfully. The commonly told story about China's actions is the very strict lockdown they put in place in Hubei province in order to contain what was a severe outbreak there. However, they did not use those same tactics anywhere else in China. Rather, they employed the same type of tracing techniques and targeted actions that S. Korea did - and with the same very good results. You can see that by tracing the smaller numbers of cases of people travelling away from Hubei province they managed to keep the infection levels far lower everywhere else, without instituting lockdowns.
Every other country in the world had the opportunity to take this sort of action (which was strongly recommended by the WHO) in order to limit the numbers of cases in their country - a good question to ask yourself is why relatively few countries took that opportunity ...
Waste from any major industry is a potential problem, but if you compare the problem of recycling and disposing of solar panels to the disposal of alternative generators (such as coal and nuclear) at the end of their life, the problems of solar are tiny.
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
OK. Thanks a lot for the full response - that provides a much better basis for discussion. In replying I'm going to assume you don't believe that China actually released the virus itself, given you've referred to the Wuhan wet market as the genesis of the pandemic. Thus the various factors where China is potentially to blame that you've referred to directly, or are covered in the articles you've linked, are as follows:
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified.
2) Destroying samples of the virus.
3) Silencing whistleblowers.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease.
Responses
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified
I posted about the early indications there was a novel virus circulating here. Up to 29th December there were 5 patients known with novel symptoms. Sequencing the virus from one of those identified on 27th December the virus was similar to SARS. The Wuhan hospital convened a meeting on the 29th and reported to the CDC the same day there was a new disease. This was reported to the WHO on 31st December. There seems very little room for improvement in the speed of reaction in that timeline.
Where the problems start is in the next 2 weeks. Although information about the potential new disease had been made available, new cases were not being reported to the CDC. This seems to have been the result of a desire at local levels not to be seen as the bearer of bad news. Later reviews of information showed that there had been a continuing growth in cases during this period, but it was only when a positive case from Thailand was identified on Jan 13th that major emergency action was prompted at a national level. That included instituting a search of records for potential cases, distributing testing kits, setting up widespread temperature checks, issuing protective equipment and opening isolation facilities in local hospitals for any identified cases. A teleconference with local officials on Jan 14th made it clear that community transmission was now expected, though it wasn't until Jan 20th that this was said publicly on national TV (and reported to the WHO the next day).
There are thus 2 potential delays that can be criticized. First the failure up to Jan 14th to recognize that there was a growing problem and second the 6 day delay in making that recognition publicly known. While it's certainly true that a delay of even a few days had a major impact in the final number of cases, I think it's unrealistic to expect there would be no delays at all. It's almost inevitable that it will take a while for a new priority to be implemented in busy institutions and it's also fair to point out that the difference for 6 days between the seriousness of the situation as recognized by government and the public message being given out is something common to most countries at some point in the epidemic cycle - and often for periods of far longer than 6 days.
2) Destroying samples of the virus
This was covered recently. Once the disease was recognized as a dangerous pathogen it would have been quite wrong for it to have continued to be held in labs which were not properly equipped with bio-safety measures.
3) Silencing whistleblowers
This was also covered recently, but I'll amplify a bit on what was said. As far as I know the only accusation that has been made about silencing people is in relation to either Dr Wenliang as an individual, or the group of 8 doctors that shared the social media group he posted in. Despite the tight controls that China normally operates on social media, thousands of posts referring to the emergence of a new virus were posted on social media during January - without being censored. That is highly unusual for China and is not consistent with the idea that there was some general conspiracy to suppress information. As I said before, what caught the attention about this specific post, was that it said new cases of SARS had been found.
I'll also note that if you look at the newspaper articles linked above, you will see references to lots of information that would typically have been kept secret, but has been made available to the media. During January and February there were also large numbers of foreign scientists and epidemiologists invited to China to study what was happening on the ground. That open availability of information has lessened more recently, back closer to what might be expected of an authoritarian country. However, I would certainly argue that in the early stages of the disease China was extremely open in the information being shared - more so than the US has been for instance.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected
The Chinese would have been on very dodgy ground if they had attempted to intern foreign nationals as a result of the potential for disease. For their own citizens they instituted a full lockdown of Wuhan from Jan 23rd and that was extended the following day to most of the rest of Hubei province.
In relation to travel safety procedures, the Chinese were doing mass screening of temperature checks at airports. However, health checks are normally the responsibility of the receiving country - in the old days when I was travelling things like immunisation certificates were checked on arrival, not departure and that's still the standard practise. The WHO from early on was telling governments to institute a program of tracking and tracing, but few countries did this.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger
I don't understand this point at all. China gave a public warning via the WHO on Jan 21st. The WHO have held very prominent public briefings on the situation every day from that date. No country can possibly claim to have been ignorant of the potential for infection from travellers.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus
I have sympathy with this point and have posted about it myself previously. However, I don't think it's relevant to whether or not China should be blamed for their action or inaction in the early stages of the epidemic.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease
While judgments about what is reasonable can be applied to all the points, this is the only one where I think the judgment is likely to be influenced by an individual's political convictions. It's certainly the case that the potential danger of transfer of disease from wild animals has been understood for many years and therefore it can be argued that everything possible should have been done to reduce that risk. Potentially that would have included forbidding the sale and consumption of wild animals. I can think of several arguments against such action though.
One practical one is that it would not necessarily have stopped the sale of wild animals, but just driven it underground - that's a rationale often used in similar situations in Africa. It's an analogous situation to the WHO telling countries not to forbid foreign travel, but monitor it instead - to avoid the situation where people find a way round the proscribed action and then have an incentive not to report what they've done if they feel ill (this seems to be one of the main reasons why the disease in north Italy took so long to be recognized).
A second is an economic one that preventing people from earning a living is unreasonable. Allied to this there is also a more overtly political libertarian argument - that's the sort of argument raging in parts of the US at the moment over whether it is reasonable to prevent people from working (or require them to wear masks) in order to protect others.
Personally I would be quite happy to see consumption of wildlife banned, but I don't think that would be easy to enforce. Nor would that mean there was no possibility of a new infectious disease emerging. Therefore it seems to me that one of the learning points arising from Covid-19 is a need for all countries to be far more prepared to deal with epidemics in future. Things done to reduce the chances of those would be helpful, but we will always need to be prepared for the possibility.
I've addressed each point individually in the spoiler sections. My overall response though is to do with the nature of blame. I don't think it's reasonable to blame someone or some country for actions which represent normal behavior, i.e. most other countries would have done the same. It's not clear to me that China has deviated from those norms and therefore I don't agree that it's reasonable to blame them for their actions. That does not of course mean they haven't made lots of mistakes and I hope that there will be a future period of reflection and learning for all countries to consider the mistakes made and how to improve responses to the next crisis.
Of the articles you linked, the second and third seem to me balanced. They point out that China made mistakes, but also explain that China did also take strong action at an early stage in the progression of the disease. They also refer to conflicting opinions among epidemiologists as to whether there was in fact any unreasonable or unexpected delay by China given the lack of information available at the time decisions were being taken. I'm not sure whether the fourth one (that you refer to as posting for giggles) is intended to be serious, but it appears to assume we live in a world of perfect information and where any regulation imposed on the grounds it might protect your health should be done irrespective of the cost or intrusiveness of that. I would describe the first article as a political hatchet job. It contains misleading information about when the disease was first known about, seems to suggest that China should be the policeman for viruses on behalf of the world and implies that China's response to Covid-19 should be criticized because China has an authoritarian government, irrespective of its actions.
The reason I put those articles in was to show that even though they are different in political leanings they all say that China did not act when it is required most. At the beginning. Every country has rules and steps to take guided by the WHO for what to do if there is a potential of a mutated virus/flu strain. China did not take those early action thus endangering the planet.
South Korea's response was swift because of their own experience with a infectious virus running through their population. They acted and also made changes to better their response for the future. Canada also acted quickly because of their battle with SARS 18 yrs ago. China, who was also at the heart of SARS, did not take the steps needed early a second time in two decades.
I understand to a degree that you don't wish to criticize or blame China because of your political leanings but we must remember that the Communist Party of China is not the people.
We all have our preferences of course, though if you think I'm sympathetic to authoritarian governments I have obviously not been expressing myself very well . I think I understand your position better now and hopefully others reading the thread will have enough information to make their own judgments about the issues.
I don't expect to convince you, but will make some final points before I go to bed:
- as I said in my last post I don't think 2 of the 3 main articles you linked do take a particularly critical line on China's actions. With the benefit of hindsight of course they could have acted a few days earlier - and such earlier action would certainly have saved significant numbers of Chinese lives (though I see no reason to believe it would have had any effect on other countries as their speed of action was not related to what China did). The point is though that China had to act based on what it knew at the time.
- the reason S. Korea was able to react was that they did so based on the knowledge they already had from China. As at 17th February S. Korea had identified a total of 30 cases and those limited numbers had allowed them to undertake detailed tracking and tracing on every individual. That system only broke down somewhat as a result of the cluster of cases in the Shincheonji church, where the higher numbers and some communication problems made individual tracing more difficult. That resulted in S. Korea expanding their tracing system and using automatic proximity alerts and targeted closures in addition to individual tracing.
- China did not have the advantage of knowing in advance what to expect, so I think it's a lot to expect for them to have been able to identify there was a new disease and discover its nature sufficiently quickly to be able to use the same sort of individualized tracing that S. Korea did. Once they were properly aware of the threat though, they took very strong measures to counter it - and did that very successfully. The commonly told story about China's actions is the very strict lockdown they put in place in Hubei province in order to contain what was a severe outbreak there. However, they did not use those same tactics anywhere else in China. Rather, they employed the same type of tracing techniques and targeted actions that S. Korea did - and with the same very good results. You can see that by tracing the smaller numbers of cases of people travelling away from Hubei province they managed to keep the infection levels far lower everywhere else, without instituting lockdowns.
Every other country in the world had the opportunity to take this sort of action (which was strongly recommended by the WHO) in order to limit the numbers of cases in their country - a good question to ask yourself is why relatively few countries took that opportunity ...
Georgia has found a new way to manipulate the actual numbers. Their strategy was to not actually list the days in chronological order, but to move dates around to get the wanted result:
In what scenario is this remotely useful to public health?? Why would this happen unless you wanted a short-term narrative to justify lifting restrictions?? China isn't the only one playing this game. The Southeastern United States is now leading the charge on lying about the numbers.
Comments
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
While there may be people on the left who aren't particularly interested in blaming China given how much of a head's up there was (again, 60 days, at least), there is NO ONE who has heaped the kind of unbridled praise we are seeing from Trump in this quote. Now someone will tell me why what he said doesn't matter. So we'll do more. Here's February 7th:
“Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days … Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"
Three days later on February 10th:
"I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control," Trump said. "I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that's a beautiful date to look forward to. But China I can tell you is working very hard."
February 29th:
“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good. We just did a big trade deal. We’re starting on another trade deal with China — a very big one. And we’ve been working very closely. They’ve been talking to our people, we’ve been talking to their people, having to do with the virus.”
There are more, but they are so repetitive it isn't worth putting them all in this post. Point being, while being given the REAL skinny from our intelligence agencies, he's HEAPING praise on China for the ENTIRE MONTH of February. He was, without question, the biggest China apologist in the country right up until the moment it was convenient not to be. These are his real quotes, that he actually said. And no amount of Ministry of Truthing is going to change that.
Of course they do, who said they didn't?
And here’s the thing, the US has done all this as well.
But nope China bad and the only one to blame.
The whistleblower who was one of the people in charge of coming up with a vaccine, and who was pushed out for not signing off on Trump's snake oil show. As for the numbers, the Administration is flat-out telling the CDC to revise their numbers downward, and Florida has been caught red-handed manipulating their numbers. I have NO doubt other GOP-led states are doing so as well. But no one is getting their data on this from the CDC. I'm someone who checks the stats daily in my bookmarks, and the CDC hasn't been on that list since March. Nothing coming from the Executive Branch of our current government is trustworthy. It will all be manipulated.
But they are to blame.
The main arguments against China I'm aware of have already been responded to. In summary:
1) China delayed in informing the world there was community transmission of the disease
The potential delay most talked about is between 31/12/19 and 21/1/20, i.e. the dates when China first informed the WHO of a new disease and when they confirmed there was community transmission of that disease. Unless you believe that China actually knew what this disease was ahead of that time (and either deliberately or accidentally released it themselves), I can't see how it's possible to expect no delay between these dates. However, that gives an absolute maximum of a 3 week delay, which is itself pretty short in the context of actions taken by other countries.
2) China tried to silence a whistleblower
I posted a while ago about this. There were numerous reports posted on social media about this virus in its early stages, so why was it that the Chinese warned this particular doctor? The reason for that was that one of his posts (this was to a group of other doctors and Dr Wenliang asked them to keep the report confidential - but they did not do so) said that the disease had been identified by a laboratory as SARS. Previous outbreaks of SARS were worrying because of the high death rate for those infected (about 15%) and the possibility that a mutated version of that would be both highly contagious and so often fatal would have been even more scary than the reality we now see.
3) China subsequently amended its case and death totals well after the end of its outbreak
This is true, but misleading, as it suggests China has done something unusual or under-handed. China for a long time only counted confirmed cases in its statistics, but that's the case with most countries. It's only a few weeks ago that the UK started properly publishing statistics of Covid-suspected cases outside hospital - and most US states still have not done this. Practice in the rest of Europe varies, but the majority of countries still only publish partial data. There are good reasons for this: it's easier to collect data just from hospital and in the rush associated with the early stages of the disease it shouldn't be a surprise if countries go with what's easy (with the side-benefit this reduces the embarrassment associated with higher numbers). It's probably going to be a minimum of a year yet before we are able to look at excess death rates for different countries in order to get a more genuinely comparable set of data about how the disease has impacted across the world.
On all the above China can certainly be criticized, but so can most other countries. I think the point is though that it's not helpful or appropriate at this stage to be blaming each other, particularly when international cooperation to defeat the disease is still so important. It's the same issue as in health care generally. To get the best possible outcomes, it's important to have a culture of openness and share knowledge and experience (of both what's gone right and gone wrong). However, there's a natural human tendency to conceal information which shows mistakes, so it's not easy to maintain this type of culture - and playing the blame game makes what is difficult in any event practically impossible.
Are there other areas where you think China's response has been particularly deficient, or do you believe that China manufactured or released the virus themselves? If the latter, why do you believe that?
Shame we have to stoop to school yard insults.
So not putting blame on a tyrannical government, even though it's warranted, is not helpful. gotcha. Not gonna argue or debate this, not even for fun. Believe as you wish.
I will state this, the main reason Italy and Iran where hit so hard is because of the very close ties in trade. The U.S. I do agree dropped the ball.
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-is-traveling-along-the-new-silk-road/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47679760
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/world/europe/italy-china-xi-silk-road.html
Putting blame on a tyrannical government in relation to a specific issue, solely because it's tyrannical and without regard to its actions, does not seem sensible to me. I've posted numerous times over the years criticizing China for things it's doing, e.g. in relation to trade policy (in particular forced IP transfer), the re-education camps in Xinjiang, the social controls it's steadily reinforcing (in particular through tie-ups with social media), the faking of statistics on things like GDP, its international sabre rattling (particularly in relation to Taiwan and the islands being built in the South China Sea), the hacking and espionage activities (especially in relation to technology) and controlling vulnerable economies by giving them loans for dubious purposes. No doubt I've forgotten other things I've posted about as well.
However, that's all criticism relating to their actions, rather than the nature of their government and China has done good things as well, e.g. the massive reductions in extreme poverty, the huge strides in internal R&D activity, the increasing level of education, the opening up of the country in relation to both trade and tourism and the world leadership in promoting solar generation.
In relation to their type of government, I've made it clear many times that I'm not in favor of this autocracy and I think the increasing concentration of power on Xi Jinping is a particular cause for concern given the high potential for instability when he eventually dies or is forced to retire. Specifically in relation to Covid-19 though, I think in principle an autocratic government is not as well-placed as a democratic one to be transparent during this type of crisis. That's why I've said I've been so surprised by the fact that China has in fact been so transparent. I suspect the reason for my surprise is that China (and neighboring countries) have had recent experience of how dangerous epidemics can be and how best to react to mitigate the effects of those. While people in the US and UK may have read stories about the impact of diseases like SARS, the reality is that left us virtually unaffected - and hence less likely to take this type of thing seriously until our noses are rubbed in it (and even then many people still don't take it seriously despite the overwhelming evidence of the problems it can cause).
In relation to the articles you link, I agree it is likely that countries with strong trade links with China will have been affected earlier than those with less direct links. However, I don't think that has any particular relationship with how badly they are affected - that is down to how quickly the particular governments have acted (and all governments had plenty of warning about the potential problems and the need to address those early). To give you a concrete example, let's consider South Korea and Italy. The former has imports from China of 21% of their total and exports of 25% - with total reported Covid-19 cases of 11k and deaths of 262 in a population of 51m. The latter has imports of 7% and exports of 3% - and total reported cases of 225k and deaths of 32k in a population of 60m. The difference in the impact of the disease is not to do with the nature of the governments, but the speed of their actions. The Italian government ignored early signs of infections and only acted after the disease was well established, while the Korean government put in place a national system of tracking and tracing as soon as their first cluster of infections arose and managed as a result to hugely reduce the rate of future infections.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271748/the-largest-emitters-of-co2-in-the-world/
https://www.activesustainability.com/environment/top-5-most-polluting-countries/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/more-than-a-third-of-chinese-millionaires-want-to-leave-china.html
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/31/china-in-africa-win-win-development-or-a-new-colonialism
None of your linked articles are about solar generation. China produces about 60% of the world's solar panels, which is the main reason I talked about them being world leaders in promoting solar generation - although they do also have more installed solar capacity than any other country.
I agree that their overall green credentials are much more mixed - in particular they have a lot of reliance on coal-powered electricity generation, which is a major reason for their high CO2 production. The recent US stance on encouraging the use of coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation has been unhelpful in trying to improve China's overall record on emissions.
I referred in my last post to the fact I've posted previously on the problem of China using economic power as a colonial tool.
As for the article saying that many Chinese millionaires want to leave China, I think the same sort of thing applies to the rich in many countries. The article says that Chinese millionaires hold on average 11% of their wealth in overseas assets. I didn't find properly comparable figures to that in a quick search, but I doubt very much that figure is unusually high. This chart shows the proportion of investment for different countries split between investment inside and outside your own country - on this measure China is in line with most other countries.
My bad.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2104162/chinas-ageing-solar-panels-are-going-be-big-environmental-problem
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/10/25/chinas-much-trailed-second-half-solar-rebound-has-failed-to-materialize/
https://www.inverse.com/article/58347-solar-energy-china-s-panels-reveal-a-big-issue
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-renewables-solar/darkness-before-dawn-chinas-solar-equipment-sector-loses-its-shine-idUSKBN1YM0LU
These articles explain that in 2018 China reduced its domestic subsidies for solar, which has led to a reduced rate of growth of domestic provision. However, that growth is still far greater than any other country. You can see figures for individual countries by year here showing that installed capacity added in China even in 2019 was well over double that in the US and almost double that in the entire EU.
This refers to the fact that air pollution reduces the efficiency of solar panels. I can't (and don't wish to) argue with that, but it doesn't change the fact that China is clearly the world leader in relation to both domestic installed solar capacity and production of solar panels.
And this all proves that China did not try to cover up the initial threat of COVID. It was the solar panels all along, thanks for clearing that up.
Now if you can show me hard proof that the WHO did not say that COVID is not transferred from Human to Human and China did not try to keep COVID under wraps in its initial spread we can have a debate. if not then you know what you can do with those solar panels
I've just been responding to the information you've posted, though I certainly agree that the goalposts have been shifting during this discussion. If you look back you will see that the start of our exchange was me noting that you have made multiple posts suggesting that China is to blame for the severity of the Covid-19 crisis and requesting that you explain why you think that is the case. You did not directly respond to that request, but instead raised other issues that I have responded to as best I can.
I would still be interested in knowing why you believe China is to blame and whether you've seen any evidence to back that belief up and will respond if you want to discuss that. However, I won't respond any more to further digressions for the time being.
-The WHO telling the world there is no Human to Human transfer.
-China destroying data and samples.
-Silencing and shaming people who try to warn the world of the virus.
-Allowing Chinese Nationals to travel all over the world knowing they may be carriers.
-Allowing contractors to travel to Italy and Iran without getting tested, also not warning those trade dependent countries of potential dangers.
-Not related to the spread but trying to put the blame on Black-Africans for 'New' wave of the virus.
-Solar Panels.
Don't understand how anyone can try and debate or argue the Chinese government is not at fault for the spread of this virus outside of its borders. I have posted a video discussion in the COVID thread that the evidence leading to this. It's not a debate. The genesis is the wet market (food plaza) in Wuhan.
Want to blame any other countries government on how they are handling the spread is a debatable topic, but the world would not be in the state its in if China came clean immediately and not try to sweep it under the rug and hope it would go away.
My opinion they should be held accountable and pressure should be put on them to make sweeping changes in areas of global affairs. Because of this they should never be trusted again, every COVID death lie directly at the feet of the Chinese Government. Also my opinion again, they should be forced to pay damages for their ignorance and cover up attempt.
Also, what does it say for the rest of the free Democratic world if we allow these tyrants to get away with this World altering avoidable mess. Everyone that has lost a job, loved one or lifestyle should be enraged by what they allowed to happen.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trolling-world-and-avoiding-blame/608332/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/china-failed-warn-public-covid-19-pandemic-days-ap-200415050833262.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-investigation-coronavirus-timeline-1.5534084
These articles are from three different political leanings. From top... Centre-Left, Right, Neutral.
One more for shits 'n giggles.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/25/blame-china-and-xi-jinping-for-coronavirus-pandemic/
( Neutral political leaning)
Say it with me:
Incubation period.
This was the great unknown when things like human to human transfer and air travel (by everyone, not just Chinese nationals) helped spread the disease.
The destroying of samples was already explained in this thread on why it was done.
The tribalism of racism happened all over the world, not just in China when it came to blaming people that were different for the spread of the virus. Highlighting only one incident is cherry picking.
And who says the rest of the world is letting them get away with it? The crisis isn’t over yet. Once it’s over, humanity as a whole can look back and see what we can do better. Doing it now, is counterproductive.
A world pandemic was going to happen eventually. Every medical expert in the field stated this to the point where every major country has a pandemic protocol. Blaming where it originated wasn’t and isn’t the problem because it could have originated from anywhere.
OK. Thanks a lot for the full response - that provides a much better basis for discussion. In replying I'm going to assume you don't believe that China actually released the virus itself, given you've referred to the Wuhan wet market as the genesis of the pandemic. Thus the various factors where China is potentially to blame that you've referred to directly, or are covered in the articles you've linked, are as follows:
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified.
2) Destroying samples of the virus.
3) Silencing whistleblowers.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger.
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus.
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease.
Responses
1) The delay in confirming human to human transmission from the point a novel virus was first identified
Where the problems start is in the next 2 weeks. Although information about the potential new disease had been made available, new cases were not being reported to the CDC. This seems to have been the result of a desire at local levels not to be seen as the bearer of bad news. Later reviews of information showed that there had been a continuing growth in cases during this period, but it was only when a positive case from Thailand was identified on Jan 13th that major emergency action was prompted at a national level. That included instituting a search of records for potential cases, distributing testing kits, setting up widespread temperature checks, issuing protective equipment and opening isolation facilities in local hospitals for any identified cases. A teleconference with local officials on Jan 14th made it clear that community transmission was now expected, though it wasn't until Jan 20th that this was said publicly on national TV (and reported to the WHO the next day).
There are thus 2 potential delays that can be criticized. First the failure up to Jan 14th to recognize that there was a growing problem and second the 6 day delay in making that recognition publicly known. While it's certainly true that a delay of even a few days had a major impact in the final number of cases, I think it's unrealistic to expect there would be no delays at all. It's almost inevitable that it will take a while for a new priority to be implemented in busy institutions and it's also fair to point out that the difference for 6 days between the seriousness of the situation as recognized by government and the public message being given out is something common to most countries at some point in the epidemic cycle - and often for periods of far longer than 6 days.
2) Destroying samples of the virus
3) Silencing whistleblowers
I'll also note that if you look at the newspaper articles linked above, you will see references to lots of information that would typically have been kept secret, but has been made available to the media. During January and February there were also large numbers of foreign scientists and epidemiologists invited to China to study what was happening on the ground. That open availability of information has lessened more recently, back closer to what might be expected of an authoritarian country. However, I would certainly argue that in the early stages of the disease China was extremely open in the information being shared - more so than the US has been for instance.
4) Allowing Chinese or other nationalities to travel who could potentially be infected
In relation to travel safety procedures, the Chinese were doing mass screening of temperature checks at airports. However, health checks are normally the responsibility of the receiving country - in the old days when I was travelling things like immunisation certificates were checked on arrival, not departure and that's still the standard practise. The WHO from early on was telling governments to institute a program of tracking and tracing, but few countries did this.
5) Not warning other countries it trades with of the potential danger
6) Blaming black Africans for spreading the virus
7) Not closing the wet market that is the most likely source of the disease
One practical one is that it would not necessarily have stopped the sale of wild animals, but just driven it underground - that's a rationale often used in similar situations in Africa. It's an analogous situation to the WHO telling countries not to forbid foreign travel, but monitor it instead - to avoid the situation where people find a way round the proscribed action and then have an incentive not to report what they've done if they feel ill (this seems to be one of the main reasons why the disease in north Italy took so long to be recognized).
A second is an economic one that preventing people from earning a living is unreasonable. Allied to this there is also a more overtly political libertarian argument - that's the sort of argument raging in parts of the US at the moment over whether it is reasonable to prevent people from working (or require them to wear masks) in order to protect others.
Personally I would be quite happy to see consumption of wildlife banned, but I don't think that would be easy to enforce. Nor would that mean there was no possibility of a new infectious disease emerging. Therefore it seems to me that one of the learning points arising from Covid-19 is a need for all countries to be far more prepared to deal with epidemics in future. Things done to reduce the chances of those would be helpful, but we will always need to be prepared for the possibility.
I've addressed each point individually in the spoiler sections. My overall response though is to do with the nature of blame. I don't think it's reasonable to blame someone or some country for actions which represent normal behavior, i.e. most other countries would have done the same. It's not clear to me that China has deviated from those norms and therefore I don't agree that it's reasonable to blame them for their actions. That does not of course mean they haven't made lots of mistakes and I hope that there will be a future period of reflection and learning for all countries to consider the mistakes made and how to improve responses to the next crisis.
Of the articles you linked, the second and third seem to me balanced. They point out that China made mistakes, but also explain that China did also take strong action at an early stage in the progression of the disease. They also refer to conflicting opinions among epidemiologists as to whether there was in fact any unreasonable or unexpected delay by China given the lack of information available at the time decisions were being taken. I'm not sure whether the fourth one (that you refer to as posting for giggles) is intended to be serious, but it appears to assume we live in a world of perfect information and where any regulation imposed on the grounds it might protect your health should be done irrespective of the cost or intrusiveness of that. I would describe the first article as a political hatchet job. It contains misleading information about when the disease was first known about, seems to suggest that China should be the policeman for viruses on behalf of the world and implies that China's response to Covid-19 should be criticized because China has an authoritarian government, irrespective of its actions.
The reason I put those articles in was to show that even though they are different in political leanings they all say that China did not act when it is required most. At the beginning. Every country has rules and steps to take guided by the WHO for what to do if there is a potential of a mutated virus/flu strain. China did not take those early action thus endangering the planet.
South Korea's response was swift because of their own experience with a infectious virus running through their population. They acted and also made changes to better their response for the future. Canada also acted quickly because of their battle with SARS 18 yrs ago. China, who was also at the heart of SARS, did not take the steps needed early a second time in two decades.
I understand to a degree that you don't wish to criticize or blame China because of your political leanings but we must remember that the Communist Party of China is not the people.
-Incubation period as in like SARS? They knew, even Family Physicians knew what it was. Need creditable citation.
- The destruction of samples was their explanation, not what was investigated to be true.
- Tribalism also pertains to Political Affiliation. I'll assume added for American Liberal flavor.
- Yes I agree it would be counter productive to let China have it now, when the smoke clears is much more likely.
- But it didn't originate from somewhere else, it originated in China. SARS 2.0.
Vaccine creation time. 00:1:48 runtime.
TLDW: There Has never been a successful vaccine created for Coronavirus, SARS or MERS
We all have our preferences of course, though if you think I'm sympathetic to authoritarian governments I have obviously not been expressing myself very well
I don't expect to convince you, but will make some final points before I go to bed:
- as I said in my last post I don't think 2 of the 3 main articles you linked do take a particularly critical line on China's actions. With the benefit of hindsight of course they could have acted a few days earlier - and such earlier action would certainly have saved significant numbers of Chinese lives (though I see no reason to believe it would have had any effect on other countries as their speed of action was not related to what China did). The point is though that China had to act based on what it knew at the time.
- the reason S. Korea was able to react was that they did so based on the knowledge they already had from China. As at 17th February S. Korea had identified a total of 30 cases and those limited numbers had allowed them to undertake detailed tracking and tracing on every individual. That system only broke down somewhat as a result of the cluster of cases in the Shincheonji church, where the higher numbers and some communication problems made individual tracing more difficult. That resulted in S. Korea expanding their tracing system and using automatic proximity alerts and targeted closures in addition to individual tracing.
- China did not have the advantage of knowing in advance what to expect, so I think it's a lot to expect for them to have been able to identify there was a new disease and discover its nature sufficiently quickly to be able to use the same sort of individualized tracing that S. Korea did. Once they were properly aware of the threat though, they took very strong measures to counter it - and did that very successfully. The commonly told story about China's actions is the very strict lockdown they put in place in Hubei province in order to contain what was a severe outbreak there. However, they did not use those same tactics anywhere else in China. Rather, they employed the same type of tracing techniques and targeted actions that S. Korea did - and with the same very good results. You can see that by tracing the smaller numbers of cases of people travelling away from Hubei province they managed to keep the infection levels far lower everywhere else, without instituting lockdowns.
Sleep well @Grond0
SARS incubation period is usually 2-7 days. COVID-19 is double that. A quick google search should give you all the citation that is needed.
And you have a good evening as well @deltago
https://www.businessinsider.com/graph-shows-georgia-bungling-coronavirus-data-2020-5
In what scenario is this remotely useful to public health?? Why would this happen unless you wanted a short-term narrative to justify lifting restrictions?? China isn't the only one playing this game. The Southeastern United States is now leading the charge on lying about the numbers.
1. He’s an idiot
2. The WH doctor will make sure he does not over dose when he gives him the med.
1. He's an idiot for taking something with the help of a doctor.
2. Isn't that a good thing?
If it kills him wouldn't half the pop of the US be happy? Win-Win is how it looks to them.