Coronavirus cases and deaths among UM members

[CiG]

Communist incompetence started this disaster anyway.

 

[Dak]

Communist incompetence started this disaster anyway.

I don't think so actually. It's a particularity of Chinese ego not wanting to admit a problem. I guess you could quibble about that being incompetence, but I would call the leadership in the US far more incompetent. China tried to cover up the problem, the US/rest of the west tried to pretend it wasn't a problem and then have been doing a mix of thrashing about late/misinforming the public/trying to take advantage of the crisis to fund their favorite pork projects, which is a bipartisan past time.

 

[CiG]

Okay then.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Shyna is at least as capitalist as the USA anyways.

 

[CiG]

What does its market have to do with the incompetence of the CPC?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Well, you said communist incompetence, not CPC incompetence. There is a difference. But in any case, China's response was fairly swift and brutal, and as a result they've been able to reopen cities again. It might be all bullshit numbers of course coming from the CPC, and they could very well have a second flare up, but who knows right now.

 

[CiG]

Well, you said communist incompetence, not CPC incompetence. There is a difference.

It's a particularity of Chinese ego not wanting to admit a problem.

Probably why they're (still) communists.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I mean, they still have free trade zones and all that good stuff right? They have a strategic, top-heavy state-capitalism government. When you consider how many Americans are employed by private contractors using public tax dollars, I bet that we aren't even all that different in terms of our overall public sector relative to China.

 

[CiG]

That's not really relevant to CPC practices that allowed this to first happen, and then spread while blanketing the crisis in censorship and misinformation.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Which practices were those? I didn't think the initial cause of the virus' spread was known.

 

[CiG]

I'm talking about how the Wuhan police were threatening doctors for publicly sharing information during the early days of the outbreak in late December, among other examples of government incompetence and censorship. They didn't even lock Wuhan down for another month after that, and during that time Wuhan health officials were telling the public that it cannot spread from human to human.

(By "allowed this to happen" I meant allowed it to spread outside of Hubei. The aggressive mass quarantining of half the country was too little too late.)

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I thought the censorship was more for PR reasons (i.e. you're allowed to talk to the CPC but you're not allowed to talk to the press), but fair enough if not. fwiw, the USA also has laws forbidding federal administrators and workers at regulatory agencies from talking to the press without permission, primarily because there's a history of government employees trying to sabotage the next presidency after a party switch.

Regarding the virulence of the disease, I think that's one of those captain hindsight things, like how Ronald Reagan is somehow supposed to be responsible for every single person that died of AIDS according to the homosexual left. Unless it is discovered that Xi or others on top intentionally suppressed reports showing the danger of the virus (and admittedly it is unlikely for whistleblowers to reveal that even if true), it seems plausible that they just underestimated the virus, especially if the two-week-incubation-time thing is legit. Something which basically every government in the world was doing.

 

[Dak]

there's been a[n epidemic of the last 4 years] of government employees trying to sabotage the next presidency after a party switch.

Also true.

 

[CiG]

YY and WeChat iirc was being censored as early as late December so it's not just a case of doctors being censored (though they experienced more direct police harassment in Wuhan). I'm not actually sure if doctors were talking to the press rather than just posting on social media and then being contacted by police, it's hard to find much more than generalities about this stuff.

 

[Slammed]

"Don't let Daddy kiss me?"

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Forgot to start my post with Dear Diary that was supposed to be private!

Lol the mouth on me sometimes.

 

[CiG]

 

[Slammed]

Suppose we are lucky it's not a video diary

 

[Carpe Mortem]

It would be so painful to watch in so many ways

 

[Sedition and Pockets]

One doctor received a mild professional reprimand for going outside of the channels the Chinese government has set up for reporting possible epidemic outbreaks. He wasn't arrested. He wasn't criminally sanctioned or prosecuted. After the SARS experience, the Chinese government was particularly (and rightly) concerned about the potential for public panic inhibiting an effective response to an outbreak, and they were especially worried about triggering the sort of disruptive panic-buying of sanitary supplies and consumer goods we've seen in the US. Unlike subsequent outbreaks elsewhere, this came at the Chinese government cold, with no prior warning. Under the circumstances, their response has been about as effective as you could possibly expect it to be, and far more effective than the responses of many other governments that did have lead time to prepare.