BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

[tshile]

6 hours ago, BigDibbs31 said:

Do you believe China's numbers are accurate?  

Considering they’re sticking to the idea this started late December and evidence is mounting it started mid November at the latest.... no....

 

(unless something has changed recently I’m not paying attention anymore)

[Springfield]

I see a growing number of liberals on social media, and now here, crediting China in some way, shape or form.  Lots of praise for their ability to cut their new infections to 0.  Lots of praise for their ability to properly quarantine their countrymen.  Lots of negative reaction to how America (read: Trump) is handling the situation.

 

I am NOT that kind of liberal.

[TradeTheBeal!]

I have no confidence in even a single bit of data or propaganda coming out of China.

 

Furthermore, it’s irrelevant.  New York, Britain, Germany, South Korea are generating the data we need to address the situation.

 

You wanna clown yourself by hyping China?  You do you...

Edited April 13, 2020 by TryTheBeal!

[Larry]

4 minutes ago, Springfield said:

I see a growing number of liberals on social media, and now here, crediting China in some way, shape or form.  Lots of praise for their ability to cut their new infections to 0.  Lots of praise for their ability to properly quarantine their countrymen.  Lots of negative reaction to how America (read: Trump) is handling the situation.

 

I am NOT that kind of liberal.

 

Just speaking for myself, I certainly don't think "praise" is the right word.  "Grudging, reluctant, admission that maybe what they did worked" might be closer.  (And maybe admission that some of the things they did might even rise to the level of "good".  China's response to the quarantine was the immediate announcement that all workers will receive their full salary for the entire duration.)  

 

"Lots of negative reaction to how Trump is handling the situation"?  Absolutely, proudly, enthusiastically guilty.  That's me.  Where do I get my hat?

 

[spjunkies]

China and our federal government are in the same fail category IMO. I do applaud the response by individual governors like Hogan, Newsom and Cuomo considering they are working with their hands tied behind their backs. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by spjunkies

[skinsmarydu]

Yep, even my idiot governor extended the guidelines. 

 

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, Larry said:

 

China delivered food to the front door of 1.5 million people, every day for months.  

 

FFS, why do we believe anything they are saying?

 

This is like defending Cuba's Literacy Program on acid.

 

There are over a billion people in China anyway, so who cares if they sent food to a fraction of them?

[No Excuses]

1 hour ago, Larry said:

OTOH, they only had an infection in one province.  How much better would our response be, if New York were the only state to have a single case?  (Although, you can also counter-argue that maybe it's our fault that we had it in more than one state.  Again - we had warning, and we "It's the flu"'d it till it spread to 50 states.)  

 

Again, I'm not sure that I would believe their data on how widespread this was in China just yet. If our intelligence community was picking up signals of a new viral outbreak in Wuhan by November, that means they already had enough community transmission by then that foreign intelligence was able to pick up signals that separated COVID-19 from other seasonal respiratory illnesses. Lockdowns in China didn't really start until ~January 20th. What we don't know is how bad the situation had already gotten by then, but we know that this virus spreads very easily without behavior changes and if an outbreak was already underway in Wuhan by November, then it's just highly unlikely that it hadn't already spread and seeded many other parts of China by January.

 

I don't think you can counter-argue that it's our fault we had it in more than one state. We know that the NY outbreak primarily occurred due to arrivals from Europe. We know that most of the west coast clusters came from China. This thing entered the US from all over the world. And we know it arrived in the US, in Europe and in other parts of the world around the time that China was still lying to everyone that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, while being opaque about what's really happening within its borders.

 

We failed at acting fast enough, when we did have warning signs in early February about how bad this truly is. We lost about a month (basically all of February). But in reality, we lost about 3 months if you count when the first alarm bells should have been rung. China should have notified the international medical community by December when it's doctors were blowing the whistle on Chinese social media about a SARS-like infection spreading uncontrollably. Some reports even trace social media chatter about this back to November, which might also be the signals our intelligence community intercepted. And the CCP responded by silencing and threatening whistleblowers and gaslighting the world for a solid two months until it was too late and SARS-Cov2 was already in Europe, Asia and North America.

Edited April 13, 2020 by No Excuses

[bcl05]

Look - China is a deeply flawed, immoral state.  They were faced with a complete unknown - a virus that had not been seen or reported previously.  They responded in a lot of ways, some terrible (disinformation and suppression of reporting) and some reasonably OK (aggressive social distancing, widespread testing).  At this point, I would have significant distrust of their numbers.  

 

Their circumstances were wildly different from ours.  The US government was warned.  The data from China and the WHO were clear - this was an aggressive, dangerous, highly contangious, often lethal virus that had the potential to cause widespread infection and overwhelm systems.

 

Our government was not dealing with an unknown.  They chose to treat it like one, and completely missed the early opportunity to lessen the damage.

 

There is no universe where we, as a country, would face this coronavirus unscathed.  We can't blame Trump and his minions for the fact that the virus exists.  But.  We absolutely should have been more prepared and had a more thoughtful and data-driven response.  Pandemics respond best to proactive action, not reactive.  Our government has bungled this from the start, and that has cost us thousands of lives and millions of jobs. 

[Larry]

23 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

FFS, why do we believe anything they are saying?

 

This is like defending Cuba's Literacy Program on acid.

 

There are over a billion people in China anyway, so who cares if they sent food to a fraction of them?

 

I agree.  We should just dismiss all information from there with a wave of the hand and speaking the word "China".  And not attempt to look and see if maybe there's something there that we could do, to improve things here.  

 

[Yohan]

4 minutes ago, bcl05 said:

 

 

Their circumstances were wildly different from ours.  The US government was warned.  The data from China and the WHO were clear - this was an aggressive, dangerous, highly contangious, often lethal virus that had the potential to cause widespread infection and overwhelm systems.

 

 

But then there is the gem...

 

ht https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 tp https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 s

://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

[Renegade7]

Just now, Larry said:

 

I agree.  We should just dismiss all information from there with a wave of the hand and speaking the word "China".  And not attempt to look and see if maybe there's something there that we could do, to improve things here.  

 

 

Yes, f'n yes, dude, I'm sorry but yes. 

 

They are lying about how many people are dying, a country that already was killing it's own people in concentration camps and lying about that, too.  C'mon, they have been so over aggressive in trying to prove they figured this out that folks are "testing positive after recovery", they are throwing off the data they lying so much leading go having to prove you can't get this twice from the same strain.

 

A huge reason we are in this mess is because they were lying to everyon about how they are handling it, we have plenty of other countries to compare to with more reliable data, like South Korea.  

 

To me, China's credibility is so shot it could be dangerous trusting them on their data and results.  Defending them is not being objective.

[goskins10]

That China and the US handled this poorly can be and are mutually exclusive. Both can be true and I believe are true. 

 

China certainly downplayed the impact and potential of the virus. And they still lie about the numbers. However, I know directly from Chinese friends in China that once they acknowledged that the virus was so highly contagious and was spreading so fast, they put measures in place to contain the problem. Measures that we would not be considered here because of the violation of civil rights. My friends are a combination of Chinese nationals and ex-pats from the US and Europe. They are in Suzhou, Changzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Hong Kong, and Bejing. I also have a friend here that is originally from China and goes home to her parents and was in fact in China when this all happened - about 200 miles from Wuhan. They all have pretty close to the same report - the government was slow to react, even slower to admit it to the international community, but once they did acknowledge they shut it down. Many of my friends have been back to work for a few months now and there so far has not been any kind re-emergence - at least not nationally. They all also agree the numbers are woefully inaccurate. 

 

The US government was also slow to acknowledge how big an issue this was having removed the resources to ensure readiness and to mobilize containment if needed. The biggest need was tests. Let's forget China for a moment. Why could South Korea test 20,000/day with drive up testing with immediate results and we were still only testing a few people a day as a country? Again I have friends and colleagues in South Korea so I know this to be fact. They are not lying abotu their numbers. They did what we should have done. Expedited tests, employ a containment process to catch early outbreaks and contain them before they spread. Instead we were having smoke blown up our ass by our sudden cheerleader in chief (can;t believe that's their excuse). 

 

China **** the bed. No arguing that point. However, knowing what we know about China, why was this administration taking their word for it? Part of the reason is through budget cuts aimed at dismantling anything Obama did, they took the boots on the ground in China that could have given better information out and simultaneously disbanded the Pandemic Readiness commission (not it's actual name but you know who i mean).

 

There was enough data from enough other countries and examples of action taken by other countries that the impact had a much better chance of being severely limited. In fairness, maybe not. But we will not know due to the incredible ineptness of our president to allow the experts to do their job, either by removing them from office or not taking their council. It's like knowing that a movie reviewer is garbage but taking their advice anyway. 

 

Anyone laying full blame or even a majority of the blame for how big this in the US on China as the primary culprit is just not looking at the entire picture. Sure, they own some of it no doubt. But we should not have been relying on them to begin with. Other countries figured it out. Why didn't we? Answer? Our toddler in chief!

Edited April 13, 2020 by goskins10

[Springfield]

One thing I think we should all agree on is that we can never return to "normal" until we have rapid and accurate testing so we can almost instantly find out if someone is infected with covid.  Why we haven't accomplished this yet is appalling.  It's like it isn't even on the radar.

[No Excuses]

17 minutes ago, Yohan said:

But then there is the gem...

 

ht https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 tp https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20 s

://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

 

This exactly. This was the worst, biggest piece of horse**** that came out of China and that the WHO for whatever reason, decided to spread. There is absolutely zero chance that China didn't know about human-to-human transmission by mid-January, considering that doctors and hospitals in Wuhan were sending warnings of huge numbers of patients showing up at hospitals with a "mysterious illness" by then.

 

One of the key lessons out of this for anyone, international organizations and news media, should be to never ever report anything the CCP puts out at face value. It's the same thing we ask of our news media in the US now, that anything Trump says should be vetted first and reported later. Stop giving headlines to blatant propaganda and disinformation. By the time corrections roll in, it is almost always too late to counter false info.

[The Evil Genius]

Let's not pretend that the US didn't know about the outbreak in November/December 2019 either. 

[Springfield]

Just now, The Evil Genius said:

Let's not pretend that the US didn't know about the outbreak in November/December 2019 either. 

 

You know... I watched this thread grow and grow thinking that there was no way that we would be effected by it.  When the outbreak started in Washington state, I was thinking that it was something just limited to the west coast.  I was playing hockey and going to the gym up until the day they closed those things down because I was hopeful that it wouldn't be as widespread as it is.

 

I think that there's a matter of willful ignorance that many, MANY people expressed.  It's a flaw in us all.  You don't see those that you're around, nor any of your friends or family are around and you don't really take it as a credible threat.  Up until last week, I never even had a friend who had a friend or relative that was effected.

[The Evil Genius]

4 minutes ago, Springfield said:

 

You know... I watched this thread grow and grow thinking that there was no way that we would be effected by it.  When the outbreak started in Washington state, I was thinking that it was something just limited to the west coast.  I was playing hockey and going to the gym up until the day they closed those things down because I was hopeful that it wouldn't be as widespread as it is.

 

I think that there's a matter of willful ignorance that many, MANY people expressed.  It's a flaw in us all.  You don't see those that you're around, nor any of your friends or family are around and you don't really take it as a credible threat.  Up until last week, I never even had a friend who had a friend or relative that was effected.

 

I'm speaking specifically about US Intelligence that allegedly briefed the NSC, the DIA, and the Pentagon's Joint staff about it...in early November. 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by The Evil Genius

[BatteredFanSyndrome]

5 minutes ago, Springfield said:

 

I think that there's a matter of willful ignorance that many, MANY people expressed.  It's a flaw in us all.

We're allowed to, as we're just regular everyday joes with regular everyday information or should I say, a lack thereof.  The administration though, they are privy to much, much more and can and should be held responsible for their actions and lack of action.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

 

[ClaytoAli]

7 minutes ago, Califan007 said:

 

This needs to run as an add on Nov 1st.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

 

[China]

43 minutes ago, Springfield said:

One thing I think we should all agree on is that we can never return to "normal" until we have rapid and accurate testing so we can almost instantly find out if someone is infected with covid.  Why we haven't accomplished this yet is appalling.  It's like it isn't even on the radar.

 

We have that ability technologically, but mass distributing it to the entire country is another matter:

 

DETECT COVID-19 IN AS LITTLE AS 5 MINUTES

 

 

[StillUnknown]

 

[Wildbunny]

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

 

Yes, f'n yes, dude, I'm sorry but yes. 

 

They are lying about how many people are dying, a country that already was killing it's own people in concentration camps and lying about that, too.  C'mon, they have been so over aggressive in trying to prove they figured this out that folks are "testing positive after recovery", they are throwing off the data they lying so much leading go having to prove you can't get this twice from the same strain.

 

A huge reason we are in this mess is because they were lying to everyon about how they are handling it, we have plenty of other countries to compare to with more reliable data, like South Korea.  

 

To me, China's credibility is so shot it could be dangerous trusting them on their data and results.  Defending them is not being objective.

While I agree about the lies, disinformation and everything that comes out of China, our leaders are definately to blame as well for slow reacting. As well as WHO.

 

As I said earlier in this thread, China can lie about everything. But if our leaders are too dumb to not get it when they completly lock down a 15M town sending army to stop in and out, then that is a ****ing huge problem.

 

China is a 1.5 Billion of inhabitants country. It doesn't matter much if a virus is killing 10 or 15K people.

They can say whatever they want, but we should at least be able to react from what they are doing.

 

The lock down by the army was on all TV news and nobody prepared for the coming? That's a big mistake here. Shutting down Wuhan was almost agreeing to sacrifice 15M of people to stop the virus. If that wasn't a big enough clue to every and one leader around the world to prepare for the pandemic, they deserve to go to the unemployed line for decades...