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Comment by yibg | Hacker News Reader

While this might be true I’m not sure if we chalk this one up to the CCP. I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries.

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> I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries.

In authoritative countries the messenger of bad news tends to be 'disciplined', and so bad news is not delivered. It still exists, but no one wants to be the individual that creates the (negative) feedback loop that may be contrary to the diktat that came down from on high.

Of course hiding bad news happens in less authoritative countries as well (being the "tall poppy", Law of Jante, 「出る杭は打たれる」), but the consequences may be less severe.

There was all sorts of secrecy with SARS many years ago, and it seems that China has still not completely broken that 'habit':

* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-stat...

I wonder if there isn’t a certain element of hindsight bias here. Now it’s clear that more action should’ve been taken earlier. But knowing the panic this has caused, not to mention the economic, global logistics and travel impacts I don’t know if it was such an obvious situation at the time. Especially when the vitality, severity and mechanism of transmission etc weren’t clear. CCP policy and behavioral patterns aside, I can see the local official in charge wanting to avoid being the guy that caused a bunch of public panic over nothing.

Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.

I can understand also the need to prevent public panic. But I can not understand the motivation of organizing big public activities when knowing a dangerous virus is in the ran. I am referring to the so called "40k family banquet" （https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI）. Permit me copy my other comment here to explain what it is:

I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.

The problem is that, as far as the currently available information shows, at first the Party tried to keep things quiet, until they just couldn't.

I have a hard time imagninig something like this happening in many Western countries. It might happen, but in my view it's far more unlikely.

At this point it’s undeniable that the government tried to keep things quiet in the beginning and that’s not a good thing. But slow reaction to new diseases isn’t uncommon. I recall when mad cow was going around a while ago the reaction in Canada was slow as well. The desire to down play things happen at multiple levels of an organization for all sorts of reasons.

I’m not dismissing the initial attempt at cover up here and the Chinese government should seriously examine their priorities. I just think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to link this event to causing a “big disaster for whole human society”.

Well, I wouldn't go it as far as saying "a big disaster", but I can say with confidence that a lot infections (and possibly deaths) could have been spared if the Party had chosen not to put its head in the sand.

(Disclaimer: hindsight is 20/20, of course)

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