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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

I really wish that China had not filtered/hidden the data related to Covid-19 for its population. That would have really helped the rest of the World prepare better.

Right now the rest of the world is just grappling with if the mortality is 3.4% or is it higher or lower. How many, across gender and age groups and so on, end up in ICU vs have milder symptoms, and so on..

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You can possibly try to blame China for hiding things up until mid January. But absolutely after that you can’t. At that point the entire world had more than good enough data to see how serious this was and that it was going to become a pandemic. Yet even still now the response in the western world is totally underwhelming for the seriousness of the situation. I’m in Seattle which is heading right towards becoming America’s Wuhan and they still aren’t even cancelling all events or closing all schools and colleges.

I wonder if the economic models of delayed action predict better economic outcomes vs cancelling all events and closing schools early?

I imagine there’s likely to be commissions probing bureaucratic response, and some scapegoating.

There is a big "It won't happen to me" mentality I can see going around. In many people's minds, coronavirus is something people in Asia get, not something westerners get.

Students at the university in my town are bragging about going skiing in northern Italy, saying "It's overblown" and "It won't happen to me".

Even acquaintances are saying "It's just the flu, what's the big deal?".

It's not China's fault that the US isn't even testing its own healthcare workers displaying symptoms.

If they faked the data, they would downplay it just like other bureaucracies who don't want to hurt the economy. The key is speed. As long as extensive tests and quick actions have been done, and hospitals are not overwhelmed, then there shouldn't be big problems. KR and JP will be fine.

The world had time since November but decided to ignore the problem.

This is a blatant lie. In November China was busy persecuting doctors and censoring social media.

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