China may have prevented 95% of virus cases if whistleblower not silenced | Hacker News Reader

China may have prevented 95% of virus cases if whistleblower not silenced

hongkongfp.com

79 pointshandedness12 comments

After the crisis, his death should be investigated by an international group.

And those responsible for rebuffing assistance, including those at the CDC or other US agencies that rejected test kits, should be investigated.

Everyone just throws their hands up and says “incompetence” but in the real-world, a huge majority seem to believe in sinister motives. This is based on anecdotal experiences from mostly wealthy/successful people I’ve talked to. I’m a skeptic but way more people are conspiratorial than the media acknowledges.

How the US didn’t have tests in January when people were sounding the alarm, or how we don’t have general Coronavirus tests from decades or years ago is quite confounding.

Have you ever worked in a bureaucracy? It's not hard to believe that this is all an admixture of hubris, incompetence, and political small-ball.

You describe a great motive for one to start an international organized crime ring and incorporate it by an Act of Congress.

You make me want to buy aluminum futures for all the tinfoil you've got under your hat friend.

I was just making what I thought was a clever counter to your endless argument. I have friends who are implicated in conspiracy theories and know well it’s a flawed philosophical system that sustains incompetence.

But set your Google search to 1970-1988, and read the old coronavirus test related papers. Ones of humans, cattle and cats. Then in ~2004 talking about coronavirus testing for SARS.

It seems like they’re at least could be a general test or indicator for all coronaviruses. Even if not, we’ve been fearing mutant coronaviruses for decades, why wouldn’t we get the tests started in November?

Poker players were betting 3-weeks+ ago that WSOP would be shut down and now the world is-

https://twitter.com/dougpolkpoker/status/1233041607131357185...

https://twitter.com/mikemcdonald89/status/123310948568372429...

While the world now praises the Chinese government's response (they shouldn't) to the Wuhan Corona Virus outbreak, please remember why it spread at first. Also, I doubt if the situation is actually controlled in China. Have we ever known how China counted the patients? In more than one case, the new infections in a city exceeds that of its province.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1237852245359644675?s=20

I couldn’t find any evidence in the link about new cases in a city exceeding that for a province. Do you have any source for that? Or any other evidence that numbers may be misleading in China? Given their past record it does seem likely, but I suspect their social distancing measures have been at least partly successful.

The related news I could find were all in Chinese I'm afraid. You'll need to translate it.

[1] Story behind the sudden spike of confirmed cases in Hubei Province.

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/chinese-news-51485553

[2] Official amendment of the numbers in Hubei Province. The day before, the newly confirmed cases reported in the Hubei Province was 349, while that of Wuhan city was 615 (Wuhan is a city in Hubei).

http://m.news.cctv.com/2020/02/21/ARTI5BVxbRm6O6rOBnUVpaMB20...

Has it even been ruled out that this pandemic has not been engineered?

Is there any way to even check if a virus has been artificially created/modified?

What prevents an organization inspired by current events from engineering something even more "effective"?

This seems to be a common conspiracy theory with the person on the street. I've actually seen people suggesting that the U.S. infected China.

As far as I am aware it is incredibly unlikely to have been engineered. The virus is very similar to those in animals already, and there are no tell tale signs of CRISPR being used (off site effects where unintentional areas are also targeted). While it is possible it could have been perfectly engineered from a very similar virus in a way to avoid leaving signs of engineering (which I think is pretty unlikely), there is no motivation. If you wanted to do this, surely you would immunise your own people against it first to reduce local damage? And for saying the USA planted it in China.... it’s just stupid. I mean, the USA is managing this terribly. If they had planned it surely they would have stockpiled enough masks or medication to make this work.

Even after Italy and other countries had known the risks, they really did not take drastic measures to contain it until it was too late. There is a pattern here - governments don’t move fast when there is this level of uncertainty. China deserves blame for lack of free speech, but rest of their efforts were pretty effective. Don’t expect either of these to happen in a democracy.

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