Hacker News Reader

Comment by gdilla | Hacker News Reader

Should China pay some sort of reparations? Maybe in the form of contributing to a WHO preparedness fund/initiative with stocking supplies that could be deployed faster next time? China needs to pay for their 1) lack of sanitary standards surrounding their markets and 2) their coverup which exacerbated the situation.

View on HN

So do we do this next time any new illness spread? what if it happened to a poor country? Is this going to be coded as an international law? If so why is the law retrospective? Considering your 1) lack of sanitary standards is more prevalent in poorer countries is the law discriminatory?

Yes, if it turns out a poor country lied and imprisoned doctors attempting to disseminate facts, then yes, they ought to be punished internationally..

We shouldn't punish China for simply having the virus. That could happen to anyone. But lying about it on the world stage for months, imprisoning whistleblower doctors, etc is reprehensible behavior.

Links to this?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early...

China misled WHO into thinking the virus wasn't contagious up until Jan 20. On Jan 14th, WHO (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152) said the virus wasn't contagious on twitter.

China arrested scientist whistleblowers. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblo...

To top it all off, China attempted to blame the united states for it. https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-th...

The Atlantic has a thorough article as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trol...

There's no defending any communist regime, but I think the more likely explanation is that China had no reason to suspect that it was anything other than flu for a long time. They made it worse by trying to "manage" the panic by deleting social media posts, etc. And even otherwise, they put their economy ahead of the health of their citizens (like countries are doing even today, like the US).

As far as we know it was identified as a novel pathogen on the 26th December. Its actually hard to know where to collect the sample from, and if you don't know what you're looking for, its extremely easy to miss. You can't just put a virus under a microscope. Its not unreasonable to assume that they didn't have any confirmation for a couple of weeks that the virus they sequenced was the exact same virus for all of the other cases. You need to develop a fool-proof protocol for a diagnostic test that has minimal false-negatives. No easy task to do in 2 weeks, etc, etc...

They could start by shutting down all of the wet markets.

They've done that.

I thought they have only banned the farming and consumption of wild animals? I can't find any reference to banning wet markets.

They haven't done it permanently yet though

Edit: For the downvoters, here's evidence of a TEMPORARY ban

https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-chinese-we...

Please refute me with evidence of a permanent ban. Otherwise, you're being counter productive

Did the US pay reparations to essentially all the nations for the 1918 flu? This originated among cattle in Kansas, and killed 50 million people: more than WW1 and WW2 combined.

Do you have sources for such a claim?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Hypotheses_about_t...

The above claim that it started in Kansas is one hypothesis among many others. This is another hypothesis from the same wikipedia section: "In 1993, Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the 1918 flu for the Pasteur Institute, asserted the former virus was likely to have come from China."

WHO has commended China for their transparency... your statement is the opposite of reality.

I think that is a slippery slope. Once it was known, other countries did nothing to stop the spread either by allowing free travel rather than going into a lock-down mode. Each country put their economy ahead of the well-being of their citizens. The US is still allowing free travel between states knowing full well that its going to make it worse.

A lot of countries did a poor job of the initial handling of the outbreak, which is why we're in this mess right now. If we're going to demand reparations from countries for a cover-up and exacerbating the situation, it shouldn't be limited to just China.

If China had been more forthcoming with the nature of the virus, instead of ramping up both internal and external censorship, perhaps the world would have been better prepared. Instead their KGB equivalent went into overdrive. Do you know that in addition to admonishing and disappearing doctors and scientists who dared to blow the whistle, at least one multimillionaire tycoon has been disappeared for criticizing the response? The CCP puts the CCP first, before both global and Chinese citizens.

And before anyone accuses me of nationalism, the US has its own share of worldbuilding to answer for, and our response is also difficult to excuse as US intelligence was no doubt aware of the true danger, considering papers regarding R0 and lethality and such have been floating around since early January. Like credit, assign blame where it is due. The behavior of the CCP is not a reflection on the Chinese people.

People are blaming China didn't do proper job in the initial one month, but ignore what US did barely nothing in the following two months with knowing it's a dangerous virus.

And also they think one organization can know everything and recognize a global Pandemic just with a few cases. Oh man, if this kind of decision maker existed, We should do whatever we can to bring him/her to the coding industry. We will have bug-free softwares with his/her insight.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fl7m3z/the_fir...

This is a straw man argument.

Most Americans are angry at their own government's response to a catastrophe, AND angry at the CCP for creating the catastrophe. (No, not the virus. The catastrophe is the virus' spread when it was preventable.)

I disagree. We have to understand that this is a massive externality of two decisions made by the Chinese Communist Party:

1.) Not fully enforcing laws regarding wildlife with wet markets, and additionally not having strict enough laws based on experiences with SARS, due to domestic pressure from a sizable group supported by wet markets.

2.) Initial suppression of communications from doctors in Wuhan trying to sound the alarm, including forcing written apologies for "spreading rumors". This suppression allowed for the disease to hit a massive spike due to not cancelling Wuhan's New Years feast.

While the citizens of China were victimized by this horrifically themselves, this doesn't change the culpability of the CCP.

Yes, other countries didn't handle it, but the root cause is the CCP's decisions, both long term and short term. India has a billion people as well, and is also densely populated. We don't see diseases coming from India on a regular basis.

Edit:

I want to add that as a human being, I've been horribly disappointed for years that we have collectively helped oppress over a billion people in China by propping up a government that doesn't respect individual rights via trade. Yes, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, but they are under the yoke of a regime that fails them. Other governments fail their citizens as well, but you don't "dissappear" if you complain about these failings publicly.

I value the wonderful contributions and accomplishments of the Chinese people. I just wish I wasn't complicit in them being under the thumb of an authoritarian government.

I mean, this is basically sanctions, right? I guess I would prefer those in charge to weigh the value of holding people responsible vs the chaos that sanctions on China would bring.

How about reparations from the WHO, for telling countries not to close their borders for fear of “stigma”?

Coverup, because every country has things that can cause problems for others.

China should have used their resources to seal everything and everyone the minute they knew. I agree with Trump on this one, they should have stopped it there. Bats, civets were all linked to previous infections and we know bats have other viruses waiting for us

They did and now there are no new cases from local transmission.

Do you have any proof of that or any way to confirm the data they provided? Some people seem to think that a country known for lying, murdering and disappearing whistleblowers suddenly is an example of transparency and honesty

So do you trust statistics from America then?

I trust their statistics and words. Do you?

But either way, now is too late. The entire world got it and tens of millions will de directly or indirectly.

This

How about this. Next time this happens, instantaneous travel and trade ban. Full stoppage.

China moved heaven and earth to stop the virus from spreading. If anyone should pay reparations it's the US for breaking quarantine and spreading the virus when china told them not to.

The lack of sanitary standards in everyday life has always been shocking to me whenever I've visited China to be honest. People often spit on the streets and cough and sneeze without covering their faces, even in the big modern cities.

Someone even vomited on my shoe in a subway station once and then just walked away without even acknowledging that they did it. I'm really not surprised that these diseases show a tendency to start in China.

In Hong Kong and Taiwan it's rather different - hand sanitizer is readily available and people actually wash their hands after using the restroom, etc.

Even in surrounding (and much poorer) South East Asian nations people seem to be much better at maintaining a better level of general hygiene.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com