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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

The regional government tried to shut down the news. That's inexcusable, but they are hardly alone on this.

Looking at your own reference from (the incredibly anti-China) National Review it was only Dec 25 that hospitals started taking it seriously (ie, they quarantined staff) and Dr. Wenliang sent a text about it on Dec 31 to colleages.

China notified the WHO on the same day (Dec 31), and gave infection numbers on Jan 3[1].

As someone who spends quite a lot of time trying to track down data in Australia I'd say 2 day turn around on the data isn't too bad.

I think people who want to blame China for this will, no matter what. I'd note that news on infectious diseases that didn't originate in China often took even longer to be widely known (eg MERS, Ebola outbreak, Zika outbreak)

[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

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> The regional government tried to shut down the news. That's inexcusable, but they are hardly alone on this.

Indeed - an Austrian ski resort is under investigation for deliberately hiding the extent of the infection as recently as February.

Its human nature.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/24/criminal-investi...

An Austrian ski resort is not the state, and does not have unlimited powers of censorship and arrest like China's one-party government.

You managed to miss the entire point.

I don't think I did. Please re-read the HN guidelines on comment etiquette, and then explain what you think I missed.

To expand on my own comment: when a private business (a ski resort, for example) decides to cover up the outbreak of a disease in a more-free country like Taiwan or the U.S., there are ways for the rest of society to route around this. When it's the government engaging in this cover-up, especially an authoritarian government with near-total information control, it's much harder to route around that kind of information suppression.

> … when a private business…

Ischgl isn't a private business: its a municipality* and the reports suggest that the cover-up included the entire valley: Galtür, Mathon, Kappl, See, etc.

* Something that would have taken you < 5 seconds to confirm for yourself.

Hence this is the government, i.e. similar (but yes, not identical) to a regional or national state authority in your example.

So,

1. to reinforce you point: 'cover-ups are prevalent in authoritarian states'. Agreed

2. and to re-make my point: '… apparently also in stable, affluent, western democracies where information flows like wine'.

It would appear that your attachment to your hypothesis that authoritarian states get away with this kind of corruption because of their control over information is preventing you from assimilating new information that this kind of corruption can happen just as easily in free democratic states.

Which should worry you, if you do indeed live in such a state and are hoping that information freedom and democracy is enough to protect you and yours.

You linked to a login-walled article where the section above the fold does not clearly make your point. The subtitle "hidden from authorities" would imply it wasn't authorities doing the hiding. You could have clarified this point in your initial response, instead of leaving an ambiguous sarcastic remark.

>if you do indeed live in such a state and are hoping that information freedom and democracy is enough to protect you and yours.

Never said that. I do think information freedom is preferable to the alternative.

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