Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

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> What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road.

I thought the same and I have no family ties there. (Though back in the early 00's I had fun studying in China and had wished to return.)

I'm more worried about what happens if we don't speak out. While we need to fix our Western democracies, we can't ignore the biggest threat to freedom in the world.

I think this virus situation could potentially unite the world in looking critically at supply chains and the CCP's motives and behavior.

When this is all over, I hope every county tallies the bill for the virus and subtracts that from their debt to China. The CCP lied, hid information, and told us to keep travel open while simultaneously welding people inside their homes. They then shifted blame to the West and threatened to cut off critical medical supplies. It's worse than negligent, and they should lose their investments overseas to repay the damage done.

> When this is all over, I hope every county tallies the bill for the virus and subtracts that from their debt to China. They lied, hid information, and told us to keep travel open while simultaneously welding people inside their homes. It's worse than negligent, and they should lose their investments overseas to repay the damage done.

I think you're being generous to the administration for assigning blame to China. We didn't really trust anything coming out of China before so why would we conveniently be expected to trust China regarding the virus? There was also plenty of time to see warning signs in countries like South Korea... not to mention several countries that much higher risk for the spread of the virus have contained it (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore).

If you are to believe Trump then he saved a lot of lives by banning travel from China... and then killed a lot of people by doing absolutely nothing after that.

> I think you're being generous to the administration for assigning blame to China.

I pay the administration no mind whatsoever. The way this has been handed by Trump is beyond incompetent. Placing the blame on China is an opinion I reached entirely on my own while the president was still out golfing.

I'm speaking out because I want our leadership to take action. I'll be asking my representatives to stick China with the bill. (They probably won't listen since I've been begging them to shut down and that hasn't happened. But maybe we can collectively turn this meme into compelling policy.)

> why would we conveniently be expected to trust China

China had an obligation to its citizens and to the world. The CCP decided they didn't care if the virus went worldwide. That's homicide, and they should pay for making people whole again.

I'm probably going to lose family members because of this, and I'm very mad about it.

> China had an obligation to its citizens and to the world. The CCP decided they didn't care if the virus went worldwide. That's homicide, and they should pay for making people whole again.

I'm no fan of the CCP, but this is ridiculous. In your hypothetical world where China takes action to prevent this, what would they have done? The common reaction from public health professionals to the Hubei lockdown was that it was unprecedented and was unlikely to work (e.g. [1]). Are you saying that it's reasonable to expect them to have done more, sooner?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/unprecedented-chinese-...

Permanent ban on wet markets before December first 2019 would have been a good start. A media campaign to get people to stop buying into "traditional Chinese medicine" would have been good too. Make them use that propaganda machine for something good for once.

No excuses for this one. China could have done something and not only choose not to, but actively attempted to surpress information about the disease. They're lying about every number related to this crisis. They are manipulating the WHO. This is a country which claims that "only" a "few hundred died" in tiananmen square. The 50 cent army actively brigades many types of anti-CCP dissent at home and abroad.

Yes. It's reasonable for them to have done more sooner. They had an obligation to do more sooner.

> In your hypothetical world where China takes action to prevent this, what would they have done?

Why did they ask for international travel to remain open while simultaneously limiting internal travel?

Why did they threaten to stop shipments of the medicines they manufacture?

Why did they silence the whistleblowers?

Why are they telling their people the virus originated from the US and Italy?

Why did they decline aid or let other health organizations put boots on the ground to measure things?

Why are they strong-arming the WHO? And why did it take so long for the WHO to declare this as a pandemic?

Why are there more cremated remains than their official death toll?

I'm not imagining anything. I'm looking at their actions.

> Are you saying that it's reasonable to expect them to have done more, sooner?

Yes.

They had a better understanding of the virus than the rest of the world and they owed us complete transparency.

We had an understanding of the virus and the dangers. Not only that we had real examples of it spreading outside of China. We chose to do nothing.

The world had time to evaluate the trickle of news and intelligence agencies knew earlier. Some countries took heed and prepared and are now looking at a different Future. Did they take responsibility for themselves? Who is responsible for the future of Taiwan or South Korea? China? The US?

Blame is an important tool for the structuring of responsibility, but responsibility is ultimately about results — but whose results? And who shall take up our burdens?

We should take up our burdens, since we can only blame ourselves for not preparing. I don’t think the issue was believing in China (as you stated China is known for suppressing information), the issue was hubris. There were plenty of signals that the virus was spreading and still we did not do anything effective while some other countries did. We have our own leaders to blame and it would be more effective to select better leaders than to blame external sources.

Also if you're going to demand reparations or place blame, you should be blaming the people who are still ignoring this virus in America and needlessly spreading it in spite of authority figures and evidence not to. China isn't blaming the first person that got the virus, and we shouldn't be blaming the first country. At what point are you going to start shifting blame from who started it to who's continuing it?

We should be focusing on the people who currently still aren't dong anything: megachurches, Spring Breakers in Florida, virus-change deniers.

It doesn't matter if you got it from Trump or not, my points regarding the idea that somehow "China" is at fault still stands.

With sufficient preparation and action the effects could have been mitigated. Other countries like Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have shown this to be possible (granted they are smaller, but also arguably at higher risk due to their trade with China and also much much denser than the USA).

But probably the most important reasons why you cannot blame China is that

1) the virus cannot be contained, even if you tried (or Europe, or any of the hundreds of countries it spread to are just as easily culpable for not containing especially since Trump banned China travel early on)

2) the virus just happened to have mutated from an animal in China and it just happened to have been highly contagious. This was just bad luck on China's part. You can also read Bill Gates' explanation for WHY in this video of the reddit posts from him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwmLbhA8Kyw

Basically, these viruses are very common and in the past the US/Mexico was responsible for H1N1 (Swine Flu)... except in this case we all just got unlucky and this one has a long incubation period, high transmissibility, mild symptoms (leading to hubris from infected people) and a total lack of global preparation.

I understand you are angry and have family members at risk, but that doesn't excuse you from prejudicial blame that will burden the people of a country of billions of people for something they did not have control over and were not responsible for. And it also will not save your family members and is wholly unproductive (as is all mis-assigned blame). The severity of the virus at this point has little to do with the virus itself and more to do with our total lack of preparation, lack of action because a) "trusting China" is not a valid excuse, as we've never done so in the past, and b) China reported the virus well in advance, not to mention the epidemic spread wildly in South Korea and Europe well before it was noticed in the USA.

China looks to be bouncing back ... how bad has COVID affected their economy vs. all other economies? Is COVID going to help them in the global economy? If so, I wouldn't put it past China as unleashing this virus on the world purposely.

Before COVID China had SARS. Why are these virus all coming from there?

Viruses can mutate and come from anywhere. Granted that animal market probably was not very hygienic, H1N1, Spanish Flu (which did not originate from Spain), pox viruses, mad cow, all did not originate from China. You're probably holding this opinion because those are the freshest in your mind?

Not into conspiracies and this as of now has been unproven. Though Wuhan is now open for business giving China a head start on restarting their economy while everyone elses is completely stopped. Do you not think that is going to boost their economy and make it stronger then almost all others???

Also keep in mind China is a massive country with over 2 billion people. Just by having a denser population they are more likely to catch a mutation.

I think this rhetoric is a bit over the top. If anything this pandemic is going to buy China goodwill and stature based on their relatively strong posturing on the way out of crisis (vis a vis US) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-us-traditionally-le...

Also they have supplied aid to Italy and Spain (although also screwed up with medical supplies to Spain).

> although also screwed up with medical supplies to Spain

The "screwing up" of medical supplies in Spain is due to the incompetence and corruption of the Spanish government. They tried to arrange directly for the buying of supplies, bypassing the common importation route used by health officials. Unfortunately, and despite the repeated warnings of the Chinese embassy and many hospital managers, they ended up buying the supplies to a non-homologated Chinese startup, so the supplies cannot be used.

They also screwed up (faulty masks and/or test) at the minimum with Netherlands, Czech Republic and Turkey.

So Roko's basilisk was China all along.

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