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Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

China locked down Wuhan much earlier than Italy did. And they did it harder. Totalitarian states have an advantage in situations like that.

The numbers are probably not accurate, but there is no place where the numbers are accurate. Case fatality rates go from less than 1% to more than 10%. In France, on the official website where they give the numbers, it is clearly written "we don't test everyone, the actual number of cases is higher", and deaths are "of COVID-19 patients dying in hospitals". All numbers are made up, because there is no way to know the actual numbers.

And don't tell me that anything after January was China's fault. It is not like governments around the world didn't know what happened there. Maybe the general public wasn't well informed but it is trivial for a government to be aware of an event of such scale. No, China may be to blame for the initial cases, but for the pandemic phase, it is completely our fault.

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China has a long, long history of suppressing access to information though. Not just in reporting false data, but also in limiting the press from investigating issues themselves. Are you honestly saying that Japan and the US have a comparable history?

> And don't tell me that anything after January was China's fault. It is not like governments around the world didn't know what happened there.

Both are possible, and both are very likely. China suppressed information to save face, and many other countries were incompetent in responding to the information they did have access to.

> Are you honestly saying that Japan and the US have a comparable history?

This is exactly the point of parent comment: people are simply repeating the same narrative based on "the history" as if we are still in cold war and it is impossible to know what really happened in China, while this is no longer true.

Surely the situation is not ideal, in that you still need hours to read between lines and investigate, China must improve on this, but the virus just showed us one thing: being dismissive about anything coming out of China may lead to a global disaster. We should either try to understand, or cut ties with China.

Trump has elevated Chinese issues into familiar grievance politics that many people are unable to assess the situation impartially. I've seen so many posts on western social media of conditions in quarantined Chinese cities being suppressed or dismissed as propaganda/shill that people are failing to accept reality, deluding themselves into unpreparedness. Also many are simply ignorant of Chinese-western relationship dynamics to comment usefully.

The fact is, China has always been on don't trust and verify relationship. You don't listen to what they say, but watch what they do. And China is one of the most watched country by foreign analysis and intelligence officials everywhere. If shutting down a city and then the country is less of an urgent indicator than their numbers collated together during an uncharted event, then you're focusing on the wrong thing. This is well understood by people in China policy who cultivate relationships with Chinese counterparts as part of intelligence gathering... intelligence that countries failed to act on. For example the Chinese CDC was basically modeled after and trained by the US CDC. There are many unofficial channels between Chinese and HK/Taiwan/US medical communities which is one reason why HK and Taiwan was so ahead of the curve. There's also thousands of expats in China and millions of Chinese diaspora with connections to the mainland. There's no shortage of information on a massively public crisis like this, there are only people who don't know how to look, or looked and decided to ignore what they found. And more disconcertingly, on a diplomatic level between western countries - the possibility that information isn't being shared behind the usual channels because lack of US leadership in the last few years has undermined world order.

> We should either try to understand

Try to understand, precisely, what?

Try to understand what happened in China, what is happening and what does all these mean, instead of being dismissive on anything coming out of China, claiming they are lies and propaganda.

> what happened in China

covid

> what is happening

covid

> what does all these mean

No idea, what does all these mean?

> instead of being dismissive

I didn't dismiss, I asked. Answer the question.

> claiming they are lies and propaganda

No, you just said that. I asked a question. Answer the question please, to wit, What am I being asked to understand.

Aww, look at that. You can't answer the question so surprise! the downvotes.

China suppressed covid information because that's it's nature; deny until it can't just deny any more. Now exactly the same, downvotes against something because you just can't answer it- what's Chinese for "the leopard can't change it's spots"?

It is impossible to trust information that comes out of country that suppresses freedom of the press.

It's a very simple cause-and-effect.

It is not like western channels were truthful all the time. Keeping America, compare fox news information with msnbc. No way both are telling truth about cornavirus.

Answer this without getting terribly confused, which of the following is a large country, which one is not a country:

a) Fox News

b) China

You would be surprised, but fox news is what is coming out of America. And currently American president is taking facts from there and disseminated them in press conferences.

And half the population dislike Trump. And they can criticise him freely. And do.

But as you ignored the last question (Answer: China is a big country, not Fox News), here's a new one for you. Which Chinese guy named Li Wenliang tried to warn people the shit was hitting the fan and then got seriously slapped down for it because reality wasn't what president Xi wanted to hear? And then died of exactly what he was trying to warn about?

As my Chinses is poor may I ask a favour of you, that you translate this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/%E6%9D%8... for us, please.

Thank you.

American doctor was fired for talking about lack of materials for doctors and nurses.

I understand what you are talking about, but there was enough data public about China having trouble in January. And there was that report from secret service that was known by goverment and became public later. The situation being bad in China was not opaque or unknown. They dis not actually managed to make it much of secret.

And right now, "Chinese are lying" is used as propaganda to make Americans think that situation is quite good and defensive measures are unnecessary. It just can't possibly be that America has taken lead in infected. America ia the greatest always and in everything. It just can't be, it would be just fine to open economy and it is all hoax.

Well, as you seem to struggle with that one too, the clue's in the question - the guy's name was Li Wenliang!

Anyway

> American doctor was fired for talking about lack of materials for doctors and nurses

Link please. Then we'll see if it's so, and if so, if there's any comparison.

> but there was enough data public about China having trouble in January

Indeed there was. I used that info to prepare BTW. And it only got out because the CCP could not suppress it totally. So "the CCP failed to suppress..." is not the same as "the CCP published...". Indeed, you said it better than I did: "They di[d] not actually managed to make it much of secret"

Wenliang had more balls and brains than the entire CCP put together. I salute the gent.

> And right now, "Chinese are lying"

Not The Chinese. Not Wenliang and those like him. The CCP and their mouthpieces.

> It just can't possibly be that America has taken lead in infected

The US fucked up monumentally and will pay the price. That much the US recognises, and all of it will do in just a very few weeks.

BTW could you translate that letter for us?

A source on recent press expulsions in China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/business/media/china-expe...

And the US expelled chinese journalists as well

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/02/washington-sla...

Of course we play it off as being "fair" and setting quotas.

> The numbers are probably not accurate, but there is no place where the numbers are accurate.

There's a huge difference between accuracy and unadulterated deception. If the numbers are off by 10%, you can claim it's inaccurate, but if the numbers are off by a lot more, it starts moving into deception territory. Right now, assuming the stories about urns being delivered to funeral homes are accurate, it sounds like numbers might be off my 2x or more. That's deception.

Maybe. But it is really hard to find an explanation on why every medical statistics (severe rate, hospitalization rate, death rate, average time in hospital, average recovery time, etc) seems to hold true and verified by other countries, and they can still fake their death count (and only death count).

On the other hand, the number of urns being delivered to funeral homes can be easily explained. For example, the urns story talks about a fact, the amount of empty urns being delivered to funeral homes exceeds death count. But selling urns is marketized and people could pick their preferred combination of style, size and price, so this can be well explained. The story then goes ahead and matches this fact-based but pointless number with "random users on social media claims 3500 urns will be delivery daily during next two weeks". I mean, that's smelly.

> seems to hold true and verified by other countries

Sure they were.

Mind giving an example of what doesn't match?

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