Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 140 posts

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#61

Post by yread »

taneq wrote: post #44
apatters wrote: post #20

Just dropping a link here, anyone who is concerned about the coronavirus and has opinions about it should imo read the daily situation reports from the WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... In 5 minutes a day you will have a better informed perspective than what any news sites provide, my own alarm has lessened considerably after reading these.

I just ran across this link ( https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594 ) suggesting that the official numbers coming out of China may be significantly understated. I'm not familiar with the site, though - are they a reliable news source? Not sure how much credence to give it.

I think the most likely explanation for that is that they confused the numbers of quarantined->infected and infected->dead people

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#62

Post by fqye »

coblers wrote: post #54
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #36

The amount of virulent (pun intended) hatred of the Chinese government really shows here. Can't say it's not well deserved but you can at least give them some credit for the quarantine.

Credit? They only acted because they had to. Doctors were arrested weeks before for "spreading rumors". Their inability to act has led to this thing spreading beyond their borders.

Not arrested. They were given a warning and asked to sign a sort of declaration that they agreed what they said were wrong then were sent to home. Still bad but not the same as being arrested.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#63

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

dehrmann wrote: post #15

> Two new hospitals, with 2,600 beds in total, were completed in 10 days , built by more than 2,000 migrant workers China.

Per another HN thread on that, they're really not hospitals so much as warehouses with beds in them. Not that they necessarily need fully equipped hospital facilities for the purpose of housing and treating the infected, but it's still a mischaracterization to call them hospitals.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#64

Post by zozbot234 »

cjslep wrote: post #59
raxxorrax wrote: post #49

You can only lock down a city in a dictatorship. So I certainly would not approve of this behavior. Additionally any speculation about the effectiveness of the quarantine is futile in my opinion.

What? US state and federal emergency responders have plans and tools for locking down a city, too.

Yup. Specifically, many people have speculated that FEMA has contingency plans where they would even be able to set up internment camps for as many people as needed, if required to quarantine an epidemic or other national emergency. Not too far from what's going on in Wuhan.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#65

Post by mkl »

zozbot234 wrote: post #50
bitbrewer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not agree. Government everywhere makes mistakes under emergencies. Just look at past responses to hurricanes in the US and the current wildfire in Australia. Maybe you could say every government is incompetent. But the fact is that China reported the cases very early to WHO, get the genes mapped very quickly, and decisively locked down Hebei. So I would say so far China has shown competence and resolve, against a…

They were very late even in informing the people in Wuhan or Hubei. Even after everyone in the West knew about this new SARS-like virus, people there were still going around with no face masks or anything, no precautions at all. Disgraceful and a total failure.

Face masks likely don't help much: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317...

WHO says they can, but only if used very right, and only alongside other measures: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of...

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#66

Post by yorwba »

taneq wrote: post #44
apatters wrote: post #20

Just dropping a link here, anyone who is concerned about the coronavirus and has opinions about it should imo read the daily situation reports from the WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... In 5 minutes a day you will have a better informed perspective than what any news sites provide, my own alarm has lessened considerably after reading these.

I just ran across this link ( https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3871594 ) suggesting that the official numbers coming out of China may be significantly understated. I'm not familiar with the site, though - are they a reliable news source? Not sure how much credence to give it.

The story is implausible because it rests on top-secret data about the "real" number of cases being shared with Tencent News and making it all the way to the lowly data-entry operator updating their website. All those disease-tracking websites in China I'm aware of link to a long list of local government press releases and seem to simply aggregate the numbers in those.

https://xw.qq.com/act/qgfeiyan

https://news.sina.cn/zt_d/yiqing0121

https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia

I don't believe they have privileged access to government secrets. If the government wants to hide something, the last thing they're going to do is share that data with a news org.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#67

Post by DarthGhandi »

apatters wrote: post #20

Just dropping a link here, anyone who is concerned about the coronavirus and has opinions about it should imo read the daily situation reports from the WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2... In 5 minutes a day you will have a better informed perspective than what any news sites provide, my own alarm has lessened considerably after reading these.

The real terrifying thing is how many people will ignore international expert consensus to push their own worldview narratives.

China is bad, everyone else is good. Anything more complicated than that is essentially discarded.

I think they've doing a good job. The world health organisation does. What's the actual problem here other than the usual China flamewars?

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#68

Post by zozbot234 »

mkl wrote: post #65
zozbot234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were very late even in informing the people in Wuhan or Hubei. Even after everyone in the West knew about this new SARS-like virus, people there were still going around with no face masks or anything, no precautions at all. Disgraceful and a total failure.

Face masks likely don't help much: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317... WHO says they can, but only if used very right, and only alongside other measures: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of...

They don't have to be foolproof, it's enough if they're better than wearing no mask at all.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#69

Post by yread »

bitbrewer wrote: post #28
mucholove wrote: post #17

Sacrifice my ass. Their incompetence led to a province and its people being hung out to dry. They let this problem get out of hand—and now the people there suffer. How? They ignored the doctors who attempted to report the problem on New Year’s day. They (the CCP) take no precautionary measures until their political regime is threatened. So many things done wrong—including maintaining wet market controls up a few year…

Do not agree. Government everywhere makes mistakes under emergencies. Just look at past responses to hurricanes in the US and the current wildfire in Australia. Maybe you could say every government is incompetent. But the fact is that China reported the cases very early to WHO, get the genes mapped very quickly, and decisively locked down Hebei. So I would say so far China has shown competence and resolve, against a…

Chinese government definitely doesn't have it easy on the internet. Whole host of conspiracy theorists were saying: wtf couple hundred infected why are they locking down cities and closing provinces - they must know something we don't. And now you get people saying they didn't do enough.

In this thread people are still sharing articles about how there akshually 10s thousands of dead and how the virus was intentionally released from a government lab. And at the same time surprised that the government arrested people spreading panic on social media.

It took them a month to recognize atypical viral pneumonia and report it to WHO. Another ~10 days to isolate the virus (no mean feat, read the paper) and sequence it. Here in the Netherlands people would be just sent home on paracetamol - I had a pneumonia couple years back so I speak from experience.

Re: China Sacrifices a Province to Save the World From Coronavirus

#70

Post by DarthGhandi »

coblers wrote: post #54
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #36

The amount of virulent (pun intended) hatred of the Chinese government really shows here. Can't say it's not well deserved but you can at least give them some credit for the quarantine.

Credit? They only acted because they had to. Doctors were arrested weeks before for "spreading rumors". Their inability to act has led to this thing spreading beyond their borders.

Would this quarantine happen in your country or any Western country? I doubt it.
Post reply on HN