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Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

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Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#141

Post by justaguyhere »

phoenixstrike wrote: post #3

Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having…

What is the reason behind doctored numbers? I mean, I can understand during normal time - governments and politicians and bureaucrats like all the time to make themselves look good. But during a pandemic/emergency, lying is only going to backfire, no?

Like, how long can they lie? a week? a month? Eventually they're going to get caught, no?

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#142

Post by rfoo »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #135
rfoo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#143

Post by ronsor »

hujun wrote: post #138

now days hacker news is often filled non-tech related discussion, specially anything relate to China or politics; come on guys, this is Hacker news, not political news; if you are so passion about politics, go to some forum dedicate for those things;

Statistics is a science

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#144

Post by [deleted] »

hajile wrote: post #108
coliveira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are wild accusations against Chinese government, when in fact we now see that they put the most stringent measures to avoid the escalation of this virus, which in fact they succeeded in doing, at least inside China. On the other hand, I live in one of the early focus of the virus in the USA, and the federal and local authorities told us to just wash hands, avoid handshakes, and continue our normal life. Against…

China lied about literally EVERYTHING. Claims the first case was in December. It was [middle of November]( https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.htm... ) Other countries didn't even know there was much going on until December 30 thanks to Dr Li Wenliang [source]( https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... ). He suddenly catches the disease and dies -- big coincidence in my opin…

[deleted]

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#145

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

rfoo wrote: post #142
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#146

Post by rovolo »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #98
tensor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's reporting in no way made it seem less urgent. The reported fatality rate hasn't significantly changed from their reports.

In December, China's influence caused the WHO -not- to report human to human transmission. This was despite the known infection of healthcare workers, and counter to the reports made from Taiwan. Human-human transmission is one of the fundamental elements used to determine the urgency of an outbreak.

I'm looking at the timeline on wikipedia, and it looks like you should be saying 'January' instead of 'December':

Dec 30: The Wuhan Municipal Health Committee reported to the WHO that 27 people had been diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown cause.

Dec 31: China contacts the WHO and informs them of "cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan".

Jan 4: The WHO waited for China to release information about the "mysterious new pneumonia virus".[51] The United Nations agency activated its incident-management system at the country, regional and global level and was standing ready to launch a broader response if it was needed.

Jan 9: The WHO confirmed that the novel coronavirus had been isolated from one person who had been hospitalised. The WHO also reported that Chinese authorities had acted swiftly, identifying the novel coronavirus within weeks of the onset of the outbreak, with the total number of positively tested people being 41. The first death from the virus occurred in a 61-year-old man who was a regular customer at the market.

Jan 14: Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of WHO's emerging diseases unit said that there had been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus, mainly small clusters in families, adding that "it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission"

Jan 20: After two medical staff were infected in Guangdong, China announced that the virus was human-to-human transmissible … the WHO has said [it] is deeply concerning and could signal evidence of a much larger outbreak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%932...

China probably could have informed people earlier, but it seems easier to not tell the WHO than to pressure the WHO to keep a secret. Also, there's a difference between possible human-to-human and confirmed human-to-human transmission.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#147

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

mikem170 wrote: post #132
viklove wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't deal in speculation and rumours sorry. But you trust a known liar (the Chinese government)? Sounds like you're a bit biased here. > US propaganda So the US spreads propaganda, but not China? I don't understand how an educated individual could spout this nonsense anywhere. edit: Am I getting downvotes because HN thinks the Chinese government doesn't have a history of lying? Anyone remember Tiananmen Square,…

Both the U.S. and China spread propaganda. Both governments do bad things. Both do good things. The world is not black and white. You don't need to pit the two against each other. The world is a big place, with a varied history. We're all people.

The US doesn't have an Ai Fen [1] as far as I can tell.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu...

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#148

Post by hungryhobo »

rumanator wrote: post #57
phoenixstrike wrote: post #3

Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having…

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, You are talking about the regime that fired the previous official in charge of the chinese government's response to it's covid19 outbreak for aledgedly falsifying information, and afterwards inexplicably decided to officially leave out from their covid19 infection statistics any patient who was confirmed to carry the virus but subjectively wasn't experiencing major symptoms…

Or you are just too deep in your personal bias. Even if you don't trust the numbers at the face value, there are external things you can observe. Provincial movement bans are lifted, factories are returning to work, restaurants are opening again. No government, authoritarian or not, would make that call if the cases are not under control.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#149

Post by StavrosK »

tigermelon wrote: post #130
StavrosK wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I could care less" could mean anything other than "I don't care completely", including "I care passionately about this, it is the thing I care most about", thus making it meaningless. If I said "I could work less", would you assume I meant "I work almost zero hours"?

True there's ambiguity there and the sentence alone really only conveys that the topic isn't one that the stater wants to focus on any further at the moment. Generally however, I think there's some assumption or perhaps prior demonstration that implies a lack of care to start. It's tough to describe. "I could care less what you do with your money" may come with a long understood history that not much care was given t…

There are two ways to look at this: What the words actually communicate, and what you know them to mean. If you told an alien "I could care less", they would have very little information as to your state of caring. Therefore, the phrase fails in that respect.

If, on the other hand, you treat it as a nonsensical synonym for "I don't care", then the phrase would well have been "gooble gooble goo" and it would make no difference, since everyone knows what you mean when you say it.

I find arguing its correctness moot because there's no way to spin the sentence to be correct. At most, you can say "well, you got the point", and that's the end of it, at least when you're dealing with a descriptivist (which you aren't, in this case).

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#150

Post by gpapilion »

lostlogin wrote: post #129
maallooc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who assumes Japan's numbers are honest? We all know they've been cooking their numbers for the stupid olympics. At this point all I can believe are South Korea's numbers. They have transparent government unlike China, they have tested extensively unlike the US, Italy and Spain, and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries.

> and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries. Do you mean political climate? I don’t think the weather over regions that large can be generalised in any meaningful way.

I'm assuming the author is referring to the weather, and the fact Korea is colder in winter and spring.
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