As New Coronavirus Spread, China's Old Habits Delayed Fight

[at140]

At critical turning points, Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=MoreIn&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&action=click&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article&region=Footer&contentCollection=Global%20Health

[Blues Heron]

1. Time for the two-minute hate on China I guess

grrrrrrrr

[uppityperson]

3. You missed the point. Chinese gvt mismanagement of this is

a huge issue.

[Blues Heron]

4. they shut down major cities

ask yourself what that would be like here before you slam them too much

[at140]

6. China was LATE to take action

and took action after it was determined that the virus was spreading faster than expected.
And also when people in other countries began coming down with that virus and EVERYONE
of those had connection to China.

Yeah so China is finally taking action after they got caught hiding it,
and let us hop it is not too late.

[Blue_true]

8. A week before the first cases started showing up,

the government arrested 8 healthcare workers that were on an online site sharing that they were seeing patients with SARS like ailments.

Maybe instead of arresting them, the government had visited their hospitals and looked into what was going on, the virus could have been contained.

[Blues Heron]

9. Got a link for that?

[Blue_true]

11. Sorry, they were not arrested. Called in and detained for a few hours.

The article was on the news wires. I don't pull in links, you can look it up try "8 people had warned about coronavirus", that should cause the article that I read to popup in the search results.

[Hekate]

12. Defensive much? Why? Check out the Los Angeles Times today, op-ed about hysteria...

The Coronavirus Hysteria, Katherine A. Mason. The hysteria she is referring to is China's, replicating their reaction to SARS, which she wrote about in "Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic."

Then and now, WHO and the rest of the world endorsed their (over)reaction, thus reinforcing it. But it is China itself that started it.

Recommended article, page A-11, February 3, 2020. There's your "link," with which I am sure you can find the article.

[Blues Heron]

14. Seeing a lot of ignorant China bashing on here

I'd like to see links and sources for the hysterical claims - one guy here revised his scare mongering when pressed for a link. A lot of it verges into tin foil hat territory ("weaponized" for example - from the scary lab in Wuhan)

[Hekate]

18. I disposed of that one by pointing out that measles is itself "airborne" by its very nature...

...as live virus are breathed out of the lungs of the sick and inhaled at some remove by the not-yet-sick.

Use facts. People are scared, and I can't really blame them, considering the anti-science SOBs we have in Washington right now, as well as social media (especially FB). The entire planet is connected by airplanes, and airplanes are rather nasty hotboxes of rebreathed air. Mass transit of all kinds connects us. Back in the day, the AIDS virus spread along the long-distance truck routes in India as truckers did what a lot of truckers do at rest stops. The defense was education about safe sex, not shutting down trucking.

But we're not all gonna die. Science and facts are our best defense. As a nurse friend said of th current situation, use hand sanitizer a lot.

Still, my sis and I are not going to be able to travel to visit our very sick brother for several months; myself, because I am within 2 weeks of total knee replacement surgery, and herself, because she just got out of almost a week in the hospital after a very bad bout of asthma which may actually be COPD (never smoked, ever). We are, by age and condition, now in a fairly high risk group for a bunch of shit we were not before, and you do have to weigh things.

Carry on.

[uppityperson]

2. Some people are freaking out at how fast the #s went up

Missing this part of the story. Yes, having a new virus is concerning, but so is public health mismanagement.

[Blue_true]

10. The situation seems to have been mismanaged, people

turned away from treatment and left on their own. Popup hospitals that are used during crisis then shutdown instead of being made into facilities that gave citizens permanent access to healthcare.

[dalton99a]

5. Dictatorship has its downsides

WUHAN, China — A mysterious illness had stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. “Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients.

“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”

In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.” ...

On the last day of 2019, after Dr. Li’s message was shared outside the group, the authorities focused on controlling the narrative. The police announced that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak.

That same day, Wuhan’s health commission, its hand forced by those “rumors,” announced that 27 people were suffering from pneumonia of an unknown cause. Its statement said there was no need to be alarmed.

Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist, went back to work after being reprimanded. On Jan. 10, he treated a woman for glaucoma. He did not know she had already been infected with the coronavirus, probably by her daughter. They both became sick. So would he.

[at140]

7. WOW..your info says volumes about the dictatorship ruling China

Thank you for posting.

[Hekate]

13. Yep, that sounds like China, and it's not "hate" to be truthfully informed about authoritarian ...

...governments.

[Blues Heron]

15. What's the source of this - you wrote this or copied it from somewhere?

There's no source for your "quote"

[dalton99a]

16. From the link in the OP

[Blues Heron]

17. OK thanks