Coronavirus: the Chinese Political Angle

[Double Edge]

Coronavirus latest updates: 54,000 people across country under community surveillance

3 dead so far. Are we doing a better job than most countries inspite of having a huge population.

I post the India related stuff here

I also post any science stuff there too. That thread is for the world except US & China.

I leave this thread for china & politics around it and the Americans in their own thread.

[Double Edge]

I am reading in CDF that the virus originated in USA as several Jan in USA were originally ascribed to Flu but have now been posthumously found to be corona related illness.

Well, its no longer crap said on the internet the Chinese FO spokesperson has said it now !!

He is encouraging people to repeat what a Canadian conspiracy website is saying. The one about the military games I posted earlier.

Holy crap !! I'm impressed with Canada's counter info ops. From being stolen from Canada the story has been changed to get the Chinese to say it was made in the US : D

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman tweets claim US military brought coronavirus to Wuhan | SCMP | Mar 13 2020

Text link for the internet challenged : P

"Zhao has a reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon with a trigger happy tweet finger, so Beijing can conveniently explain it away as rogue commentary in a personal capacity".

This term 'rogue' sound familiar, Oracle ? Pretty sure i've heard this same rogue pretext being employed elsewhere : )

[Double Edge]

Settled

[Oracle]

Well, its no longer crap said on the internet the Chinese FO spokesperson has said it now !!

He is encouraging people to repeat what a Canadian conspiracy website is saying. The one about the military games I posted earlier.

Holy crap !! I'm impressed with Canada's counter info ops. From being stolen from Canada the story has been changed to get the Chinese to say it was made in the US : D

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman tweets claim US military brought coronavirus to Wuhan | SCMP | Mar 13 2020

Text link for the internet challenged : P

"Zhao has a reputation for being a bit of a loose cannon with a trigger happy tweet finger, so Beijing can conveniently explain it away as rogue commentary in a personal capacity".

This term 'rogue' sound familiar, Oracle ? Pretty sure i've heard this same rogue pretext being employed elsewhere : )

Non-state actors or rouge PLA general? I guess, Pakistan and China, in the same breath.

[Oracle]

Settled

Settle what? President Trump as usual speaking like the bully.

This is what happens in a democracy. The other side, however autocratic, can do away with lies and propaganda, but when Trump says, that becomes racist. Democracies needs a Trump from time to time.

[Double Edge]

Non-state actors or rouge PLA general? I guess, Pakistan and China, in the same breath.

PLA general

Settle what?

As a reply to the Chinese CT thing.

[Oracle]

PLA general

As a reply to the Chinese CT thing.

A guy who owns a small store near my house said that Israel created the virus, and that Israel had themselves said it. Is Israel a man/woman to say it? Anyway, when challenged he did not even want to listen to me. I tried explaining the Vox video, but these semi-educated Indians are the worst lot. They read fake propaganda on FB and Whatsapp and consider those news. It's like a status symbol here, everybody has a smartphone, and everybody has a FB account, and also Whatsapp. What the F do these lot have to show on FB? FB is for show-off, or to hunt. They have nothing to show, and never learnt the art of hunting. I will celebrate when Mark Zuckerberg is behind bars, and FB and all its associated companies go bust.

[Double Edge]

A guy who owns a small store near my house said that Israel created the virus, and that Israel had themselves said it. Is Israel a man/woman to say it? Anyway, when challenged he did not even want to listen to me. I tried explaining the Vox video, but these semi-educated Indians are the worst lot. They read fake propaganda on FB and Whatsapp and consider those news. It's like a status symbol here, everybody has a smartphone, and everybody has a FB account, and also Whatsapp. What the F do these lot have to show on FB? FB is for show-off, or to hunt. They have nothing to show, and never learnt the art of hunting. I will celebrate when Mark Zuckerberg is behind bars, and FB and all its associated companies go bust.

Heard similar once from an LG washing machine demo guy about the detergent Ariel. He said it was an Israeli product and that Surf was better.

When asked what was wrong with an Israeli product I didn't get an answer.

Now LG recommends Ariel over Surf in their brochure so why was he pushing some other company for which he didn't have an answer either.

My mistake was I forgot to ask him who told him Ariel was Israeli made.

I then told them the difference was US (P&G are based in Ohio) and UK (Unilever which is HUL in India)

Unilever was started by a pair of brothers and in the case of P&G the husbands of two sisters, well over a hundred years ago.

[Oracle]

Chinese virus :D

[Double Edge]

^Comes from this Times report.

Chinese scientists destroyed proof of virus in December | Times (London) | Mar 01 2020

Philip Sherwell, Bangkok
Sunday March 01 2020, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times

Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.

A regional health official in Wuhan, centre of the outbreak, demanded the destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia on January 1. China did not acknowledge there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later.

The detailed revelations by Caixin Global, a respected independent publication, provide the clearest evidence yet of the scale of the cover-up in the crucial early weeks when the opportunity was lost to control the outbreak.

Censors have been rapidly deleting the report from the Chinese internet.

Caixin reported that several genomics companies sequenced the coronavirus by December 27 from samples from patients who had fallen sick in Wuhan.

There was a striking similarity between the new virus and the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus that killed nearly 800 people in 2002-3. But the news was shared with only a small group of medics and party officials.

The laboratory findings were relayed to officials in Beijing at the Centre for Disease Control (CDC). The information should have alerted national health chiefs to a looming crisis, but on January 3, the National Health Commission, China’s top medical authority, issued its own gagging orders. Laboratories were told not to release any information and to hand over or destroy the samples.

When a CDC team was sent to Wuhan on January 8, it was deliberately not informed that medical staff had already been infected by patients — a clear confirmation that the disease was contagious.

The cover-up was led by officials in Wuhan as provincial party chiefs prepared to gather for an annual meeting. The city then pressed ahead with a pot-luck dinner for 40,000 families to celebrate the lunar new year.

Only on January 20 was it made public, in an interview with Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory health expert who led the fight against Sars, that the disease was spreading between humans.

Wuhan,with a population of 11 million, was put into lockdown on January 23 as the communist authorities finally tried to control the spread of the disease.

[Wonderful Plans]

In the U.S.A. cities that will be hit hardest are the more densly populated cities like New York where you can't keep a distance because its overcrowded and then the more socially inclined and leftist cities like Los Angeles which aren't all that densely populated but people interract a lot more there than most cities and population is sky high. Cities with a more rightist and Republican lean will lose less people because their populations naturally keep a good distance and aren't prone to personal space invasion like them fags in California and Canada.

Then you should consider all those apartments and houses that are overcrowded with illegal immigrants. Got em sleepin in the tub, on the floor, in their closets, all their furniture. True story. I read numerous times about INS busts that yielded several dozen illegals squished into tiny apartments with conditions that were already borderline epidemic, throw the coronavirus in there and you got a match made in hell.

[Double Edge]

Full article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-blame/608332/

I imagine that opinion in agreement to this article is building. Particularly when lives will be lost. Will Italy look at China in the same way it did before the crisis. It's one thing to get goods made in China, quite another for "death" made in China.

After the crisis, whenever after is, the relationship with China cannot and should not go back to normal. Nothing, in any case, will go back to normal after the sheer scale of destruction becomes clear. Of course, the rest of the world will have to live with the Chinese leadership as long as it remains in power. But this pandemic should, finally, disabuse us of any remaining hope that the Chinese regime could be a responsible global actor. It is not, and it will not become one.

China is looking at a massive PR disaster once this covid thing cools down.

Will people blame China or will they hold their own govts accountable for failing to prevent the spread of this disease ?

If its the latter then the CCP gets a breather because technically anything outside their jurisdiction is somebody else's problem.

[Oracle]

^ That article Ironduke posted, is a damn good article. Calling out the CPC is not racism, and whoever thinks so is a bloody bigot.

[Double Edge]

From the author



Click the image to see the thread

His next tweet

China’s message is clear: The regime there is saying to the world, without shame or apology, that brutal technocracy is the way to deal with existential threats, in this case a virus

Every day, I see Americans and citizens of Western democracies doubting themselves, losing faith in their own governments but also their own systems. They point to China, and they say, ‘look how they’ve so quickly contained the virus, if only we could do the same’

^THIS

I’ve never been prouder to be American, and I’ve never loved this country as much as I do now, today. I’m lucky, and I thank God, that I was born here and not where my parents were born

Where were his parents born ?

Is this an odd reaction, when our government seems (and is) incompetent, when we watch a president so out of his depth, and so uniquely ill-suited for the moment? Perhaps.

What I see in our democracies, in Italy, Spain, France, and here at home, is community, solidarity, and, yes, "nationalism." We are under attack, and it's only natural that feel more strongly about who we are. This is an ideological nationalism, not an ethnic one

The authoritarian state might be "effective"—in the short run. However, if they don't do a good job, there are few who can pick up the slack, b/c there is fear, and there is rarely solidarity among citizens. All you have is a bet: that brutal technocrats will do the right thing

What I see in the US is one of the richer, if frightening, debates of my lifetime, and the sheer plurality of opinions and responses to the virus allows us a flexibility and nimbleness an autocratic state could never claim. And we do so, as Americans, without fear of persecution

Why? Because this is our country, and we *feel* that it's our country. My relatives in Egypt, unfortunately, will never know what that feels like, and I know they don't. I wish it were otherwise. When I try to describe it, they either long for it, or look at me with blank stares

He's Egyptian and i know what he means. oh yeah.

Is democracy a panacea? No. As with everything, there's a tradeoff and we might as well be frank about it. Brutal technocracies like China will do some things better than we do. But it will never be worth it. And we shouldn't have to apologize for that. It doesn't make us weaker

We are losing the ideological battle, and we can't wait until we beat the virus to fight it. Every day China is weaponizing the virus to sow doubt about democracy and portray itself as a global leader, even though it's directly to blame for the virus' spread in the first place

Articulating what has been on my mind for over a month now

Yesterday, I wrote about a conversation with my mom. She was saying how most of her Egyptian relatives and friends on various WhatsApp groups are telling her that the US "manufactured" the virus—and that this is becoming a dominant narrative

I see my mom, who I watched *become* American (and that's a beautiful thing), in a state of doubt. Trump, shall we say, doesn't inspire confidence. And she is pummeled every day by our Egyptian relatives. And then she sees how "efficient" China has been

But Egypt, itself, offers an important reminder: Most authoritarian states aren't competent or effective. Most authoritarian regimes kinda suck. China is the exception that proves the rule (and China's effectiveness is overhyped in part because of its effective propaganda)

There's also that little, somewhat inconvenient fact that even "good" autocracies like China can make you disappear or arrest doctors who say things they don't like about a virus, but, whatever, oh cool look they can build a hospital in 36 hours

And this bit

It's remarkable to me that some Americans—and mainstream news outlets—are taking the Chinese numbers at face value. Does anyone really believe that 3 days passed with not a single new domestic case, as China is claiming? Come on, are we that naive? Why are we accepting this?

3 days is good but not everything. The target is 28 days to declare an outbreak over. And then there is the business of getting people back without allowing the virus to return.

Who's in pole position right now. Who are we going to refer to when we all face this question.

Why would we believe the claims coming from one of the most brutal, ruthless regimes that we've seen in our lifetimes? Do we have that much self-doubt in our own system, in our own way of life, that we would trust a totalitarian regime that has a fundamental interest in lying?

This, to me, will be the defining struggle. It's not national, ethnic, or religious; it's ideological, about competing systems that represent completely different ways of understanding the world—and the citizen. Call it the post-Corona era, or whatever. It's already started

Unfortunately, we're not prepared for this ideological battle. American elites, particularly on the left, have too much self doubt. On the right, there is the temptation of making nationalism ethnic. "America first" doesn't grasp the exceptionalism of democracy

[Double Edge]

Unless you contained the outbreak right off the bat, then containment cannot be restricted to a few streets/blocks. You have the established the widest possible containment and that is the city. However, just the fact that it spread outside of China meant it was not contained and the ENTIRE city was exposed. That's just the facts. Whether the entire population got infected or not does not eliminate the fact that they were exposed.

Part i'm trying to figure is how the heck did it spread every where so fast yet the rest of the provinces and major cities managed to limit the spread

https://jobtube.cn/wv/


Shenzhen - 443

Guangzhou - 397

Shanghai - 451

Beijing - 565

HK - 410

Taiwan - 235

If HK & Taiwan could do it then those other cities had a good chance too.

Singapore is at 631

Tibet - no statistics ? why not