Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[Mnementh]

Jaicee said:

iron_megalith said:

Have you missed the news about CCP jailing one of the doctors who tried to make an early warning about Corona Virus potentially spreading?

It's Taiwan who should be admired here. They've done a great job preventing it. You can count Hong Kong in as well for being so damn close yet not having it as bad as their neighbors.

There is literally nothing to admire about Mainland China. The methods they used are borderline oppressive just to do extreme damage control. That's CCP for you. They do whatever the fuck they want. Not to mention they've almost guaranteed to have adjusted those numbers further to tone down the severity of the case. No amount of praise from W.H.O., especially Tedros, can change the fact that they were the ones who fucked up in the first place just like what they did with SARS.

Yeah, China's initial response of suppressing information was god-awful! But they did get their act together eventually and indisputably have managed to drastically reduce the number of daily new transmissions in the country to like single or double digits where it had been in the many thousands. That's what I'm talking about! It's some of the successful steps that they ultimately took that I think we should look at. As to being oppressive, this whole experience is oppressive for all of us. Name one thing about it that isn't: the problem? The solutions? Anything? Major disruption of normal life is just factually the only way to address a crisis like this.

It's also not like our own White House has exactly been honest and forthcoming about the seriousness of the outbreak either for that matter. You know good and well that Trump would have all those critical reporters and so forth rounded up and imprisoned if he could halfway legally get away with it. It's not like his instincts are any different.

Look, I've got no respect for China's system of government. It's a repressive, tyrannical, and often dangerously dishonest police state. But when there are individual solutions to this outbreak that have been enacted and proven effective that we're not even thinking about implementing here in this country as our situation begins to rapidly deteriorate, do I worry about whether they were first enacted in China or not? No, I'm concerned with whether they're effective or not. That's not being a shill for a police state, it's called being pragmatic.

I agree. And I want to add, that this is an extraordinary situation, a state of emergency. In situations like this it is acceptable to temporarily restrict personal liberties, if it is helpful to save lifes. Important is, that the liberties are restored, once the situation has been overcome.

Also the measurements taken seem to have stopped the spreading of the virus in China. I fear if all is over, some countries might end up with more casualties than China does. And I am not accepting that this will be worth the liberties and the profits of companies.