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China

China Didn't Warn Public of Likely Pandemic For 6 Key Days (apnews.com) 350

The Associated Press: In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20. But by that time, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data.

Six days. That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus. But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time -- the beginning of the outbreak. China's attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than 126,000 lives.

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China Didn't Warn Public of Likely Pandemic For 6 Key Days

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  • 6 days vs 6 weeks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @10:53AM (#59950156)

    Trump ignored this for 6 weeks yet he is trying to blame the Chinese for 6 days

    • my first was "6 days isn't that bad" given the magnitude of what they were facing.

      That said, China seems to have downplayed things. What I don't know is if that was to prevent hysteria or because they thought it was politically expedient.

      A for Trump, that 6 week gap [realclearpolitics.com] is inexcusable. As recently as Feb 28th he was calling it a Democrat Hoax [nbcnews.com].
      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:28AM (#59950358)

        Feb 28th he was calling it a Democrat Hoax [nbcnews.com].

        That's BS.. You are misrepresenting what Trump actually said.

        He never called the virus a hoax, he called the democrat claim that he didn't react appropriately a hoax. He called your attempts to lie about what was said a hoax. So this post of yours is part of the hoax Trump was talking about.

        • by thereitis ( 2355426 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:24PM (#59950724) Journal

          That's the magic of how Trump talks: you never really know what he means. If it was a hoax, he could say "see, told you so". Or he can change what he meant by "hoax" to point at the Democrats. Or maybe it was a Chinese hoax designed to bankrupt America. Several things are plausible.

          • by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:33PM (#59950786)
            Sure. He implements a travel ban because of it, then calls it a hoax. Keep repeating that lie.
            • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:56PM (#59950930) Journal
              The con artist did not implement a travel ban [washingtontimes.com]. Neither from China nor Europe.

              That the Trump administration "banned flights," "closed the borders," or "stopped flights" from first China and later the European Union to halt the spread of COVID-19 has become a staple of its defense of its response to the pandemic. But it simply isn't true. At no time through the course of this awful period have flights even once been halted between either China and the U.S. or Europe - including even Italy - and the United States.

              Keep repeating the lie.

              • by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @01:12PM (#59951010)
                From your link:

                The Trump administration did impose travel restrictions between China and the U.S., and later Europe and the U.S., but both actions have loopholes large enough to fly a 777 through. In the case of China, on Jan. 31 — weeks after it was known that the coronavirus was a serious problem — the administration restricted travel for “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.”

                So, despite the editorializing, the article admits that he did enact a ban. So my point holds: Trump enacted a ban because of the epidemic. So after he took action you're claiming that he called the epidemic a hoax? Sure. Keep repeating that lie.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by sexconker ( 1179573 )

                Are you retarded? Yes, you are.

                They implemented a travel ban for flights coming from China, pretty much immediately after "Dr." Tedros from the WHO said travel bans weren't necessary (other countries did the same, because they knew the WHO was China's bitch).

                No, it wasn't a total ban on all flights where we shot them out of the sky. We directed all such flights to a limited number of airports where we could screen all passengers, forcefully quarantine foreigners, and keep tabs on US citizens (who we can't

                • The US can legally enforce quarantines for its own citizens.

                  From the CDC web site:
                  "Under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code 264), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.
                  The authority for carrying out these functions on a daily basis has been delegated to the Centers for Disease Control and Preve

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            I watched his speech yesterday on Sky News, and it is absolutely amazing how long that man can bloviate without actually saying anything. About 5 minutes of just saying peoples names, along with statements utterly bereft of any substance, like "we're taking measures, very powerful measures", saying things like "we all know what that's about" when referring to criticism aimed at him, and stumbling over reading words with more than 5 letters in his notes. The TV eventually cut away to something else in the mi
          • He definitely needs to be much more clear in his speech patterns. He spends too much time being impromptu rather than writing stuff down, or at least being slower so that the words get organized in the right order to form a grammatical sentence. Too much repetition, I think this is the Trump style to repeat a phrase rather than say "um" a lot. And he rambles on and on.

            So in this particular talk, there's the sentence about the Democrats trying to politicize coronavirus. Then he bitches about democrats a b

        • by kqs ( 1038910 )

          A "hoax" is a fake thing. What about Democrat's word were a hoax? They said he wasn't taking in seriously, wasn't preparing. He wasn't. They said he was downplaying the severity. He said "There's like 15 cases in the US now, probably down to zero next week".

          So... he said it was a hoax. But, well, it wasn't a hoax, and Trump mostly ignored it when he should have been dealing with it. Except for cleverly closing the border to China AFTER coronavirus cases were already in the US, which is tactically mor

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        What 6 week gap? As recently as January 31st he had banned Chinese travel.
        December 31: Reports emerge that China investigating illness
        January 6-8: CDC issues a series of warnings, alerts
        January 16: CDC says US will screen passengers arriving from Wuhan
        January 21: First US case confirmed
        January 21: WHO says human-to-human transmissibility a 'possibility' but more information and analysis is needed
        January 22: First COVID-19 news conference
        January 29: US coronavirus taskforce created
        January 31: Trump blocks al

        • by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:20PM (#59950690)

          What 6 week gap? As recently as January 31st he had banned Chinese travel.

          And it did exactly nothing to slow down the virus. At most a 3-5 day delay: https://science.sciencemag.org... [sciencemag.org] . The ban was simply a typical Trumpian way to throw red meat to his rabid base, without doing anything actually effective.

          Prior examples: travel bans for certain Arabic countries because of "terrorism".

          • Dr. Anthony Fauci: Travel Ban To China Absolutely Made A Difference [realclearpolitics.com]

            Obama Selected The List Of Muslim Countries in Trump’s Executive Order [townhall.com]

            Organisation of Islamic Cooperation [wikipedia.org]
            "57 member states, with a collective population of over 1.8 billion as of 2015 with 53 countries being Muslim-majority countries"

            Terrorism, not "terrorism."

            • by Cyberax ( 705495 )
              Of course Fauci has to say that the ban made a difference (he signed for it). Yet the paper above show that there was none. And the largest outbreak was caused by travelers arriving from Europe.

              And nope, Trump instituted the ban, not Obama. So yep, "terrorism" - as Saudi Arabia was not banned.
          • by skids ( 119237 )

            It was the right move and did buy some small amount of time. The problem is Trump drank his own koolaid and thought that would fix the issue because after all, xenophobia just feels good for his ilk. The U.S. didn't ramp up testing production and adequately plan for contact tracing both before being warned as a precaution, and after being warned. Now he's trying to shift all blame the WHO.

            South Korea doesn't seem to have had the problems we are having, and there's no real reason to doubt their statistic

        • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:49PM (#59950888)
          Trump didn't ban travel you idiot guruevi. He barely slowed it down a little bit. And no the arrivals weren't checked or quarantined.

          January20: "I know more about viruses than anyone."
          January 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. It's going to be just fine."
          February 2: "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
          February 24: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA⦠Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
          February 25: "CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."
          February 25: "I think that's a problem that's going to go away... They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine."
          February 26: "The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
          February 26: "We're going very substantially down, not up."
          February 27: "One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
          February 28: "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."
          March 2: "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"
          March 2: "A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they're happening very rapidly."
          March 4: "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work â" some of them go to work, but they get better."
          March 5: "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work."
          March 5: "The United States has, as of now, only 129 cases and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!"
          March 6: "I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down⦠a tremendous job at keeping it down."
          March 6: "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They're there. And the tests are beautifulâ¦. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."
          March 6: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it⦠Every one of these doctors said, âHow do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."
          March 6: "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."
          March 8: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus."
          March 9: "This blindsided the world."
          March 13: "National emergency, two big words."
          March 13: "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible."
          March 13: "Five million (tests) within a month... I doubt we'll need anything near that."
          March 13: "I don't take responsibility at all."
          March 14. "It's something that nobody expected⦠it's one of those things that happened. It's nobody's fault."
          March 15: "This is a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something that we have tremendous control over"
          March 17: "I have always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic⦠I've always viewed it as very serious."
          March 19: "If we had an honest media in this country, our country would be an even greater place."
          March 19: "It could have been stopped, could have been stopped pretty easily if we had known, if everybody had known about it⦠Nobody knew there'd be a pandemic⦠of this proportion."
          March 25: "Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming."
          March 25: "It's hard not be happy with the job we're doing, that I can tell you."
          March 26: "I don't believe you need 40,000 or
        • by Ly4 ( 2353328 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @01:42PM (#59951148)

          Why do you have nothing listed for the month of February? (hint: It's because Trump did nothing).

          BTW, don't ask Trump about that - he might have another meltdown, like he did when a reporter asked him that very question.

          • by zioncat ( 632849 )
            February 4: State of the Union Address, Trump calls corona virus a 'threat' and vows 'to take all necessary steps to safeguard citizens from' it. Pelosi rips up the speech because it's all 'pack of lies'.
      • by yndrd1984 ( 730475 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:59AM (#59950544)

        As recently as Feb 28th he was calling it a Democrat Hoax.

        They're lying, even Snopes says [snopes.com] "Despite creating some confusion with his remarks, Trump did not call the coronavirus itself a hoax."

        • by ObliviousGnat ( 6346278 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:38PM (#59950804)

          It's called a "double entendre". Trump knew idiots on both sides would think he called it a hoax and smart people like yourself would think otherwise. He knew how people would (mis)understand what he said, so both interpretations were intentional. He meant both.

          He does that a lot, have you noticed? He'll say one thing and then claim he didn't say it.

        • by Lickety Splitt ( 6769422 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:52PM (#59950900)

          As recently as Feb 28th he was calling it a Democrat Hoax.

          They're lying, even Snopes says [snopes.com] "Despite creating some confusion with his remarks, Trump did not call the coronavirus itself a hoax."

          The funny thing is, he was calling the Democratic Party's messaging on the urgency of an aggressive response to the nascent pandemic a hoax. You might get hung up on the semantics of whether or not he believed it was an actual pandemic or a hoax, but the larger picture is that he knew it was a pandemic, was being told by the CDC and Intelligence officials that it was a pandemic, and yet he went on camera and to campaign events and aggressively downplayed the urgent need to take action, and calling THAT perspective from the Democrats a hoax.

          Knowing that something is an existential threat to the entire country - right, left and center - and calling people sounding the alarm about it hoaxers is really... well the opposite of the sort of person one would want running a country.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Trump listed to the experts:

      On Feb 29, Dr. Fauci on coronavirus fears: No need to change lifestyle yet [today.com]

      Your infantile blame game is getting tiresome.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The UK has a massive horse racing gathering with 250,000 people that likely spread the disease far and wide. Italy had a major football match that probably hurt them pretty badly.

      Many countries reacted too late and were in denial at first.

      • I recall that 3000 fans came from Madrid to Liverpool for a big incubation party right before lockdowns started

    • by Lucas123 ( 935744 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:10AM (#59950264) Homepage

      So, let me get this straight. China, the source of the pandemic, said nothing about the virus's spread for nearly a week and allowed more than 3,000 people to be infected by that time, and your go to response is to turn it around on Trump, who had to choose to shut down all borders versus China simply telling the world, "Hey, we just started a pandemic. You may want to prepare."

      China didn't just keep quiet, it forcefully kept any medical personnel from talking about it. Doctors like ophthalmologist Li Wenliang at a hospital in Wuhan, who tried to warn the world via WeChat but was then paid a visit by by police who muzzled him. BTW, Dr. Wenliange later died from coronavirus.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
        Both can carry plenty of blame. China for hiding information and being slow to act and Trump for pushing out a bunch of falsehoods and being slow to act.

        Part of being a leader is taking the blame. Trump likes to take all the credit and none of the blame. Can't have it both ways. If you're going to brag about stupid shit, better be ready to get blamed for the bad.
        • Except this article isn't about Trump; it's about China's suppression of information around the outbreak. Keep that in mind. China didn't just stay quiet, it forcefully prevented information from being disseminated causing the pandemic to take place.

          Had this been an article about Trump not responding fast enough -- perhaps comparing Trump's response to Bush's or Obama's regarding H1N1 before him -- sure, comment away on how poorly our current president has responded.

          FTA:"In the six days after top Chinese o

      • China didn't just keep quiet, it forcefully kept any medical personnel from talking about it. Doctors like ophthalmologist Li Wenliang at a hospital in Wuhan, who tried to warn the world via WeChat but was then paid a visit by by police who muzzled him. BTW, Dr. Wenliange later died from coronavirus.

        Good luck logging into PubMed.cn after that statement. ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        So, let me get this straight. China, the source of the pandemic, said nothing about the virus's spread for nearly a week and allowed more than 3,000 people to be infected by that time, and your go to response is to turn it around on Trump, who had to choose to shut down all borders versus China simply telling the world, "Hey, we just started a pandemic. You may want to prepare."

        Yes. It's important to understand why something that was well known in February and covered widely in the media in February is suddenly news again now. It's an attempt to distract. Turn around and look at the people trying to distract you from their incompetence.

        Or don't. Just pretend it's all China's fault.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        You are modeling China, or at least the Chinese government, as a unitary entity. This is incorrect. It's a major bureaucracy with lots of individuals guarding fiefs. Have you EVER tried to get a major change through a bureaucracy? Six days is incredibly fast. I've known individual people to dither for longer than that.

        So the first reports of a major change required get through to one of the top people. Does he trust them? What happens to him if he makes a major change and it's unnecessary? (Losing h

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        your go to response is to turn it around on Trump, who had to choose to shut down all borders...

        Not all borders, just China's. And that was an easy decision because he was engaged in a trade war with China and knew it would harm China's economy.

        Trump didn't do anything about the virus that wasn't self-serving until March.

    • [sarcasm]Well you see he was busy with the Impeachment defense which ended in February which explains his lack of action till March.[/sarcasm]
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Most leaders, most places were slow to take this seriously. I think that's because of the limits of common sense. Common sense is a reliable guide -- to things you've had a lot of experience dealing with. For things outside your experience, common sense is useless.

      The one standout country in this whole COVID-19 mess is South Korea. It's not because South Korea's government is intrinsically any better than everyone else's, but they just had an outbreak of MERS in 2012 and another in 2015. While this was m

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Yeah, it's all Trumps fault, right?

      On Jan. 30, the CDC had confirmed the first case of person to person transmission in the U.S
      On January 31, HHS declared Coronavirus a Public Health Emergency in the US
      On Jan. 31, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a federal quarantine for 14 days affecting the 195 American evacuees from Wuhan, China
      President Donald Trump signed an order on Jan. 31 for the U.S. to deny entry to foreign nationals who traveled to China
      Oh, and this while he was st

    • You realize that nobody would have had to respond to Covid-19 if the PRC had just contained it, right? Oh sure, let's shift blame again and again to protect poor Xi Jinping.

  • Taiwan (Score:2, Informative)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 )
    issued a travel advisory on Jan 16, so 4 days ahead of China. ( https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bull... [cdc.gov.tw] ) As I understand it, Navarro notified Trump in Jan as well, and I thought it was in writing that Trump got news of this in Jan as well in a Presidential Daily Briefing. But hey those come from the fake intelligence services. So while I certainly fault China for their 6 day delay, what can anyone say about Trump's 1-2 month delay. As the previous anon coward post details, Trump ignored it until it could not be
    • Easy - you can criticize multiple actions.

      It's pretty easy, and generally done in a post mortem. In fact, assigning blame to a single actor is normally almost impossible, outside scooby doo.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:10AM (#59950260)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:16AM (#59950286)

      It's not impossible for two things or people to be bad at the same time.

      Yes, Orange Man bad. Yes, CCP bad. What's the tension? Trump's delay was just as inexcusable as the Chinese'.

      Stop playing this as either/or. Trump is a dangerous idiot. Xi is a dangerous competent autocrat. Both are bad.

    • I recall at the time people were impressed with the speed the Chinese had isolated the virus and sequenced it.
      If you want to defend Trump the appropriate way would be: what were his advisors telling him. if he was being stupid against what all his advisors insisted on then it's all his fault. But if the advisors took a long time before the seriousness of the problem dawned on them then Trump does not carry much of the blame.
      Everyone goes to a stage of caution , cautious denial or arrogant denial before they

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:48AM (#59950478) Homepage Journal

      China was hiding the fact that this was transmissible between people until January 20, but the US has other means to find out what's going on in China than relying on official statements.

      DIA had been tracking this since November and warned the president in the January 3 Presidential Daily Brief this was heading for the US, over two weeks before the first reported US case.

      One of the things that really surprised me about Donald Trump after he assumed office is that he continued to rely on partisan media reports to find out what was happening in the world, when he had the CIA, NSA, and DIA at his fingertips. I guess he was set in his ways.

    • but I expect better from my leaders than I do from China's. We have vastly superior intelligence networks and we are a democracy.

      The fact that China is also bad doesn't make Trump a better or more capable administrator. This isn't a sporting event or a game show.
    • They both fucked up BIGLY.
    • China sat on this info for two months

      False. Being able to retrospectively trace a virus back and knowing about that case at the time are two different things. In retrospect we are able to trace a lot of cases back through to December and earlier, but at the time they were nothing more than standard cases of pneumonia. It wasn't even until late December that abnormally high rates of pneumonia were registered in Wuhan hospitals and investigations started looking if there were cases of SARS, and it wasn't until very early January that it was iden

    • False. "On December 27, Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that the disease was caused by a new coronavirus." It wasn't obvious until then.

      Back then they hadn't yet isolated the virus -- and also it wasn't clear how severe it was and how/whether it was different from SARS. They only knew there was a new virus of some sort in late December. Isolating and releasing the virus sequence on January 10 is reasona

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:32AM (#59950382)

    — Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) responding to @SpokespersonCHN who said "Welcome to China anytime and talk to anyone in the streets to enjoy the freedom."

    First, I would like to speak with Dr. AI Fen.

    She worked at Wuhan Central Hospital and tried to sound the alarm on the virus.

    Could you un-disappear her so we could speak?https://t.co/yvxGSKSEk9 [t.co]
      https://t.co/mbL08cR4tW [t.co]

    2. Next, I’d like to speak with Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin – two video bloggers that tried to bring the world a glimpse of Wuhan unfiltered by your Communist regime.

    Could you un-disappear them so we could speak?https://t.co/0ndiKKjQYZ [t.co]

    3. I’d like to speak with Li Zehua next.

    He worked as a journalist in Wuhan and refused to stay silent on Covid. In his last report, he live-streamed his own arrest.

    Could you un-disappear him so we could speak?https://t.co/KHg7JzqcJh [t.co]

    4. I’d then like to speak with Xu Zhiyong.

    He was arrested after he criticized your party leader for his botched handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

    Could you un-disappear him so we could speak? https://t.co/8SLrohSMPs [t.co]

    5. They’re not available for comment? That’s odd.

    Then let me speak with Ren Zhiqiang.

    He committed the high crime of writing an article criticizing your regime’s attempt to cover up the Covid outbreak.

    Could you un-disappear him so we could speak?https://t.co/8vPghCb4T1 [t.co]

    6. Ok, how about the hero doctor Li Wenliang then?

    He was dragged to a police station in the middle of the night and forced to recant the early warning he wanted the world to hear.https://t.co/8B8UNZKHK0 [t.co]

    7. Could I speak with Xu Zhangrun?

    He’s a law professor in Beijing that wrote an essay titled “Viral Alarm.”

    It says what the world knows: your authoritarian regime and censorship hindered efforts to slow Covid’s spread.

    Could you un-disappear him?https://t.co/rSrDFkYf1v [t.co]

    8. I’d then like to speak with Xie Linka who worked at Wuhan Union Hospital.

    She joined other Wuhan health officials in trying to sound the alarm on Covid before being berated and forced into silence by communist officials.

    Can I speak with her?https://t.co/Yx1V3Z3Byk [t.co]

    • Why do you want to speak? You think you're going to find out something you don't already know?

    • by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @12:15PM (#59950672)

      The shills request a moment while they figure out how to respond...

    • From this internal memo the TFA claims to obtain, it said:

      Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.” It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had “changed significantly” because of the possible spread of the virus abroad.

      So the officials didn't lie. They only thought human-to-human transmission is possible but not conclusive even internally, which is also consistent with their public message.

      “They may not have said the right thing, but they were doing the right thing,” said Ray Yip, the retired founding head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s office in China. “On the 20th, they sounded the alarm for the whole country, which is not an unreasonable delay.”

      If health officials raise the alarm prematurely, it can damage their credibility — “like crying wolf” —and cripple their ability to mobilize the public, said Benjamin Cowley, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

      They underestimated just like basically all other countries on this planet. The difference is that the other countries had witness Wuhan yet still chose to underestimate.

      Legally speaking, China reported the new virus outbreak on December 32 to the WHO and notified the US on Jan.

  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:35AM (#59950398)
    I hear the death toll in Tiananmen Square is still reported zero.
  • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @11:59AM (#59950550) Journal
    Medical ppl in Wuhan were announcing it. Chinese gov cut their resources, these ppl we're infected and died. Basically, Chinese gov murdered those trying to get the word out. Likewise, China then had WHO hushed as well as pushed northern Italy to 'hug a chinese'. So no, it was not just lack of action. BTW, what is also missing is that both Florida and Louisiana gov took no actions because, like China, they wanted the tourism and their money.
  • I mean we covered this story in February : https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
    We also covered it in January : https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

    Why would we cover it again now? Are we trying to create a distraction? Are we trying to point fingers while people die in ICUs? I mean yeah let's do that. Slashdot only covered well over 100 stories about this virus before Trump even bothered to pull his finger out, but it's all China's fault. And Slashdot is infamously slow at breaking news.

  • just like our leadershit! I mean ship.

  • by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @01:00PM (#59950962) Journal

    Its obviously revisionist history planted on behalf of the Chinese government.

    The article babbles about the CCP delaying a crucial decision to come clean starting in Jan 14. But members of the Chinese gov't knew about the coronavirus weeks before that. In fact, one of the early whistleblowers (Dr. Li Wenyiang [thelancet.com]) was documented trying to send coronavirus warnings to his collegues on December 30th, and within a week gov't officials forced him to make a written retraction. The virus was probably on their radar since late November.

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