Author Topic: Coronavirus Outbreak  (Read 134684 times)

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there is a deeper feeling in people in the West that the PRC simply cannot have managed the outbreak better overall than Western governments, and so the vastly lower death toll per capita must be entirely due to CCP lies (I'm sure some of it is, but the US is currently like 10 times worse and is probably also undercounting).

The numbers from China are utterly untrustworthy. So are the numbers from North Korea (which supposedly has 0 cases) and Russia (which supposedly has 273 total deaths).

"I'm not a public health expert but I'm pretty sure they're all wrong and China actually had ten million deaths, the crafty communists just covered it up." Without credible evidence for how many deaths you think the CCP have covered up this is just a conspiracy theory being used to cover up the West's failings.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
It's not like anyone here is going to vote for the CCP. The people that do don't have a choice.

Every person in this thread has voting rights in a democracy and some of those democracies are doing a far worse job then others. The CCP's lies/wishful thinking are not only beyond our control, they're also a factor that literally every democracy has had to deal with: South Korea was told the same things as the US was - yet South Korea is doing a far better job at containing their outbreak then the US is dealing with theirs. That is where we do have choices to make.

Focusing on China focuses the debate on external factors beyond our control and in doing so the debate is not about internal factors we can control. jr2 in particular focuses on China when he is confronted with questions about the government that he voted for.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2020, 05:47:04 am by -Joshua- »

 
Not that it's a very effective tactic mind.  Talking about how China was too slow to take measures and underestimated the severity of the disease only highlights how some democratic governments are too slow to take measures and underestimating the severity of the disease months later.

 

Offline karajorma

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The whole debate about China lying about the number of deaths is morally bankrupt if you're going to say the president didn't fail in any major ways anyway. It implies that the US government had a correctly measured response to a virus which would kill 4000 people in China. That they honestly believed that they were prepared for that and it was only the fact that the virus was much more deadly that means people in the US have died in such large numbers. That there were no major flaws in the government's response to COVID-19 had it been as deadly as advertised. That is the absolute implication of what Donald Trump has claimed. That is the implication of what jr2 and Goober have implied on this very thread with their refusal to say that the US made major mistakes. That the US would have taken more strigent measures, would have regarded COVID-19 as much more of dangerous only if they knew more people in China had died.

Let's investigate that. Let's assume there were 40,000 deaths. There's absolutely no evidence to back that up but let's assume it for sake of argument.

The US government wasn't prepared for even a virus at that level. Let's say the Chinese lied about how transmissible the virus was. The US has 700,000 cases. We're still saying they were expecting 70,000. At the mortality rate in the Chinese figures that is still 3,500 people dead. Both of those numbers put the US well in the top 10 most affected countries. Even at 1% mortality that's 700 dead which is still in the top 20! So the absolute implication is that the Trump government, doing everything absolutely correctly expected America to be one of the worst affected countries even if everything had gone to plan.

The number of people who died in China being wrong is a massive red herring. The figures from China are bad enough that the US needed to have done more about COVID-19 even if they had turned out to be absolutely true.


TL;DR I have no idea why the Republicans keep pushing this "The WHO lied, China lied" narrative. Best case scenario is that the Democrats were right for the wrong reasons (more testing was needed, earlier social distancing and shudowns) while Trump was wrong for the wrong reasons (trusting China and the WHO) and still expected a lot of Americans to die.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2020, 08:02:43 am by karajorma »
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"I'm not a public health expert but I'm pretty sure they're all wrong and China actually had ten million deaths, the crafty communists just covered it up." Without credible evidence for how many deaths you think the CCP have covered up this is just a conspiracy theory being used to cover up the West's failings.

I have no idea how many deaths China had (though ten million is absurd). As for evidence:

  • I've already mentioned several people who were disappeared or imprisoned in connection with the coronavirus. Their names bear repeating: Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi (journalists), Xu Zhangrun and Xu Zhiyong (academics), and Ren Zhiqiang (real estate tycoon).
  • Doctors at the Central Hospital of Wuhan were banned from communicating critical information to the public. Some doctors (e.g. Ai Fen and the late Li Wenliang) were punished for warning friends and colleagues.
  • Starting on December 31, Chinese social media censored a wide variety of coronavirus-related keywords and keyword combinations, including (translated) "Wuhan seafood market", "SARS variation", "P4 virus lab", "Xi Jinping + epidemic spread", and "Communist Party + pneumonia + demonstrate + rule".
  • In defiance of the CCP, Chinese journalists have reported that officials concealed similarities to SARS, and that they delayed warnings of human-to-human transmission.
  • Universities in China have posted new policies specifically regarding research into the coronavirus' origins - for example, a requirement that papers on the source of the outbreak (but not papers on other medical topics) be approved by China's ministry of science and technology.

How can you trust a government that controls the narrative to such a degree? The CCP has zero credibility. Remember that the same organization denied the existence of their concentration camps - and we still have no idea how many people are in those camps, though estimates range from hundreds of thousands, to a million, to three million. The CCP absolutely has the motivation and the power to hide their coronavirus death toll.

The whole debate about China lying about the number of deaths is morally bankrupt if you're going to say the president didn't fail in any major ways anyway. It implies that the US government had a correctly measured response to a virus which would kill 4000 people in China.

China's response does nothing to excuse the U.S.' response, and vice versa. It's obvious (and completely predictable) that governments around the world are trying to divert attention from their own botched responses. The upside is that every government is having its failings thrown into stark relief.

 
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How can you trust a government that controls the narrative to such a degree?
I'm not sure where you got the impression that anyone here trusts the chinese government.

 
My point is that

The numbers from China are utterly untrustworthy.

4,000, or whatever number they're saying, is worthless.

 
So what? How does that change Hoover's original point?

 
I can't tell whether Hoover is claiming that

A. it's a conspiracy theory to say that China actually had ten million deaths; or
B. it's a conspiracy theory to say that the numbers from China are utterly untrustworthy.

If he's claiming A, then duh. If he's claiming B, then I directly addressed his claim.

 
You could tell if you read his post!

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there is a deeper feeling in people in the West that the PRC simply cannot have managed the outbreak better overall than Western governments, and so the vastly lower death toll per capita must be entirely due to CCP lies (I'm sure some of it is, but the US is currently like 10 times worse and is probably also undercounting).

 

Offline The E

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I can't tell whether Hoover is claiming that

A. it's a conspiracy theory to say that China actually had ten million deaths; or
B. it's a conspiracy theory to say that the numbers from China are utterly untrustworthy.

If he's claiming A, then duh. If he's claiming B, then I directly addressed his claim.

A is an obvious conspiracy theory.

But here's the thing: So is B.

There's a chance, even a pretty good one, that the officially publicised numbers for China do not actually reflect the real spread or impact of COVID-19 (This is true globally!).
The point is, every number you see is inherently flawed. There is simply not enough testing happening for anything else. The chinese government could be completely transparent about every part of the process, and their statistics would still be flawed.
So: To claim that there is intentional under-reporting is a conspiracy theory. One that has a convincing story behind it, but a conspiracy theory nonetheless because there is little evidence for it. I can see how one can make the assumption that there is intentional under-reporting happening, hell, I even agree that it's likely, but at the same time: We know that containment measures, taken early and followed consistently are very effective at reducing the spread and therefore death toll of COVID-19, so there actually is a chance that the underreporting factor is not as large as you assume.

So, in my admittedly completely unprofessional estimation: Whether or not the chinese government is under-reporting does. Not. Matter.
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Offline karajorma

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Quote
  • I've already mentioned several people who were disappeared or imprisoned in connection with the coronavirus. Their names bear repeating: Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi (journalists), Xu Zhangrun and Xu Zhiyong (academics), and Ren Zhiqiang (real estate tycoon).
  • Doctors at the Central Hospital of Wuhan were banned from communicating critical information to the public. Some doctors (e.g. Ai Fen and the late Li Wenliang) were punished for warning friends and colleagues.
  • Starting on December 31, Chinese social media censored a wide variety of coronavirus-related keywords and keyword combinations, including (translated) "Wuhan seafood market", "SARS variation", "P4 virus lab", "Xi Jinping + epidemic spread", and "Communist Party + pneumonia + demonstrate + rule".
  • In defiance of the CCP, Chinese journalists have reported that officials concealed similarities to SARS, and that they delayed warnings of human-to-human transmission.
  • Universities in China have posted new policies specifically regarding research into the coronavirus' origins - for example, a requirement that papers on the source of the outbreak (but not papers on other medical topics) be approved by China's ministry of science and technology.

How can you trust a government that controls the narrative to such a degree? The CCP has zero credibility. Remember that the same organization denied the existence of their concentration camps - and we still have no idea how many people are in those camps, though estimates range from hundreds of thousands, to a million, to three million. The CCP absolutely has the motivation and the power to hide their coronavirus death toll.

And yet we heard about all that stuff and have proof it happened. Cause the Chinese government doesn't really care anywhere near as much about keeping secrets from the West as it does about keeping them from their own people. So when it comes to one of the biggest stories in the world, why would you expect the death count to be much higher than reported? Especially when the Chinese government is doing stuff like giving revised counts from residential homes regardless of how likely it is that dumb Trump supporters are going to claim that's proof of China lying cause they're unaware that pretty much most countries are only reporting hospital deaths at the moment. It's not like they couldn't have stuck at 4000.
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I think what we're all forgetting here is that Xi Jinping and thirty-six of his closest friends were the only Chinese survivors of COVID-19.  All the footage of China reopening are cleverly posed maniquins, and their industrial output just shows that their automation technology is further along than we thought.  Karajorma was Xi Jinping this whole time.  Very modest of him to keep his identity under wraps, but now we know the truth.

There haven't been any American deaths.  Something-something crisis actors.  Trump personally prevented a COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, and anything else you hear is fake news.  Sorry, #fakenews.

Stay-at-home orders are a Democratic conspiracy to tank the economy and make Trump look bad in the months leading up to the election.  Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton came up with the plan while ****ing children at Rocket Pizza.  It's right there in Hillary's 36,000 deleted e-mails.  QAnon will reveal all.

Prove me wrong!  But you know, not with credible sources or anything, because credibility is fake news.  Sorry, #fakenews.


*Sigh*

I'm going to go get some lunch.  I think hunger has driven me to delerium.

 
You could tell if you read his post!

Quote
there is a deeper feeling in people in the West that the PRC simply cannot have managed the outbreak better overall than Western governments, and so the vastly lower death toll per capita must be entirely due to CCP lies (I'm sure some of it is, but the US is currently like 10 times worse and is probably also undercounting).

OK, that's an earlier post than the one I was talking about. "The US is currently like 10 times worse" makes an assumption about the number of deaths in China. All of the data we have from China is utterly untrustworthy.

there actually is a chance that the underreporting factor is not as large as you assume.

So, in my admittedly completely unprofessional estimation: Whether or not the chinese government is under-reporting does. Not. Matter.

What have I assumed about the under-reporting factor?

I don't see how you can say that intentional under-reporting "does not matter". If we want useful data, then of course it matters. If we're playing the game of "how do the US' response and China's response compare" - which is not a game I'm interested in playing - then of course it matters.

And yet we heard about all that stuff and have proof it happened. Cause the Chinese government doesn't really care anywhere near as much about keeping secrets from the West as it does about keeping them from their own people. So when it comes to one of the biggest stories in the world, why would you expect the death count to be much higher than reported?

... because the Chinese government wants to appear competent to its own people?

Despite your claim that they don't really care about keeping secrets from the West, we still have no idea how many people they have in concentration camps (for example). If you truly believe that "all that stuff" I mentioned is the entirety of their cover-up, then I have a bridge to sell you.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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The whole China thing doesn't matter. Much of this thread has been arguing that the west's, particularly the US', response to the virus has been horrible. Comparing to China's numbers was one facet of that argument. Then people like jr2 and Goober jumped on that topic foolishly thinking that if they can disprove that particular point then the entire argument about the US' horrible, lazy response would meltdown. This is not the case.

TLDR; it doesn't matter what China's actual numbers are. The US has botched this problem either way and people are dying because of it.
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Offline The E

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What have I assumed about the under-reporting factor?

That it is inflated by intentional efforts to cover things up.

Why do I need to explain your assumptions to you.

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I don't see how you can say that intentional under-reporting "does not matter". If we want useful data, then of course it matters. If we're playing the game of "how do the US' response and China's response compare" - which is not a game I'm interested in playing - then of course it matters.

Because it, quite literally, does not matter at this point. It mattered back in January, now it doesn't; Now we have a lot of data from a multitude of sources, some more reliable than others.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
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OK, that's an earlier post than the one I was talking about. "The US is currently like 10 times worse" makes an assumption about the number of deaths in China. All of the data we have from China is utterly untrustworthy.

But that's the thing: If China managed to hide tens of thousands of deaths, the US would still be matching that (assuming no under-reporting on the side of the US, which is a stretch considering its lack of testing). It's not so much about how utterly untrustworthy the Chinese data is, but how effective their cover-up would have to be in order to absolve the US government. Last time I checked...

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“You’re talking about 2.2 million deaths,” Trump said, referring to an Imperial College study that identified 2.2 million people as the high end of how many Americans could die if no measures were taken to slow the spread of coronavirus. “So if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 [thousand] and 200,000, we altogether have done a very good job.”

Do you think China is able to hide between a hundred thousand and 2.2 million deaths?

 

Offline Stealth

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Florida's governor, DeSantis, already drew criticism for leaving beaches open during spring break. Now, with Florida's daily death toll steadily increasing, beaches are starting to reopen.

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You yell, "Barracuda!" and everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell, "Shark!"...we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.

Did anyone else immediately think the same thing?


I'm just wondering who Trump will blame this time. Everyone on the left said don't do it. The WHO said don't do it. I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised if China decides to chime in and say don't do it just so that they can say "We told you not to do it" when this turns into a ****ing disaster.

LOL too funny.

 

Offline Stealth

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If this holds true across other locales, that means as more antibody testing comes online over the next few weeks, the death rate as a percentage will decline.

it will not, however, reduce the absolute number dead, nor the degree of culpability of the american government in those deaths

No, but what it will do, is when it turns out only 0.2% of cases are fatal, it will quickly reduce the amount of panic.
I live in one of the top 5 largest cities in America, and haven't been able to buy toilet paper for 6 weeks.  Or a good steak for that matter.

 
No, but what it will do, is when it turns out only 0.2% of cases are fatal, it will quickly reduce the amount of panic.

What are you even basing that on?