[Grizzly]

There was plenty of warning even before Italy. South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc all had access to the same data the West did and their response was drastically different. And the effects of the virus on those countries was also drastically different.

This can't really be stressed enough I think: Allegations of a chinese coverup, or the excuse that the CCP's total control allowed them to take far more drastic measures then any western government did, don't take into account the existence of South Korea, a country that's just as democratic as any western country (And could arguably be considered a western country considering its allies and economical and political systems). Italy didn't have an excuse either. It's the political apperatus that was waking up after Italy's situation got dire, but it's not like there haven't been plenty of warnings before.

[Scourge of Ages]

My workplace has had its first confirmed COVID case.

Congratulations! 

I'm sorry to hear that, what are they doing? Are they going to make sure everybody gets tested, or send everybody home for two weeks? Or something else? Or nothing?

I'm very certain that at least one person at my job site is going to get or already has covid, and the only reason we don't know is because nobody wants to get tested. And it's scary seeing so many people who I'm actually working closely with just aren't taking things seriously...

[GhylTarvoke]

There isn't any hard evidence that China is harvesting organs, either, and people have been digging for years.

Wha....?

what even is this point you're trying to make?

The point of bringing up organ harvesting, and the fact that it's unproven despite years of investigation, is that asking for "evidence" against China is just dumb. As karajorma said, they're going to cover things up (and they're exceptionally good at it); however bad you think they are, they're probably worse.

It's also dumb to point to South Korea, etc. as proof that there was sufficient warning. No matter what China did, some countries were going to weather the outbreak better than others. Of course South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and other countries deserve praise for their responses. But Fauci and other health experts don't deserve blame for underestimating the threat. Unfortunately, the science only became clear around the time of Italy's outbreak.

Returning to my apparently uncontroversial U.S.-bashing: Georgia's governor is suing a mayor for continuing to mandate masks, and the White House has just blocked the CDC from testifying on schools reopening.

[perihelion]

It's also dumb to point to South Korea, etc. as proof that there was sufficient warning. No matter what China did, some countries were going to weather the outbreak better than others. Of course South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and other countries deserve praise for their responses. But Fauci and other health experts don't deserve blame for underestimating the threat. Unfortunately, the science only became clear around the time of Italy's outbreak.

That is manifestly the wrong lesson to take from all this. If the science was so unclear, why did South Korea slam shut in such an economically devastating way? They only did this because they listened to their scientific experts when they told them they were under existential threat. They listened.

Our governments didn’t. That doesn’t mean the science was unclear. It means that our scientific leaders and the scientific method itself have been so devalued that not enough people in positions of influence listened to, let alone acted on, the information coming out of China. South Korea did.

That’s it. That’s what happened. Swallow the bitter pill and vow to do better from now on. Because things only got this bad because enough of us allowed them to.

[BlueFlames]

My workplace has had its first confirmed COVID case.

Congratulations! 

I'm sorry to hear that, what are they doing? Are they going to make sure everybody gets tested, or send everybody home for two weeks? Or something else? Or nothing?

What was the last one again?  Yeah, that one.

HS&E does some contact tracing within the factory, and anyone who had close contact has to stay out for one(!) week and get a negative COVID test during that week to return to work.

The rumor mill says that two people got flagged up in the contact trace, and for everyone else, it's business as usual, lax PPE compliance and inadquate PPE standards included.

Car parts is serious business.

[karajorma]

The point of bringing up organ harvesting, and the fact that it's unproven despite years of investigation, is that asking for "evidence" against China is just dumb. As karajorma said, they're going to cover things up (and they're exceptionally good at it); however bad you think they are, they're probably worse.

Or they're actually quite bad at it and it doesn't exist.

It's also dumb to point to South Korea, etc. as proof that there was sufficient warning. No matter what China did, some countries were going to weather the outbreak better than others. Of course South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and other countries deserve praise for their responses. But Fauci and other health experts don't deserve blame for underestimating the threat.

No one is blaming the health experts except for the Trump administration. They're desperate to claim that it's someone else's fault. Why are you helping them spread that nonsense?

Unfortunately, the science only became clear around the time of Italy's outbreak.

Bull. ****.

Everyone knew that you needed testing. Everyone knew that you needed contact tracing. Everyone knew that you needed lockdowns. But some countries weren't willing to do it or did it very badly. Hell, both the UK and US leaders are on the record as saying they figured they could just let the virus spread and treat people who caught it until the country had herd immunity AFTER Italy.

[GhylTarvoke]

This is clearly flying to nowhere. Ever since Goober and jr2 left the thread (which was admittedly a good thing), every criticism of the U.S. has gone unchallenged, and every criticism of China has generated controversy.

I'll stick to criticizing the U.S. from now on, which I quite enjoy anyway. Our response keeps reaching new lows.

[karajorma]

This is clearly flying to nowhere. Ever since Goober and jr2 left the thread (which was admittedly a good thing), every criticism of the U.S. has gone unchallenged, and every criticism of China has generated controversy.

I'll stick to criticizing the U.S. from now on, which I quite enjoy anyway.

Or you could try being realistic in your criticisms rather than complaining when you say something that is quite obviously nonsense and people call you out on it. Which comments about the American response do you feel need to have been challenged?

[Grizzly]

The point of bringing up organ harvesting, and the fact that it's unproven despite years of investigation, is that asking for "evidence" against China is just dumb. As karajorma said, they're going to cover things up (and they're exceptionally good at it); however bad you think they are, they're probably worse.

I just like to point out that this is rather dumb: Journalists in China are able to paint a decent picture of what is happening over there, including various atrocities against minorities like the treatment of the Uyghurs, or simply that China was trying to surpress the COVID thing as "nothing is really happening here" despite journalists reporting that it was. China isn't telling the whole story for sure, but that is not an excuse to just start making baseless claims.

Asking for evidence against China isn't dumb: Journalists and NGOs have been able to provide evidence for the various bull**** that's happening in there for decades.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Yeah, there's plenty of reasons to bash China without involving conspiracy theories. People don't bash China in this thread because, as far as this particular crisis is concerned, they didn't do too badly.

[Mobius]

Italy's R0 value is now officially above 1, again. This is what you get when people misbehave even though the regulations were (and are) good enough to reduce the infection rate to a minimum.

[666maslo666]

I'm yet to see a single iota of evidence that China covered up things on a scale that would have made the "rest of the world" do anything drastically different.

There isn't any hard evidence that China is harvesting organs, either, and people have been digging for years.

We can say, with near absolute certainty, that even if the chinese government had the full, accurate profile of COVID 19 in early December and even if they had sounded the alarm at that point, that this whole pandemic would have played out pretty much as it did. Why? Because the only reason why we in the west started to take it seriously was because Italy showed us what could happen if it were to go wrong.

I dont think so, this is too strong of a claim. The initial Chinese coverup and downplaying was instrumental in the initial spread. Especially China corrupting the WHO response (and then making many people lose faith in the organization at the critical time when it was most needed, after this corruption was revealed). Most people woke up after Italy started getting serious, but remember that the WHO declared this a pandemic only on March 11. Do you really think this would happen if China used its considerable influence in WHO to sound the alarm in early January, instead of using it to downplay the threat?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/

After initial denials and cover-ups, China successfully contained the COVID-19 outbreak—but not before it had exported many cases to the rest of the world. Today, despite the falsehoods it initially passed on, which played a critical role in delaying global response, it’s trying to leverage its reputed success story into a stronger position on international health bodies.

Most critically, Beijing succeeded from the start in steering the World Health Organization (WHO), which both receives funding from China and is dependent on the regime of the Communist Party on many levels. Its international experts didn’t get access to the country until Director-General Tedros Adhanom visited President Xi Jinping at the end of January. Before then, WHO was uncritically repeating information from the Chinese authorities, ignoring warnings from Taiwanese doctors — unrepresented in WHO, which is a United Nations body—and reluctant to declare a “public health emergency of international concern,” denying after a meeting Jan. 22 that there was any need to do so.

After the Beijing visit, though, WHO said in a statement that it appreciated “especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated.” Only after the meeting did it declared, on Jan. 30, a public health emergency of international concern. And after China reported only a few new cases each day, WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic March 11 — even though it had spread globally weeks before.

Every country that did not shut down immidiately after March 11 and became seriously infected afterwards has their own incompetent leadership at fault and cannot blame WHO/China.  But every country that became seriously infected before March 11 can at least partly blame WHO/China.

[Grizzly]

I gladly bash China but as Maslo's response indicates, China is being used here as a convenient excuse to not look too hard at our own government's responses. "But atleast we're not China"  isn't an excuse for doing worse then Germany, which mobilized it's pandemic response in early january. Just becuase you remember the outbreak in Italy as a point that you'd take this seriously doesn't mean it shouldn't have been taken seriously before.

I mean seriously, are you going to claim that before march, you blindly trusted China over the governments of South Korea, Japan or Germany? And hell, it's not like China was "covering up "numbers in january and february, where it was reporting tens of thousands of cases throughout the country. German scientists reported on the 30th of January that the virus could spread without symptoms.

[Grizzly]

China was locking down entire provinces from January onwards, which was widely reported in the media at the time. The dutch government was sticking to the "As long as you haven't been in Wuhan you should be safe" guideline even as the disease was reported as spreading in many countries, again also in January. Reconstructions by journalists have shown that not only did the Dutch government underestimate the virus even when every report from China itself indicated otherwise, it was simply unprepared for a large scale outbreak to begin with, since our entire healthcare sector is built around running as lean as possible. Italy was locking down entire towns in February as well. To claim that "Before march 10, china was partially to blame" is the same willfull blindness that caused Italy's health sector to crash around that date.

[666maslo666]

Well, we now have the benefit of hindsight, but in many countries it was hard to argue for hard lockdowns at that initial time, when your political opponents could just point to WHO lukewarm-at-best response recommendations and accuse you of overreacting. Health departments and politicians tended to trust/defer to WHO recommendations as an authoritative body, which were simply inadequate. WHO heavily influenced by China.

[Mobius]

[...] willfull blindness that caused Italy's health sector to crash around that date.

I do understand that the details on how coronavirus spread here may be difficult to get for a foreigner, because they require some basic knowledge of the country itself, but that one line seems to imply that the entire nation's healthcare system has been overwhelmed by Covid-19 at various stages. It wasn't. There are twenty regions in this country, and only one (maybe two, depending on criteria) of them got hit very, very hard. These regions are densely populated but they represent at best one fifth of the entire country in terms of population. And there have been areas within these regions that experienced Covid-19 in a much less catastrophic way.

Other regions, including my own, sent their own doctors to help and I don't recall any articles saying that ICUs were overwhelmed from Emilia Romagna southwards. There is a raging debate about very expensive makeshift hospitals, built and set up very quickly, that served no real purpose at all. We even hosted two patients from other regions because we had extra space in our own hospitals. An Air Force C-130 transferred these extra patients here (I still have the videos in my phone, recorded right from the tarmac).

[Grizzly]

I am aware of that Mobious, I just think that the collapse of a health system in some part of the country is ultimately a failure of the healthcare system of that entire country (or, more specifically, a failure of the governance of the healthcare system of that country). The Netherlands was only saved from a complete collapse becuase the germans had extra ICUs available, despite the vast majority of the outbreak being in one of our 12 provinces.

WHO heavily influenced by China.

So why was China not following it's supposed own advice by locking down Wuhan?

[666maslo666]

So why was China not following it's supposed own advice by locking down Wuhan?

Once there was clearly a serious ongoing epidemic in Wuhan, no one in China could deny reality. But before that there were attempts at coverup and downplaying, even in Wuhan (remember the ophtalmologist who was admonished by police for making comments about new SARS-like outbreak?).

As for why China locked down Wuhan, but still continued to downplay the crisis internationally at WHO? We could certainly speculate about various malicious reasons... but never attribute to malice what could be adequately explained by incompetence. So I will stick with incompetence as an explanation.

[Dysko]

Italy's R0 value is now officially above 1, again. This is what you get when people misbehave even though the regulations were (and are) good enough to reduce the infection rate to a minimum.

Actually, new daily cases are so low that Rt increasing above 1 is likely to be caused by statistical fluctuations... for now

Moreover, 30% of the new daily cases are caused by people coming from abroad (and illegal immigrants are only a very small part of this).
For foreigners, nationwide news talked a lot about an enterpreneur returning in Veneto region from Serbia with COVID-19 symptoms. He was tested positive and, despite worsening conditions, he refused to be hospitalized. Not only he returned to work, but he attended a party and a funeral service. Ultimately, he worsened so bad to require intensive care. Luckily, this cluster seems to have been contained quickly and efficiently.

[...] willfull blindness that caused Italy's health sector to crash around that date.

I do understand that the details on how coronavirus spread here may be difficult to get for a foreigner, because they require some basic knowledge of the country itself, but that one line seems to imply that the entire nation's healthcare system has been overwhelmed by Covid-19 at various stages. It wasn't. There are twenty regions in this country, and only one (maybe two, depending on criteria) of them got hit very, very hard. These regions are densely populated but they represent at best one fifth of the entire country in terms of population. And there have been areas within these regions that experienced Covid-19 in a much less catastrophic way.

Other regions, including my own, sent their own doctors to help and I don't recall any articles saying that ICUs were overwhelmed from Emilia Romagna southwards. There is a raging debate about very expensive makeshift hospitals, built and set up very quickly, that served no real purpose at all. We even hosted two patients from other regions because we had extra space in our own hospitals. An Air Force C-130 transferred these extra patients here (I still have the videos in my phone, recorded right from the tarmac).

For foreigners, it is also worth noting that, unlike the rest of the country, Lombardy has quasi-private healthcare (unsurprisingly, the governor who made this reform was found to be heavily involved in bribery scandals). Many hospitals are privately-managed, and focus more on specialist services than general medicine, and have comparatively few ITUs.

Lombardy and Veneto regions discovered their first clusters the same day, but Veneto healthcare system started a massive screening campaign in order to contain the outbreak, while Lombardy healthcare system did not even stock up supplies considering it a waste of money.
When the 2nd Lombardy cluster was found in an hospital near Bergamo, the hospital was closed only for few hours and then reopened. Moreover, the Italian industrial employers federation strongly advised against locking down the valley with the newly found cluster to avoid closing major industries in the area. This backfired, spreading the virus and leading to nationwide lockdown.



In an attempt to trace back the arrival of the virus in Italy, compatible virus traces were found in sewage waters in Milan, Turin and Bologna as early as December 2019, and the hospital near Bergamo epicenter of the outbreak reported having ~100 unusual cases of "pneumonia of unknown origin" in the same time frame. They are still investigating whether they were already COVID-19 cases.

[RizZen]

Sorry when im telling you this, but YOU, the US - ****ed it up lonelessly. It is just showing how poor you are, when your still pointing with fingers on others. Any hardcore trump fan - who is still a trump fan - wont ever get that cause there is too much missing sense for reality.

Edit: and in my point of view people like Fauci, trump and others who underestimated the virus - should be arrested and judged for homicide. Thats MY OPINION!

Edit2: Sorry when i say this, but Trump was the worse president you'd ever have. I dont know who made the Americans mind blinded, but by voting for a guy like this you made yourself a joke to the rest of the world. No one is taking USA serious anymore. All are laughing about you and your pitty boy who calls himself a mighty man. Hes a douchebag - TOUCHE!