I'm sorry that my knowledge of the USA political system is somewhat limited. I just assumed that there should be some sort of barrier (even a low one) to go through for one to become a Senator!
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
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I'm sorry that my knowledge of the USA political system is somewhat limited. I just assumed that there should be some sort of barrier (even a low one) to go through for one to become a Senator!
I respect your analysis, but I still think that had the info been released earlier, and the Government responds by shutting down the city earlier, less people in other parts of the country would have been infected. Since Dr. Li and his colleagues realized that the new virus is highly contagious, the Wuhan Municipal Government could have alarmed the public earlier. Yes, it would have created a panic inside Wuhan, but it would be better than having the virus spreading throughout the country and sicken nearly every single province. The Wuhan Municipal Government's mistake was that it put way too much emphasis on the goal Stability Maintenance and such emphasis caused the government to put little emphasis on taking the incoming crisis head-on until it was too late. Still, I think the Central Government has responded way more effectively this time than in 2003.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
It all comes down to an understanding of the virus. The challenge is to react decisively when you should but never overreact when it's not merited. If you overreact every time you see something that might be infectious, there would be multiple lock-downs every year. Everybody's thinking about how that doctor gave an early warning but wasn't heeded but do we think about how many doctors gave false alarms throughout the years and were appropriately told to sit down and shut up? It is a very delicate balancing act to determine the thresholds for going full epidemic control mode vs. not causing unnecessary alarm and simply put, they did not understand this virus well enough early enough so it slipped through the cracks of those thresholds. If anybody knew what this virus was all about, they would never try to keep things under wraps for "stability" or whatever because they would know that it's not possible.
Trouble is, I feel too many people been reading too many negative news like the one below.
"If China valued free speech, there would be no coronavirus crisis" from the Guardian.
The last few days, the news is full of this doctor who try to whistle blow. Etc.
If this had happened in the west, the MSM would say this is not the time or place to discuss this. But because it is China, is a free for all. There was even an article in the SCMP that put the blame squarely on President Xi. Really!
I edited your post because of obnoxious formatting.
"If China valued free speech, there would be no coronavirus crisis" from the Guardian.
The last few days, the news is full of this doctor who try to whistle blow. Etc.
If this had happened in the west, the MSM would say this is not the time or place to discuss this. But because it is China, is a free for all. There was even an article in the SCMP that put the blame squarely on President Xi. Really!
I edited your post because of obnoxious formatting.
Last edited by a moderator:
It seems like the Wuhan government or at least certain elements of local health authorities should have been relaying information to the central government with greater urgency.
However the doctors who recognized that there was this disease at the time also should have been primarily communicating within the health system to impress the status of the disease, to carry out appropriate protective procedures while the disease was simultaneously still being studied and sequenced.
Health systems and national response systems have a chain of command which exists for a reason.
But at the same time, Dr Li's own comments were part of a private chat group of health professionals that got shared outside of that group, so my understanding is not that he was intending to spread information to the general public at large, which is why I believe he received a low level warning.
I think the importance of responding to rumours cannot be called into question, and the warning to Dr Li was not inappropriate given it was low level and he wasn't actively trying to spread rumours. Even as we speak, there are dozens and hundreds of rumours flitting around on the internet surrounding the virus many of which if left unchecked would likely lead to greater unnecessary panic and hampering of the population level health response. And at the stage when the chat group was active, health authorities were still working out what exactly was going on and what the appropriate level of response would be, so it was likely judged as prudent to avoid spreading potentially panic-creating information that has yet to be proven.
The primary fault as part of this process seems to be the local govt level's chain of command, either in terms of the local govt not acting fast enough on the information at hand, or the local govt not receiving information fast enough from the local health authorities, and that should be the primary area to rectify going forwards.
The rest of the nationwide level of response and the central govt response has obviously been exemplary and very transparent with data available to us in near real time in a way that is night and day compared to say, SARS.
The spread of the 2019-nCoV to the other parts of China and rest of the world is caused, in a major part, by the large number Wuhan residents who left the city after panic set in and before the central government decided to close off Wuhan.
So a contrarian view is that if Dr Li only alerted the hospital administration and the CCDC (Chinese Center of Disease Control and Prevention) instead of notifying his medical school classmates by WeChat, public panic would have been delayed and less people would have a chance to leave before the city is quarantined.
I do not want to question Dr Li's sincerity. He upheld his sacred oath as a medical professional and made the ultimate sacrifice for it.
But hind sight is 20/20 and there are always 2 sides to the coin.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
I didn't even know that's what he did. I thought he reported it and they told him to shut up cus it's no big deal. That is definitely an incredibly stupid and unprofessional way to do things and I can completely understand how they thought he was fear-mongering.
supercat
Major
I couldn't believe my eyes either. If you look at the number from 2/9, it's also relatively low at 296 compared to past few days.
A powerful counterexample to the narrative of western MSM is the CDC and U.S. government's absolute disastrous management of the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in the U.S. The U.S. is, after all, the shinning beacon of free speech on the hill. Yet the H1N1 not only became an epidemic in the U.S., it also became a pandemic worldwide later.
As for Dr. Li, the sad part is that if he expressed his concern through some official channel instead of WeChat, maybe the result would be a little different. Then again, the official channel might not be available? That's why the Chinese government should conduct a thorough root-cause-analysis to correct any systematic errors.
February update, daily (cumulative):
2/1: confirmed 2,590 (14,380), suspected 4,562 (19,544*), severe case 315 (2,110), death 45 (304), cured 85 (328), under observation: 137,594 nation-wide
2/2: confirmed 2,829 (17,205), suspected 5,173 (21,558*), severe case 186 (2,296), death 57 (361), cured 147 (475), under observation: 152,700 nation-wide
2/3: confirmed 3,235 (20,438), suspected 5,072 (23,214*), severe case 492 (2,788), death 64 (425), cured 157 (634), under observation: 171,329 nation-wide
2/4: confirmed 3,887 (24,324), suspected 3,971 (23,260*), severe case 431 (3,219), death 65 (490), cured 262 (892), under observation: 185,555 nation-wide
2/5: confirmed 3,694 (28,018), suspected 5,328 (24,702*), severe case 640 (3,859), death 73 (563), cured 261 (1,153), under observation: 186,354 nation-wide
2/6: confirmed 3,143 (31,161), suspected 4,833 (26,359*), severe case 962 (4,821), death 73 (636), cured 387 (1,540), under observation: 186,045 nation-wide
2/7: confirmed 3,399 (34,546), suspected 4,214 (27,657*), severe case 1,280 (6,101), death 86 (722), cured 510 (2,050), under observation: 189,660 nation-wide
2/8: confirmed 2,656 (37,198), suspected 3,916 (28,942*), severe case 87 (6,188), death 89 (811), cured 600 (2,649), under observation: 188,183 nation-wide
2/9: confirmed 3,062 (40,171), suspected 4,008 (23,589*), severe case 296 (6,484), death 97 (908), cured 632 (3,281), under observation: 187,518 nation-wide
*cumulative suspected = cumulative suspected on the previous day + daily suspected – those who tested positive or negative on the same day (my personal unofficial interpretation)
No one not even Chairman Xi Jinping dare to shut down Wuhun with just a few dozens of confirmed cases and without the certainty that the virus is highly contagious. Firstly, Dr Li got the information from his colleagues on Dec 30 and on the same day Wuhan CDC alerted front line doctors to look out for a new type of pneumonia. The CDC was alerted by Dr Zhang on Dec 26. Dr Li and his colleagues suspect that the new virus could be contagious but their suspicion were only confirmed in early Jan 1/8. Dr Li also underestimated how contagious the virus would be. In one of his interviews, he said that since he is an ophthalmologist, he didn't take enough precaution measure.
I think Wuhan government, Hebei government and China CDC should be blamed. But I don't buy the fact that sounding the alarm early would stop the virus from spreading. It could have slowed it down in Wuhan but unlikely to prevent the virus from spreading throughout China. Just look at Wenzhou from example, many Wenzhou businessmen escaped Wuhan and went back to Wenzhou but instead of quarantined at their homes, these people decided to go out partying with friends and relatives. Another example is that how many nearby cities of Wuhan got so many cases. These are the people who escaped Wuhan before the lock down.
The only chance the Chinese government has to contain the disease is to lock down Wuhan between 1/8 to 1/12 when it is almost certain that the virus is contagious. Then the scale of the epidemic would be much more manageable if more have been done in early Jan. But the Wuhan government is literally unprepared for the lock down. There is a complete meltdown of the system. In the end of the day, I would argue the local government should be more transparent and act more swiftly and be more prepared and have preemptive measures in place. But I disagree that Dr Li's alarm would make much of a difference. People just rally behind him to express their grievances and the western media just want to explore this to bad-mouthing the central government.
Exonerating the eight doctors accused of spreading rumors would be necessary as doing so would further enhance the government's image as serving justice rather than simply trying to cling onto power.