vesicles
Colonel
Well, I’m not sure how one can distinguish the two...
I have a family member living in a Texas town came back from Europe a few weeks ago. He first, then his entire family, began to experience most of the classic symptoms of the COVId-19. They made several attempts to get tested. They had the travel history and they displayed all the classic symptoms. They should satisfy all the criteria for a test. However, every time, they were turned away at the various testing centers. Several of his colleagues, who went on the same business trip to Europe, all showed classic symptoms. And they had all been turned away by testing officials. All this time, their home town proudly showed “0” confirmed cases. Would you classify this as incompetence or intentional incompetence?
Germany is showing an especially low death rate. Everyone was amazed by their incredible health care system. It turned out they only counted those directly dying from Coronavirus-caused pneumonia. Others who died of the COVID-19 but from other complications were not counted. Would that be incompetence or intentional incompetence?
Do you define these acts as intentionally playing with numbers to hide things? Maybe intentionally playing dumb and pretending to be asleep?
Unlike most of the world at this very moment or a month ago when the outbreak exploded in Europe and America, China didn’t have the benefit of the hind sight when they got hit 3-4 months ago. They had no idea what hit them. They spent much time debating how they should characterize the disease, hence going back and forth with their numbers. Should they just count everyone with a pneumonia? Should they also count kidney failure and liver failure too? Some experts wanted one way while others wanted other ways. So they went back and forth. And the numbers kept changing accordingly. For outsiders, it looked like they were trying to play with numbers. In reality, they were trying to make sense of things. Of course, their actions could easily be interpreted as them intentionally hiding things. But in the early days without the benefit of the hind sight, what do you expect them to do? It’s like a person who gets lost and is trying to find his way back home. He goes zigzag around the neighborhood. But one can also simply show his mysterious zigzagging route to others and say “see! He’s intentionally trying to lose his stalkers, or he’s trying to waste time before he has to go home...”.
They also made serious efforts trying to control information so that they would not prematurely and most likely unnecessarily cause chaos before they knew what hit them. To be sure, doctors in any country see weird diseases popping up all the time. In most cases, these weird diseases disappear as quickly as they show up. What were the chances that this time would be any different? So they warned their clinicians not to say anything and cause panic unnecessarily when they worked on a potential solution. Most hospitals around the world have policies like this. In the US, we have HIPPA policies that specifically prohibit hospital employees from leaking information about diseases to the public. Of course, most in the general public are not aware of these policies. And if someone shouts: “ see! Chinese hospitals are trying to silence their doctors!” Everyone in the public will go “how terrible!” What they don’t know is that every hospital in virtually every country in the world has policies like this.
Did the Chinese make the correct decisions? With the benefit of the hind sight, we now can say that they made poor decisions at the beginning. Many of these decisions can certainly be painted as intentionally doing something bad.
Why did the Germans invent a new way of counting their dead. Whose idea was it to come up with the creative way to count only COVID-19 pneumonia? Does it look like they were intentionally trying to make Germany’s numbers look so amazingly good?
Why did the Texas home town of my family member intentionally refuse to test them? To make their numbers look good?
In Houston, when any of us wants to be tested, we have to go through a strict phone interview. If we don’t pass it, we can’t get tested. The real reason is that they simply don’t have enough test kits. However, someone can also conveniently ignore to mention this fact, and simply interprets it as an intentional attempt to keep the total confirmed cases low. It sounds and looks equally legit, doesn’t it?
What is happening in Europe and the US is simply unacceptable. Most European countries and the US had been aware of the major symptoms of the COVID-19 for nearly two month. In addition to the Chinese government making daily reports of their progress, chinese clinicians and scientists have been publishing their findings in top tier science and medical journals since early January. To the extent that any study coming out of Wuhan And Hubei would be published in good science and medical journals. During that period, the Chinese scientists and clinicians have racked up tons of top tier publications that will undoubtedly benefit their careers. In their studies, they’ve listed all the classic symptoms and useful treatment options. They’ve shown detailed genomic data and analyses of the virus. They’ve shown all the detailed statistics of their patients. I myself have cited the links of many of those publications in this very thread. So they have been sharing their most valuable information with the entire world since the beginning. They have the publications to show for it. And all the medical professionals around the world have been gathering these information from the beginning. Everyone knows!!
As with the general public, We’ve seen the devastation of this virus in China since late January as soon as we heard about the lockdown in Wuhan. With all the conspiracy theories and rumors floating around in the media about however many hundreds of thousands people died, how can anyone with their right mind still say “we didn’t know! You didn’t tell us!” Well, in his tweets, Senator Tom Cotton has been religiously reporting all the devastations happening in Wuhan and the potentially deadly “bioweapon” invented by the Chinese since day one. Senator Cotton was never shy about describing the horrific hell-on-earth condition in Wuhan. Did he fail to relay any of the devastation to the President? Did no one see his tweets? Did no one see any of the reports coming out of any of the major new media? Why is everyone acting like they knew nothing about this?
During late January and the entire February, China has been reporting their numbers, including a huge jump of nearly 20,000 confirmed cases on one day. If you look at their chart, it looks weird and ugly. Shouldn’t they make their charts prettier if they make up their numbers? And whenever they show their numbers, other countries yelled “it’s fake! It must be worse than that!” So everyone knew all along that it must be very bad!
In Texa, we get hit a lot by hurricanes. In a hurricane season, all we need to know are two things: (1) it’s a category 5 hurricane, and (2) it’s coming our way! Then we know it’s time to prepare for a hurricane. Dust off your power generators, stock up water and food, buy sandbags, board up your windows and doors, etc etc etc. Shouldn’t fighting a transmissible virus the same way. All we need to know are two things: (1) the virus is bad, and (2) it’s coming our way. It’s time to get ready! We knew these things in late January. We were all watching the terrible lockdown in Wuhan in our comfortable houses, while eating popcorns.
Even in early February, Asians in Europe and America have started getting beat up and spit on because of their perceived connections with the virus. So people knew?! And people knew it was bad. Why didn’t anyone start preparing? Why is everyone still acting like no one knew it’s this bad? Why did people beat up Asians if this was just a flu? You beat up people because of a flu?!
The rest of the world had two months to prepare for the outbreak (after the much publicized and demonized lockdown of Wuhan). TWO months! They’ve wasted the two months while watching China fighting for its life, while giving commentaries and making judgements like discussing a sports game or a gladiator fight. Now they put all the blame on the Chinese?
Last edited:
