China's Wuhan shuts down transport as global alarm mounts over virus spread - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Provision of the two UN HDI indicators other than GNP.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#15061709
Istanbuller wrote:Honesty is not a part of Eastern cultures. I don't see any reason why we should believe Chinese.

China is basically a tribal country with a large population. A very large segment of its population is still living under Africa conditions. I lacks basic democracy and Western norms.

You see that we have many reasons to worry.


Africa conditions might be a stretch, although I do agree that both Asia and Africa should be under Western rule (in some cases "again"). This can contain everybody back to where they belong and can remove so much racism due to unnecessary migration.

EDIT: Some self-contained and less messed-up countries, e.g. Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, Tunisia, etc., can be excluded from the above statement.
Last edited by Patrickov on 26 Jan 2020 08:50, edited 1 time in total.
#15061710
Istanbuller wrote:I don't believe any word Chinese government says. You shouldn't believe either. Chinese might try to hide facts even though millions are going to die. That is how communist government works.


No, it's how all authoritarian regimes work, Turkish just as much as Chinese. If you report something the government doesn't like, you'll end up in prison:

Turkey remains ranked 157 among 180 countries in press freedom index

It's just human nature. People will cover up negative news. It's instinctive. They don't even have to think about it. In totalitarian regimes, to cover up is systemic. The CCP and our resident China apologists can extol Chinese anti-corruption measures and transparency until they are blue in the face, without freedom of press this sort of thing will repeat itself into all eternity. If you imprison dissidents (in China or Turkey) you will always squash critical voices that alert you to problems.

ness31 wrote:I don’t think we can say the Chinese government are downplaying anything.


Rancid wrote:I agree. As much as we all like China bashing, I doubt they could cover up something of the magnitude people are claiming here.


Now look, who is coming out of the bush at a time even our China apologists start to see the light:

Crantag wrote:My friend in Western China said it's 10 times worse than the news media says, and there are cases in her village, 'nevermind the cities'.


On social media (for example reddit) we are advised to keep a record of every news we post because many news sources (videos, pictures, etc.) are deleted from the Internet only minutes after they are posted.

Western health officials have been praising the Chinese for the new transparency they have allegedly learned from the SARS fiasco. The reality is that it is worse today than it was 15 years ago because comrade Xi has put an iron grip on public opinion in China.

Rugoz wrote:How is that even much worse than a normal flu..


If the Wuhan virus spreads like a normal flu, and there are indications that it does, we could have tens of millions of death.

That's the reason for the drastic measures. There are now almost 60 million Chinese under lockdown. That's the entire population of France. Just try to imagine that sort of measure is taken in France. You'll have rioting with ambulances and hospitals going up in flames in not time at all.
#15061711
Atlantis wrote:If the Wuhan virus spreads like a normal flu, and there are indications that it does, we could have tens of millions of death.

That's the reason for the drastic measures. There are now almost 60 million Chinese under lockdown. That's the entire population of France. Just try to imagine that sort of measure is taken in France. You'll have rioting with ambulances and hospitals going up in flames in not time at all.


At the same time, I doubt French society and culture, or that of the entire Western world, would give opportunity of such an epidemic to occur at all.
#15061712
Patrickov wrote:At the same time, I doubt French society and culture, or that of the entire Western world, would give opportunity of such an epidemic to occur at all.
:roll: Right... because diseases don't happen in the Western world. The difference is only in the high population density that exists in some areas in China.
#15061720
Godstud wrote:That's true. Pretending this couldn't happen in France, or the "Western world", however, is delusional.


Anything can happen, certainly in a more globalized and centralized world in where people move more and more to cities and seem to get weaker and weaker and more dependant.
Last edited by Code Rood on 26 Jan 2020 09:53, edited 1 time in total.
#15061721
Godstud wrote:That's true. Pretending this couldn't happen in France, or the "Western world", however, is delusional.


Lack of transparency and press freedom means authorities do not have the robustness needed to react, and that is where major disasters occur despite it should be controllable.
#15061722
Godstud wrote:That's true. Pretending this couldn't happen in France, or the "Western world", however, is delusional.


That's true. Notably in France, there have been cases of HIV contaminated blood transfusions in the early days of the AIDS epidemic or unsafe silicone breast implants. In Germany there has been the emissions scandal, in the US there has been collusion between Boeing and the FAA that costs hundreds of lives.

However, the degree of the possible pandemic due to the Chinese cover-up is a whole new ballgame.

That's an important lesson to learn for the Chinese (and the World). Unless they introduce full democracy with press freedom, etc., this will only get worse. Let's not obfuscate here, it's too important.
#15061733
OK class. Back to reality.

There is no 'effective' coverup. The numbers that the Chinese are reporting, even if grossly understated, are alarming enough. China is making a massive effort. When was the last time you saw a country restrict 75 million of its citizens?

The epidemiology of this disease is being studied in virtually every country. In the US a test has already been published and is available at the CDC. Steps are in place to control a pandemic to the extent it can be controlled. USARMIID is already working on a vaccine as are some private companies. Monitoring is occurring at some US airports. With a third case in California I suspect more will happen.

At 5AM I got a text today outlining steps that our facility should be taking and asking for an inventory of our pandemic supplies. (We are a limited pandemic center.) At our clinic today we will have an in-service about this and begin active surveillance in our population. I dug out my face masks this morning and am about to head for the clinic. Not at all concerned for my safety at this point but mindful of the developing situation.

My friends at a certain three letter government agency seem to have this as well in hand as can be expected at this point. If you want to dive in to this stuff go here: https://www.cdc.gov/eis/field-epi-manual/chapters.html This is not for laymen but it is interesting if you are willing to not pick and choose sound bites from it.

The thing to remember Patrikov, is that you should take nominal steps to protect yourself and your family and not use this as an opportunity to slam the government. Two previous corona viruses, SARS and MERS are NOT to be trifled with. This one does not appear at this point to be quite as severe but that could change in an instant, indeed may have already changed somewhere. It is not just a matter of how severely it affects any one person but also how virulently is spreads. If it spreads like most corona viruses we have a good chance to contain it. If it spreads like measles, we are well and truly fucked.
#15061734
So for a while, I was labeled this extreme China hater. It's not pretty clear that I am not. :lol:

Don't get me wrong, I still think their government is shit, but I'm going to claim that they're doing a shit job of containing the virus.

1-2months into SARS how many people outside of China were infected?
#15061741
Drlee wrote:The thing to remember Patrikov, is that you should take nominal steps to protect yourself and your family and not use this as an opportunity to slam the government. Two previous corona viruses, SARS and MERS are NOT to be trifled with. This one does not appear at this point to be quite as severe but that could change in an instant, indeed may have already changed somewhere. It is not just a matter of how severely it affects any one person but also how virulently is spreads. If it spreads like most corona viruses we have a good chance to contain it. If it spreads like measles, we are well and truly fucked.


Sticking at home (it is 2nd day of the lunar new year AND it is a Sunday) and not going out saves a lot of trouble.

The real challenge is when we resume work on Wednesday, although we always put face masks on and are very keen to wash our hands.

On top of all the precautions we take, we have every right to criticise on the incompetence or even malice of whoever in charge.
#15061744
Breaking:

There are allegations that some medical staff of Queen Mary Hospital, one of the closest to Central district of Hong Kong, have started strike because Carrie Lam refused to totally shutdown the border.

The officials of the Hospital did not admit there's a strike.

Report from Stand News, citing both sides of narrative (Chinese)

Machine translation (sorry that I am lazy because it's quite late at night)
#15061746
Political Interest wrote:Ah yes, the misanthropes of the world never fail to disappoint us, east and west:



Sometimes soundbites like this have to be checked over and over again.

1. The video has no sound, because it's apparently CCTV of the lift. It is fully possible that the guy only pretended he's a rapper, and did not spit at all. Besides the video is in Traditional Chinese. I suspect it is made by a fellow Hongkonger. With us Hongkongers having so immense hatred against China I would not deny that there may be some people making fake subtitles just to stir up further hatred. For the purpose of analysis, though, let's assume the subtitles are accurately describing the event.

2. The tweeter used the word "hometown", which would suggest the guy returned somewhere far away from Wuhan proper. However, Hanjiang Xincheng is apparently a name of a housing estate (it sounds like 汉江新城), which should only appear in cities. As a matter of fact, Wuhan also has the character 汉, and indeed it sits on the estuary where Hanjiang (汉江) enters the Yangtze. I didn't check up thoroughly, but I suspect this video was taken just in a housing estate of Wuhan, not somewhere away from it. With the shutdown in effect, he's probably not going to infect anybody outside the building he's in.

(EDIT: A search in Google reveals that there is one Hanjiang Xincheng in a city called Xiangyang, about 200 miles upstream from Wuhan. AFAIK it's also shut down after this video was allegedly taken)

3. Assume that he actually spit, whether his act would infect anybody else is up to debate. With the CCTV catching the act in live, there's probably at least one estate administrator seeing that. Assuming that they are responsible enough (although in China, one cannot be too confident on anything), they would probably have shut down the lift immediately and arrange a sanitisation.
#15061749
Rancid wrote:So for a while, I was labeled this extreme China hater. It's not pretty clear that I am not. :lol:

Don't get me wrong, I still think their government is shit, but I'm going to claim that they're doing a shit job of containing the virus.

1-2months into SARS how many people outside of China were infected?


Yeeeah. I’m not sure if I’m a Chinese apologist or not :?:
  • 1
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 136

Any of you going to buy the Trump bible he's promo[…]

Moving the goalposts won't change the facts on th[…]

There were formidable defense lines in the Donbas[…]

World War II Day by Day

March 28, Thursday No separate peace deal with G[…]