Coronavirus - accurate information? what you believe ?

[realmayo]

 

24 minutes ago, roddy said:

I'd be releasing the best figures I had.

 

What if they have figures they believe are fairly reliable estimates about deaths of people who were turned away by, or failed to get in to, hospitals? It's hard to see anyone wanting to release those if they were considerable - it would damage public confidence.

 

 

21 minutes ago, roddy said:

Not once have I heard "What about the Belgian Congo?"

 

Came across this piece mentioning nuclear cover-ups in the US and the UK before Chernobyl:

 

http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu21le/uu21le0j.htm

 

Nevertheless, the Metropolitan Edison company chose to withhold information that was perceived as being in the vital interests of the general public once it finally became available. This produced a cascade effect in the company's dealings with the media in particular and the public in general. Once people realized that they had been deceived, they were less inclined to accept any information subsequently released by the company. A confrontational stance was preferred.

[vellocet]

34 minutes ago, 889 said:

I call this The American Indian Distraction. Among the most common of Chinese propaganda techniques. You know, if you ever talk about Tibet in China, someone is sure as shootin' going to bring up 19th century treatment of American Indians.

The technical term is whataboutism.  

 

Whataboutism is a propaganda technique first used by the Soviet Union, in its dealings with the Western world.[1] When Cold War criticisms were levelled at the Soviet Union, the response would be "What about..." followed by the naming of an event in the Western world.[2][3] It represents a case of tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy),[4] a logical fallacy that attempts to discredit the opponent's position by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with that position, without directly refuting or disproving the opponent's initial argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Way back when, I was fascinated by mass hysteria.  How could it happen?  How could people believe the unbelievable?  I did quite a great deal of reading.  

 

The answer I got, at the end of it all, was that people had stress in their lives.  It could come from anything.  And this mass hysteria was a way of releasing that stress.  You take whatever you're most afraid of, accuse The Other of doing it, and proceed to shout and scream. If you can infect other people with your hysteria, this makes you feel better. Apparently it's very cathartic and stress-relieving.  

 

This also explains why people start enraged, spittle-flecked diatribes at you on the internet.  If you've ever been a victim of it, you know what I'm saying.  A deranged person takes out her frustration on you for everything that's wrong in her life, over some political issue.  Again, catharsis.  

 

We saw this with Flora, who according to Wuhan foreigners who knew her, was a nutcase with a lot of things wrong in her life.  Along came the triggering event and bam, here comes the outpouring of bile and ugliness.  

[889]

Like Roddy said, using America for the distraction is a red flag as to what's going on.

 

Now, if you had said what about Iran (the plane that was shot down) or the USSR (Chernobyl) or Japan (Fukushima), then -- to quote you -- "I would not bring this up."

 

But no, it's always America, isn't it.

[889]

Just posted on SCMP:

 

"At least 500 hospital staff in Wuhan had been infected with the deadly new strain of coronavirus by mid January, multiple medical sources have confirmed, leaving hospitals short-staffed and causing deep concern among health care workers. While the government has reported individual cases of health care workers becoming infected, it has not provided the full picture, and the sources said doctors and nurses had been told not to make the total public. The reason for this edict was not explained, but the authorities have been trying to boost morale among frontline medical staff, especially following the death of Li Wenliang, who was killed by the disease weeks after being reprimanded by police for warning colleagues about the new virus."

 

www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050077/least-500-wuhan-medical-staff-infected-coronavirus

[DavyJonesLocker]

It seems that a lot of people are willing to ignore evidence and facts to enforce a preconceived bias towards a topic, only human i suppose. Sure we can rely on past history to weight the balance of probabilities that china is lying however if you want to have a sensible debate and come to the  best conclusion you have no choice but to reply of hard data and not start extrapolating from random clippings found around the web. 

 

Its happened several times in USA and other countries  Remember O J simpson, I can't remember the poll figures off hand but the majority of people believe he got away with murder and  similarly Michael Jackson. He was cleared of all child molestation charges yet public opinion wouldn't agree. Thus its irresponsible to say the former is a murdered and the latter is a child molester

 

Similarly with China , all the 'maybes', 'perhaps', 'whataboutism', 'what if', 'how do we know that they didn't(insert negative comment) ' cannot be included in a rational debate without at least a fair amount of circumstantial evidence.

 

Remember the WHO has commendedded China of its transparency so now if one takes the view that there is overwhelming false reporting going on,  one is also suggesting the WHO are in cahoots with the Chinese. I really struggle to believe this personally . 

 

 

 

[realmayo]

The UK tried to covered up a 1957 nuclear accident, the US tried to cover up Three Mile Island in 1979, and the USSR tried to cover up Chernobyl. What reason do people have for thinking that the PRC would be more open and honest than those three countries were?

[Balthazar]

  

3 hours ago, 889 said:

Like Roddy said, using America for the distraction is a red flag as to what's going on.

 

Now, if you had said what about Iran (the plane that was shot down) or the USSR (Chernobyl) or Japan (Fukushima), then -- to quote you -- "I would not bring this up."

 

But no, it's always America, isn't it.

 

Not a native English speaker, but it's hard for me to tell whether or not you are being sarcastic here.

 

To quote your first post:

 

7 hours ago, 889 said:

Let's just assume for purposes of discussion that the outbreak did originate at that research facility in Wuhan. (Perhaps a worker there contracted the disease due to some sort of equipment malfunction not noticed at the time and unknowingly passed the disease on to the community before developing symptoms.)

 

Raise your hand if you believe the Chinese Government would admit this, if it happened.

 

 

Seems to me you were making a point about the nature of the Chinese government, its lack of trustworthiness, as opposed to other, more honest, governments. To make the comparison with Iran or the USSR would be absurd, as they too are examples of authoritarian countries. When comparing China to a "liberal democracy", the USA obviously makes the most sense as it is the foremost representative of this category. It's the default, much like the USSR was for the "authoritarian camp" during the cold war (and China is now) and the British Empire would have been at the height of the colonial era.

 

All of the above assumes that you intended to point out something specific about the Chinese government (or the category of governments to which it belongs). If you didn't, and basically meant "Raise your hand if you believe any government would admit this, if it happened", then I can see how the comparison seemed misplaced.

 

(On a side note, I feel like labeling these kinds of comparisons as "whataboutism" is about as intellectually lazy as it gets, a catch-all to deflect accusations of hypocrisy and pointing out similarities between representatives of different categories, even when relevant to the discussion.)

[889]

To repeat, the topic at hand is whether you can believe the figures China is putting out about the virus.

We're not talking about American Indians, Three-Mile Island, or even Michael Jackson or O.J.Simpson.

 

There are people here and on other boards who have a knee-jerk reaction: whenever China seems to be discussed in an unfavourable light, they do their very best to move the conversation off the topic, usually by trying to put other countries in an unfavourable light as well.

 

Let's keep the conversation focused on China and ignore the distracting talk.

[Tomsima]

Im certainly no expert, but seeing as the title reads "what do you believe", I will share my opinion based on what I saw in Hubei in the last few days.

 

Ive never seen anything like the level to which the cities have been locked down before, it was very extreme to the point where I was wondering, why are there so many roadblocks everywhere, when nobody even wants to go outside?

 

People have been saying a lot about how the amount of flu deaths far exceeds this virus, even if it is super contagious, no need to panic blah blah. But we all know the Chinese govt puts economic development before pretty much everything, so shutting down a whole province all the way down to the movement of people out of their neighbourhood streets onto the main streets, which will inevitably have a deep impact on the economy long term, surely indicates that this is not only a serious problem, but the govt knows just how much more serious it might become if it doesn't put measures in place.

 

But they can't really state this outright, otherwise the whole place will go into panic mode.

 

So yes, I personally think numbers are being underreported and downplayed, judging from the actions bring taken at street level, and to me it makes logical sense as to why.

 

[Jan Finster]

1 hour ago, Balthazar said:

Seems to me you were making a point about the nature of the Chinese government, its lack of trustworthiness, as opposed to other, more honest, governments. To make the comparison with Iran or the USSR would be absurd, as they too are examples of authoritarian countries. When comparing China to a "liberal democracy", the USA obviously makes the most sense as it is the foremost representative of this category.

 

I totally agree. It is especially western countries that very outspokenly criticize China from a hypocritical moral high ground. Before "casting the first stone", they should first self-reflect on their own short comings. It is not just the US (even though they are "loud"). And yes, I also demand this from my home country (Germany). The German media is full of know-it-all value judgments about how China handles this crisis. Recently, when China built their hospital in 7 days, they spoke of a "performance dictatorship" ("Leistungsdiktatur") and about "showing off", how efficient China was. Instead they could have reflected on the fact that Germany has been building a new airport in Berlin for 10+ years and there is no end in sight... They could self-reflect how they benefit from the Chinese "performance dictatorship", which lets them type their criticism on a 5000€ MacBook instead of on a 50000€ Comodore 64 (if computers were manufactured in Germany instead of China progress and costs would be different to what we have today).

 

1 hour ago, 889 said:

There are people here and on other boards who have a knee-jerk reaction: whenever China seems to be discussed in an unfavourable light, they do their very best to move the conversation off the topic, usually by trying to put other countries in an unfavourable light as well.

 

No, it is about balance! Go ahead and criticize China all you want, but do so in perspective relative to how other countries (incl. your own country) have handled similar events in the past. What is better, what is worse? Anything else is just lazy...

[Ruben von Zwack]

14 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

although we have our disagreements , everyone is pretty well educated and rational in putting forth their viewpoints

That must be because we have a shared interest, the Chinese language, and therefore, everyone is more valuable to each other alive than dead (metaphorically speaking).  I think the only time when you guys don't take prisoners is when someone comes here and makes nonsensical claims about the Chinese language.

[imron]

6 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

one is also suggesting the WHO are in cahoots with the Chinese. I really struggle to believe this personally . 

China definitely exerts strong influence on the WHO, see for example their continued efforts to keep Taiwan out of the WHO.

[889]

At the senior level, UN and other multilateral organisations are extremely political.

 

Recall that China effectively appointed the previous WHO head, Margaret Chan.

 

News reports suggest that when the current WHO head recently held meetings in Beijing, he engaged in the oiliest of flatteries.

 

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1737014.shtml

[vellocet]

4 hours ago, Balthazar said:

(On a side note, I feel like labeling these kinds of comparisons as "whataboutism" is about as intellectually lazy as it gets, a catch-all to deflect accusations of hypocrisy and pointing out similarities between representatives of different categories, even when relevant to the discussion.)

That's what it literally is, though.  It's an effective tactic that works.  That's why it keeps being done.  It's a common demagogical trick.  

 

2 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

The German media is full of know-it-all value judgments about how China handles this crisis.

Aw jeez, they are the worst.  Constant sanctimony.  Looking down their noses at everyone.  The US occupies a special place in their scorn...they get to just make things up about us.  They got caught red-handed last year in a pile of ugly lies, distortions that made Americans look like monsters.  Not a word of truth in any of it, and no fact-checking was done.  If anyone wants to talk about lack of trustworthiness we can start right here.  

[mouse]

I think it's likely that the official numbers are lower than reality, mostly because the numbers are hard to collect, but also partly because there may be an attempt to massage them down by the authorities. That was a deliberate plural, by the way.

 

I think the idea that the virus was created in a lab to be very unlikely. 

 

At the moment China is fighting two battles: the battle against the virus and the battle against panic. As we've seen from previous viral outbreaks, panic and fear can have very serious repercussions. In terms of China's authoritarianism and secrecy, the damage was already done when the authorities in Wuhan suppressed the story. Since then, I don't think the official response has been unreasonable. Yes it's ad-hoc and heavy-handed, and they're probably not releasing all the info they have, but unlike a lot of the arbitrary authoritarianism of the PRC, one can see why they're doing things the way they are. They need to contain the virus and they need to contain panic. 

[markhavemann]

To add my own two cents, to me, the extreme reaction (locking down cities etc.) seems reasonable, even if the infection numbers are exactly what they are reported to be.

 

I've been to a few Chinese hospitals here in Chengdu before and from what I could tell they could barely cope during normal times. Although everyone says the death rate is lower than the flu, it seems clear that it's at the very least very contagious. It also seems like simply getting on a drip and being put on oxygen is enough to save most people's lives (from the limited stuff that I've read), even if they are quite sick.

 

But imagine 500 million people get infected and flooding the hospitals. There are not enough beds and definitely not enough drips so I would guess that the death rate would sky rocket because most people wouldn't be able to receive even basic care. This is just me speculating of course. 

 

As for massive death rates and corpses being burned... Most of the university students that I teach have access to VPN's and proxies and many of them have Instagram and Facebook accounts. There are millions of Chinese people living overseas with families in mainland China. If people were dying wholesale, where are all their families and friends from other parts of China and the world who suddenly don't hear from them? Where are the photos of huge smoke plumes rising out of Wuhan? In the age of the internet I find all this hard to believe. 

 

Looking for conspiracies is a lot of fun, especially when people have been locked up at home for some time, and the (western) media is spreading terror with their "killer virus" headlines. It all seems like a bit of a far stretch, especially when there is more than enough evidence to justify more or less believing what is in front of you. 

 

As a side note, I returned to Chengdu from South Africa last week. The plane was almost completely empty and there were no lines at the airport (the best travel experience I've ever had) but the city is still relatively busy, lots of cars and people moving around, although it's very quiet at night. Lots of stores are closed but people are still ordering stuff off of Taobao and collecting packages. The hotpot restaurant next door is even still open and people are eating there. It's not all doom and gloom and military supression.

 

[DavyJonesLocker]

7 hours ago, imron said:

China definitely exerts strong influence on the WHO, see for example their continued efforts to keep Taiwan out of the WHO.

 

Yeah I'm not suggesting that politics doesn't influence a lot in the WHO or any global organisation, but as to knowingly massively tampering with numbers , and stating the opposite live on TV seems a far reach. Maybe It's more a case of "not asking the right questions" Who knows!

 

6 hours ago, 889 said:

Recall that China effectively appointed the previous WHO head, Margaret Chan.

 

News reports suggest that when the current WHO head recently held meetings in Beijing, he engaged in the oiliest of flatteries.

 

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1737014.shtml

 

But that's seems to suggest that because they solely appointed a Chinese person something is fishy. And one politician flattering another is nothing new. If a major cover up was underway I'd imagine someone in the WHO would leak it , after all they choose to work for an organization that is dedicated to helping people

 

12 hours ago, realmayo said:

The UK tried to covered up a 1957 nuclear accident, the US tried to cover up Three Mile Island in 1979, and the USSR tried to cover up Chernobyl. What reason do people have for thinking that the PRC would be more open and honest than those three countries were?

 

I don't anyone here is naive enough to believe "yes of course the Chinese government are open and transparent always!" but public opinion does seem overwhelmingly swayed towards , "guilty until proven innocent , and then you're still guilty anyway".  Which brings me to another point. Often what happens as least as far as my experience goes, when someone like me starts defending china your immediately seen as a procommuninst (why is that bad?) wishing to  ignore the negative side . Actually it's not the case, it's more that people like me end up taking the role of a goalkeeper as there are so many balls flying at you. You seem to end up defending against BS accusations rather than trying to score for your team. That doesn't mean to say I would in anyway deny all the negative issues like human rights abuse , corruption and so on 

 

 

In any debate, for or against, people need to put up evidence even if circumstantial so we all get a clearer picture. We all have a gut feeling and mine is I'd imagine the numbers are underestimated a lot but no major cover up, However I am open to persuasion though!

 

When you try look at incriminating evidence against its very hard to wade through all the name calling, the inconsistency stores, wild claims,  based or little or no consistent evidence, or just plain lack of thought and logic . I'd be more than happy see a well written journalistic piece and not just "we can't trust them". For example I don't have the medical knowledge to explain if the number was 5-10 times more that chinese are reporting , why isn't there a greater fall out outside China where numbers can't be covered up. It's been long enough now to see such a fallout surely 

 

Someone convince me 

 

36 minutes ago, markhavemann said:

ut imagine 500 million people get infected and flooding the hospitals. There are not enough beds and definitely not enough drips so I would guess that the death rate would sky rocket because most people wouldn't be able to receive even basic care. This is just me speculating of course. 

 

This is a good point, I wonder what i would do if I was in the CPC, history is awash with covering things up for the greater good especially during war times major threats. A separate topic though 

 

 

 

[DavyJonesLocker]

9 hours ago, Tomsima said:

Ive never seen anything like the level to which the cities have been locked down before, it was very extreme to the point where I was wondering, why are there so many roadblocks everywhere, when nobody even wants to go outside?

 

 

 

Best solution to me : "we need to build a wall around Wuhan folks, and the coronavirus is going to pay for it!!" 

[洋人丹]

Quote

Does this satellite image show the scale of China's coronavirus cremations? Sulphur dioxide emissions which are produced when bodies are burned reach alarming levels in Wuhan

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7986553/Does-satellite-image-scale-Chinas-coronavirus-cremations.html

 

This kind of stuff is hilarious. I had a friend posting this theory all over the place. So here's the thing. Conspiracy theories like this always make dark insinuations like this when there are really more simple answers.

 

So first of fall, this originates from 4Chan, so that's a red flag right there.

 

But let's think of other reasons that S02 emissions could be increasing. Things that can create SO2 emisions: burning organic waste, power plants, and industrial facilities. What contains a lot of organic waste? Medical waste. So a combination of incinerating large amounts of medical waste in combination with industry and  coal burning power plants could  create excessive amounts of SO2.

 

More evidence for this fact is that the SO2 seem to be emitting from an industrial park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DavyJonesLocker]

29 minutes ago, 洋人丹 said:

This kind of stuff is hilarious. I had a friend posting this theory all over the place. So here's the thing. Conspiracy theories like this always make dark insinuations like this when there are really more simple answers.

 

I saw this on several wechats groups. You couldn't  make it up. Everyone who knew diddly squat about the  source of So2 emissions  (including me) became experts. Same website is showing around 220 today . Guess they got on top of the virus and burnt all the bodies