It seemed during the conference that they were trying their best to not step on Beijing's toes. I wonder if they think China would stop cooperating if they called them out on their poor containment procedures.
> How is locking down an entire city "poor containment".
Because it followed a week of ignoring the issue and then another week of arresting people who were reporting on the issue. This has been an issue since December 28th, but China and the WHO are pretending it began just recently.
It's "containment" in much the same way that the Soviet Union just couldn't stop lying about Chernobyl because people miles away were melting from the inside, so they took drastic actions to pretend they were on top of things.
Those "hospitals" they are building (and selectively live streaming parts with glorious Party tunes on the background)? Those were resorts that were almost complete, but since tourism in the area is going to be dead for a decade, they're turning them into hospitals and claiming they're brand new buildings.
What is staggering to me is not that China finally moved when it realized the problem could not be swept under the rug, it's that the WHO is going along with the doublespeak of saying "all is well" but then also declaring an emergency, but don't cancel your trips to China!
Can you find me what the 8 people arrested for actually wrote?
5 have been arrested in Malaysia and 2 in Thailand also, have read the viral fake news they wrote and have no problems with their arrest at all.
In the shadier parts of the internet I'm already seeing services for ruining your competitors with viral social media fear campaigns.
r/Australia has a big sticky of all the nonsense being peddled in the country and the NSW health department is constantly having to repudiate popularly shared content. The bullshit asymmetry principle at work.
> China finally moved when it realized the problem could not be swept under the rug
Again, if this outbreak was in the US or Northern Europe, would they _move_ as quickly? Would huge cities be quarantined? Find it incredibly hard to believe.
It's 2020, hiding things a la Chernobyl is not so easy. I think they are doing a half decent job given the circumstances and it's just the usual China bashing by people who have absolutely no idea about the country and only knowledge comes from the newsmedia
> Can you find me what the 8 people arrested for actually wrote?
One of the doctors saw the initial cases before they were officially confirmed. He told the news in WeChat groups to their friends who were also doctors about a SARS-like virus that's being identified and warned their doctor friends to beware. The other 7 just spreaded the message and they are also doctors. They weren't arrested though. They were warned by the police and forced to promise that they won't do it again.
You speak of quarantining huge cities like it's some sort of accomplishment worthy of praise and not a brute force response to the effects of their own negligence.
Being critical != bashing, why are you being so defensive about the situation? Why are you trying to drag other countries down saying they wouldn't do any better? What is your goal?
Like the hospitals being almost finished resorts? They are building these things from the ground up, there was nothing there, you could even see this in those live streams, from multiple camera angles.
Corona virus was first detected in mid December. Things got pretty serious over the next 4 weeks, 5M people left the city before any containment happened.
So of course now everywhere in China has it, not exactly a good containment. The Wuhan mayor said he'd been talking to the China administration for 4 weeks before being allowed to talk about it to the public.
On timeline of events, there was a week or so of delay between first death + ICL paper and the city lockdown. It can be argued the lockdown was very late.
The OP might also mean poor containment within China - which is only relying on other countries right now.
Certainly later than one would hope, but is there a real world benchmark for the handling situations like this that they fell short of? Have similar viruses crossed over in other countries and been handled better?
