China Delayed Releasing Coronavirus Info, Frustrating WHO (apnews.com) 98
schwit1 shares a report: Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus "immediately," and said its work and commitment to transparency were "very impressive, and beyond words." But behind the scenes, it was a much different story, one of significant delays by China and considerable frustration among WHO officials over not getting the information they needed to fight the spread of the deadly virus, The Associated Press has found. Despite the plaudits, China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Tight controls on information and competition within the Chinese public health system were to blame, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents. Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11. Even then, China stalled for at least two weeks more on providing WHO with detailed data on patients and cases, according to recordings of internal meetings held by the U.N. health agency through January -- all at a time when the outbreak arguably might have been dramatically slowed.
The question is... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the WHO had not said nice things about China, would they have gotten the information sooner, or later?
Institutional inertia (Score:3, Insightful)
A government bureaucracy (and executive) does not act as fast as if it were a single, maximally informed person.
If something gets organized enough for official information outputs to start coming out in a week or two, that's actually impressive performance, considering that a responsible government does not want to release inconsistent or incorrect information that is coming up unfiltered from multiple sou
Re:Institutional inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an active "blame China" campaign underway, particularly by the US government, which is seeking to deflect blame away from their own abysmal performance.
Holy Shit. You type "deflect blame" while defending the country that let this thing get out of control. The very article we're posting about now, finally, admits China lied and covered up about the virus.
Get up off of your knees and wipe the China from your lips.
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The people worth listening to usually admit that there is plenty of blame to go around, instead of arguing about where to put it. They qualify the blame, rather than quantify it.
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https [smh.com.au]
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China is responsible for China's sins. the US is responsible for the US's sins, DogDude is responsible for DogDude's sins, which are probably numerous and include roaming off leash, trespassing on fire hydrants, and unwanted crotch nuzzling.
Re: Institutional inertia (Score:1)
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They let it get out of control? Quite honestly you're imagining things, China went into the biggest lockdown the world has ever seen after a new virus emerged, no western country acted any where near as decisively.
I stopped work 2 weeks before the UK gov't got it's act together, it was blindingly obvious to me that the UK governments response was completely pathetic and wrong at the time. Between the day I stopped work and the day the gov't announced lockdown, the disease had multiplied 20-fold - the 40,000
Re: Institutional inertia (Score:1)
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No, someone's getting there facts mixed up, the virus is believed in hindsight to have 1st infected someone in nov' 2019. That's not the same as 'knowing' about it in November. Chinese authorities were 1st made aware of a SARS-like virus 27 December 2019, at which point they did act like a bag of dicks and tried to cover it up for about 3 to 4 weeks.
Blame lies everywhere, China fucked up, most European countries fucked up, US totally fucked up.
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To be clear, China did indeed let this get out of control... in China. The virus was already out of the country and spreading by the time it was identified. We all knew about China lying and trying to cover up the virus right at the start. Do you remember the doctor who died twice. The point is that each country is responsible for its own response to the virus and some countries failed to respond well. The government of any such country can't absolve itself of blame by trying to shift all the blame to China
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+1!
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And yet many countries who heard the same lies and cover-ups from China were able to handle the pandemic better than the US. Whom do we blame for that, precisely?
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Facts can be inconvenient:
US: 327 deaths per million population
China: 3 deaths per million population
[ Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ]
The US is literally doing 100 times worse at managing this. Rather than attacking other countries, get a grip on reality and facts, and deal with this crisis in your own country, with maximum international co-operat
Re: Institutional inertia (Score:1)
very distorted warmongering (Score:2)
China did not assure the world no animal to human (transmission)
What actually was reported from China sources for a while was "we have found no conclusive evidence yet of human-to-human transmission".
Key words, phrases:
NOT FOUND - To a person educated in scientific (or just careful) thinking, that does not imply THERE IS NOT
patticularly when phrased as:
not found YET - does not imply there is no such transmission, only that the data acquisition and analysis (th
Re:Institutional inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you're not familiar with China. There are about 2500 xiao wang zi (little princes) in Beijing that run everything. Xi is a virtual dictator, and the princes execute his will. If you're a mayor or Governor or other Government official that does not toe the official party line is swiftly removed from office and disappears. It's why policies from Beijing are implemented nearly immediately, and construction of Government works happen in record speed: it's dictated from Beijing, and you have a week or two to start the project - or you're out.
China is a total dictatorship, and censoring and Government action happens at speeds that most small businesses would envy. Beijing decides they want a building in a specific location? It's a matter of a week or two and construction starts. A city misses its assigned GDP goal (yes, they assign goals for GDP, not just as a nation but down to regions and cities), and the mayor "retires". If a bank (they are all State owned) misses a profit (or loan-out) amount, the board is replaced. and so on.
The speed of Government in China is radically different than anything you've seen because it is such a strong dictatorship, and the State controls 100% all the important industries (telecom, media, banking, transportation, power) and it is a single-party State.
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But overall, no matter how "efficient" the dictatorship is, it's still a massive multi-headed hydra organization (even if authoritarian hierarchical), and some parts of in
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Apparently you're not familiar with China.
And neither are you.
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Uh, you know he created that situation with a "purge," but you don't think the situation exists?
Ivan, your translator is broken again.
and scientific inertia (Score:3, Informative)
On Jan. 5, the Shanghai Public Clinical Health Center, led by famed virologist Zhang Yongzhen, was the latest to sequence the virus. He submitted it to the GenBank database, where it sat awaiting review
Despite the plaudits, China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information.
Chinese government labs only released the genome after another lab published it ahead of authorities on a virologist website on Jan. 11.
So Chinese scientist did release the data in a timely manner, but it was waiting for reviews as have been practiced in science for eon. The question is whether 6 day is too long.
In November 2019, just a month before this COVID-19 was detected in Wuhan, two -- just two -- people in China caught Black Death disease [cnn.com] and it was reported immediately and dealt with properly. So the question is: if China is not transparent about infectious disease, why would it reveal the Black Death disease (and other ones like H
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"So he did, but he didn't, but since I already said he did, he did, even though he didn't. Because Aristotle."
Yeah, no surprise I look up at your username after writing that part and see it is "hacking bear." Fucking Russians.
Re:Institutional inertia (Score:5, Insightful)
I would believe this if China was governed by a democratic government where there is no one person in charge of it all.
However, China is at best an authoritarian government, but is rightly considered to be a dictatorship under the lead of one person - President Xi Jinping. There is nothing important that doesn't go through him. And he is the one in charge of it all. He would know what the status of the information is and the requests for it would've come through him.
He's powerful enough to basically ram through what he wants - arresting people on a whim or as retaliation There's a reason he rammed through the Hong Kong national security law last week - he was hoping that everyone was distracted enough that no one would notice.
Right now China is extremely vulnerable - they don't have the political power they had because the economy sucks (and it was their fault, if you want to cast some blame). Economic weapons only work when there's an economy after all.
There's a reason why China hasn't retaliated much over the Meng/Huawei decision - because China can't. They could declare tariffs on goods, but China imports raw materials and exports finished goods, so doing that just hurts their own industry, at a time when people aren't buying that many finished goods. They can't ban the NBA because the NBA isn't playing any games at this moment.
On the upsicde for China, at least it does put the whole "engineered bioweapon" conspiracy theory to rest - if it was a weapon for China to use, it certainly backfired as it hurt them economically and politically. It's why the world is demanding more from China.
So no, bureaucracy doesn't come into play. If they can build a 1000 bed hospital in a week, they could certainly have released the information in mere hours. And the hospital requires acquiring land (by force), and coordination of thousands of workers and hundreds of companies to get the supplies and skills at the right time and right place. And it's not like companies were having all the equipment on hand and waiting just in case a hospital needed to be built.
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Releasing bad (false or inaccurate) information on a thing like this is worse than releasing no information at all.
Remember please that comparable information on MERS and SARS took multiple months to release.
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The data that was actually collected is very reliable because the causes of errors are natural and there has been an ongoing effort to understand those errors for centuries or longer.
Releasing real data is releasing real data.
Releasing fake data is releasing fake data.
You seem really confused, but it isn't hard.
The speed of reporting depends on the speed that hands can either print pages and deliver them, or type email addresses and press send. In some places that takes a long time, because you have to go a
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However, China is at best an authoritarian government, but is rightly considered to be a dictatorship under the lead of one person - President Xi Jinping. There is nothing important that doesn't go through him.
This is obviously bollocks. The country has over a billion people. Many cities with a population larger than a country. No dictator, however powerful, can handle all of that. Even the "important" stuff alone would be too much information for anyone.
Time to stop reading fiction when trying to understand how actual countries work.
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Again using the US as an example, look at the US reaction to the San Francisco plague outbreak, which is long enough in the past that no-one can turn it into the usual Trump/Republican/Democrat shitfest. The government silenced medical people who tried to warn about it, doctored figures to show there was nothing going on, and when all that failed outright lied about it being a problem. This sounds pretty much exactly like what's being said about China, except this time it was the US doing it.
And that's n
Re:The question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the WHO had not said nice things about China, would they have gotten the information sooner, or later?
Appeasement of tyrannical regimes has worked out wonderfully in the past!
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Ding ding ding!!
It's called deference. If you need someone's assistance and that someone is big, powerful, and highly egotistical, you will almost certainly need to approach asserting those needs with big helping of deference. You thank them publicly. You celebrate their good actions. You do what it takes.
Because no, China would not have contributed much if anything were it not for the WHO's deference.
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Obligations to all of humanity supersede the usual expected social nonsense of ego-stroking.
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Obligations to all of humanity supersede the usual expected social nonsense of ego-stroking.
Which is why none of the governors or mayors had to suck up to Trump in order to get PPE for their states/cities.
Oh.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
much later *if at all* (Score:3)
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Sooner.
Pooh would have had to save face by playing nice.
This is good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the type of information that should have already been public knowledge.
It is not an excuse for other countries that have responded poorly, but it is important that China be criticized for the things they screwed up (and likewise for other countries*).
I applaud the AP for revealing this information. It adds important perspective to the response around the world, and in my mind slightly elevates the WHO.
* There's certainly plenty of well-deserved criticism for the US (which is also good).
Re:This is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Read TFA...
This is exactly why China needs to be called out:
The new information does not support the narrative of either the U.S. or China, but instead portrays an agency now stuck in the middle that was urgently trying to solicit more data despite limited authority.
The WHO (or really any international organization) shouldn't be in a position where it needs to pander to the ego of any nation to get important data about a disease.
Re:This is good (Score:4, Insightful)
The WHO (or really any international organization) shouldn't be in a position where it needs to pander to the ego of any nation to get important data about a disease.
I agree, but no similar or replacement international organization will ever be allowed to have teeth. All countries, even those in the West, will always put their own interests first.
We have to accept it for what it is, flawed but still better than nothing, which is the other alternative.
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I agree, but no similar or replacement international organization will ever be allowed to have teeth. All countries, even those in the West, will always put their own interests first.
We have to accept it for what it is, flawed but still better than nothing, which is the other alternative.
This is the core of the Realism [wikipedia.org] school of thought in international relations.
Chinal killed 100,000 Americans in March (Score:2)
Nonsense.
Sure they were tardy with their data by 6 days. And they stuffed up locally in December before anyone realized it was serious.
But the pandemic hit America hard in March, many weeks later. The fact that America has the highest infection rate in the world is not China's fault. Many other countries used information from China to kill Covid-19.
It is purely an American problem. And Trump's attempt to deflect blame on China is garbage.
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It is purely an American problem.
No. England's as well.
So it is purely a Trump problem. Trump, and any world leader that is chummy with him, basically Boris Johnson, are the ones who stuffed up.
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what's the solution?
The solution here is that the international community (not the WHO, but its member nations) needs to chastise countries when they act unfavorably like this. If the whole world says "China, you can't act like that", or "US, you can't do that", then it's a more impactful message. Unfortunately, most countries are more concerned about making China (or the US) angry than speaking up for what's right.
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a-freak'in-men!
Orgs like the WHO had an opportunity to be GREAT! Instead, politics intruded, bureaucracy abounded, and the UN ineptitude stepped in, and they ended up being, at best, only marginally useful IMO.
I'm sorry- (Score:2)
I thought this was well known by this point in time?
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We got spammed repeatedly about that on Slashdot by some AC, that's for sure.
Next thing you know, the "Internet today sucks*" spammer will be proven right!
* yes we already know it sucks, Internet sucks spammer guy. Slashdotters already know about that, you're only wasting everyone's time including yours.
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Lives Lost (Score:1)
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How many lives were lost because of this delay?
So far? None. Not a single life has been saved because we know the genome, and knowing it two weeks earlier wouldn't have changed that.
In the future? Perhaps some, if the genome leads to a vaccine, cure, or effective treatment.
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Facts do matter. The federal government response or lack thereof in the US is Trump's responsibility, yes. No-one is currently burning down US cities although in the past the majority of mass arson in the US outside of war has been by white supremacists, yes. This does, in fact, appear to be a post fact world for some.
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The narrative of Trump is that China lied so he has no responsibility for the Coronavirus going out of control in the USA.
The narrative doesn't hold water though, since although China lied and didn't help in stopping the spread of the infection at its beginning, other countries proved to the world that Coronavirus had to be taken very seriously: Italy as example was in deep shit long before the USA's infections started to escalate.
The truth is that Trump wanted to avoid the economy being disrupted by social
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What was happening in December, months before WHO declared covid-19 to be a pandemic?
Democrats in Congress: IMPEACH TRUMP
Trump: We need to halt travel from asian countries because of the growing pandemic.
Democrats: IMPEACH RACIST TRUMP
China lied, Dems divided and distracted the country at a critical time just to undermine a legitimate election, and Trump gets the blame. While China was buying up all the PPE they could get their hands on after they had purposely failed to lock down their own country, Pelosi
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What was happening in December, months before WHO declared covid-19 to be a pandemic?
Democrats in Congress: IMPEACH TRUMP Trump: We need to allow travel from asian countries whilst blocking some random Chinese people because of the growing pandemic. Democrats: IMPEACH RACIST TRUMP
blah...
You seem to have a typo. Fixed it for you.
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> The truth is that Trump wanted to avoid the economy being disrupted by social distancing and business closing down,
No, you are over thinking it. Trump simply does not have a clue about anything.
But blaming China will appeal to stupid people, so Trump will probably win in November. I wonder if many Americans even realize that their infection rate is about the highest in the world, despite having many weeks of warning which were used by many other countries to prevent the spread.
One bad effect of blami
What's That? (Score:1, Funny)
WHO is a corrupt mouthpiece spouting CCP lies and causing death.
US gets fed up and cuts almost half a billion dollars in funding to the WHO.
WHO starts telling the truth.
I'M SHOCKED.
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That half a billion dollars constitutes 15% of the WHO's funding. I think this is an attempt to appease Trump.
Delayed releasing the genomy by a WEEK. (Score:2)
Please tip your masked waitress... (Score:2)
W.H.O.'s Goodwill amabasdar. (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
This must mean all other governments (thinking for example of the US and UK) reacted in timescales of much under this delay, in order for it to be significant and not utterly irrelevant to the implication of the headline?
(that that delay was material in other countries death tolls)
The Lancet: Jan 24 2020: Coronavirus (Score:2)
“In December, 2019, Wuhan, Hubei province, China, became the centre of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause, which raised intense attention not only within China but internationally. Chinese health authorities did an immediate investigation to characterise and control the disease, including isolation of people suspected to have the disease, close monitoring of contacts, epidemiological and clinical data collection from patients, and develop
Virus genome made no difference (Score:2, Insightful)
China in fact sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information.
We have had the virus genome for a long time now. We haven't even gotten close to a vaccine. So that information was held back by two weeks. It didn't make a fucking difference. It's not like. The only way to slow the spread was quarantines/lockdowns and tracing, but the paranoid-everything-is-1984-tinfoil-hat crowd puts personal inconvenience/annoyance above saving lives.
And judging by the Slashdot crowd, China's genome data would have been under suspicion. And the same paranoid-everything-is-1984-tinfo
"deadly virus"... (Score:1)
0.4% death rate can hardly be called "deadly". Almost everything is deadly to people who think this counts as deadly.
Duh. And what use is WHO? (Score:2)
Why do have the WHO, or dozen, or hundreds, of organizations like it?
All they do is repeat Chinese propaganda, and charge the US $5 billion a year for the service.
Being $30 trillion in debt, maybe we could cut out a few such services?
WHO is frustrated? (Score:1)