OT: COVID-19 thread #4

[SalmonsSuperfan]

Awesome!!! Those doubting the existence of a China defense squad get to see it in action.

OK, let's quickly pull apart your points. You are conceding that the Italian study is actually evidence that covid was there months beforehand. Now, logically, that rules out the fact that covid just appeared in China in December. Of course, we now know that it takes months for covid to build up to the point where it is filling up hospitals so that wasn't really in question. At least, it shouldn't have been.

But, let's go with your train of thought. So, covid was in Wuhan for months before it spiked. Your point is that its hard to notice that at first. Fair enough. However, once people go back and look at things in hindsight, the pattern becomes really obvious. That's something we have seen throughout the world.

If, once China and associated authorities realized that it was there, they would have been able to go back and see a typical viral spread pattern with a slow buildup up and then an explosion. Basic epidemiology. Once they saw that, if they had relayed that to the world, then medical authorities around the globe would have been thinking "OMG, its existed for a while. It might be here already." They would have been investigating and finding cases locally instead of telling their own doctors to ignore the cases they were seeing. End result would have been earlier shutdowns and countless (hundreds of thousands) of lives saved.

Instead, we got "no evidence of human to human transmission" and "it just showed up in December". That lulled the world to sleep during a critical time.

These were lies and cover ups.

I love how discussing this is QANON type stuff. Gotta discredit, right? Let's turn that around. The idea that the first cases in Wuhan were in December and then a few weeks later they had to build hospitals to house the sick and shut down the entire province is a complete fantasy. The world doesn't work like that. Its a fairy tale being told by an autocratic government to cover its own tracks.

this is your brain on nationalism: the guy is basically just reiterating what was written in the link that YOU posted, now he's a CCP shill for it because that's what you are if you say anything about china that isn't hyper-critical and borderline conspiratorial. it only works that way with china and not every other country in the world that does questionable **** (all of them) because china is the only country that is actually challenging american hegemony across the world. in 20 years, i bet americans will be saying the same stuff about india

Nope. Stuff like this:

Read on Twitter

wouldn't happen in any but the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. We now have an overwhelming amount of data showing how covid spreads. There is no possible way that someone could come to the conclusion that covid wasn't being spread by people after that long.

I mean, its not borderline conspiratorial. Its a known and proven fact that Chinese authorities were arresting people who spoke up about the outbreak. They WERE suppressing it.

so there wasn't evidence, and now there is. funny how that works.

[coldfish]

this is your brain on nationalism: the guy is basically just reiterating what was written in the link that YOU posted, now he's a CCP shill for it because that's what you are if you say anything about china that isn't hyper-critical and borderline conspiratorial. it only works that way with china and not every other country in the world that does questionable **** (all of them) because china is the only country that is actually challenging american hegemony across the world. in 20 years, i bet americans will be saying the same stuff about india

Nope. Stuff like this:

Read on Twitter

wouldn't happen in any but the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. We now have an overwhelming amount of data showing how covid spreads. There is no possible way that someone could come to the conclusion that covid wasn't being spread by people after that long.

I mean, its not borderline conspiratorial. Its a known and proven fact that Chinese authorities were arresting people who spoke up about the outbreak. They WERE suppressing it.

so there wasn't evidence, and now there is. funny how that works.

Lol. How viruses spread is exponential growth. You can feel free to pick out any of the countless graphs floating around and see that. It would have taken a significant amount of time to get to the point where you have to build hospitals to keep up with the sick. Even a cursory review would have made the human to human spread blatantly obvious.

Hell, we know that Donald Trump was being given intelligence information on the virus a month before that tweet about how rapidly it spread among people. He directly told Woodward.

The Chinese clearly were covering information up. Denying this is getting to contortions that definitely defy science and a lot of logic.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

So, our intelligence people knew about this and how bad it was weeks before China even notified the world. Two months before China "could find no evidence of human to human transmission." Feel free to bash Trump on this. I'll be right there with you but if you defend China . . . its completely irrational to the point where the only logical explanations for such ridiculous thoughts drift to conspiracy theories.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

Nope. Stuff like this:

Read on Twitter

wouldn't happen in any but the most authoritarian regimes on the planet. We now have an overwhelming amount of data showing how covid spreads. There is no possible way that someone could come to the conclusion that covid wasn't being spread by people after that long.

I mean, its not borderline conspiratorial. Its a known and proven fact that Chinese authorities were arresting people who spoke up about the outbreak. They WERE suppressing it.

so there wasn't evidence, and now there is. funny how that works.

Lol. How viruses spread is exponential growth. You can feel free to pick out any of the countless graphs floating around and see that. It would have taken a significant amount of time to get to the point where you have to build hospitals to keep up with the sick. Even a cursory review would have made the human to human spread blatantly obvious.

Hell, we know that Donald Trump was being given intelligence information on the virus a month before that tweet about how rapidly it spread among people. He directly told Woodward.

The Chinese clearly were covering information up. Denying this is getting to contortions that definitely defy science and a lot of logic.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

So, our intelligence people knew about this and how bad it was weeks before China even notified the world. Two months before China "could find no evidence of human to human transmission." Feel free to bash Trump on this. I'll be right there with you but if you defend China . . . its completely irrational to the point where the only logical explanations for such ridiculous thoughts drift to conspiracy theories.

It seems likely they were 'covering up' information before we know the extent of how dangerous it was, in the same sense that every government covers things up, ostensibly to prevent mass panic, and because of a legacy of distrusting 'international' institutions based in Western Europe or North America.

I just don't know why we're even talking about this a year later, as if the Chinese government sharing information with WHO slightly faster would have changed anything in the long run. Meanwhile, the virus is basically under control in China while it continues to decimate North America and Europe. Your whole spiel seemingly has little to actually do with COVID-19 and this thread has basically devolved into 'why we hate China: part 10'


let's see what medical experts in a peer-reviewed journal think: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

[Dresden]

...
I mean, its not borderline conspiratorial. Its a known and proven fact that Chinese authorities were arresting people who spoke up about the outbreak. They WERE suppressing it.

No, not arrested. Admonished. In the case of Dr. Li, interrogated as well. And later cleared of all wrong doings by Chinese authorities. At least this is what wikipedia states about the original 8 doctors who first sounded the alarm. Maybe there were others that were arrested, I don't know.

"Eight of these doctors, including Li Wenliang (punished on 3 January),[258] were later admonished by the police for spreading false rumours, and another, Ai Fen, was reprimanded by her superiors for raising the alarm.[259]"

[Dresden]

so there wasn't evidence, and now there is. funny how that works.

Lol. How viruses spread is exponential growth. You can feel free to pick out any of the countless graphs floating around and see that. It would have taken a significant amount of time to get to the point where you have to build hospitals to keep up with the sick. Even a cursory review would have made the human to human spread blatantly obvious.

Hell, we know that Donald Trump was being given intelligence information on the virus a month before that tweet about how rapidly it spread among people. He directly told Woodward.

The Chinese clearly were covering information up. Denying this is getting to contortions that definitely defy science and a lot of logic.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

So, our intelligence people knew about this and how bad it was weeks before China even notified the world. Two months before China "could find no evidence of human to human transmission." Feel free to bash Trump on this. I'll be right there with you but if you defend China . . . its completely irrational to the point where the only logical explanations for such ridiculous thoughts drift to conspiracy theories.

It seems likely they were 'covering up' information before we know the extent of how dangerous it was, in the same sense that every government covers things up, ostensibly to prevent mass panic, and because of a legacy of distrusting 'international' institutions based in Western Europe or North America.

I just don't know why we're even talking about this a year later, as if the Chinese government sharing information with WHO slightly faster would have changed anything in the long run. Meanwhile, the virus is basically under control in China while it continues to decimate North America and Europe. Your whole spiel seemingly has little to actually do with COVID-19 and this thread has basically devolved into 'why we hate China: part 10'


let's see what medical experts in a peer-reviewed journal think: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

Could not get that Lancet link to work, but the Lancet is cited in a Wikipedia article, stating that the first known case of Covid was Dec. 1st. That Wiki article lists the number of confirmed cases to be 60 by Dec. 20th, and 266 by Dec. 31st.

Theories that there was an earlier outbreak, (cited in an earlier post by Coldfish, and attributed to our intelligence sources) could be true, but no real proof of that has been given. I'm sceptical of any announcement by the US govt. Earlier Mike Pompeo said in a press conference that he had "enormous proof" that the virus was created in a Chinese lab in Wuhan, rather than being something that arose in the wild. 6 months later, and Pompeo has yet to reveal what his "enormous proof" consists of.

Until I see real definitive proof of an earlier outbreak than what is generally accepted to the case (December), assuming a coverup on China's part seems to be more conspiracy theory than reality.

[dice]

Lol. How viruses spread is exponential growth. You can feel free to pick out any of the countless graphs floating around and see that. It would have taken a significant amount of time to get to the point where you have to build hospitals to keep up with the sick. Even a cursory review would have made the human to human spread blatantly obvious.

Hell, we know that Donald Trump was being given intelligence information on the virus a month before that tweet about how rapidly it spread among people. He directly told Woodward.

The Chinese clearly were covering information up. Denying this is getting to contortions that definitely defy science and a lot of logic.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273



So, our intelligence people knew about this and how bad it was weeks before China even notified the world. Two months before China "could find no evidence of human to human transmission." Feel free to bash Trump on this. I'll be right there with you but if you defend China . . . its completely irrational to the point where the only logical explanations for such ridiculous thoughts drift to conspiracy theories.

It seems likely they were 'covering up' information before we know the extent of how dangerous it was, in the same sense that every government covers things up, ostensibly to prevent mass panic, and because of a legacy of distrusting 'international' institutions based in Western Europe or North America.

I just don't know why we're even talking about this a year later, as if the Chinese government sharing information with WHO slightly faster would have changed anything in the long run. Meanwhile, the virus is basically under control in China while it continues to decimate North America and Europe. Your whole spiel seemingly has little to actually do with COVID-19 and this thread has basically devolved into 'why we hate China: part 10'


let's see what medical experts in a peer-reviewed journal think: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

Could not get that Lancet link to work, but the Lancet is cited in a Wikipedia article, stating that the first known case of Covid was Dec. 1st. That Wiki article lists the number of confirmed cases to be 60 by Dec. 20th, and 266 by Dec. 31st.

Theories that there was an earlier outbreak, (cited in an earlier post by Coldfish, and attributed to our intelligence sources) could be true, but no real proof of that has been given. I'm sceptical of any announcement by the US govt. Earlier Mike Pompeo said in a press conference that he had "enormous proof" that the virus was created in a Chinese lab in Wuhan, rather than being something that arose in the wild. 6 months later, and Pompeo has yet to reveal what his "enormous proof" consists of.

Until I see real definitive proof of an earlier outbreak than what is generally accepted to the case (December), assuming a coverup on China's part seems to be more conspiracy theory than reality.

wikipedia says that china tried to suppress SARS info as well, so it's not exactly an out of the blue accusation this time around

[dice]

-pfizer shipping 6.4 million doses of vaccine in a few weeks, going primarily to health care workers and vulnerable populations

-largest australian airline will eventually require proof of vaccination to fly

[Dresden]

A thorough timeline of the early days of the pandemic, from the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52573137

[Jimako10]

I'll just put my 2 cents and say that IMO, China did cover it up for a few weeks, while at the same time significantly reduced their exports/increased their imports of PPE in Jan/Feb. Is it possible that China covered up it in order to prevent a mass global panic and be able to have all the PPE they needed to get through it?

Well Dr. Fauci even said that they downplayed masks early on in order to make sure healthcare workers were able to have adequate supply of PPE. Being in healthcare, I can assure you that masks were hard to come by in March/April, along with other PPE. Supply was never going to meet demand and I don't fault Fauci for taking this route to make sure healthcare workers had PPE (even though it still wasn't enough early on and if that truly was his intention). Without PPE for healthcare workers, things could have gotten much, much worse.


Happy Thanksgiving Bulls board and stay safe!

Sent from my SM-G986U1 using RealGM mobile app

[musiqsoulchild]

China absolutely covers up data and facts. It's what you should KNOW and PLAN for in your foreign policy. They are a dictatorship.

US on the other hand...the supposed last bastion of freedom and democracy...why are we hiding stuff and downplaying it?

Because Trump and his re-election

[Dresden]

China absolutely covers up data and facts. It's what you should KNOW and PLAN for in your foreign policy. They are a dictatorship.

US on the other hand...the supposed last bastion of freedom and democracy...why are we hiding stuff and downplaying it?

Because Trump and his re-election

They may have been slow to admit the scale of the pandemic, claiming it was contained, and that they had no evidence of human to human transmission. And they apparently made it harder for the WHO to gather facts in the beginning, and tried to delay announcing this as an international health emergency. But these were delays of days, or a couple of weeks at most, not 3-4 months, as some people suggest.

And again, I think the way you work around this is by doing things like re-staffing the field offices our own CDC has in China- we reduced it's staff by 2/3's under Trump, and cut it's budget drastically. Having our own people inside China would give us much better information about future developments. And having our scientists develop good relationships with Chinese scientists will help both countries. So that's where diplomacy in the realm of international cooperation can play a key role, and that includes re-joining the WHO and probably working with our allies to strengthen it so that it has more ability to exert pressure on nations that aren't as transparent as they should be.

[coldfish]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/30/asia/wuhan-china-covid-intl/index.html

In a report marked "internal document, please keep confidential," local health authorities in the province of Hubei, where the virus was first detected, list a total of 5,918 newly detected cases on February 10, more than double the official public number of confirmed cases, breaking down the total into a variety of subcategories. This larger figure was never fully revealed at that time, as China's accounting system seemed, in the tumult of the early weeks of the pandemic, to downplay the severity of the outbreak.

The previously undisclosed figure is among a string of revelations contained within 117 pages of leaked documents from the Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, shared with and verified by CNN.

...

Tuesday, December 1, marks one year since the first known patient showed symptoms of the disease in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, according to a key study in the Lancet medical journal.
At the same time that the virus is believed to have first emerged, the documents show another health crisis was unfolding: Hubei was dealing with a significant influenza outbreak. It caused cases to rise to 20 times the level recorded the previous year, the documents show, placing enormous levels of additional stress on an already stretched health care system.

The influenza "epidemic," as officials noted in the document, was not only present in Wuhan in December, but was greatest in the neighboring cities of Yichang and Xianning. It remains unclear what impact or connection the influenza spike had on the Covid-19 outbreak. And while there is no suggestion in the documents the two parallel crises are linked, information regarding the magnitude of Hubei's influenza spike has still yet to be made public.

....

But, so far, access for international experts to hospital medial records and raw data in Hubei has been limited, with the WHO saying last week they had "reassurances from our Chinese government colleagues that a trip to the field" would be granted as part of their investigation.

.....

The documents show a wide-range of data on two specific days, February 10 and March 7, that is often at odds with what officials said publicly at the time. This discrepancy was likely due to a combination of a highly dysfunctional reporting system and a recurrent instinct to suppress bad news, said analysts. These documents show the full extent of what officials knew, but chose not to spell out to the public.

On February 10, when China reported 2,478 new confirmed cases nationwide, the documents show Hubei actually circulated a different total of 5,918 newly reported cases. The internal number is divided into subcategories, providing an insight into the full scope of Hubei's diagnosis methodology at the time.

.....

He said Chinese officials "seemed actually to minimize the impact of the epidemic at any moment in time. To include patients who were suspected of having the infection obviously would have expanded the size of outbreak and would have given, I think, a truer appreciation of the nature of the infection and its size."

....

Death tolls listed in the documents reveal the starkest discrepancies. On March 7, the total death toll in Hubei since the beginning of the outbreak stood at 2,986, but in the internal report it is listed as 3,456, including 2,675 confirmed deaths, 647 "clinically diagnosed" deaths, and 126 "suspected" case deaths.

.....

Testing was inaccurate from the start, the documents said, and led to a reporting system with weeks long delays in diagnosing new cases. Experts said that meant most of the daily figures that informed the government response risked being inaccurate or dated.
On January 10, one of the documents reveals how during an audit of testing facilities, officials reported that the SARS testing kits that were being used to diagnose the new virus were ineffective, regularly giving false negatives. It also indicated that poor levels of personal protective equipment meant that virus samples had to be made inactive before testing.

Much, much more at the link.

[Shill]

Again, China does deserve plenty of blame for this delay, which probably caused countless new infections. But the US delayed just as long from taking serious actions, even when we knew of it's presence in places like Washington and California. Remember Trump's declaration that "this week we have 15 cases, soon there will be zero"? If action had been taken immediately (as was done in some places like San Francisco), the spread may have been much better contained. And certainly we should have started gearing up production of PPE at that point, doing a lot more to prepare the public for a possible outbreak.

Again, that's not to let China off the hook, but saying "the CCP is notorious for this kind of thing" (which they are, absolutely), overlooks the fact that our own govt. was just as guilty it trying to cover up the severity of the pandemic- and if fact still is.

I feel like there's a parallel conversation taking place.

There's been plenty of analysis of America's response to the virus, and a disproportionately small amount of analysis on China's role.

Even if the U.S. had handled things impeccably and there were zero deaths in the country, that still means there were over 1.1 million deaths worldwide.

The virus originated in China, so it makes sense to scrutinize how and why this happened, and how it can be mitigated in the future.

For example, Dr. Fauci was on television as late as February saying the virus wasn't that big of a deal because he was basing his analysis on information coming out of the World Health Organization, which—let's be honest—is beholden to Beijing.

So what did China know, and when did they know it?

These are fair questions to ask without immediately pivoting to how the U.S. (or any other country) might've botched the response.

I agree those are fair questions to ask, and should be asked. But I see a lot of people supposing a large scale coverup on China's part, going back as far as August of 2019. I don't think there's any good proof of that.

As far as I can see, China first became aware of pneumonia clusters in late December, did some additional testing, found out there was a new corona virus circulating, and made this public a few days later.

The WHO was notified on Dec. 31st, and launched an investigation a few days later. Whether China interfered or stonewalled this investigation, I don't know. Perhaps they did.

I don't know how valid this point is either that the WHO is "beholden" to China. I don't know what evidence exists to make that conclusion.

In the future, the US needs to re-staff it's field offices in China that worked on issues like sudden infectious disease outbreaks, which were drastically cut by the Trump administration:

"The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters has learned.
...

The CDC’s China headcount has shrunk to around 14 staffers, down from approximately 47 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the documents show. The four people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the losses included epidemiologists and other health professionals.

...

“The CDC office in Beijing is a shell of its former self,” said one of the people, a U.S. official who worked in China at the time of the drawdown.

Separately, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the global relief program which had a role in helping China monitor and respond to outbreaks, also shut their Beijing offices on Trump’s watch. Before the closures, each office was staffed by a U.S. official. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) transferred out of China in 2018 the manager of an animal disease monitoring program.

Reductions at the U.S. agencies sidelined health experts, scientists and other professionals who might have been able to help China mount an earlier response to the novel coronavirus, as well as provide the U.S. government with more information about what was coming, according to the people who spoke with Reuters. The Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and for keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to assist."

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/26/trump-administration-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak/


So there you have it- we actually had a robust presence in China prior to Trump- epidemiologists and animal disease experts that were there for precisely these reasons. We need to work with China to rebuild those ties (as well as with other nations), and invest more in our CDC branches around the world to help monitor and assist with future outbreaks. Of course, we should also be re-joining the WHO and be part of their effort to be more vigilant on these sorts of things in the future.

Read on Twitter

As for more staff in Beijing, China is a black box.

At least two independent journalists who were reporting on the virus were suddenly spirited away:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/business/wuhan-coronavirus-journalists.html

China denied access to the U.S. to investigate:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-scientists-not-allowed-china-investigate-coronavirus-origins-mike-pompeo-1499705

The CCP was welding people inside their homes:

https://www.the-sun.com/news/378365/coronavirus-patients-welded-into-homes-in-china-as-death-toll-spirals-to-813/

They were reportedly cremating bodies around the clock:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7969861/Wuhan-crematoriums-burning-bodies-24-7-cope-extra-workload.html

China tried to blame the U.S. for COVID:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-chinese-official-suggests-u-s-army-blame-outbreak-n1157826

Then they tried to blame Europe:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13239648/china-accuses-italy-starting-covid-pandemic-study-proves/

Then they tried to blame India and Bangladesh:

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/shifting-the-blame-new-chinese-research-claims-coronavirus-originated-in-india-in-summer-2019/ar-BB1bsSIX


There are issues with China that go beyond CDC staffing decisions and diplomacy.

Again, this isn't to absolve the U.S. of all blame, but China cannot be seen as an honest actor on the international scene.

[Dresden]

I feel like there's a parallel conversation taking place.

There's been plenty of analysis of America's response to the virus, and a disproportionately small amount of analysis on China's role.

Even if the U.S. had handled things impeccably and there were zero deaths in the country, that still means there were over 1.1 million deaths worldwide.

The virus originated in China, so it makes sense to scrutinize how and why this happened, and how it can be mitigated in the future.

For example, Dr. Fauci was on television as late as February saying the virus wasn't that big of a deal because he was basing his analysis on information coming out of the World Health Organization, which—let's be honest—is beholden to Beijing.

So what did China know, and when did they know it?

These are fair questions to ask without immediately pivoting to how the U.S. (or any other country) might've botched the response.

I agree those are fair questions to ask, and should be asked. But I see a lot of people supposing a large scale coverup on China's part, going back as far as August of 2019. I don't think there's any good proof of that.

As far as I can see, China first became aware of pneumonia clusters in late December, did some additional testing, found out there was a new corona virus circulating, and made this public a few days later.

The WHO was notified on Dec. 31st, and launched an investigation a few days later. Whether China interfered or stonewalled this investigation, I don't know. Perhaps they did.

I don't know how valid this point is either that the WHO is "beholden" to China. I don't know what evidence exists to make that conclusion.

In the future, the US needs to re-staff it's field offices in China that worked on issues like sudden infectious disease outbreaks, which were drastically cut by the Trump administration:

"The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters has learned.
...

The CDC’s China headcount has shrunk to around 14 staffers, down from approximately 47 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the documents show. The four people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the losses included epidemiologists and other health professionals.

...

“The CDC office in Beijing is a shell of its former self,” said one of the people, a U.S. official who worked in China at the time of the drawdown.

Separately, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the global relief program which had a role in helping China monitor and respond to outbreaks, also shut their Beijing offices on Trump’s watch. Before the closures, each office was staffed by a U.S. official. In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) transferred out of China in 2018 the manager of an animal disease monitoring program.

Reductions at the U.S. agencies sidelined health experts, scientists and other professionals who might have been able to help China mount an earlier response to the novel coronavirus, as well as provide the U.S. government with more information about what was coming, according to the people who spoke with Reuters. The Trump administration in February chastised China for censoring information about the outbreak and for keeping U.S. experts from entering the country to assist."

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/26/trump-administration-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak/


So there you have it- we actually had a robust presence in China prior to Trump- epidemiologists and animal disease experts that were there for precisely these reasons. We need to work with China to rebuild those ties (as well as with other nations), and invest more in our CDC branches around the world to help monitor and assist with future outbreaks. Of course, we should also be re-joining the WHO and be part of their effort to be more vigilant on these sorts of things in the future.

Read on Twitter

As for more staff in Beijing, China is a black box.

At least two independent journalists who were reporting on the virus were suddenly spirited away:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/business/wuhan-coronavirus-journalists.html

China denied access to the U.S. to investigate:

https://www.newsweek.com/us-scientists-not-allowed-china-investigate-coronavirus-origins-mike-pompeo-1499705

The CCP was welding people inside their homes:

https://www.the-sun.com/news/378365/coronavirus-patients-welded-into-homes-in-china-as-death-toll-spirals-to-813/

They were reportedly cremating bodies around the clock:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7969861/Wuhan-crematoriums-burning-bodies-24-7-cope-extra-workload.html

China tried to blame the U.S. for COVID:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-chinese-official-suggests-u-s-army-blame-outbreak-n1157826

Then they tried to blame Europe:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13239648/china-accuses-italy-starting-covid-pandemic-study-proves/

Then they tried to blame India and Bangladesh:

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/shifting-the-blame-new-chinese-research-claims-coronavirus-originated-in-india-in-summer-2019/ar-BB1bsSIX


There are issues with China that go beyond CDC staffing decisions and diplomacy.

Again, this isn't to absolve the U.S. of all blame, but China cannot be seen as an honest actor on the international scene.

I've never said China was "an honest actor". But it's also important to separate what is known verifiably, and what gets reported in tabloid like news sources. Also, journalists are one thing, scientists are another. I don't think there has been any reports of US scientists getting "spirited away".

Working in China is difficult- they heavily censor the news, make it hard to get access, and put pressure on scientists to follow the party line. That doesn't mean they are monolithic, or that some concerned scientists haven't been able to get information out, and therefore if we had more of our scientists in China they may get information from Chinese colleagues, and they certainly could possibly tell if there was an outbreak occurring, or a coverup.

Also, in terms of trying to sell the public on false stories, or trying to underplay the outbreak, the US has done plenty of that themselves, from Trump trying to prohibit cruise ship passengers who were infected from disembarking because it would raise our numbers, to his officials apparently trying to limit testing for the same reason. Mike Pompeo announced last summer that he had "enormous evidence" that China had allowed Covid to escape from a lab- which he has never produced. Trump has hinted that China released the virus on purpose to slow the western economies. And on and on.

[Shill]

Also, in terms of trying to sell the public on false stories, or trying to underplay the outbreak, the US has done plenty of that themselves, from Trump trying to prohibit cruise ship passengers who were infected from disembarking because it would raise our numbers, to his officials apparently trying to limit testing for the same reason. Mike Pompeo announced last summer that he had "enormous evidence" that China had allowed Covid to escape from a lab- which he has never produced. Trump has hinted that China released the virus on purpose to slow the western economies. And on and on.

So we're comparing the cruise ship incident to journalists being disappeared?

And I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of whether or not the virus came from the Wuhan virology lab, but there's more evidence for that than any of China's claims.

This is also an interesting read on some of the actions taken by the CCP:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

[Dresden]

Also, in terms of trying to sell the public on false stories, or trying to underplay the outbreak, the US has done plenty of that themselves, from Trump trying to prohibit cruise ship passengers who were infected from disembarking because it would raise our numbers, to his officials apparently trying to limit testing for the same reason. Mike Pompeo announced last summer that he had "enormous evidence" that China had allowed Covid to escape from a lab- which he has never produced. Trump has hinted that China released the virus on purpose to slow the western economies. And on and on.

So we're comparing the cruise ship incident to journalists being disappeared?

And I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of whether or not the virus came from the Wuhan virology lab, but there's more evidence for that than any of China's claims.

This is also an interesting read on some of the actions taken by the CCP:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

No, we're comparing cruise ship passengers, infected with Covid, not being allowed on shore in order to get the medical treatment they need, because we a) couldn't figure out what to do with them, and b) possibly also because Trump didn't want to have to count their numbers, to China wanting to minimize their Covid numbers for political purposes (which you had alluded to).

There are plenty of other examples of the US taking measures to hide or artificially lower their numbers, too- look at what happened in Florida, when the woman who was in charge of keeping the count was fired because her method of counting was proving too embarrassing for De Santis.

[Dresden]

The CCP was welding people inside their homes:

https://www.the-sun.com/news/378365/coronavirus-patients-welded-into-homes-in-china-as-death-toll-spirals-to-813/
.

Story above appears to be exaggerated and a lone incident....https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46044/were-covid-19-patients-in-wuhan-welded-into-their-apartments-to-enforce-the-lock

[Dresden]

They were reportedly cremating bodies around the clock:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7969861/Wuhan-crematoriums-burning-bodies-24-7-cope-extra-workload.html
.

When I did an internet search on this topic, all the news outlets that came up in the search were of dubious quality- the National Review, Fox News, UK Sun, etc., etc.

It's sensationalistic journalism, and by the way, you can find the same thing going on here, in another media outlet not known for it's quality or high standards:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/20/coronavirus-crematoriums-meet-demand-cemeteries/5148779002/

'It's carnage': Crematoriums run around the clock to meet demand from coronavirus
Rick Jervis
USA TODAY

...
"Crematories across the nation are working long hours and double shifts to keep up with the increased death count from the coronavirus. As of early Monday, COVID-19 had killed more than 40,600 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Thursday saw the highest single-day spike yet, with 4,591 deaths reported. The U.S. has more confirmed COVID-19 deaths than any other country in the world. "

[Shill]

No, we're comparing cruise ship passengers, infected with Covid, not being allowed on shore in order to get the medical treatment they need, because we a) couldn't figure out what to do with them, and b) possibly also because Trump didn't want to have to count their numbers, to China wanting to minimize their Covid numbers for political purposes (which you had alluded to).

So quarantining cruise ship passengers is analogous to renditioning journalists?

There are plenty of other examples of the US taking measures to hide or artificially lower their numbers, too- look at what happened in Florida, when the woman who was in charge of keeping the count was fired because her method of counting was proving too embarrassing for De Santis.

There are also stories of people inflating COVID numbers and people who died in car accidents and shootings being counted as COVID deaths.

There are one-off stories in every direction (that may or may not be true), but that obscures from the bigger problem.

[moorhosj]

There are also stories of people inflating COVID numbers and people who died in car accidents and shootings being counted as COVID deaths.

There are one-off stories in every direction (that may or may not be true), but that obscures from the bigger problem.

I think you are obscuring the bigger problem by deliberately taking people’s words out of context and making claims without sources.

Nobody thinks China is a benevolent actor or trusts their state-distributed information. This is one of the reasons we had medical experts stationed in China, so we didn’t have to rely completely on their information. At the same time, our leaders have continually lied to us about this virus and actually pitted states against each other to procure PPE.

China is going to do what they do, that has nothing to do with how our government has responded over the past 10 months. The obsessive focus on it is bizarre, almost like it’s meant to distract from our own government’s inept response. Let’s control the virus and save some lives, then we can squabble about what China did or didn’t know.