Merged 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

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The Atheist said:
Hell yeah, let the xenophobia flow, boys!

I'm pretty sure you are both American, and I'd trust Xi further than I'd trust your human mutation you have as president right now. I ask again, how do you think USA would respond to two states being cut off by armed guards.

If anything, you should be thanking your lucky stars this is happening in China - so far.

"Woo, some people aren't being seen at the hospital!!111!!"
"Woo, there are problems!!11!"

Right now, China has 2788 patients listed as critical.

Then ask yourself how USA, or any other damned country, would handle that in their over-loaded and under-staffed hospital systems. (The sub-question of which ones are insured is hardly even relevant)

They fumbled the ball at the start, but right now, China should be being praised for doing such an amazing job. They are screening people trying to leave the goddamned place. I don't even need to ask you how that would go down in the land of the free and home of the cowards brave.

Criticism of China right now is pure racist baloney.
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|I agree. Given the constraints (massive population and many London-sized cities in most regions) it has acted impressively and responsibly. It shared the genome sequence with he global scientific community immediately. It has invited US scientist to come and help them develop a vaccine. It built a thousand-bed hospital from scratch within ten days. It stopped residents of Wuhan form travelling outside the region and stopped public transport.

What more could it have done.

Yes, it erred in not taking initial reports seriously and even threatened docotrs who raised the alarm with legal action but apart from that it is perfectly 'trustworthy'.
 
Ziggurat said:
Look, the CCP does have an interest in not exporting the disease. So it’s not unreasonable to think they will try to prevent that, which is good. But they also have an interest in under-reporting the numbers. Why on earth do you think they wouldn’t?
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Underreporting could prevent other nations from taking actions that would prevent the export of the disease, which as you agree would go against Chinese interests.

There may be motivations to underreport but there are also motivations for honest reporting of the numbers. I don't know where the balance lies, but at the moment my guess is that the numbers aren't outrageously underreported (whether there are a lot of unknown cases is a different question). That's only a guess though.
 
Roboramma said:
Underreporting could prevent other nations from taking actions that would prevent the export of the disease, which as you agree would go against Chinese interests.

There may be motivations to underreport but there are also motivations for honest reporting of the numbers. I don't know where the balance lies, but at the moment my guess is that the numbers aren't outrageously underreported (whether there are a lot of unknown cases is a different question). That's only a guess though.
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And that's the problem, we can only guess. Because it's a communist dictatorship, there's really no way to double-check the official numbers.

If the numbers are being under-reported, but they're being under-reported on both the infection and death side to equal degrees, then the effect is basically just like a time lag: the spread of the disease is further along than we're being told, but the disease itself could be portrayed accurately. The more frightening possibility, which I don't have any reason to believe is true but can't discount either (because commies), is that the death toll is being disproportionately understated, so that the chances of dying from an infection are higher than the official numbers suggest. It's also logically possible (but I don't find plausible) that the severity of the disease is being overstated by under-reporting infections more than they under-report deaths.
 
The Atheist said:
I disagree and pretty well every criticism and CT is just racism wrapped in a thin veneer of "what ifs".
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Rubbish! Don't start playing the race card with no evidence.

In fact, earlier in this thread you were not only criticizing China's response, the way Chinese people eat, and your suspicions that the disease was being under-reported, you also made a few comments that uncharitable people may think are a bit racist such as your concerns about Chinese people in your son's schools.

I say "uncharitable" because I am not personally making the allegation of racism towards you, just pointing out that you should put those rocks down when you live in a greenhouse.

The Chinese government is a dictatorship. I know many Chinese people who will say the same thing about their own government (very quietly of course, because...well, the Chinese government is a dictatorship).

Of course, as with the old joke, there is something China and the United States have in common. In the United States, people can criticize their government openly and mock the president. In China, people can also criticize the US government and mock the US president.
 
I went to the pharmacy on Sunday to pick up some prescriptions. They had a sign prominently displayed that said they were sold out of masks. The interesting bit is that I have not seen anyone wearing masks in this area. Maybe someone is speculating and they will hit the streets at exorbitant prices if a case is discovered here.
 
catsmate said:
And have been debunked. No-one with a quarter working brain takes such drivel seriously.
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The part of my post you cut makes clear that the video of people falling over isn't significant regardless of any debunking.
 
Vixen said:
Perhaps you are the one that is ignorant and should look up stuff. Coronavirus is picornavirus like. Picornavruses are named thus because they are small. Try not to be rude in future.
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Both are positive sense single stranded RNA viruses. But they are distinguished readily by the presence of an envelope glycoprotein and not considered at all similar.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ziggurat said:
China is a communist dictatorship. That isn’t racist baloney. And I said nothing about whether the quarantine was the right move or not, I said that you can’t trust them to tell the truth. That too has nothing to do with race. It’s possible they are taking all the right actions but still lying about the infection numbers. Or maybe they are telling the truth, but how would we know? Because it’s a dictatorship, there are no independent sources of reliable information about this.

I wouldn’t trust the North Korean government at all, but the South Korean government is fairly honest (and I don’t rate my own any higher than that). What separates North Korea from South Korea? Not race, but one being a dictatorship and one being a democracy. If you don’t understand how that influences the honesty of a government, then you’re an idiot.

And lastly, your Trump derangement has blinded you to the fact that in a situation like this, the person at the top isn’t who matters most. It’s the institutions on the ground and the local politicians that really matter the most. And given that we already know the local Chinese politicians lied, why are you trying to act like China is trustworthy? Again, this has nothing to do with race, though you seem to be incapable of thinking in any different terms.
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China is a dictatorship, but calling it communist at this point is ridiculous.
There are CINO..Communist In Name Only. In economics, they wen capitialist a long time ago.
I agree with most of what you say, they are not to be trusted, just don't call them Communist...it is just not a accurate label.
 
catsmate said:
And have been debunked. No-one with a quarter working brain takes such drivel seriously.
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This, China fudging the number I can buy, but no way could they could cover up something like people falling dead in the streets.
 
angrysoba said:
Rubbish! Don't start playing the race card with no evidence.

In fact, earlier in this thread you were not only criticizing China's response, the way Chinese people eat, and your suspicions that the disease was being under-reported, you also made a few comments that uncharitable people may think are a bit racist such as your concerns about Chinese people in your son's schools.

I say "uncharitable" because I am not personally making the allegation of racism towards you, just pointing out that you should put those rocks down when you live in a greenhouse.

The Chinese government is a dictatorship. I know many Chinese people who will say the same thing about their own government (very quietly of course, because...well, the Chinese government is a dictatorship).

Of course, as with the old joke, there is something China and the United States have in common. In the United States, people can criticize their government openly and mock the president. In China, people can also criticize the US government and mock the US president.
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THIS.
I agree there has been some xenophobic crap going on, but to distrust A dictorial government is not xenophobic, but common sense. I would mistrust the Caucasian Russian Government in the same situation. Dictatorships have no hesistation about lying.
 
Surprise. Somebody who has a long established Dislike of the US likes the Chinese dictatorship better.
 
dudalb said:
THIS.
I agree there has been some xenophobic crap going on, but to distrust A dictorial government is not xenophobic, but common sense. I would mistrust the Caucasian Russian Government in the same situation. Dictatorships have no hesistation about lying.
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Substitute democratic governments for dictatorships and the statement is equally true.
 
Steve said:
Substitute democratic governments for dictatorships and the statement is equally true.
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Even supposing it is, there remains a critical difference: democratic governments cannot stop alternate channels of information flow like dictatorships can. So it's much easier to discover lies from democratic governments than from dictatorships. That helps get the truth out even when democratic governments do lie, but it also can lead to democratic governments telling the truth even when they would like to lie because they know they can't hide the truth.
 
Steve said:
Substitute democratic governments for dictatorships and the statement is equally true.
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It's really no difference, as far as governments go, indeed. The difference is free press. All the numbers we get from China are from China Health Committee. There is no other source. You can't just go to a hospital, and start asking questions. Internet is also heavily limited and what's left is well monitored.
 
dudalb said:
China is a dictatorship, but calling it communist at this point is ridiculous.
There are CINO..Communist In Name Only. In economics, they wen capitialist a long time ago.
I agree with most of what you say, they are not to be trusted, just don't call them Communist...it is just not a accurate label.
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I think the party structure still earns them that label, but it's really not important in the current context, the dictatorship part suffices for my point. It's essentially a semantic disagreement, and those are the most boring kind.
 
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