WHO on the ground is trying to get Chinese cooperation with getting more data and working out how they will test the piles of vaccine candidates that seemingly everyone wants to try on Chinese citizens. The big traditional vaccine firms like Novartis don’t want to invest a lot but they are still, like everyone else, trying to get some testing done on the cheap and hopefully get their candidates to market before the free stuff CDC/WHO/CEPI are working on get to market.
WHO is also literally begging for money.
I really can’t blame them for not rocking the Chinese money boat. This may be the only chance they get to shake the Chinese government down for money.
not a stupid question, i see the statistics and tell myself this is nothing, who cares, people are just freaking out because of something new just like zica etc etc
but then i see the reaction to it, not from people but from government, a government with a poker player's mentality of rational thought and making EV decisions. I see this government take actions that are essentially shutting down their entire country, a country with a landmass and population much larger than all of Europe... all because of a flu variant that's largely isolated to one greater metropolitan region
i see the reaction and can't help but wonder which of the following possible scenarios are the reality
1. "better safe than sorry" they'd rather shut everything down to get this dealt with quickly because
a. because they don't fully understand the disease yet or are afraid of a mutation that makes it really deadly
or
b. they did the math and decided it's better to shut down country and get this dealt with than let it drag out as a stronger than typical flu - ie gross national triage
or
c. they are worried people will panic and freak out so they decided against educating them and instead reassuring them via action (don't believe this is possible given effectiveness of their propaganda and people's trust in government decision making)
or
d. this is an excuse for some high level political manuevering a la the cultural revolution (also don't believe but hey it's china - for example modern and technology companies are thriving because everyone is at home and online and those industries employees can remotely work so in a way this has been a boon for them with a literal captivated audicence and an employment force able to continue working from home)
2. It's far, far worse than what has been released and they are appropriately freaking out but making it all apear to be just simple precautions because they don't want the markets to crash etc etc - this is a terrifying thought that gets realer with each day passing day as the entire country is now on like two months now of people staying home alone and not going to work or school
either way, i'll be reading up heavily on this all once all the dust settles - going to be really interesting once we can take a step back and review it all clearly
Interesting post. Certainly got me thinking.
Gonna be a lot of people making movies about this in 5 years.
Actually got a half decent explanation: they had to take steps before fully knowing enough about it. Being first they had little choice. I believe that is a good chunk of why. Mortality rate in particular.
It is my sincerest hope that China takes this chance to fundamentally change food safety practices and not just blame it all on the wild life trade.
Watch the video I linked above. It's a horror show if you have ever worked in a western kitchen or gotten training on food safety. You can start at 3:50. Sheeps are being slaughtered at room temperature and whole sheeps are just hanging there and customers are literally patting the sheeps with their bare hands. Blood is dripping on the ground... then the camera pans over to vegetable vendors got that vegetables right on the ground. They show a similar scene with pork later in the video. At one point, the guy even mentions there is an open air dentistry and that he wouldn't get his dental work done at the market. Other highlights including chicken coops (with obviously the poop and all) right in the market to be killed on demand on the spot.
The wild life food trade isn't really the main problem. Japan deals in a lot of the wild life with no issues. The real problem is just China's food safety practices are still stuck in the 20th century and desperately need to get updated.
If they don't get rid of pretty much all the unsanitary practices you can see in the video I linked, even if they eat nothing Gordon Ramsay wouldn't cook, China will still keep gifting the world with more than their fair share of animal-human transmissions.
I know US healthy and sanitation codes failry well and I am also a super picky eater.
but you couldnt catch me DEAD walking those markets, or even sniffing any of the stuff, just makes my somach crawl thinking about it or seeing it. even if I was starving I couldn't find myself eating any of that. I would legit throw up. liek so many violations and unhealthy practices
and there is not much the chinese govt can do unless a full compete overhaul which is so difficult do to in a country that massive
My preferred Brazilian conspiracy theorist Debora Barbosa interviewed the guy behind the youtube channel 'China Uncensored' where they cover a range of topics--Corona virus obviously, censorship in China and how China uses economic pressure through corporations to censor things critical of China outside of China, Huawei, and a few other things. She starts off for the first minute in Portuguese but then the rest is all in English. Corona virus discussion starts at 6:00 and Corona virus conspiracy discussion starts around 11:00. https://youtu.be/IYTkVkWqPn4
My preferred Brazilian conspiracy theorist Debora Barbosa interviewed the guy behind the youtube channel 'China Uncensored' where they cover a range of topics--Corona virus obviously, censorship in China and how China uses economic pressure through corporations to censor things critical of China outside of China, Huawei, and a few other things. She starts off for the first minute in Portuguese but then the rest is all in English. Corona virus discussion starts at 6:00 and Corona virus conspiracy discussion starts around 11:00. https://youtu.be/IYTkVkWqPn4
Those things were pretty widely discussed like 2 months ago, not much new there. I think it's probably bunk too.
Scientists have been sounding the alarm on this for years. You can go back 5+ years and find people saying this exact thing was an absolute certainty to happen. Don't need a nefarious conspiracy. We're just not smart enough to prepare.
The expert is just wrong about rich and powerful. Some exotic species (bears, tigers, stuff like that) maybe. But I am not sure why he neglects to mention the consumption of wild life like bats and rabbits is associated with poor peasants.
I pointed out in a WeChat group that China is probably still getting new cases and will get more once people go back to work (this much even WHO admits.)
The pushbacks (keep in mind these are mostly people with American JDs/LLMs/MBAs and work here in US now) I got include:
Screenshots of China showing very few new cases with the followup: "They are being imported." (most of them aren't)
We sacrificed a lot but it can't be questioned the virus has been stopped.
And my favorite, you need to read more "domestic" (国内） reporting.
My favorite part about the last piece is the speaker came here when he was in highschool and grew up in Flushing. He's incidentally a green card holding Trumpkin. It's only in the past couple years have I realized the amount of propaganda and influence China already exerts inside Chinese communities.
I wondered early on in coronavirus crisis about how China is going to climb down and cover this up. Now I realize I underestimated their propaganda machine. They have successfully convinced the Chinese people it is our (foreign, 国外）fault exporting cases back to China. It's straight up gaslighting and it's working.
I realize what I wrote in this post is rocket fuel for racism but I just can't look away from this **** anymore.
I was very careful and quoted the WHO guy who said he expected the situation to be like a "brush fire" and once people start going back to normal, infections are coming back.
Grizy better watch what he says int he WeChat or they might send agents for him in NY
I would think someone in the chat reported him, but is it possible they are monitoring the app??
someone definitely reported him, that's some hardcore local cronism going on
local traffic cops wouldn't have access to any national monitoring system that's focused on uighurs planning terrorist attacks or falungong revival etc etc
it doesn't make sense based on how contagious this seems. There is a possibility China committed some sort of genocide to contain virus. Otherwise their numbers don't add up.
Grizy better watch what he says int he WeChat or they might send agents for him in NY
I would think someone in the chat reported him, but is it possible they are monitoring the app??
My friend does business in China and he corresponds on WeChat. A Chinese businessman he talks with told him not to discuss the corona virus on WeChat because the government is definitely monitoring it. And I believe it 100%. They’re numbers are definitely bullshit, just look at how they lied about and handled the ASF outbreak in their pig herd over the last 2 years.
it doesn't make sense based on how contagious this seems. There is a possibility China committed some sort of genocide to contain virus. Otherwise their numbers don't add up.
so japan, taiwan, korea, singapore, etc all committed mass genocide as well? they have even better numbers than China
don't forget ze sneaky germans with their 9k infected and only 26 dead - lord knows they have the experience and know how
Still focused on bat eating and just wildlife enforcement.
Nothing about the atrocious food safety practices of wet markets. It's not just relative lack of regulations and enforcement of regulations that do exist, it's the Chinese people (yes, I am saying the people) generally lack food safety awareness.
If they don't attack food safety and instill better personal hygiene into the Chinese populace, even if they do somehow ban ALL wild life (roughly defined anything you can't find in Whole Foods) trade, they will still gift us with the next avian/swine/duck/bovine/lamb flu.
That video of the chinese celebrity eating the bat was absolutely disgusting. Not only because bats are wonderful creatures but everyone knows they carry disease. In the video this woman was taking bites of a legit whole bat.
That video of the chinese celebrity eating the bat was absolutely disgusting. Not only because bats are wonderful creatures but everyone knows they carry disease. In the video this woman was taking bites of a legit whole bat.
it was a travel show, she went to indonesia, indonesia is where they eat bat
