[resters]

> We are what we think China is.

This sort of analysis always gets downvoted on HN, but it's true. In many ways we are further along in the direction of having an obedient population (compared to China) but we still have our own great firewall and social credit score systems in place to help keep everyone under control.

China is more overtly authoritarian than the modern US, which is actually an advantage* in fighting a pandemic. So ironically most of the criticisms of China (as hypocritical as they may be) give China a leg up in this kind of crisis.

* Note that I am not condoning authoritarian rule, just noting that it is in some cases effective.

[gdubs]

Like most things, there are shades of gray and it’s not black and white.

China made some critical missteps early on in silencing doctors who spoke up about a novel virus. They also downplayed the crisis to avoid bad news around the New Years celebration (and kept the banquet in Wuhan that was a turning point in the explosive growth of the virus).

Once they mobilized, yes, it was impressive — and judging by their numbers today, it has been effective.

The US is also a mixed bag. There’s going to be _wide_ variation in the response at state and local levels. But something really stinks with the lack of testing. And despite having China and then Italy show us how seriously we needed to be taking this, we sleep-walked through a critical period and are now creating the top of the roller coaster.

[skrtskrt]

The US did not just sleep-walk, they actively suppressed the warnings of doctors and health professionals.

Today they are saying they do not plan to mobilize drive-thru/mass testing because they don't want to get in the way of the relationship between a patient and provider, the same bullshit private-insurance talking point, now applied to an even more intense and immediate public health crisis.

edit to clarify:

1. I agree there are shades of grey here, but the US' shade regarding suppression of information is closer to China's than is being widely reported.

2. The US' patchwork, profit-driven health system and purposely-underfunded government agencies are completely incapable of mobilizing at the necessary scale, even if it somehow found the motivation for any greater good beyond the profits of the private insurance industry and the asset managers that are buying up and gutting hospital systems.

This is incompetence by design over many decades.

[aqme28]

> China made some critical missteps early on in silencing doctors who spoke up about a novel virus.

We are doing that too. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

> They also downplayed the crisis to avoid bad news around the New Years celebration (and kept the banquet in Wuhan that was a turning point in the explosive growth of the virus).

And we're downplaying the crisis to avoid bad news in an election year.

[microcolonel]

How is the story you linked anything like arresting people for taking this seriously? Not having adequate testing early on is not the same as arresting good samaritans.

[shkkmo]

> Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. While acknowledging the ethical questions, Dr. Chu and others argued there should be more flexibility in an emergency during which so many lives could be lost. On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether.

While the researches weren't arrested, they were obstructed and then prohibited from continuing to test even though they helped uncover a major outbreak.

[microcolonel]

This is not a prohibition on testing to protect the egos of politicians, this is a refusal of authorization for a specific medical practice, because of bureaucracy. They are not being reprimanded for speaking their mind, they are literally being published in the New York Times.

There is no moral equivalence between these two things. Nobody is barred from expressing whatever knowledge they have of the outbreak by anything except their own professional agreements.

No reasonable parallel is drawn between the total suppression of independent expression about an outbreak, and a regulator inflexibly deciding that a clinical professional is not qualified to practice some field.

[Jommi]

Wuhan Municipal Government != Chinese Central Government

You're not conflating actions in US states as reflective of the US gov either are you?

[simonh]

This is true, but knowing China well I think the same would probably have happened anywhere else. It's a direct result of the system of controls and incentives imposed by the party.

[Jommi]

I'm unsure what you mean by "would have probably happened anywhere else"

[simonh]

Sorry I mean anywhere else in China, in other words we can’t just blame the authorities in Wuhan.

[surge]

The difference is, here we're allowed to speak up, even the CDC to some extent, counter the President's opinion. The facts are still available

No one has that opportunity in China when it comes to Xi Xinping's message, if they do, they're censored or get a visit to their home by the police.

I see Trump to some extent trying to negate a mass panic amongst the populace by downplaying it while the real decision makers look to the CDC to make decisions about what actions to take. At least the optimistic side of me believes that's how its working. Problem is its now backfiring and people are saying its just another flu, which curtails any advice the CDC has on cancelling events, limiting contact, etc.

[rconti]

It's a very charitable interpretation. Unfortunately, the administration is actively working to prevent the CDC from spreading useful information.

[microcolonel]

If that's what they're trying, it's failing; and I'm not sure that's an accurate idea of what they're trying either.

[rconti]

It IS failing, due to public interest.

Reuters reported today that Coronavirus briefings have been classified to limit information sharing [1]

They've blamed it on Mexicans running over the southern border [2]

They've called it "the flu"

They've kneecapped professionals at every turn (stopped the CDC from reporting how many people have been tested, tried to muzzle Nancy Messonnier for saying a Coronavirus outbreak was inevitable in this country, [3]

They're still asking for cuts to the CDC [4]

The president called the Governor of Washington "a snake" to cut down his credibility, cut off his head of HHS to lie to the public and say tests were available, he's most concerned that the US count of infections will go up if they let the cruise ship passengers on US soil, preferring, presumably, to let them die and infect each other [5]

They overrode CDC's plan to recommend that elderly people and fragile people not get on airplanes [6]

Generally, it is beyond clear that they are most concerned with not looking in control, and giving out mixed messages that will lead to death.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrec...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/cdc-director-border...

[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/07/trump-coronavirus-m...

[4] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-administratio...

[5] https://www.wired.com/story/trumps-coronavirus-press-event-w...

[6] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/486475-trump-administr...

[resters]

That perspective is remarkably charitable to Trump, who not only claimed that the virus was a "hoax", but mobilized his loyalists in the media to spread harmful ideas about the level of contagion and lethality.

It is important to realize that Trump's comments about COVID-19 likely caused many people to defy their own common sense intuitions and do the opposite of what the experts have recommended.

In the US, direct censorship by government is not necessary. Voices that the government doesn't approve of are quickly censored/deplatformed by private sector firms, news feed algos are updated to suppress certain kinds of information, etc.

The extent to which firm authoritarian measures are necessary is determined by how compliant/obedient the citizens are. The Chinese government must be more heavy handed because there is an active culture of dissent, not because China is somehow innately more authoritarian.

[Mountain_Skies]

The president did not call the virus a hoax. You're either being intentionally disingenuous or are poorly informed. Before you post an out of context link to a partisan blog, go find the entire statement in context and realize everyone else here is quite able to do the same. If you wish to remain in an information bubble, that's your choice but don't be surprised when others who do not pop that bubble when you attempt to spread misinformation.

[resters]

Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated. He is the most talented politician the US has seen in decades, and this is just one example.

He says the word salad, the sound bite is picked up as outrageous, and then when the tiny subset of his supporters who care to look carefully at it examine the transcript, they can vindicate him based on technicalities of the syntax he used.

But make no mistake, he intended to communicate that the virus was a hoax and he did so quite effectively, just as he intended to show support for the white nationalists in Charlottesville and intended to convey that he thinks many immigrants are rapists.

While I am not a partisan for either party and despise most of the major pols, one must admit that Trump is very good at politics, and this is a great example. Once called out, his supporters defend him by dissecting the word salad and finding a well meaning, thoughtful comment where none ever existed :)

[surge]

Stop making me defend Trump, you guys are ignorant, or willfully misrepresenting the context.

In NYT, they featured this "opinion" piece:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opinion/coronavirus-trump...

tldr; If you're sick with Corona virus, the blame lies entirely with Trump, not China for hiding it early on, not the WHO for recommending countries continue as normal and tried to downplay it, Trump, and we should call it the Trump virus (the new "thanks Obama" I guess).

Two days later in reaction to this, Trump called this kind of talk in the media and on Twitter by DNC pundits (who take their talking points from NYT) a hoax. Everyone at the rally he was talking to had seen that article, cause it was shared and mocked, talked about on Fox News, everyone there had the same context, its your lack of awareness that causes the context shift, and when the media reported on it they also conveniently left out that context, because they're lazy at best, trying to steer the narrative at worse. People see the misrepresentation and they believe the media even less. They realize the bias is both ways, the people who claim to be factual ignore facts that aren't convenient.

It is only word salad to you because you walked in half way into the conversation, and are happy to assume the worst (that he said the virus itself was a hoax) without doing some background on it.

Criticize, but do so with full understanding.

[microcolonel]

> Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated.

"It's the President's fault that I ignored what he was saying so that I could interpret it uncharitably, and share that interpretation without a second thought."

> he thinks many immigrants are rapists

You got this from... What? A speech talking up the border wall, a measure that by definition only pertains to a subset of illegal aliens, not "immigrants" broadly.

You are responsible for your own ludicrous interpretations of plain language. It is not anyone else's fault that you choose to believe something is meant that isn't said.

When the President continues to say things like “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally”, you can't credibly interpret that as an indictment of immigrants.

[grey-area]

He said, at a rally, about Democrat criticisms of the administration response:

'this is their new hoax'

That's pretty incoherent (criticisms may be untrue, but they're never a hoax), but strongly hints he thought the virus unimportant in the most charitable interpretation, or the threat a complete fabrication from democrats.

He then went on to lie about the number of cases in the country and the likely impact and said it was less serious than flu.

Trump's ignorance is going to kill a lot of people in the US.

[DyslexicAtheist]

effective propaganda is always invisible to an inside observer.

[whylie]

How about they use some of that authority to stop these diseases from festering in cesspools of animal & human waste repeatedly in their country? Pivoting from allowing this to occur to saying they have an advantage or painting them in a positive light is so backwards to me. Hopefully all the dissenters being tortured in black boxes over there are safe from the virus at least.

[MiroF]

> festering in cesspools of animal & human waste

have you ever even been to china?

[Mountain_Skies]

China is a very big place. Lots of modern clean areas and lots of areas that are best described as cesspools. Neither is truly reflective of the entire country. Pretty much the same can be said about the United States and many other countries.

[jacquesm]

I showed someone a picture of one of China's metropoles a while ago and asked where they thought it was. Everywhere but China apparently. It is surprising how hard it is for people to let go of such badly outdated information.

Here is another one to take a guess at:

https://media.tacdn.com/media/attractions-splice-spp-674x446...

[MiroF]

granted, at the street-level it is mostly not so glamorous - but gosh reading comments online makes me feel like people are still operating on an early 2000s conception of China.

[resters]

Most of the press coverage about China in the US focuses on pollution, sewage, labor practices, authoritarianism, etc. It's not surprising that many have such a one-sided view and forget how easy it would be to present the US in similar (or worse) light to an unbiased audience.

[simonh]

Yes, my wife is Chinese and unfortunately there is actually some truth to that comment. I've seen Chinese public toilets with piles of human excrement around them, because the stink was so bad inside people just did what they needed to do nearby. Animal markets can be truly noxious, and the conditions animals are kept in can be hard to believe.