| Drop the China bashing. If we're going to criticize any government on this issue, we need to criticize all of them. Was there really any government without guilt or incompetence in their handling of this? Really nobody who in any way delayed taking steps, nobody who in any way sat on information, nobody who in any way instructed a certain type of scale of coverage in an attempt to minimize panic? Let those without sin cast the first stone. But actually, I think the "blame game" is bullshit. Everyone should just be like, "Holy crap, this virus doesn't care about what passport you have, we all need to just work together on this." Good to see people contesting the blame narrative here, but better if we didn't promote this news at all. This is a highly technical site, surely there's a chance to share articles about studies, algorithms, ways data scientists/programmers/bioinformaticians can get involved, pool resources, donate cloud time, etc. |
In our town (New Jersey, USA), several parents decided to keep their kids home from school as the virus spread nearby, even as the school stayed open. Evidently (https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000006970549/cor...) in other forms of government, the government itself controls what information is available (and the ability of citizens to make prudential judgments).
That doesn't mean this virus is "China's fault." As you say, all governments demonstrated some form of incompetence (usually starting with the assumption it can't be that bad). There is here an interesting contrast in how two systems respond to incompetence. Since surely how we disseminate information is important to the response to the virus, it seems fair to point out how one system disproportionately impedes how that happens.