[zepto]

China didn’t close a whole country.

They prevented people traveling from Wuhan to the rest of China but did not prevent people from traveling from Wuhan to the rest of the world.

During this time, they, and the WHO were saying that there was no evidence of human-to-human contagion.

You do the math.

[nl]

China confirmed human-to-human transmission on Jan 20[1].

China shutdown Wuhan on 23 January[2] (notice this was after human-to-human transmission was confirmed). Wuhan airport was closed[2], and Chinese did stop all travel out of Wuhan[3]. There are many reports of people escaping the lockdown that night, but it doesn't seem this was some Chinese policy - more that events were moving fast.

It's your country's responsibility who enters its borders. The Trump administration moved fairly quickly and closed borders to Wuhan by Feb 2, which was earlier than South Korea (but later than many countries).

I don't think many would fault that part of the US response, but it isn't exactly clear what people think China was hiding in this period - remember this was the time when people were seeing pictures of the lockdown in Wuhan. Countries can make their own judgement about the severity.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/20/coronavirus-sp...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_lockdown_in_...

[3] https://www.health.gov.au/news/chief-medical-officers-update...

[zepto]

This is good information. The only think I question is this:

“It's your country's responsibility who enters its borders”

This is technically true according to a black and white definition of ‘responsibility’.

But the decision you make will be based a lot on information you get from other parties and how trustworthy they are.

The extent to which the Chinese system causes the severity to be downplayed matters a lot.

[nl]

> The extent to which the Chinese system causes the severity to be downplayed matters a lot.

They were welding doors shut to keep people inside. It's difficult to argue they downplayed it.

There is (fair) criticism of the regional authorities in Wuhan downplaying it in early January. But the central government didn't seem do anything to try to hide things.

BTW, if you didn't already know these dates and thought the Chinese gov was hiding things, you might want to re-examine the source of your information.

[zepto]

I don’t think it’s possible to claim that you have the ‘correct’ source of information.

I’m not saying that your sources are worth nothing, but there is reason to doubt that they tell the whole story.

Claiming the central government didn’t seem to do anything to try to hide things, and blaming it on the regular government seems rather blithe.

It is well reported m that a doctor who identified the virus early on was forced to lie and claim he was mistaken.

In an environment where forcing lies is a normal part of government operation, we just can’t know how many other doctors were prevented from speaking out.

We also know that the CCP was spreading the story that the virus was planted by the US military.

Are you really so certain that your timeline is accurate?

[nl]

> I don’t think it’s possible to claim that you have the ‘correct’ source of information.

What does this mean? I read the WHO reports at the time, and they are still the same. They are "incorrect" in the sense they didn't know things at the start, but they are a correct historical record.

> It is well reported that a doctor who identified the virus early on was forced to lie and claim he was mistaken.

Indeed. And look what happened to the officials who forced him to do that.

> Are you really so certain that your timeline is accurate?

Yes, absolutely - which is why I'm so surprised at the "blame China" narrative.

I'd be quite interested to understand why you think it could be wrong? It was less than a year ago, and the information is all publicly accessible.

I was following Covid from early and ordered masks in late January. The WHO started publishing daily updates at[2] from Jan 21 and prior to that on[3]. People knew and were making preparations for a SARS type epidemic - I'd suggest you read some to see how much people knew and how seriously they were taking it.

Their update on Jan 21 reports:

Additional investigations are needed to determine how the patients were infected, the extent of human-to-human transmission, the clinical spectrum of disease, and the geographic range of infection. [4] (note the human-to-human transmission bit)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquir...

[2] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

[3] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

[4] https://www.who.int/csr/don/21-january-2020-novel-coronaviru...