Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

[Exarch]

The opinion could be forwarded that the 2016 presidential election represented something of a revolution in the polity of United States replete with its own "Great Leap Backward".

(Welcome back, by the way. Now behave! )

Pleasure +1

That would not be amusing.

Speaking of which, Exarch are you paid by the post or the word, and how do I get some of those sweet, sweet yuan?

It's not hard, you just need to have a conscience, be pro-social and accept basic scientific principles.

China's done what the West has said it should be doing to prevent pandemics; the Anglo led West has done everything but what it advocated in preventing pandemics, in fact the filmmakers of "Contagion" actually said that they never anticipated
1) just how stupid and anti science the predominantly western public could be, eg QAnon, masks etc and
2) just how inept the government handling of the pandemic could be as well.

While one may deplore his China uber alles triumphalism, his racially tinged Anglo-Saxon as the "what-is-all-that-is-wrong-with-the-world" idée fixe, he's not completely wrong (If "He" is not the correct pronoun, Exarch, apologies; though this is possibly strictly a Western concern). We screwed the pooch on this one, Infidel144. Sure, one can be reasonably certain China obfuscates and distorts its statistics for propaganda purposes but, nonetheless and notwithstanding, we here in the United States done ed it up.

Coronavirus Update (Live): 79,671,184 Cases and 1,747,884 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer (worldometers.info)

And that's not on Exarch.

I assure you my tone is not based on schadenfreude but rather, out of complete disgust at the disregard the US leadership under Trump have towards human life.

Trump and his people prioritised a race war and a cold war against china over fighting the virus; NSC members like matt pottinger deliberately screwed up the pandemic response and blamed their own ineptitude on Fauci and other doctors, and decided blaming China would help the race war, as Navarro and Pompeo wanted. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have died because of their actions.

The tragedy is that China and the WHO could have helped the US save lives and prevented the spread of COVID; we would not have the UK variant, nor the south african variant if it were not for the USG prioritising a race and cold war, or as Kiron Skinner called it, a "whole of society response" against China-and this was back in 2018-2019. The USG was committed to a race war against China, with or without COVID.

[antaeus]

We screwed the pooch on this one

What's this "We" you speak of?

Do you mean the Anglosphere that Exarch refers to? Because there are Anglo countries that didn't screw the pooch. And there are plenty of non Anglo countries that did.

I'd suggest that "Anglo" or "White" or what ever term Exarch wishes to band about make for a flawed argument.

Now when we're getting specific: the US screwed the pooch. As did the UK. As did many other countries. They screwed through late disorganised action, yoyo policy and unclear communications. As we debated last time Exarch was in the thread before some moderator tired of the endless irony, this formula for failure was not exclusive to any one government type or society.

I think if I was forced to speculate, personality type in leadership was probably more telling of how well a country responds to a pandemic. Leaders that depend on a level of chaos in their leadership style, seem to be mostly responsible for the pooch becoming screwed here, and these leaders exist in both liberal democracies and dictatorships.

[Exarch]

What's this "We" you speak of?

Do you mean the Anglosphere that Exarch refers to? Because there are Anglo countries that didn't screw the pooch. And there are plenty of non Anglo countries that did.

I'd suggest that "Anglo" or "White" or what ever term Exarch wishes to band about make for a flawed argument.

You'd be incorrect; the Anglosphere ie the countries that make up the Five Eyes: UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, function as a cohesive political entity. All Anglo nations share intelligence and follow the same political and foreign policy of the United States, hence why travel still continued between the US and australia for eg throughout this year, despite covid rampaging across the US.
In fact, that's the reason why Australia is now experiencing a Christmas surge in cases, thanks for US diplomats who refused to self quarantine.

Now when we're getting specific: the US screwed the pooch. As did the UK. As did many other countries. They screwed through late disorganised action, yoyo policy and unclear communications. As we debated last time Exarch was in the thread before some moderator tired of the endless irony, this formula for failure was not exclusive to any one government type or society.

This dysfunction appears to be a common feature for the overwhelming number of democracies in the world, such as India and the US and Brazil, despite earlier hypotheses that liberal democracies ought to be more competent in handling pandemics:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...breaks/606976/

I think if I was forced to speculate, personality type in leadership was probably more telling of how well a country responds to a pandemic. Leaders that depend on a level of chaos in their leadership style, seem to be mostly responsible for the pooch becoming screwed here, and these leaders exist in both liberal democracies and dictatorships.

Incorrect, the guiding principle of the West was that no matter the individual at the helm, the democratic system should have prevented incompetence of this magnitude.

Where were all these "checks and balances" that the "End of History" should have accounted for?

Now that COVID has proven the lie, we are going to see the waning of the power and influence of the anglo led west in the decades to come.

[antaeus]

You'd be incorrect; the Anglosphere ie the countries that make up the Five Eyes: UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, function as a cohesive political entity. All Anglo nations share intelligence and follow the same political and foreign policy of the United States, hence why travel still continued between the US and australia for eg throughout this year, despite covid rampaging across the US.
In fact, that's the reason why Australia is now experiencing a Christmas surge in cases, thanks for US diplomats who refused to self quarantine.



This dysfunction appears to be a common feature for the overwhelming number of democracies in the world, such as India and the US and Brazil, despite earlier hypotheses that liberal democracies ought to be more competent in handling pandemics:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...breaks/606976/



Incorrect, the guiding principle of the West was that no matter the individual at the helm, the democratic system should have prevented incompetence of this magnitude.

Where were all these "checks and balances" that the "End of History" should have accounted for?

Now that COVID has proven the lie, we are going to see the waning of the power and influence of the anglo led west in the decades to come.

Incorrect. My previous post already illustrates how your zero sum "all Anglo democracies are flawed" argument is itself flawed, with barely a couple of paragraphs. By all means, repeat yourself again. Write some big text, post a few images.

Your argument that all liberal or "anglo" democracies are flawed - either overall, or in response to Covid - is simply too large an argument to make in such a simple manner with such broad generalisms. You either need to dramatically expand your use of evidence, or scale back your claims. Until do one of those, there really isn't much point engaging with your argument in much depth.

[Exarch]

Incorrect. My previous post already illustrates how your zero sum "all Anglo democracies are flawed" argument is itself flawed, with barely a couple of paragraphs. By all means, repeat yourself again. Write some big text, post a few images.

Your argument that all liberal or "anglo" democracies are flawed - either overall, or in response to Covid - is simply too large an argument to make in such a simple manner with such broad generalisms. You either need to dramatically expand your use of evidence, or scale back your claims. Until do one of those, there really isn't much point engaging with your argument in much depth.

Please desist from cowardly avoiding these points: that the Anglo Five Eyes function as a cohesive political entity is evident especially when the imperial centre- the US- fails in its own covid response, the rest of the Five Eyes had to go along with the face saving gesture of pretending that covid 'wasn't that big of a deal' in line with QAnon conspiracy idiots.

I mentioned earlier that covid was also a test of social cohesion: anglo societies failed in containment and cohesion; simply following basic health rules like wearing masks and not having mega parties or spitting in each others' mouths was resisted over some fuzzy notion of "freedom". Secondly,it's no coincidence that the only members of the Five Eyes who had better responses to COVID were also the ones who were much more friendlier to China, such as NZ and Canada. This is not a coincidence.

Secondly, anglo nations aren't flawed because of democracy, they are flawed because they are racial apartheid caste structures which are anti science, whose leadership prioritised a race war against china to preserve anglo white supremacy at the cost of the lives of their own people.

You saw this anti science racialism when US senators promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory of COVID-19 only affecting asians and white people being immune, or that COVID-19 was a bioweapon when it was apparent white people didn't have innate immunity against COVID-19. Suffice to say, the anglo nations are being punished for their sins.

As you sit and cower in christmas quarantine, know that Santa has said that China is on his nice list and the anglos are on his naughty list:

[swabian]

Where are the creative and entertaining Chinese trolls, i never saw them. It must be so much fun to laugh them off.

[Exarch]

Martin Jacques lists out the reasons for why China succeeds and why the Anglos have failed; any european nation following the anglos have only led their nation to ruin, only european nations which worked with China such as Serbia, Italy et al have succeeded in crushing COVID



Amazing what a little virus can do.

EDIT:

Merry Christmas everybody,

According to Harvard, COVID is going cost the US at least $16 trillion

What might COVID cost the U.S.? Try $16 trillion

Source: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/sto...e-16-trillion/

Effectively, the USG has allowed its citizens to die, it is an absolute dereliction of duty, incompetence at the highest levels.



American citizens ought to sue the anglo american regime.

[Exarch]

double post

[sumskilz]

Remember when Dr. 'Do as You're Told' Fauci admitted to lying about masks?
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-f...ve-coronavirus

Now the NYT is suggesting that Dr Nauzci has admitted to lying about herd immunity for the Chinese Cave Bat Lab Lung AIDS virus:
"In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak…


“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/h...-immunity.html

If we assume that he's finally telling the truth, and that he's not just pulling the 90% figure out of his ass, that would mean he's withholding data from the public that would indicate that the R0 is actually about 10.

[Exarch]

The Anglo virus has now been unleashed on Spain, it is now out of control across the european mainland, attacking France, Denmark and Spain:

FIRST CONFIRMED CASES IN SPAIN OF BRITISH COVID-19 VARIANT - REGIONAL GOVT

Source: https://ewn.co.za/2020/12/26/first-c...-regional-govt

[Ludicus]

Last month...

Yesterday, a Swedish patient told me..

She fiercely criticized her country of origin for its relaxed approach to handling the pandemic.It was predictable,

COVID-19 and the Swedish enigma - The Lancet

...not until Dec 18, 2020, did the government give directives to start to translate more of these recommendations into practice including the use of face masks, as the trajectory of rapidly rising cases and deaths continues and intensive-care facilities and the health-care professionals are stretched to the limits in many regions in Sweden

Sweden Targets New Law Enabling Lockdowns

Sweden's government hopes to have the power to impose lockdowns from Jan. 10, if a bill submitted on Monday passes parliament.

Unfortunately, there are no miracles.

-----

The Anglo virus

Exarch and others, Anglo Virus or Chinese virus, does it really matter?...let's stop all this patriotic nonsense. Virus have no nationality.Too much time has been wasted in sterile, unproductive debate.

[Cyclops]

...
Exarch and others, Anglo Virus or Chinese virus, does it really matter?...let's stop all this patriotic nonsense. Virus have no nationality.....

That's exactly what a virus would say...

...Too much time has been wasted in sterile, unproductive debate.

Yes from human POV, and an ethical and moral one, and a medical and rational one too. However there's some value in some political systems ignoring and/or attacking the medical establishment. I mean the US elected a phony TV guy as president, and the current chap is a time server with at least one foot in the grave (the other is still in the embalmer's lab) so their priorities are not ethics or medical facts, they want phony shouting and "reality" TV garbage instead of real life.

We do talk about Trump and his hopeless idiotic response, and he has been incompetent, but the US system seems to be fine tuned around gridlock politics protecting the status quo so he's not solely responsible: I agree with some posters that he's more symptom than cause of the US systems' poor performance.

The system I expected more from was the UK. The NHS has a reputation as a pragmatic lean system with reasonable central control and reasonable standards. While not overly well funded it at least has capacity for coherent response (something lacking in the US with its mess of often predatory medical systems).

The UK likewise has an established security apparatus (they have had waves for terrorism for many centuries) so the capacity for track and trace is surely there, all that's needed is pragmatic decision making and political courage to include the public in the extent of domestic surveillance so it can be adapted for health use (as was done in Israel).

UK geography is also a great bonus: the sea makes for a wonderful first line of defence (as Australia and New Zealand demonstrate: our relative success has been mostly about the luck of geography and simplifies the medical and human movement responses). Given the current government's mandate to enact Brexit there should already be institutions evolved or adapted to control points of entry and that mandate surely arms the government with the will to close those points as needed.

My uninformed view is the UK was set up to succeed better than most countries, but its an absolute cluster****. Is it fair to say Boris Johnson is the worst performed leader in the world?

[conon394]

We do talk about Trump and his hopeless idiotic response, and he has been incompetent, but the US system seems to be fine tuned around gridlock politics protecting the status quo so he's not solely responsible: I agree with some posters that he's more symptom than cause of the US systems' poor performance.

You are too generous. Trump and the grifters and fools and sycophants he appointed to hollow out the federal government and have no farking ideal what to do in crisis are the first and foremost problem. That the US federal system is hard to deal with is true from states down to locality. But last I checked FDR and his administration did a f-ton better in WW2. When the US decided to join the push to eradicate small pox NYC vaccinated some 4-5 million people in 2 weeks in ~1947.

Back when I was is grade school we still had a infrastructure to deliver vaccinations to kids in school - its where I got my small pox shot and pretty much most others.

Trump and his admin are just the most gross version of the Republican party. Break government, defund it and than claim it can't work so elect us again to break it some more. Rinse and repeat since saint Ronny.

[Aexodus]

UK geography is also a great bonus: the sea makes for a wonderful first line of defence (as Australia and New Zealand demonstrate: our relative success has been mostly about the luck of geography and simplifies the medical and human movement responses). Given the current government's mandate to enact Brexit there should already be institutions evolved or adapted to control points of entry and that mandate surely arms the government with the will to close those points as needed.

My uninformed view is the UK was set up to succeed better than most countries, but its an absolute cluster****. Is it fair to say Boris Johnson is the worst performed leader in the world?

One thing to note is that most bio labs or whatever was necessary for testing in recent times have apparently been outsourced to Germany. In April, Germany had the facilities and the infrastructure to conduct mass testing. Most other countries did not.

I also believe that in some countries they have had bad experiences with imported viruses.

New Zealand, in 1918 their Maori population died at a rate I think 7 times that of the general population. Due to what is likely a hereditary vulnerability to alien diseases within the Maori community, to my knowledge New Zealand has had a very strict bio-security policy, certainly for the past couple decades. I once read a book by Stephen fry in New Zealand looking for endangered animals where he touched on the subject. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/in...Hari%20Wahanui.

Australia might have similar experiences.

There's also the experience of say, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan with the original sars virus. When sars II hit, they had the right playbook, they closed the borders and iirc tested everyone who came through. They also instituted local lockdowns, something I have wanted us to do since March/April when I saw the Koreans do it. But the British government along with waited until Autumn, which was too late, and probably rather negligent.

I recall in March the so-called 'experts' proclaiming that we were better off allowing international travel, because it let's us track and trace positive infections. I was ing fuming when I found out the policy which many including myself clamoured for, worked so well in East Asian island nations. The so-called 'experts' said that people would illegally travel anyway and we couldn't track them.

What a load of rubbish. They have lost my trust, especially when the government introduced this pathetic quarantine system for new arrivals, which I doubt anyone follows.

You're right that us having a sea border is an advantage, but only if we use it. Stopping the ships is no use when we bring in sars II by aeroplane. I'm shocked that Ireland, an isolated island in the Atlantic ocean has some pretty bad rates of community infection, and it's because they (North and south governments) let the virus in in the first place.

We have a Conservative government elected on a manifesto of strong borders, it's not as if the political will or popularity weren't there. It's incompetence, but I think it might be negligent. Because I refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Also an island Iceland also has a good starting circumstance, and they started their pandemic plan in January. I won't regurgitate the article, but a combination of early intervention, mass testing, and using their existing scientific and medical infrastructure helped them stop the spread. The article also implies they stopped non essential visitors from entering the country sometime after january and reopened in June to European countries, because of economic fears and the reliance on tourism.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This wasn't a perfect plan though.

Then, on 10 August, a pair of tourists at Reykjavik airport tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, ignored regulations and went into town. That incursion led to a small bump of cases in August centred on two pubs and a fitness centre visited by the tourists. Then, in mid-September, the number of infections increased abruptly, from 1 to 55 in a week. “This one clone of virus was able to spread around and cause lurking infections all over, especially in Reykjavik, and all of a sudden, we saw this increase,” says Guðnason. “It’s evidence of how difficult the virus is to contain.”
By October, coronavirus was more widespread in the community than it had been in the first wave, peaking at a rate of 291 infections per 100,000 people over 2 weeks. On 17 October, the number of active infections finally began to decline, which researchers attribute to widespread testing, tracing and quarantine procedures, as well as fresh government restrictions and emphasis on mask wearing. “Hopefully we can start relaxing our restrictions soon,” says Guðnason.

COVID-19 is not the first pandemic to reach Iceland’s shores: in October 1918, two ships carrying pandemic influenza docked in Reykjavik’s downtown harbour. Within six weeks, two-thirds of the capital city’s inhabitants were infected1.

A century later, the Icelandic government was better prepared, enacting a national pandemic preparedness plan at the beginning of January, two months before COVID-19 arrived. “We decided from the beginning we would use isolation, quarantine and contact tracing,” says Þórólfur Guðnason, chief epidemiologist at the Directorate of Health. As part of that plan, the microbiology laboratory at the university hospital began testing citizens in early February.

The lack of information on the virus in December/January and not knowing how serious it was when doctors in Wuhan first noticed it harmed everyone.

Related:

n early spring, most of the world’s COVID-19 studies focused on individuals with moderate or severe disease. By testing the general population in Iceland, deCODE was able to track the virus in people with mild or no symptoms. Of 9,199 people recruited for population screening between 13 March and 4 April, 13.3% tested positive for coronavirus. Of that infected group, 43% reported no symptoms at the time of testing2. “This study was the first to provide high-quality evidence that COVID-19 infections are frequently asymptomatic,” says Jade Benjamin-Chung, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who used the Iceland data to estimate rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States3. “It was the only study we were aware of at the time that conducted population-based testing in a large sample.”

Italy also had a small screening study was released months later.

In addition to tracking asymptomatic infections, the researchers in Iceland concluded that children under 10 were about half as likely to test positive as people aged 10 and older — a finding confirmed in Crisanti’s study of Vo’, as well as studies in the United Kingdom5 and United States6. Additionally, the deCODE team analysed the viral genetic material of every positive case, and used that fingerprint to track where each strain of the virus came from and how it spread. Most of the initial cases, the researchers found, were imported from popular skiing destinations, whereas later transmission occurred mainly locally, within families (see ‘Iceland’s three COVID waves’).

(Well okay I'll regurgitate a bit of it).

The emphasis on a strict national effort, particularly in Korea according to a German TWC member from Saxony studying in Seoul whose name I forget (the guy who used to be a communist and posted in the TD, anyone know?) definitely helped a lot of these countries, enabling cooperation and good faith between individuals.

Also, the Icelandics found the fatality rate of the virus to be around 0.3%.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03284-3

And here's a New Yorker article that might be easier to read. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...he-coronavirus

[Macunaíma]

Hey fellow TWCposters. Would you agree that China's success in dealing with the pandemic is proof that democratic centralism is the best system for the modern world?

[Cyclops]

Hey fellow TWCposters. Would you agree that China's success in dealing with the pandemic is proof that democratic centralism is the best system for the modern world?

Arguably yes. Centralised systems with more or less democratic systems like Australia Israel and New Zealand have dealt with the pandemic better than China (which seems to succeeded in spreading the pandemic in the first place through politically motivated dishonesty) or the US (which is too decentralised to respond effectively).

[Macunaíma]

Arguably yes. Centralised systems with more or less democratic systems like Australia Israel and New Zealand have dealt with the pandemic better than China (which seems to succeeded in spreading the pandemic in the first place through politically motivated dishonesty) or the US (which is too decentralised to respond effectively).

I'm yet to see a credible source of this deliberate spread by China. On the contrary: they quickly identified the outbreak and acted to stop it, achieving a much greater success in it than all western countries while having a much greater population. Not to mention other factors other than the pandemic (if you live in the US just turn the TV on).

[Cyclops]

I'm yet to see a credible source of this deliberate spread by China. On the contrary: they quickly identified the outbreak and acted to stop it, achieving a much greater success in it than all western countries while having a much greater population. Not to mention other factors other than the pandemic (if you live in the US just turn the TV on).

Who said they spread it deliberately? In the first instance China seems to have denied the existence of a problem, possibly so as not to interfere with a prestigious party conference. Several scientists who spoke out were silenced. This wasn't deliberate virus spreading, just a typical behaviour of a repressive regime.

Once the problem as public the central authorities responding rapidly and effectively, if inhumanely.

[saxdude]

New Zealand, in 1918 their Maori population died at a rate I think 7 times that of the general population. Due to what is likely a hereditary vulnerability to alien diseases within the Maori community, to my knowledge New Zealand has had a very strict bio-security policy, certainly for the past couple decades. I once read a book by Stephen fry in New Zealand looking for endangered animals where he touched on the subject. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/in...Hari%20Wahanui.

Australia might have similar experiences.

OR RATHER, due to discrimination, marginalization and abandonment of Maori communities by New Zealand authorities, as opposed to a ficticious special vulnerability towards a broad range of "foreign" diseases, whatever that entails.

[Macunaíma]

Who said they spread it deliberately? In the first instance China seems to have denied the existence of a problem, possibly so as not to interfere with a prestigious party conference. Several scientists who spoke out were silenced. This wasn't deliberate virus spreading, just a typical behaviour of a repressive regime.

Once the problem as public the central authorities responding rapidly and effectively, if inhumanely.

Well, those are the claims to which I have not seem any credible confirmation. The last one I checked claimed that one of these "silenced scientists" spoke out one day before the official announcement by the government. Not to mention all the false narrative around it about him being some sort of dissident, while in fact he was a party member...