I think there is plenty of events reported in (English language versions) Chinese press and reports of events showing manipulation of the data to provide lower infections and death numbers by Chinese themselves to question the numbers. The fact that there might be a China-always-lies-about-data train that any number of people might be riding really has much to do with it.
They definitely have been taking some very serious actions. However they have also been using their dominant position in WHO to craft an international narrative that may well have allowed a greater international spread of the infection.
That said, clearly the existing meme and this outbreak seem very compatible with my bit above about xenophobic reactions. I do think it’s a risk, and certainly hope it does not play out, but as I said I think the end result in a few years is no one really remembers this any more than they do SARS and MERS.
[Things like this don’t help the case for believing China’s government. After releasing the first COVID-19 genome sequencing the Chinese lab was shutdown for “rectification” without any real explanation it seems.]
I think there is plenty of events reported in (English language versions) Chinese press and reports of events showing manipulation of the data to provide lower infections and death numbers by Chinese themselves to question the numbers. The fact that there might be a China-always-lies-about-data train that any number of people might be riding really has much to do with it.
They definitely have been taking some very serious actions. However they have also been using their dominant position in WHO to craft an international narrative that may well have allowed a greater international spread of the infection.
That said, clearly the existing meme and this outbreak seem very compatible with my bit above about xenophobic reactions. I do think it’s a risk, and certainly hope it does not play out, but as I said I think the end result in a few years is no one really remembers this any more than they do SARS and MERS.
[Things like this don’t help the case for believing China’s government. After releasing the first COVID-19 genome sequencing the Chinese lab was shutdown for “rectification” without any real explanation it seems.]