
The Word from Wuhan - yarapavan
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-word-from-wuhan
======
richk449
The most fun anecdote:

Zhang Wenhong, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Shanghai’s
Huashan Hospital, became a national hero for a press conference speech:

The first-aid team put themselves in great danger. They are tired and need to
rest. We shouldn’t take advantage of good people. From now on, I’ll replace
all the frontline medics with party members from different sectors. Didn’t you
all swear to put the people’s interest first when you joined the party,
whatever the difficulties? I don’t care what you were actually thinking when
you joined the party. Now it’s time to live up to what you promised. I don’t
care if you personally agree or not: it’s non-negotiable.

But good article - read the whole thing.

~~~
ksec
>with party members from different sectors

Pretty sure that was mis-translated ( Intentional or not ). What he meant was
party member from within the Medics and Hospital. He didn't just suggest to
put any party member in the frontline because they wouldn't be qualify in the
first place.

~~~
zhte415
No no no.. translating is to put them in the 'headlights' of transparency of
accountability. It's quite an angry comment.

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dragonshed
> There is a phrase in China for the way such tensions are manifested: when
> everyone denies all responsibility and tries to shift the blame back onto
> the blamer, they are busy ‘throwing woks’.

I appreciate learning idioms of countries foreign to me, and in this case it
makes for a great article.

~~~
kohtatsu
There was an great episode on this topic on CBC a week ago:
[https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/the-life-giving-nature-
of-...](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/the-life-giving-nature-of-
language-1.5476924) (Available on most Podcast apps too
[https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/tapestry-from-cbc-
radi...](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/tapestry-from-cbc-
radio/id250082526?i=1000466998731))

------
coding123
You can count on the states that have an official number of infected people of
about 100 to have about 10000. You can count on US states that have 0 cases
for those to have about 1000. We've passed containment options when we didn't
do anything about 2 months ago.

People just don't go to the doctors, especially with the news of how people
are being treated on the boats.

~~~
karatestomp
Deductible of several thousand per person in our household. Good ol’ HSA plan
(our other options _guaranteed_ higher spending than that every year on
premiums). Bet your ass we’re not going to the hospital unless we absolutely
have to. And we’re lucky enough to have insurance and the means to pay if we
have to (though it’ll hurt a hell of a lot).

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Deductible of several thousand per person in our household_

Call your insurer. Many are waiving testing and treatment, including for
HDHPs, in respect of SARS-Covid-2.

~~~
karatestomp
I would be _shocked_ if that turned out to be true. At best I’d expect some
part of treatment very specific to COVID-19 to be free but everything else
around it to be normal price. Insurance companies and hospital billing
departments screw you and screw up constantly in the best of circumstances—no
way I’m trusting them any more than I would a used car salesman.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I would be shocked if that turned out to be true_

It’s a call. Not that hard. My insurer, a major Californian one, confirmed
affirmatively within minutes.

------
jessaustin
Expecting local officials to deal effectively with extraordinary circumstances
is unrealistic. A wealthy populous nation should be able to support a team of
national experts to assist in times and places of particular need, in a
variety of fields including that of infectious disease. The system described
in TFA seems rather more like a struggle among competing cults of personality.
"Your mayor sucks! Now you will be ruled by our super-mayor!" "Does he know a
single thing about health?" "Who knows?! Who cares!? He has a take-charge
personality!"

~~~
koheripbal
Leadership is exactly about organizing groups of experts to fight against
specific threats to the common good.

The point isn't that local officials should have been working in the
hospitals, it is that they should have been collecting the infectious disease
experts and executing against a containment and mitigation plan.

~~~
jessaustin
Are you a "West Wing" fan?

The whole point of a unitary centrally-controlled state apparatus like that in
China is that leadership of the type you describe does not exist. If it did
exist, it would not exist locally. Local officials are to follow directions,
which come from more central authorities. Sometimes they follow directions
poorly, because they're more concerned with their personal well-being than
that of their subjects. That's understandable, because those orders themselves
came from the same motivation on their bosses' parts.

Am I criticizing the form of government that the Chinese people endure? Yes!
It is much like most other forms of government endured by humanity.

------
flyGuyOnTheSly
>Teams of doctors arrived from every province in China to join the effort and
an army of engineers was deployed to build two new hospitals in ten days.
Millions of people watched the buildings go up.

That's unbelievable.

Where can I read or see more about that?

EDIT: Found something [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/pictures-china-builds-
two-ho...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/pictures-china-builds-two-
hospitals-in-days-to-combat-coronavirus.html)

I am still in disbelief.

~~~
positr0n
Wendover Productions in the topic:
[https://youtu.be/3Sh7hghljuQ](https://youtu.be/3Sh7hghljuQ)

------
aaron695
Little more about the student lead DDOS attack here -

[https://technode.com/2020/03/02/dingtalk-begs-for-stars-
on-c...](https://technode.com/2020/03/02/dingtalk-begs-for-stars-on-chinas-
app-stores/)

~~~
JCharante
<quote>On the first day back to school, DingTalk saw over 50 million students
and 600,000 teachers in China using its live-streaming feature to hold online
classes.</quote>

OMG! Their infrastructure team must be so proud, I can't imagine the app saw
even a one-hundrenth of that much traffic before then.

~~~
carltonf
DingTalk is a product from Alibaba, which also owns Taobao and Alibaba Cloud.
DingTalk celebrated 200 million registered users back in August 2019. So this
online course surge is probably not that a big stretch for them.

------
jpster
The question remains: what will happen when everyone returns to work and
school? I would expect infections to flare up again. What then?

~~~
sgt101
Deal with each new outbreak quickly and efficiently. The problem in Italy and
China was that the outbreak got out of hand before measures to deal were in
place, the big deal here seems to be that if people in critical conditions get
support with breathing they often pull through, if they don't they die. If you
are dealing with 1000's of cases providing supported ventilation is not
possible. If you are dealing with 10's then it can be done.

~~~
jpster
Practically speaking, I think this means e.g. temperature checks at every
school, place of work, subway, train, airport, and large residential building.
At entry/exit, like metal detectors. Routine swabs / testing. Ideally could
swap, put into an envelope and send off to a central testing facility. What
else?

Given the reports of asymptomatic testing, not sure we can confine to small
size flare-ups in the absence of this.

------
webninja
“The censor machine is working tirelessly too. Public mood is constantly
monitored and analysed by AI, with countermeasures devised to match it. Take
the case of Li Wenliang. Li, an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, was one of the first
to warn people about the new virus. On 30 December he messaged a group of
colleagues about a possible outbreak; a few days later he was summoned by
police and reprimanded for ‘making false statements that disturbed the public
order’. Li continued his work at the hospital and on 10 January started
experiencing symptoms of infection. On 6 February, his heart stopped.“

What a completely different world these people live in.

~~~
speedplane
> What a completely different world these people live in.

\- No Wikipedia.

\- No user generated yelp reviews.

\- No non-government approved news articles.

\- Every message you write online can affect your credit-worthiness and your
children's access to schools.

\- Buggy face recognition technology that routinely implicates the innocent

\- Secret detentions if you are "deemed" a scofflaw, with no clear process to
challenge it.

\- Non-existent property rights unless you have connections to power.

I love the Chinese people and culture, but the Chinese government is one of
the worst ever. It doesn't just effect the way you live, it effects your
ability to even think.

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neonate
[http://archive.md/6g6nO](http://archive.md/6g6nO)

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RickJWagner
Amazing. Thanks to the author.

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baal80spam
You can use the Reader View in Firefox to work around the paywall.

~~~
kerng
That always works like a charm!

~~~
generalpass
Firefox has hardwired me to enter Ctrl+Alt+R whenever something even slightly
interferes with reading the content.

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allovernow
This is how authoritarian socialism/communism pits people against each other.
Imagine a massively broad and deep bureaucracy which controls every aspect of
your life. Where so many things are illegal that practically everyone is
breaking some law - and the government (or your personal enemies) just need a
reason to get you reprimanded - piss off the wrong boss and your life is
turned upside down.

Our system in the West isn't perfect but at least your mistakes (real and
otherwise) typically don't follow you for the rest of your life, excluding
extreme cases.

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zepearl
I liked the article, thx :)

