
Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools - dazhbog
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53816511
======
tristanj
I'm confident Wuhan does not have community spread of Coronavirus. To
eliminate the virus, China tested all 11 million residents of Wuhan for
coronavirus in just 14 days [1]. That's more than 500,000 people per day.
Dozens of asymptomatic carriers were found, who were then quarantined. Wuhan
hasn't had new cases in weeks.

China used a similar mass testing strategy in Beijing. When an outbreak
appeared at the Xinfadi wholesale market in June [2], the government had a
short (several weeks long) lockdown and tested more than half the city's
population. Some days they did ~400,000 tests per day [3]. This was possible
because they sent in testing resources from across the country to Beijing. The
outbreak was eliminated within a month.

I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. It's
impossible to have a widespread outbreak if you preemptively test and isolate
all carriers.

[1] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-
pacific/sc...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-
pacific/science-health-asia-pacific/china-testing-coronavirus-wuhan/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbreak)

[3] [https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-
Da...](https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Day-How-
Beijing-stemmed-new-COVID-19-outbreak-RXqRcu3r4k/index.html)

~~~
makomk
Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because
it really shouldn't work. We know that these kinds of swab tests have a fairly
substantial false negative rate - initially from Chinese research, and then I
think confirmed pretty much everywhere else - especially when trying to detect
pre-symptomatic carriers of the disease. (Also, based on other results
elsewhere, I think we'd expect to see a few people out of a Wuhan-sized
outbreak testing positive even if they'd long since recovered from the disease
and were no longer infectious.)

~~~
James_Henry
Even with a fairly substantial false negative rate, mass testing is incredibly
effective for a disease that is contagious while you are asymptomatic.

Suppose the test only caught half of the asymptomatic cases and that anyone
with symptoms was properly self quarantining. Then you would stop the spread
of the disease by half! and if you had an R0 of 2, then you'd half it to 1.

Obviously, reality isn't as simple as this. It could be thought that these
tests have false negatives when the viral load isn't high and when people are
less contagious.

The fact that the US hasn't used antigen tests on every person in the country
or at least in communities with high amounts of spread should be considered
one of the great scandals of our day. A great article on the subject,
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/how-to-
te...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/how-to-test-every-
american-for-covid-19-every-day/615217/)

Also, the fact that we don't do mass pooled tests in communities at the
beginning of an outbreak like they did in the Xinfadi and later Wuhan
outbreaks is also disappointing.

We could have had this under control by now.

~~~
swiley
No. I don’t want to live in a country where the government can force people to
have any kind of test.

It’s one thing to have misconceptions about vaccines and tests but government
mandated medical treatment is totally different and completely unacceptable.

~~~
ubercow13
Why? The government compels you to do all sorts of stuff.

~~~
jquery
My body my choice.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
When it's something deadly that affects others, then the difficult question of
forcing others comes up. What if smallpox got started again. That kills
millions of people. Today most of us in the west don't have personal
experience with things like that.

It's like masks. You should be able to make laws that force people to wear
masks if there is a deadly disease that will kill other people in large
numbers, in my opinion. For those that argue about undue force, what about
driver's licenses, taxes, health checks at restaurants, food inspection,
building codes, rules on water lines, seat belts, etc? Seat belts mostly just
affect people in the car, yet masking and cv19 affects others, so it should be
an easier thing to understand the impact.

My guess is our tortured political situation convinces people that somehow the
situation is different than these other things.

~~~
meowface
I think being very specific about language is important here. There's
"forcing", and there's "disallowing things if people don't agree to do
something".

Forcing would be literally forcibly entering people's homes and testing or
vaccinating them against their will, or jailing them or removing them from the
country if they refuse. But you could disallow people from entering certain
kinds of property or areas if they don't agree to show test results /
vaccination status or take a temperature test or wear a mask.

Once a vaccine is officially approved and rolled out, I don't think
vaccination should be mandatory for residents of the US, but I also don't
think people should be allowed to enter my place of work or education if they
aren't confirmed to be vaccinated.

~~~
dredmorbius
Or maybe freedom is simply the wrong frame for this question. There are
others.

Public health. Commonweal. Morality. Consideration for the disadvantaged.

------
save_ferris
We're starting to see just how misguided the US was by not taking lockdown
seriously early on and pushing to keep the economy going despite the long-term
risks to mortality and commerce.

Here we are months later, and ground zero for the epidemic seems to largely be
operating business-as-usual while the US is still seeing ~1k deaths per day as
we approach flu season. I was watching an Aussie rules football game the other
day and they're allowing fans back in the stands. I couldn't dream of going to
a sports event in many areas of the US right now.

~~~
zozin
I beg to differ. We still have no idea which policy will prove correct in the
long run because the Covid-19 timeline (6–8 months) is still too short. It's
not outside the realm of possibility that letting the virus burn through the
population is more beneficial; it's possible that in 2-3 years the United
States will have herd immunity and Covid-19 is in the back-mirror, while
countries that followed China's model still has to shut down cities relatively
frequently as outbreaks inevitable occur.

~~~
liuliu
Have we reached herd immunity against other coronaviruses?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Yes. Herd immunity doesn't mean that the disease is eradicated, just that
outbreaks are self-containing. We don't see cases where the existing
coronaviruses spread suddenly across an entire city, and they're deadly enough
to at-risk populations that we'd notice if it happened.

------
michaelgiba
I'm honestly pretty disappointed in the BBC for covering this like it is fact
and not calling into question the data integrity issues China is infamous for.
Nevertheless, I do think China, at least before re-opening, had less community
spread than most other countries due to the severity of their lock-down.
Authoritarian countries are able to impose measures like this much more
quickly than democracies, for better or for worse.

~~~
peacefulhat
How many people do you think have died from covid in China? America has 200x
deaths per capita according to official numbers.

~~~
dole
Last time I checked about a month ago, China reported ~6,700 total deaths, I
would guess ~8,000 now.

I'm still surprised this isn't a more publicized, aggravating, and/or disputed
figure, even given China's questionable reporting.

------
umvi
Is there any way to independently confirm China's claims? AFAIK they have
kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the
truth.

~~~
quercusgrisea
That they've eradicated coronavirus in Wuhan? The photos are pretty self-
evident. If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick
then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music
festival.

>AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole
control over the truth.

I'm not able to find a source to confirm that, but I do see some news articles
from earlier this year abiut China revoking press credentials for journalists
from 3 US news outlets. AFAICT from searching, journalists from other
countries and news outlets are not affected.

~~~
umvi
> That they've eradicated coronavirus in Wuhan? The photos are pretty self-
> evident. If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting
> sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music
> festival.

I think you underestimate the power of government propaganda.

If Chinese citizens are told by their government that covid is no longer a
risk to the general population and that western media outlets are fear
mongering to damage China, they will believe it regardless of the truth. The
CCP _is_ the truth in China.

It's not like covid is the black plague, bodies don't pile up in the streets
no matter how bad it gets. Some elderly die here and there and life moves on
(and plus it doesn't spread all that fast because mask usage is a cultural
thing there anyway).

I just have a hard time believing that a country with as much corruption,
pollution, and just general lack of sanitation as China does has "completely
eradicated" the virus, meanwhile South Korea is taking containment measures
for its latest wave.

I think more it's more likely China just put on a dog and pony show for the
world, but really they haven't eradicated covid at all and the citizens are
just kept in ignorance. This is, of course, gross speculation with no evidence
to back it up. But in my mind it's like "the most populous country on the
planet claims they've only had 4,634 deaths total due to covid, hmm..." and I
start to think I'm being lied to by a country that wants to save face on the
world stage.

Then again, maybe this is a scenario where having a dictator is advantageous
to having an inefficient collection of bumbling democracies. When you have a
god king that can force 11 million people to take a medical test within 14
days (or else?), you have an upper hand over countries where stuff like "due
process" and "deliberation" slow down policy making.

~~~
jdietrich
_> If Chinese citizens are told by their government that covid is no longer a
risk to the general population and that western media outlets are fear
mongering to damage China, they will believe it regardless of the truth. The
CCP is the truth in China._

Nonsense. Chinese people aren't an unthinking monolith. Like anywhere else,
some people believe whatever the government tells them, some people believe
any old nonsense on social media and some are savvy and sceptical.

The only thing more effective than Chinese censorship of the internet is the
efforts of Chinese citizens to satirise and subvert it.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html)

~~~
LegitShady
Ya their satirizing is so effective you have to go back 10 years for an
article about it but their social credit system would have downgraded you for
reading that article.

I think the level of naivete on your part shows someone who doesn't worry
about getting called for tea.

------
dehrmann
> there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province
> since mid-May.

I'm somewhat suspicious of this when New Zealand wasn't able to keep it to
zero. China might be able/willing to impose stricter policies, but New Zealand
is an island.

~~~
flukus
China hasn't been able to keep it to zero, new cases have been imported and
there have been flare ups but they keep them from growing with mass testing
and lockdowns, the same as New Zealand is doing now.

> but New Zealand is an island

Every country can effectively be an island if they want.

~~~
dehrmann
Not really. The US has more than 7,000 miles of land borders, not to mention
sea crossings. Closing European borders to that extent is equally impractical.

------
1MachineElf
If the US had taken the same approach as China, it would have been both 1)
effective and 2) unconstitutional.

~~~
James_Henry
If we had the political will, we would have had weekly mass testing by now.
The US has spent trillions to try and keep people afloat when they could have
used that money to try and keep people safe by stopping the virus.

A combination of ignorance (throughout society), what seems to be FDA
incompetence, and of political games is what is killing the economy and
thousands of lives.

------
xster
> Wuhan went into a then unprecedented lockdown on 23 January - at a time
> where the virus had killed 17 people and affected more than 400.

It hasn't been that long ago but I almost feel like I forgot how to count this
low now.

------
alphabettsy
It seems as if an aggressive and extended lockdown at the start has worked?

------
rossdavidh
None dare call it herd immunity.

------
parserman
good job

------
draw_down
Over here in the US we're stuck in the stage where we get really mad at
everyone but ourselves for how badly we've blown it. I saw the video of the
party, it looked fun (though someone should really teach those kids how to
dance). Meanwhile, we're just watching social media videos where people scream
at each other for wearing masks, or not wearing masks.

------
nelaboras
It might well be true that Wuhan currently has no known community
transmissions but this is also pretty obviously a propaganda/public relations
move. Weird that the BBC covers it so uncritically.

