
China Hid Severity of Virus to Hoard Supplies: DHS Report - blondie9x
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-03/report-china-hid-coronavirus-severity-to-hoard-supplies
======
IAmEveryone
AP here is only reporting that there is a US government document saying as
much. Which was conveniently leaked to them.

Reading between the lines, this document seems to include a statistical
analysis of Chinese trade patterns to conclude that its trade in medical
supplies in January deviated from the past.

The idea that China was buying more medical supplies in January seems entirely
obvious to me, and I’m pretty sure I have seen previous reports of this,
extending even beyond January.

The Wuhan Lockdown happened on January 23rd. Do I believe that they were
importing more medical equipment in the month where they locked down an entire
providence due to the emergence of a new and deadly contagious disease? Yes.
Does it take advanced statistics and p-values do convince me of that fact? No.

But, of course, including a bit of stats in such a paper might also induce
people to put more stock into its other claims, namely that buying such
materials was a motivating factor to hide the extend of the disease. Or that
China was hiding the extend of the disease in the first place.

Here's the WHO's bulletin on the matter. This is based on information they
were given by China _in December_. If you search any news, you'll also find
reference to China briefing their US contacts on January 3rd, with similar
information. The bulletin itself is from _January 5th_ :
[https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-
unk...](https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-
china/en/)

Quotes:

 _On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of
pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City_

 _Of the 44 cases reported, 11 are severely ill, while the remaining 33
patients are in stable condition._

 _National authorities report that all patients are isolated and receiving
treatment in Wuhan medical institutions._

 _One hundred and twenty-one close contacts have been identified and are under
medical observation;_

So they were hiding it, except they told WHO that they had severely ill
patients which had been isolated? And that they were tracking >100 people that
had been in contact with these patients, indicating the believe that the
disease may be contagious?

~~~
ehvatum
On January 14, Chinese central authorities knew that COVID-19 spread readily
between people. They continued to tell the world the opposite, as reflected by
the infamous WHO tweet.

Also, the word you are looking for is not "extend" but "extent".

~~~
IAmEveryone
And on January 17th the US started screening passengers from China (here’s a
great source for that: [https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/timeline-the-trump-
admini...](https://www.donaldjtrump.com/media/timeline-the-trump-
administrations-decisive-actions-to-combat-the-coronavirus/)).

Screening only makes sense if you believe the disease is contagious.

So that’s what.. 3 days of misdirection?

Before that, on January 6th, the CDC issued a “Level 1 travel warning” and
“established an incident management system”.

And according to [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
security/presidents-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-
threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html) the virus
(and it’s true extend) was discussed dozens of times in the president’s daily
briefings, starting in early January.

Not that any of it matters: Two months after the first warnings, and more than
a month after the Wuhan shutdown that ended any possible efforts to hide
anything, the President was publicly forecasting that the number of cases
“within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, it’s like a
miracle, it will disappear.”

That’s from _February 26th_.

Check his own timeline above to see how much use he made of that month. He’s
very proud of mentioning it in the SoU and chatting about it with the Indian
PM, and various groups being briefed.

~~~
ehvatum
> So that’s what.. 3 days of misdirection?

Oh! So, China only _intentionally_ lied to the entire world for a 3 days. Or,
at least that's all your prepared to acknowledge, while bizarrely attempting
to minimize it.

In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese
central authorities. You invite the reader to assume the opposite. Why?

~~~
IAmEveryone
> In fact, this is only one example in a pattern of behavior by the Chinese
> central authorities

You're arguing for China's culpability by simply asserting they are always
dishonest. That's just circular reasoning!

Look, I don't particular like dictatorships. I'll grant you all the standard
complaints about China's human rights abuses, lack of freedom of the press,
and their military leaders' terribly old-fashioned banana-republic-style
oversized hats.

But the attempt here is to shift responsibility for 70,000+ US deaths onto
them. In terms of causality, I believe that is wrong. As in: even if they were
dishonest, it didn't make a difference. It's also wrong for the single purpose
responsibility actually has, to avoid repetition: not only is it the US
governments' (in)action that primarily influences the outcomes here, _that_
government is also far more responsive to any sort of pressure the US public
can create.

A even if you can somehow browbeat China into handling the next such situation
in a way that is more helpful, that only protects against a more-or-less exact
repeat of this crisis. But if the US government improves, that improvement
also applies if the next virus is the Canadian Maple-Fever. Or an earthquake,
or whatever.

There probably was some Chinese obfuscation. But it seems to be entirely of
the superficial, nationalism-inspired attempt at window-dressing many other,
ostensibly more open, transparent, and democratic government engaged in.

Florida, for example, doesn't (or didn't, at the beginning) count out-of-state
visitor's deaths in its statistics. Trump famously didn't want cruise ship
passengers disembarking because it would ruin his numbers. Many countries were
rather slow to start counting out-of-hospital deaths, etc. Even the exact same
no-(local)-transmission lie China is accused of was recycled by Trump!

If you look at the graphs of cases and deaths, you'll note that China's data
fits in rather nicely with that in other countries. Since they were always a
few weeks ahead of everyone else, it seems their data was, by-and-large,
credible. Or they are extremely good at guessing.

All this is such a transparently obvious attempt to whip up a bit of
xenophobic furore to yet again ride a nationalistic wave to an election
victory, it wouldn't be acceptable as the background plot for a politics-
themed porn movie. To see it succeeding is just...sad

~~~
downvoteme1
Thank you for writing this. You put exactly my thoughts in words. Just because
China delayed telling the world about H2H transmission for 6 days from Jan 14
to Jan 20 does not make them culpable for 70000 US deaths.

It is not that once the US learnt of H2H transmission on Jan20th and knew that
the virus was in US, it shut down all public events.

The US still proceeded to have the Chinese New Years parade in Manhattan, the
LA marathon still happened on March 8th.

------
aaomidi
I hate China more than the next person, but it's hilarious we're blaming China
for our system that's fucked people over.

Our economic system is not set up for natural issues like this. I would also
like to propose another question. You know how we're spending a metric fuckton
of money on the Military? What if this was, you know, actually a biological
attack?

Is this where all of our preparedness has come to show itself? What if this
virus was actually manufactured to be even stronger than this? If we're not
even able to prepare for a pandemic through spending this much money, maybe we
shouldn't spend this much money on the military and spend more on social
systems that would lessen the blow of such an attack.

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canada_dry
60 Minutes Australia did an interesting report on Chinese companies that
stockpiled and shipped supplies back to China at the onset of the pandemic.

[https://youtu.be/T3s6kcXi4pA?t=305](https://youtu.be/T3s6kcXi4pA?t=305)

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tibbydudeza
Trying to blame China for the US govt ineptness and preparedness for this
pandemic is a bit daft when you look at other countries who had much better
outcomes with the same information.

Logic will work for the MAGA crowd but some of us are more cynical after the
lies peddled to justify the mess that was Iraq.

