Coronavirus

[Grays_1890]

I also have quite a few colleagues from China and have been to China a few times previously. The public obey what the government wants. There are also many (including those who have settled in the West) who are perfectly happy with how the government runs things.

Of course I disagree but they are saying this as totally free citizens in the West.

Agreed that Xi is a total nutter.

And I'm not using the Arab countries and China as a direct comparison. I am saying that the caricatures of them doing things without any thought whatsoever as to public opinion is, imo, wrong. And there are examples of dictatorships around the world that we can see where this exact meteorology does apply.

That doesn't mean the communist party is nice or that I'd want to live under their government.

Where the Chinese and Arabs are similar is that regimes like that are a breeding ground for ideology. Because it’s a Mushroom state, keep them in the dark and feed them brick.

Huge reason we are where we are today

 

[Grays_1890]

I also have quite a few colleagues from China and have been to China a few times previously. The public obey what the government wants. There are also many (including those who have settled in the West) who are perfectly happy with how the government runs things.

Of course I disagree but they are saying this as totally free citizens in the West.

Agreed that Xi is a total nutter.

And I'm not using the Arab countries and China as a direct comparison. I am saying that the caricatures of them doing things without any thought whatsoever as to public opinion is, imo, wrong. And there are examples of dictatorships around the world that we can see where this exact meteorology does apply.

That doesn't mean the communist party is nice or that I'd want to live under their government.

Where the Chinese and Arabs are similar is that regimes like that are a breeding ground for ideology. Because it’s a Mushroom state, keep them in the dark and feed them brick.

Huge reason we are where we are today

 

[Hootnow]

And it’s an example of a community action that are common in regimes that are sheltered like communism.

And based on fact that this kind of bizarre living habit caused the virus I would be careful about praising how the Chinese are governed and live because although I’m happy to question the West and we should let’s not be blind to what caused this and sick and stupid it is.

But as I've said, Taiwan, SK, Singapore are not communist regimes. Though Asian cultures do of course tend to be more collectivist in their outlook than Western ones.

It is of course also perfectly reasonable and not mutually exclusive to criticise the practice of wet markets and think they're disgusting, criticise the actions of the local Hubei branch of the communist party in the initial stages of the outbreak and also think that China have so far conducted better PH campaigns than the UK has once they grasped the full gravity of the situation.

As have Singapore, SK HK and Taiwan if people are loathe to say a good word about China.

I also think that China have clearly massaged their figures and have a colleague who's from HK who says some smaller towns are still reporting cases while the province is reporting 0 so something isn't adding up.

Nowhere have I praised how the Chinese are governed or live.

 

[Hootnow]

Where the Chinese and Arabs are similar is that regimes like that are a breeding ground for ideology. Because it’s a Mushroom state, keep them in the dark and feed them brick.

Huge reason we are where we are today

Again, this has nothing to do with what I initially said or the post I was initially responding to.

Most Arab states are not at all a breeding ground for ideology, its where ideology goes to die. The ideology there is you shut the fudge up while we steal your money and make your life miserable, otherwise you disappear for ever. The flavour of who's telling you to do that can either be religious or military in nature but the end result is the same.

 

[Hootnow]

I agree with your analysis above but was already well aware of that - laymen in this thread have even been passing that analysis around for a while.

My point is that at the end of January, he was intentionally and publicly stating that this was not a case for alarm. Had he meant that govt should be ramping up defences for an imminent battle, I think he would have phrased what he said very differently.

There is a difference between blind panic (for example, buying 70 packs of toilet paper or multiple large bottles of spring water in a country with a clean water supply) and taking appropriate steps to help mitigate the effects of something that is happening.

I shouldn't panic when I get into my car. But at the same time, I've passed my driving test, my car has an MOT, I do a quick check of the tyres before I get in, I put my seatbelt on and I don't drive at 90mph around London.

While he was rightly calling for people not to panic and the media not to sensationalise, he was also posting the following on his twitter that same week:

Spoiler: Horton

https://twitter.com/x/status/1223264064719216640

https://twitter.com/x/status/1222874749329715207

https://twitter.com/x/status/1222565112281735169

https://twitter.com/x/status/1221051729317453826

https://twitter.com/x/status/1221552137517305856

https://twitter.com/richardhorton1/...1%2Fstatus%2F1222505595569352706&widget=Tweet

And for fairness sake, he also retweeted this, to show that this is a very difficult situation where the response was not always necessarily completely obvious:

Spoiler: Retweet

https://twitter.com/JenniferNuzzo/s...o%2Fstatus%2F1222892226784530432&widget=Tweet

Though I notice the cheeky buggers in China have basically put in a travel ban for most countries in the world now, having cried about some countries doing the same to them earlier on in this.

 

[scaramanga]

I didn't say that it treats them well. It treats certain elements of their population like crap and is running actual concentration camps in the NW of the country. They have widespread censorship (though probably not quite as hard to get around as many people in the West think) and no elections. There's a lot of corruption.

I would never want to live under their system at all.

I was just saying that unlike for instance Kim or most of the Arab dictators, who treat their country as their own personal piggy bank and couldn't care a jot about what their citizens think or do, there is a little bit more to and fro in China. For instance, the protests in HK would have have been brutally put down in Arab countries, with many thousands of casualties.

That was my only point.

I think the outcome in HK would have been very different if it weren't for the fact that there is still such heavy British involvement there.

 

[Trixster]

In CZ they were told to stay home and everyone behaved like obedient little doggies. On the upside, they were told that nobody was allowed out without a mask and instead of bitching that there were no masks available, they shared instructions online on how to make them.

Not quite how I, or I imagine how anyone else living here, would view it tbh.
More the fact that we saw what was happening around us in Central Europe, and what was happening Globally, and understood that it was a logical step to take.

People are still allowed out for necessary tasks, work included, provided their face and nose are covered, even if just by a scarf. But even us little obedient doggies take a brick on the wrong lawn and flout this from time to time. I can easily wfh but if I do it all the time then I'll go mad so two days a week I'll use public transport and go to work - I live on the side of the river and there are still runners/cyclists going about, hardly necessary and certainly not as you label.

We issued a state of emergency on 12th March when we had just 2/300 cases of infections, by the 16th March the movement restrictions as you know them now came into effect. As I have said in other posts, I am glad they moved this quick to the emerging threat that they saw - will it work, will we become a Spain/Italy, who knows. But maybe moving so quick will help in the end.

Anyway, covid-19 is the least of the worries now... We have over 1 million litre's of beer that might have to be thrown away!

 

[Grays_1890]

Again, this has nothing to do with what I initially said or the post I was initially responding to.

Most Arab states are not at all a breeding ground for ideology, its where ideology goes to die. The ideology there is you shut the fudge up while we steal your money and make your life miserable, otherwise you disappear for ever. The flavour of who's telling you to do that can either be religious or military in nature but the end result is the same.

No but conversations develop and the point I’m making and I maintain is countries are a product of how they are governed and China being a communist regime makes ideas for example that eating bats for a cough breed and maintain because two way censorship leads to wonky beliefs aka not being out there enough in the wider world to know it’s that safe or right.

Bit like boiling dogs alive. A lot of this stuff comes from the regime and what it provides for people which is a commute from a hovel to a market with little interest in the wider world where people salute the flag still.

We can sit and praise their after the event actions and criticise ours all day but it’s the lack of their action in the first place to close down wet markets run by mafias that caused the issue and that’s where my beef lies.

 

[Hootnow]

No but conversations develop and the point I’m making and I maintain is countries are a product of how they are governed and China being a communist regime makes ideas for example that eating bats for a cough breed and maintain because two way censorship leads to wonky beliefs aka not being out there enough in the wider world to know it’s that safe or right.

Bit like boiling dogs alive. A lot of this stuff comes from the regime and what it provides for people which is a commute from a hovel to a market with little interest in the wider world where people salute the flag still.

We can sit and praise their after the event actions and criticise ours all day but it’s the lack of their action in the first place to close down wet markets run by mafias that caused the issue and that’s where my beef lies.

There are lots of countries in East and SE Asia where people do things like eat bats that have nowhere near as much censorship as China does. Most of these videos of 'Chinese eating bat soup' are actually filmed in countries like Indonesia or Polynesian Islands.

I mean in France they eat Frogs and force feeds Geese with a feeding tube to eat their livers. H1N1 in 2009 originated from either Mexico or the USA and the 1918 flu most likely came from Europe or North America. Its not unique to China.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of this worldwide will be that we start to actually improve sanitation standards for the animals that we eat. I doubt it though and I imagine that unfortunately once the heat reduces, China will restart the disgusting wet markets.

This is I guess where our responses differ. Rather than sitting here moaning about where it started, allowing a PH disaster to unfold (ie USA) I'd rather we have just gotten on with it and helped keep it under control like Singapore and Taiwan have. And considering we live in an open society and our government is responsible for us, as opposed to Xi, I'd rather focus my efforts on what we can actually influence.

Similarly to those who are just criticising as a reflex, I imagine there are some who are happy with the response now who would not be so if another party were in power.

Perhaps that's just my cynicism though.

 

[Hootnow]

I've got some more planning to do for our unit this weekend and frankly, consider my points on the state of our HC system and our initial response far more important to debate than the similarities and differences between dictatorships in China and the Arab world.

Those seem to have been mostly left however so I'll bow out here.

Have a good weekend everyone and stay safe.

 

[scaramanga]

Not quite how I, or I imagine how anyone else living here, would view it tbh.
More the fact that we saw what was happening around us in Central Europe, and what was happening Globally, and understood that it was a logical step to take.

One of the things I admire and enjoy seeing most in CZ is how the historic communist shackles are being thrown off. You can see it directly in the replacement of old buildings - especially in Moravia in my experience.

Some of the old habits die hard though. Being sticklers for rules and having a very proscriptive legal environment shoe that heavily. There's also still a strong distance between workers and management - something that's taken our company nearly 10 years to break down.

All of the respect of authority makes it far easier for the govt to get people to behave in a way that the UK govt simply couldn't do. We're not collective thinking people here - haven't been since the mid 70s (and even that was a hangover of WW2 measures).

People are still allowed out for necessary tasks, work included, provided their face and nose are covered, even if just by a scarf. But even us little obedient doggies take a brick on the wrong lawn and flout this from time to time. I can easily wfh but if I do it all the time then I'll go mad so two days a week I'll use public transport and go to work - I live on the side of the river and there are still runners/cyclists going about, hardly necessary and certainly not as you label.

Yet the public was very quick and almost entirely uniform in its obedience to the message to stay at home (at least in the areas I have contact with). That's a big difference to the UK. I had to go out and get some weed killer this morning - everyone in the queue for the store was complaining that we couldn't just go in and go about our business.

We issued a state of emergency on 12th March when we had just 2/300 cases of infections, by the 16th March the movement restrictions as you know them now came into effect. As I have said in other posts, I am glad they moved this quick to the emerging threat that they saw - will it work, will we become a Spain/Italy, who knows. But maybe moving so quick will help in the end.

Anyway, covid-19 is the least of the worries now... We have over 1 million litre's of beer that might have to be thrown away!

You can always send it this way.

Or just open that pub where you serve yourselves and go up on a leaderboard against the other cities - you'd be rid of it all in a night!

 

[scaramanga]

There are lots of countries in East and SE Asia where people do things like eat bats that have nowhere near as much censorship as China does. Most of these videos of 'Chinese eating bat soup' are actually filmed in countries like Indonesia or Polynesian Islands.

I mean in France they eat Frogs and force feeds Geese with a feeding tube to eat their livers. H1N1 in 2009 originated from either Mexico or the USA and the 1918 flu most likely came from Europe or North America. Its not unique to China.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of this worldwide will be that we start to actually improve sanitation standards for the animals that we eat. I doubt it though and I imagine that unfortunately once the heat reduces, China will restart the disgusting wet markets.

This is I guess where our responses differ. Rather than sitting here moaning about where it started, allowing a PH disaster to unfold (ie USA) I'd rather we have just gotten on with it and helped keep it under control like Singapore and Taiwan have. And considering we live in an open society and our government is responsible for us, as opposed to Xi, I'd rather focus my efforts on what we can actually influence.

Similarly to those who are just criticising as a reflex, I imagine there are some who are happy with the response now who would not be so if another party were in power.

Perhaps that's just my cynicism though.

You argue all you want about anything else, but stay the fudge away from foie gras.

I'll defend my right to eat that with my life.

 

[Parklaner81]

Perhaps the best thing to come out of this worldwide will be that we start to actually improve sanitation standards for the animals that we eat. I doubt it though and I imagine that unfortunately once the heat reduces, China will restart the disgusting wet markets.

This is I guess where our responses differ. Rather than sitting here moaning about where it started, allowing a PH disaster to unfold (ie USA) I'd rather we have just gotten on with it and helped keep it under control like Singapore and Taiwan have. And considering we live in an open society and our government is responsible for us, as opposed to Xi, I'd rather focus my efforts on what we can actually influence.

I don't see the two viewpoints as being entirely mutually exclusive. Rather, they need to be correctly sequenced.

You are absolutely right that the priority now is controlling the virus, and that is where the focus should be. However, others are right in that the source of the situation should absolutely not go unchallenged - but, I'd suggest, the time for doing this lies in the future.

Control the virus now. But simply accepting the bolded text as the way things will be when it's done is unacceptable IMO.

 

[monkeybarry]

Fact is, and also according to the DR that led the fight against SARS based in HK the fault lays squarely with China. As soon as the first case was known they should have done more to contain, this is their 2nd mad outbreak.

Didn’t report to WHO till end of December with fudged data and didn’t close travel till Jan 23rd. Sorry just because they are further down line and being used as a mark of the green shoots of recovery doesn’t mean they are not to blame.

They set the tone that the world followed and ultimately had to adapt.

Agreed.
But all of the above has nothing to do with the UK response, which was poor and slow acting/reactive risk management, especially at a social security level.

 

[Grays_1890]

Agreed.
But all of the above has nothing to do with the UK response, which was poor and slow acting/reactive risk management, especially at a social security level.

No but it is the route cause and can’t be ignored.

No medieval ways of living and eating highly contagious wild animals, no Virus.

 

[Grays_1890]

There are lots of countries in East and SE Asia where people do things like eat bats that have nowhere near as much censorship as China does. Most of these videos of 'Chinese eating bat soup' are actually filmed in countries like Indonesia or Polynesian Islands.

I mean in France they eat Frogs and force feeds Geese with a feeding tube to eat their livers. H1N1 in 2009 originated from either Mexico or the USA and the 1918 flu most likely came from Europe or North America. Its not unique to China.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of this worldwide will be that we start to actually improve sanitation standards for the animals that we eat. I doubt it though and I imagine that unfortunately once the heat reduces, China will restart the disgusting wet markets.

This is I guess where our responses differ. Rather than sitting here moaning about where it started, allowing a PH disaster to unfold (ie USA) I'd rather we have just gotten on with it and helped keep it under control like Singapore and Taiwan have. And considering we live in an open society and our government is responsible for us, as opposed to Xi, I'd rather focus my efforts on what we can actually influence.

Similarly to those who are just criticising as a reflex, I imagine there are some who are happy with the response now who would not be so if another party were in power.

Perhaps that's just my cynicism though.

And I blame those of where it came from rather than those having to deal with the fall out, I don’t think that’s unreasonable at all.

The fact you allude to Wet Markets returning days all you need to know about the problem and where the lack of reaction stems from in my opinion.

I’m a life long Labour voter who didn’t vote in the last election due to no faith, that said as. Life long Labour voter my defence of BOJO is non bias.

 

[monkeybarry]

How much of our money should they have blown on something like that just in case?

An appropriate amount equivalent to the risk, just like with anything done for the same reason - defence, healthcare, refuse collection, road maintenance etc.
So things you see in front of you, most you don't - they operate in the background and underpin daily life. You don't notice them when they are there - but when they are not there you'll wish they were.

Plans for funding the economy at a time of such crisis would only need updating infrequently and be mainly equation based. So as soon as it started to spread, those plans can be updated and ready to implement, rather than the retrospective approach we have taken. That's why small government creates sparse governance.

 

[monkeybarry]

No but it is the route cause and can’t be ignored.

No medieval ways of living and eating highly contagious wild animals, no Virus.

Again, agreed.
But that has nothing to do with the UK response level.
And you are correct, it can't be ignored - which is exactly the point of my posts and why the UK response was inadequate, especially at a social security level.

 

[scaramanga]

An appropriate amount equivalent to the risk, just like with anything done for the same reason - defence, healthcare, refuse collection, road maintenance etc.
So things you see in front of you, most you don't - they operate in the background and underpin daily life. You don't notice them when they are there - but when they are not there you'll wish they were.

Plans for funding the economy at a time of such crisis would only need updating infrequently and be mainly equation based. So as soon as it started to spread, those plans can be updated and ready to implement, rather than the retrospective approach we have taken. That's why small government creates sparse governance.

I agree. Given the miniscule risk of such an event materialising (every 100 years or so), the spending should have been minimal.

 

[AuroRaman]

I'm fine with that. Self inflicted (with reasonable warning of the consequences) shouldn't be covered.

Are...are you vegan now?