Q1: Did China lie or suppress information about the virus? A: Yes
Q2: Does it matter? A: Yes
Q3: Did it make a difference to where we are now? A: No
1. Chinese authorities lied and suppressed information about the virus.
The evidence? From the Chinese themselves. The main witness for the prosecution is professor Dr Ai Fen who was -- and still is -- Director of the Emergency Department at the Central Hospital of Wuhan. She is: member of the Emergency Physician’s Association; member of the Emergency Medical Association; Chairman of the Wuhan Medical Association. Her expertise includes: trauma, respiratory failure, severe infection and organ dysfunction. In short, she knows whereof she speaks.
On 30 December, when she found out about a SARS-like virus she notified the hospital’s public health department. She did so again on 1 January, when more patients came in with the virus. She sent a screenshot of the report to another doctor and from there it went viral (as it were), reaching the now famous whistleblower -- the now late -- Dr Li Wenliang.
Shortly after, she was "strongly rebuked” (her words) by the hospital’s “supervision department”,
an arm of the communist party. On 16 January the hospital's officials continued to deny (ie lie) that the virus could be transferred amongst humans -- when Professor Ai and colleagues had specifically warned that it could be.
On 10 March China's People magazine published a first-person account of her experiences, which was forcibly removed within three hours by communist censors. However, citizen activists saved copies in multiple languages, from which we know all the shenanigans that the officials got up to, to try to stop news of the virus getting out, and denying that transfer among humans was possible.
[more at Ai Fen]
2. Why it matters that officials lied.
(a) It’s a matter of principle. People deserve clear and true information. They ought not be treated like babies.
(b) It’s a matter of lives. As Professor Ai says: "Had doctors been notified promptly, this day might never have come”.
(c) It’s a matter of huge geo-strategic consequence. Nutters like Bannon and more centrist Senators like Martha McSally, are calling for “reparations”.
So, whether or not the delays in finding out about the full scale of the virus would have made any difference is hugely consequential.
My view on that is: it’s a counter factual that we can’t know the answer to....
3. Would it have made a difference to where we are now in the world?
Could this have been avoided?
Professor Ai says “this day might never have come”. But it might have. Only now, in these last few days do we know just how often this virus is asymptomatic (perhaps 20% of cases), yet asymptomatic people are infectious.
By her own evidence, Professor Ai did not know of the first definite cases until December 30. And by mid January China and the WHO were warning of human transmission and the need to take it seriously.
So, at worst, the delay was two weeks, until mid January. Meantime, even when Europe and the United States knew, without a doubt, about the severity of the virus, confirmed by the lockdown of Wuhan in later January, they did nothing. House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer were encouraging people to go to public events as late as mid February, while criticising Trump’s travel restrictions. Which they now say were “not enough”! OMG, the hypocrisy!
Instead of listening to the WHO and copying China, with its rapid lockdowns, in the West they mocked China for the “extreme” measures, for its “authoritarianism”, forcing people into lockdown, for its “breach of human rights”, in stopping the free travel of people (all of which, it hardly needs saying, we are now doing in the West, where these measures are now seen as “necessary”, “courageous” and “robust”). That was just a month, two months ago! And now, it’s all China’s fault? Now that there are so many infections, which they just didn’t think they would, now it’s China’s fault? As my Dad would say: “pull the other one”.
So, as dodgy as counterfactual history may be: NO, it would have made no difference. It is highly unlikely that there would have been anything different in the reactions of the West had we known of the virus’s human-to-human transmission two weeks earlier than we did. To say otherwise is blame-shifting, scapegoating, pure and simple.
It’s understandable...why not do it? Deflect. But it’s clearly dodgy.
We just don’t know enough yet. An article in the New Scientist of 1 April says: [or PDF]
Related:
Q2: Does it matter? A: Yes
Q3: Did it make a difference to where we are now? A: No
1. Chinese authorities lied and suppressed information about the virus.
The evidence? From the Chinese themselves. The main witness for the prosecution is professor Dr Ai Fen who was -- and still is -- Director of the Emergency Department at the Central Hospital of Wuhan. She is: member of the Emergency Physician’s Association; member of the Emergency Medical Association; Chairman of the Wuhan Medical Association. Her expertise includes: trauma, respiratory failure, severe infection and organ dysfunction. In short, she knows whereof she speaks.
On 30 December, when she found out about a SARS-like virus she notified the hospital’s public health department. She did so again on 1 January, when more patients came in with the virus. She sent a screenshot of the report to another doctor and from there it went viral (as it were), reaching the now famous whistleblower -- the now late -- Dr Li Wenliang.
Shortly after, she was "strongly rebuked” (her words) by the hospital’s “supervision department”,
an arm of the communist party. On 16 January the hospital's officials continued to deny (ie lie) that the virus could be transferred amongst humans -- when Professor Ai and colleagues had specifically warned that it could be.
On 10 March China's People magazine published a first-person account of her experiences, which was forcibly removed within three hours by communist censors. However, citizen activists saved copies in multiple languages, from which we know all the shenanigans that the officials got up to, to try to stop news of the virus getting out, and denying that transfer among humans was possible.
[more at Ai Fen]
As an aside, there’s terrific and amusing information at the China Digital Times [Web Archive] on how Chinese netizens immediately screenshot the People article and translated it into all sorts of bizarre languages, like Elvish, Martian, Klingon, Braille, DNA sequences. The inventiveness! Result: Professor Ai’s evidence survives.By the way, I’m assured by people with knowledge of Wuhan that: (a) the Wuhan Hua'nan Wet Market doesn’t sell bats and in any case (b) Chinese don’t eat bats. It’s rare, and confined to SE Asia. The list of animals sold at Huanan confirms that. So there was an intermediary, likely another animal. So.. still an issue with wet markets, selling exotic animals, which really are horrid places. I still recall with a shudder the Guangzhou wet market I visited decades ago, selling civet cats, rats and dogs. And then we have to consider the possibility that the virus was an accidental leak from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology, as Jim Geraghty does here.
2. Why it matters that officials lied.
(a) It’s a matter of principle. People deserve clear and true information. They ought not be treated like babies.
(b) It’s a matter of lives. As Professor Ai says: "Had doctors been notified promptly, this day might never have come”.
(c) It’s a matter of huge geo-strategic consequence. Nutters like Bannon and more centrist Senators like Martha McSally, are calling for “reparations”.
So, whether or not the delays in finding out about the full scale of the virus would have made any difference is hugely consequential.
My view on that is: it’s a counter factual that we can’t know the answer to....
3. Would it have made a difference to where we are now in the world?
ADDED 4 April: This is a counter-factual history and some say “counterfactuals are bullshit”. Still, many in the West are now saying “if only China hadn’t lied and suppressed information, we wouldn’t have this crisis”. Is that true? My short answer was “uncertain”, is now, NO. Bearing in mind how dodgy counterfactual history is. Usually the stuff of movies...We are now (3 April) at over a million infections and over 53 thousand deaths. Could these have been avoided? We have a world economy on the brink of Depression. Not just recession: but Depression. Like my Dad kept telling us about in Oz in 1929, when he swept tennis courts for sixpence.
Could this have been avoided?
Professor Ai says “this day might never have come”. But it might have. Only now, in these last few days do we know just how often this virus is asymptomatic (perhaps 20% of cases), yet asymptomatic people are infectious.
By her own evidence, Professor Ai did not know of the first definite cases until December 30. And by mid January China and the WHO were warning of human transmission and the need to take it seriously.
So, at worst, the delay was two weeks, until mid January. Meantime, even when Europe and the United States knew, without a doubt, about the severity of the virus, confirmed by the lockdown of Wuhan in later January, they did nothing. House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer were encouraging people to go to public events as late as mid February, while criticising Trump’s travel restrictions. Which they now say were “not enough”! OMG, the hypocrisy!
Instead of listening to the WHO and copying China, with its rapid lockdowns, in the West they mocked China for the “extreme” measures, for its “authoritarianism”, forcing people into lockdown, for its “breach of human rights”, in stopping the free travel of people (all of which, it hardly needs saying, we are now doing in the West, where these measures are now seen as “necessary”, “courageous” and “robust”). That was just a month, two months ago! And now, it’s all China’s fault? Now that there are so many infections, which they just didn’t think they would, now it’s China’s fault? As my Dad would say: “pull the other one”.
So, as dodgy as counterfactual history may be: NO, it would have made no difference. It is highly unlikely that there would have been anything different in the reactions of the West had we known of the virus’s human-to-human transmission two weeks earlier than we did. To say otherwise is blame-shifting, scapegoating, pure and simple.
It’s understandable...why not do it? Deflect. But it’s clearly dodgy.
We just don’t know enough yet. An article in the New Scientist of 1 April says: [or PDF]
This focus on pneumonia may mean that many milder early cases were missed. By December, infections had probably already spread outside Wuhan. A study of six children who contracted the covid-19 virus identified a girl who developed symptoms on 2 January (New England Journal of Medicine, doi.org/ggpxpr). She and her family live in Yangxin, more than 150 kilometres from Wuhan. None of them had travelled outside the county for a month before she became ill, and the researchers weren’t able to identify how she became infected.In short: we still don't know where Patient Zero came from, and when. This virus was out of the bag, and into the world well before anyone, anywhere, knew about it. It’s a world virus and we ought to start treating it as one.
Related:
- “China Silences Critics Over Deadly Virus Outbreak”. NYT, Jan 22
- "As Virus Spreads, Anger Floods Chinese Social Media". NYT, Jan 27
- "As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight". NYT, Feb 1.
- “Decoding the Chinese Internet". CDT, Jul 1 2016
[ADDED: I edited this on 4 April 2020]
