Today's headlines...
Fears of new virus trigger anti-China sentiment worldwide...
Missteps, state secrecy helped spread farther and faster... Feces may reveal hidden risk of spread...
QUARANTINE BY DRONE...
US troops held in SKorea...
Funerals Banned for Victims...
Authorities threaten to kill pets...
Panic in Hong Kong...
Nurses Threaten To Strike If Borders Aren't Shut...
Africa mobilizes...
Thai medics claim breakthrough?
I don't know if it makes a difference if a story comes from one or the other but hey, I suspect it does, maybe? But no matter...
I read the NY Times, who, by chance reported today..
From:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world...virus.html
As New Coronavirus Spread, China’s Old Habits Delayed Fight
At critical turning points, Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment.
A mysterious illness had stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. “Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients.
“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”
In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”
The illness was not SARS, but something similar: a coronavirus that is now on a relentless march outward from Wuhan, throughout the country and across the globe, killing at least 304 people in China and infecting more than 14,380 worldwide.
The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.
A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.
In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade.
Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.
By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
“This was an issue of inaction,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. “There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat.”
The first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat...
Of course, in the ol' fashion style of actually reporting info (without all that mumble jumble conspiracy to manipulate the reader blah blah blah) the article, available in its entirety at the link above, goes to considerable length to educate its readers to the facts, as the paper's investigative reporters discover them...
