pei59_y Kevin FrayerGetty Images_china virus

新型冠状病毒是中国专制病

Jan 28, 2020 Minxin Pei

克莱蒙特，加利福尼亚—始于中国武汉市的新型冠状病毒爆发已经传染了超4000人——大部分在中国，其他一些国家也有，包括泰国、法国、美国等——100多人丧生。中国屡次爆发疾病——包括非典型性肺炎（SARS）和非洲猪瘟——官员也显然清楚必须加强化解“重大风险”的能力，那么为什么还会发生这样的事呢？

历史在中国重复，这不足为奇。为了维持权威，中国共产党必须让老百姓相信，一切都在计划之中。这意味着政府会系统性地掩盖丑闻和缺陷，因为这会给中共的领导抹黑，而不是采取必要的应对。

这一病态的保密工作妨碍了当局迅速响应流行病的能力。如果包括卫生部长在内的中国官员不刻意对公众隐瞒信息，2003年的SARS疫情原本可以更快受到遏制。一旦实施了合理的疾病控制和预防措施，SARS在几个月内就得到了遏制。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 45 Comments on this article

Joe Bu Mar 23, 2020

This didn’t age well
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Peter Schaeffer Feb 6, 2020

Years ago, I would have rated the ability of the U.S. government to handle such a crisis (the Coronavirus) as superior to China (and perhaps any other country). The concept of ‘public health’ was deeply ingrained and widely respected.

The ‘public health’ concept was (generally speaking) a liberal/left idea that most Americans accepted.

Now, I am not so sure. A ‘civil rights’ mindset has arisen that makes ‘personal rights’ more important than the public good. A few examples.

1. At one time (supposedly) that slogan of the Democratic Party was “The Greater Good for the Greater Number”. Can you imagine a modern Democrat saying such a thing?

2. Vaccination rates are highest in Deep South (Mississippi) and lowest in liberal states (California). The traditional liberal/left concept of ‘public health’ is now a ‘right wing’ idea.

Several generations ago, a very famous Democrat (FDR) gave an important speech and used the idea of quarantines as a metaphor. Quote from “Quarantine Speech” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_Speech).

“The Quarantine Speech was given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on October 5, 1937 in Chicago (on the occasion of the dedication of the bridge between north and south outer Lake Shore Drive), calling for an international "quarantine" against the "epidemic of world lawlessness" by aggressive nations as an alternative to the political climate of American neutrality and non-intervention that was prevalent at the time.”

Back then FDR knew that he could use the “quarantine” metaphor without hesitation and that everyone would understand what he meant and the underlying logic of quarantines (the speech itself was somewhat controversial).

Now?

The point is that, China may have more 1930s US mindset, than the US does.
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Adrian Wu Feb 3, 2020

How many people present to hospitals with pneumonia each day ? At what point should one be alert to a new emerging infection ? Do you know how many different microorganisms can cause pneumonia or ARDS ? The fact that they identified the new virus so quickly is actually quite remarkable. This article is clearly written by someone who has no knowledge or experience in infectious disease or epidemiology. Just because one sees a cluster of pneumonias does not mean an epidemic is about to happen. Many infections such as mycoplasma, chlamydia, adenovirus, influenza, parainfluenza or even Legionnaire's disease occur in clusters from time to time, especially in the winter. It takes time to thoroughly investigate these cases. Some tests could take days or even weeks. If the authorities declare a public health emergency every time they see such an occurrence, they would be criticized for creating panic. How long did it take the medical community to realize that AIDS was an emerging epidemic ? We are talking about years, not weeks. And the CCP secretary of Wuhan has come out to issue a public apology, which is the exact opposite of what you say they would do.
- simon noble Feb 3, 2020
  
  Pure apologia. The first case was not pneumonia. The doctors identified it as a new virus. They were then forbidden to discuss it even with colleagues or take precautions against infection. When hospital staff were infected China continued to insist that the virus does not spread human to human. The apology was very late and carefully shifted blame from the CCP and Beijing. Meanwhile the mayor of Wuhan in coded language confirmed he had been acting on instructions from Beijing
  - Adrian Wu Feb 5, 2020
    
    Do tell me how to identify such a new virus ? I am a clinical immunologist and I published one of the first scientific papers on SARS. It took us a lot longer to identify SARS. I would love to learn more from you.
    - simon noble Feb 5, 2020
      
      Endlessly inventive in Beijing
      Here we are at 20k++ and 450 odd deaths and you ate still trying to say no one could have known and denying what is reported first hand - the doctor who tried to warn colleagues that there might be a case of SARS was silenced
      China is now quarantining some 50mm people and strongly limiting internal movement but when the US and other countries ban flights from China the CCP screams racism and political motives. Meanwhile WHO meekly choruses spouting nonsense about illegal entries to countries divided by massive amounts of ocean
      Pathetic
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Patrice Ayme Feb 2, 2020

A Closed Society (China) is More Open To Disease (Coronavirus)
China is not an Open Society. The concept of Open Society was originated by Aspasia, a philosopher married to Athenian general and politician Pericles, who famously declared.
“Quoting Pericles' famous funeral oration as reported by Thucydides:
... Our administration favors the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes...
Our city is thrown open to the world… We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet, we are always ready to face any danger.... We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely.”
(Beautiful words, yet, disastrously, Pericles didn't act accordingly to them!)
Debate is crucial to advancing understanding. Debating with oneself is indispensable, but debating with others enables debating with others enables one to go where none thought of, and thus to advance understanding.

Instead in a dictatorship, few decide; thus, the brain power is reduced, or minute. Actually it’s the multi-debating aspect of Western Europe which enabled most of the advancement of civilization in the last millennium. China, which used to be very advanced scientifically and technologically missed the debating aspect, motivated by mighty intellectual passions. This is the main problem of Confucius philosophy, which views the respect of one’s “station” in life, the most important feature of society. Hence Confucius is most compatible with Xi’s regime.

Whereas intellectual debate and its descendants, in particular scientific, medical and technological advancement, are the exact opposite: they respect only truth, and, more generally, the search thereof. To equal the West, China will have to accept to see truths, and love thereof, be hurled around.

We have striking historical examples of pandemics facilitated by tyrannical regimes, with disastrous effects (starting, ironically, with Athens under Pericles). I will put them in a fuller essay on my site.
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simon noble Feb 2, 2020

The crude apologia for the CCP speedily posted here in the comments is more proof of how far the autocracy will go to protect its image
- simon noble Feb 3, 2020
  
  The same pattern of comments quickly appear in each article across the spectrum of the media. Flu is worse, China is being picked on, the West would have handled it worse, and of course the critics are right wing.
  The fact is that China suppressed the information for 7 crucial weeks, threatening doctors, blocking Taiwan from WHO information and even now complaining about international border closure even though it has imposed even more draconian measures internally. It is obvious that the CCP hopes to appeal to nationalism to divert attentions from its failures.
  Hard to see what there is to defend
  - About Face Feb 4, 2020
    
    Simon,
    See link below:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/military-government-secret-experiments-biological-chemical-weapons-2016-9
    - simon noble Feb 4, 2020
      
      I dont go in for conspiracy theory
      - Jay Kay Feb 5, 2020
        
        Your loss.
        
        A theory is a hypothesis that has been proven by rigorous experimental testing to have significant and useful predictive ability of real world behavior.
        
        This is as opposed to say the Global Warming Climate Change hypothesis, whose every model irrespective of cost or complexity, has demonstrated zero predictive ability of real world climate behavior.
        
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- Mike Huben Feb 2, 2020
  
  What a crude defense of your fellow conservative.
  - simon noble Feb 3, 2020
    
    See my reply above How very unimaginative to assume that CCP critics are conservatives. socialists love dictatorships?
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  - Jay Kay Feb 2, 2020
    
    Indeed.
    
    The revolution to wrest back political control from the traitors of the Globalist Cabal, for the peoples of the democracies of the world, is now well underway and accelerating at an accelerating rate. Sri Lanka, India, Sweden, US....it's happening everywhere.
    
    Brexit was days ago. That is just the start. The organic EU implosion is next.
    
    The timing of the advent of the organic implosion of the CCP regime is anyone's guess. One thing is however exceedingly clear, that like an Australian bushfire, the longer it takes for the inevitable to trigger, the more catastrophic and violent will likely be the outcome.... Unless of course we are lucky and get a USSR type evaporation event...
    - Feb 2, 2020
      
      This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
      - Jay Kay Feb 2, 2020
        
        How many people present to hospitals with pneumonia each day ? At what point should one be alert to a new emerging infection ? Do you know how many different microorganisms can cause pneumonia or ARDS ? The fact that they identified the new virus so quickly is actually quite remarkable. This article is clearly written by someone who has no knowledge or experience in infectious disease or epidemiology. Just because one sees a cluster of pneumonias does not mean an epidemic is about to happen. Many infections such as mycoplasma, chlamydia, adenovirus, influenza, parainfluenza or even Legionnaire's disease occur in clusters from time to time, especially in the winter. It takes time to thoroughly investigate these cases. Some tests could take days or even weeks. If the authorities declare a public health emergency every time they see such an occurrence, they would be criticized for creating panic. How long did it take the medical community to realize that AIDS was an emerging epidemic ? We are talking about years, not weeks. And the CCP secretary of Wuhan has come out to issue a public apology, which is the exact opposite of what you say they would do.
        
        Feb 3, 2020
        
        This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
        
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About Face Feb 2, 2020

Minxin, you may resent the CCP and President Xi. However, to draw the conclusion you did - that this Wuhan virus is a CCP manufactured epidemic goes way too far. Sure, rest of the world is not happy that China is exporting Wuhan virus. In the same breadth, rest of the world need take cognizance that China has acted and acted with speed that rest of the world can only scratch their heads when its done.
- Jay Kay Feb 3, 2020
  
  It could have just as easily be a US bioweapon or precursor, which had been stolen by CCP spies, or sold to the CCP by Globalist traitors within the US. Both of these sorts of things happen all the time....
  
  The key points here are big crazy autocratic Globalist Deep Stare types doing crazy traitorous acts against their own people.
  - About Face Feb 3, 2020
    
    Right now, there is overt mafia robbery in the US by the highest office in the land.
    - Jay Kay Feb 3, 2020
      
      Indeed.
      
      The revolution to wrest back political control from the traitors of the Globalist Cabal, for the peoples of the democracies of the world, is now well underway and accelerating at an accelerating rate. Sri Lanka, India, Sweden, US....it's happening everywhere.
      
      Brexit was days ago. That is just the start. The organic EU implosion is next.
      
      The timing of the advent of the organic implosion of the CCP regime is anyone's guess. One thing is however exceedingly clear, that like an Australian bushfire, the longer it takes for the inevitable to trigger, the more catastrophic and violent will likely be the outcome.... Unless of course we are lucky and get a USSR type evaporation event...
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Mike Huben Feb 2, 2020

I suppose AIDS was a disease of US autocracy under Reagan? Look how well "freedom" did there.

Many of these emerging diseases come from human-animal interactions that are infrequent. If you want to blame the Chinese autocracy, it would be better to blame them for not suppressing (or otherwise reducing) Chinese traditional medicine/food superstitions that have endangered many species such as pangolins, rhinos and bears. For a start, they can outlaw trade in bats, which are a source of many viruses, and likely this one.

No matter its horrible autocratic failings, we should be happy that the Chinese government can marshal the resources and knowhow to suppress this disease as they did SARS. Indeed, there doesn't seem to be any recourse except authoritarian controls to halt the spread of epidemics in mobile populations.
- simon noble Feb 3, 2020
  
  What a particularly poor attempt at equivalency AIDs was not covered up and considerable effort went into trying to limit it. Ironically China was notable for denying AIDs existed in China long after it was known to - It was bad for the party image to have a homosexual disease (back then. AIDs was widely viewed as a gay disease)
  - Peter Schaeffer Feb 6, 2020
    
    It is quite true that AIDS was not covered up in the West. However, not that much was done to stop the spread of the disease. Controlling the spread of AIDS was viewed as a 'civil rights' violation and not generally done.
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- Jay Kay Feb 3, 2020
  
  The West was not fee then, as it is not really free even now.
  
  The West was then, as it was up until very recently, wholly controlled by a trans national cabal of Globalist traitors, whose objective is to destroy the Western nations, cultures, traditions, freedoms, and way of life.
  
  The pathetic and insane official response to the AIDS epidemic (to officially pretend that the epidemic wasn't driven by specific and extreme lifestyle choices) was dictated purely by the traitor Globalists in Western politics and in Western institutions seeking to protect their extreme lifestyles from public scrutiny and or from possible curtailment.
  
  As a result vast numbers of hedonist but suggestible young men went to an agonizing early death, which could have been easily prevented had the usual and rational disease control measures been implemented in a timely manner.
  - simon noble Feb 5, 2020
    
    Beijing must be stretched if this is the best it can manage...
    - Jay Kay Feb 5, 2020
      
      How Medical Bureaucracy Functions
      - Yes Minister -
      
      1
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyf97LAjjcY
      2
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A
      
      And Beijing is the mother of all bureaucracies...
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Neil MacLean Feb 2, 2020

I was think this article looked a bit strange relative to the praise that WHO has been heaping on China. But then I found this article made some points that others seemed to have neglected and it seems there is indeed a critical and very important concern here that correlates well with so much else of what you read about the character CPC governance.
- Jay Kay Feb 5, 2020
  
  WHO is a Globalist institution.
  
  Modern industrial China is a Frankenstein Globalist aggregate, formed from the stolen body parts of Western Industrial Democracy.
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Kien Choong Feb 2, 2020

We might reasonably debate whether China's government could have done more to mitigate the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, but I am surprised that this article goes so far as to claim that it is "a disease of Chinese autocracy". I respectfully suggest that the article is badly titled.

That said, I would agree China's government ought to review the incentives that its provincial or city officials face, and assess if they can be improved.
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Susi Ng Jan 30, 2020

Why is the CCP the holy grail in the comments. It was leaked that over 100,000 cases existed whilst the Govt said 1,000. Now the growing numbers within a week suggests a lot of cover up. Unwell Chinese in the street can't even get into the 7 hospitals that have been ruled as the compulsory avenues to be admitted. Another man's mother died and said it was coronavirus and the death was officially noted as pneumonia instead. The only reason why the world is believing what the CCP is saying is to get co-operation at a workable level to get on with the job of minimising the spread; and trying to get enough data to create a vaccine. This whole 'losing face' culture needs to stop; we all lose face sometime; that's part of being human. We suck it up and get on with solving the problem at hand. It's more important to resolve coronavirus than maintain the CCP self-adoration of being mighty and invincible! Significant viruses in history including the Spanish Flu had origins in China. If eating wild game is the common denominator, then how many serious viruses need to be born and spread before China changes this cultural practice?
- twood Feb 11, 2020
  
  you have confused clinical diagnosis which lags behind epidematology review. Most cases were diagnosed only weeks later especially in the early stage when diagnostic tools were absent or insufficient. Most what you wrote was subjective speculation without evidence.
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P. Kamath Jan 30, 2020

I have been scratching my poor head for some time now to figure out why the learned professor would like me to believe his arguments that the new disease that is sweeping the country because of incompetence (or whatever) of Communist Party of China. I give up😟!
- Jay Kay Feb 2, 2020
  
  We will see what the people who really know, the people on the ground, the people of China, think of the CCP's performance at the next Chinese democratic election...
  
  In the interim, the free and unconcerned Chinese internet will allow us to see first hand the unfiltered opinions of the people of China, as to how the CCP is responding...
  
  No?
  
  Surely such a supremely competent and uncorrupted political party as the CCP is not afraid of the judgement and opinions of its own people?
  
  To be fair, in the West we know our system of government has been corrupted by the traitor Globalists permanent political class. However, that treasonous anti democratic abomination now being torn up root and branch and burned everywhere across the West and beyond.
  - Godfree Roberts Feb 2, 2020
    
    Lee Kwan Yew[1] explained how 'free speech' wreaks havoc on democratic societies like China's,
    
    "The Philippines press enjoys all the freedoms of the US system but fails the people: a wildly partisan press helped Philippines politicians flood the marketplace of ideas with junk and confuse and befuddle the people so that they could not see what their vital interests were in a developing country. And, because vital issues like economic growth and equitable distribution were seldom discussed, they were never tackled and the democratic system malfunctioned. Look at Taiwan and South Korea: their free press runs rampant and corruption runs riot. The critic itself is corrupt yet the theory is, if you have a free press, corruption disappears. Now I'm telling you, that's not true. Freedom of the press, freedom of news critics, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government." [1] A Third World Perspective on the Press. RH Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore. C-SPAN, APRIL 14, 1988
    
    The Great Firewall was one of China’s most forward looking policies and resulted in the development of an entire ecosystem of domestic internet companies found basically nowhere else. The idea that it’s removal would be fighting the global misinformation war on equal footing is patently absurd because the majority of Western media companies are de-facto US government owned organizations which has total gate keeper control over who goes in to the system. In addition, requiring that the Chinese fight misinformation in English is again a non-starter simply because language proficiency issues means that any kind of argument conducted in English would immediately disadvantage the Chinese. This is akin to demanding a 12 year old fight a 24 year old boxer in a “fair fight”.
    
    The fairness being only in the confrontation and disregarding the base levels at play. If the Western liberasts had any balls, they would challenge the Chinese on Zhihu and Douban, but a tiny insignificant China hands capable of doing so inevitably end up running for the hills, being regularly out trolled by the native speakers or just as quickly get banned. There is nothing stopping Westerners from going inside the firewall to debate the Chinese, they are unable to do so, so they instead demand that the Chinese surrender the high ground and volunteer themselves to be surrounded.
    
    In addition, it is plain as day that the ostensible freedoms of Western social media are rapidly vanishing under a tide of government misinformation, corporate compliant shadow bans, “ngo” bot campaigns, algorithmic tweaking, search obscuration, etc all designed to reinforce a status quo that the Western states momentarily lost control of due to the internet originally bypassing the traditional gate keeping networks that keeps all mass media organizations playing the same tune.
    
    The reason that Tik Tok is going to be banned in the US has nothing to do with security nor reciprocity, it is simply because it isn’t a US government controlled media company, thus the tools it has in it’s arsenal for “curating” the consensus are not under US government control. This is it’s biggest crime.
    - Jay Kay Feb 3, 2020
      
      The thing with kings is, that for every Lee there is a Stalin, a Mao, a Xi....
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    - Jay Kay Feb 3, 2020
      
      'The Great Firewall was one of China’s most forward looking policies and resulted in the development of an entire ecosystem of domestic internet companies found basically nowhere else.'
      
      Yep, protectionism works.
      
      The West's rise was fueld by protectionism, in large part.
      
      China's rise was fueld by protectionism, in large part.
      
      The West's decline began when it became pathologically infatuated with 'free trade', and threw its protectionism out the window.
      
      The US's renaissance is fueled by protectionism, in large part.
      
      To be fair, repeated experimental testing demonstrates that a mix of protectionism-ish, and freeish trade, is what works best for most nations and their people, and that the optimal mix of protectionusm-ish and freeish trade, varies from country to country and from time to time.
      
      This is of course the exact opposite of Globalist Ideology, which demands a one size fits all 100% free trade regime for every nation in the West, but entourages China and Switzerland to do whatever they like...
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- Jan 30, 2020
  
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j. von Hettlingen Jan 29, 2020

Minxin Pei says the Communist Party of China (CPC) is “responsible” for the current “calamity,” due to its penchant for secrecy in times of crisis. The leadership has been widely criticised for being slow to acknowledge the severity of the deadly coronavirus, and is facing demands for greater transparency in their disclosures about the disease. The full-blown crisis may be one of those "black swan events" Xi Jinping warned about a year ago, that could destabilise the CPC’s 70-year rule.
The author says “China seems not to have learned its lesson” from the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002/2003, which killed more than 800 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide. The CPC is repeating the same mistake and its “pathological secrecy” has been getting in the way of its ability to confront the coronavirus, hobbling the “authorities’ capacity to respond quickly” to its outbreak and contain it sooner.
Despite “important differences” between today’s coronavirus outbreak and the SARS epidemic – “including far greater technological capacity to monitor disease” – they may show the CPC’s “habit” of withholding information in common. Although “the first case was reported on December 8, the Wuhan municipal health commission did not issue an official notice until several weeks later,” and its “officials have downplayed the seriousness of the disease and deliberately sought to suppress news coverage.”
There had been “tighter control over the Internet, media, and civil society.” Wary of letting fear run rampant, police have worked meticulously to control the narrative about the virus, harassing people for “spreading rumors” about the disease. Misleading information – “no evidence that the new illness could be transmitted among humans, and claimed that no health-care workers had been infected” – and the “systemic cover-ups of scandals and deficiencies” do “reflect poorly upon the CPC’s leadership.”
Instead of “doing what is necessary” the propaganda machinery is moving into overdrive to protect Xi’s reputation. The president has always sought to cultivate an image as a beloved “People’s Leader.” He met World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday. Initially he told Tedros that he “personally directed” the response to the outbreak. But later, state outlets quoted Xi saying that his administration was “collectively directing” the response.
Critics said if Xi was fully confident of a victorious outcome against the disease, why not put himself in charge and reap all of the credits? Popular faith in Xi, who had abolished the term limit and consolidated power, portraying himself as China’s strongest leader since Mao, could “evaporate” if the situation worsened dramatically.
It would be a political catastrophe if the virus would continue spreading to major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. The word “Chernobyl” has been on people’s mind recently. The Kremlin’s ineptitude to deal with the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986 is widely seen as hastening the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The author says “the Chinese government’s attempts to protect its image proved costly, because they undermined initial containment efforts.” What he sees as a “tragic” chapter of the current ciris is that “there is little reason to hope that next time will be different. The survival of the one-party state depends on secrecy, media suppression, and constraints on civil liberties.”
Although Xi “demands that the government increase its capacity to handle ‘major risks,’ China will continue to undermine its own – and the world’s – safety, in order to bolster the CPC’s authority.” For years China has proved unable to address the health risks that experts have long warned could lead to an outbreak just like this one. The gulf between autocratic leaders in Beijing and local officials who run the country day-to-day, is the core conundrum in how a highly centralised system works.
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Robert Wolff Jan 29, 2020

This oriental infatuation with eating something rare actually has little to do with autocracy but with the oriental concept of 'elitism'. No doubt autocrats are elite, but anybody with enough money in the orient can eat something very rare (and expensive in the orient). Hawaiin Kings and Queens ate plates of hummingbird tongues, which nobody else could do, but did they taste good?

This was explained to me, an American, by the son of a Thai ambassador to Australia who became a doctor in Australia then an American psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. He said, "There are only two eyes in a fish, very rare, then there is the whole fish." But why do Orientals eat fish eyes and Persians eat the eyes of a cooked lamb head. Is it because they taste good? No, it is because the sensation of eating them provides a different attitude, if you consider it "good" and allows you to consider other ways of thinking (which can lead to unique views and advantages for those who hold these views).

All this should remind Americans of the TV serial episode of "Robinhood" in which he invasively pretended to be a French cook for an elitist dinner thrown by the Sheriff of Nottingham. He cut a slim slice of snouts off the pigs the sheriff had collected as taxes from poor farmers, cooked it eloquently and served it to the sheriff's elite guests as a "rare cuisine" only appreciable by elites. Robinhood returned the rest of the pig carcasses to the poor farmers so they could eat well.

Bottom line, I would not call the 2019-nCoV virus the result of Autocratic China, but a residual culture of Chinese Elitism, that rare and unusual foods, whether they taste good or are even good for you, if you eat them proved that you are part of the Cultural Elite.
- Jay Kay Feb 2, 2020
  
  Combine that with open borders, mass immigration, jet air travel, status-seeking mass tourism, and a Western culture where responses to a problem or crisis are foremost determined by their Globalist dictated Wokeiness - and you have the Pandemic Creation Ecosystem du jour.
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Jan 29, 2020

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Godfree Roberts Jan 28, 2020

Vioxx killed 500,000 Americans: a toll that could have been reduced by 90% had the FDA issued a timely warning.
Pharmaceuticals, correctly and legally prescribed, kill 140,000 Americans each year, yet most people are unaware of their lethality and do not know how to a prevent being killed this way.
Coronavirus deaths are few, its victims are elderly, and prevention is simple.
Media report American flu deaths this season stand a 8200 so far, and that's not newsworthy? “When we think about the relative danger of this new coronavirus and influenza, there’s just no comparison,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial.”
It also appears those most likely to die of Wuhan virus fit the same profile as flu fatalities: people over 65, those with compromised immune systems and those with serious pre-existing conditions. Two of the 17 Wuhan dead were 89-year-olds with pre-existing conditions; the youngest was 48 and suffering from diabetes and a stroke.
Contagiousness is highly important, of course. But so far, there is no evidence that Wuhan, first reported more than three weeks ago, is more contagious than influenza or spreads differently.
142,000 Americans died due to pharmaceutical drug use in 2016, but that's not news, either.
But 100 Chinese–mostly born during WWII, malnourished and carrying a heavy disease burden–have died from a novel virus and that's an epidemic?
- Jay Kay Feb 2, 2020
  
  Maybe not?
  
  Maybe there is another agenda, like a CCP plan to cover up for the implosion of the Chinese economy? Next step, invade Taiwan?
  
  But with the CCP media propaganda and internet censorship in China, and Globalist Fake News propaganda and Globalist internet censorship in the West, who knows?
  - mark the shark Feb 3, 2020
    
    How sad... The Chinese economic implosion has been predicted for 30 years... by you and your kin, along with the invasion of Taiwan. Now there is a new song to sing - China will make the world sick. Sure dictatorships are a bummer - sad the US is about to have one. But using a domestic disease outbreak to try to win ideological points is just plain sick.
    - Jay Kay Feb 5, 2020
      
      Yeah I know, my prediction timing sucks.
      
      After all, I have been forecasting the Australian bushfire disaster for the last 15 years, and with each passing year my predictions became more dire.
      
      Before 2004, I was warning about the danger caused by tsunamis. I even sold my low lying coastal house in order to move to a higher, albeit still coastal attitude.
      
      The West has lived and evolved with economic failure and booting out governments and taking new directions for centuries. Goodness, the US was designed around it, and designed to fail and reboot in and endless cycle of generally upward creative destruction - The Great Phoenix.
      
      China and the CCP on the other hand are at the opposite end of the institutional design spectrum. Rigid, hard, and strong, with a shiny alluring surface, they are the political economy institutional allegory of their material namesake, porcelain China. It's all lovely until a certain shock comes along, then it shatters into pieces, and there is no going back.
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- dapo alani Feb 2, 2020
  
  Could not have put it better!!!!! Pei is clearly looking for a US state hand out
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新型冠状病毒是中国专制病

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