My read on the Chinese reaction is the same in that they seem to be taking it very seriously indeed. But it might not be because the PRC are so worried about the disease per se. They may just be worried about the unrest and panic an insufficient response could cause. I.e. the PRC may be trying to prevent the infodemic more than the epidemic, to use current parlance.

One interesting frame to view this through is as a stress test of Chinese state capacity. I.e. is the state able to rapidly deploy resources vastly and effectively, at the cost of very dear priorities, to achieve some key national security objective?

If I were a CPC member, I'd be pretty happy with how this has gone. It was able to turn an initial misstep into a triumph: the people I talk to tend to take the view that China got a pop quiz and scored a B+, while all the other countries around are getting the same exam take home and flunking it.

China is taking it seriously which is different from addressing it competently ... welding occupied apartment buildings shut, throwing undiagnosed into Hotel California[1] quarantine centers, randomly spraying things with who knows what, etc does not inspire a sense of efficient effectiveness in onlookers.

[1] - "Welcome to Hotel California / ... / You can never leave!"

Both probably play a role in the equation of how China and the PRC has acted thus far in the wake of the disease. I certainly don't think China is acting with some far greater knowledge of the virus than other affected states/countries. The virus genome has been mapped and the world is working on developing a vaccine (I believe I read a recent story that Hong Kong claims they developed one). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), any kind of vaccine will need to go through phases of testing and validation to ensure its efficacy and this process will inevitably take time. That time will regrettably see more people fall victim to Covid-19.

Of course, China was also probably worried about the economic and political repercussions of appearing to the world as not being strong or proactive enough in its response. So much of the global supply chain relies on China that even having the resemblance of not being in control of the situation would have produced a far greater economic bloodbath than we've seen thus far.

I have the polar opposite view, China is not transparent with their numbers, and their response is hamfisted because they aren't competent and a lot of it is theater (typical of communist regimes.) It is possible that in many years more people will die from cancer from their irresponsible spraying than the actual virus. Western countries are also traditionally cleaner, and things like "gutter grease" aren't common. I have much more faith in the west than hamfisted policies from China.

They may not be transparent with their numbers, and certainly weren’t in the early days, but what about their response has been not competent? And what does gutter grease have to do with this virus or containment?

Does this look like a competent response to you? Or do you think is was thought of by a bureaucrat within the CCP? This is one of many examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw7M-fUaIb0

Also fecal matter might be part of the transmission. Gutter grease is produced from sewage waste (in many case.) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-20/fecal-tra...

When talking about competence in containment we need to look at aggregate data. Clearly there will be pockets of mishandling things, everything from medical facilities to airports etc.

Aside from the initial mishandling due to downplaying the situation and hiding information, the subsequent actions seems to have been pretty effective. Outside of Hubei the virus seems to be pretty well contained and relatively quickly at that.

If making a stupid PSA video is the criteria for incompetence, I'm not sure I've ever interacted with a single competent organization that was large enough to film one.

I don't care about their filmographic teams. I care about whether or not the control measures are working.

I said that was one of -many- examples. Try reading around. China even went so far as to blame the outbreak on the US. Sounds a lot like the Soviet era. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/coronavirus-xi-jinping-...

Outside of just lying about case numbers...

"But by Feb. 5, the funeral parlors and crematoriums were reported to be having problems keeping up with the disposal of the dead in Wuhan. Though no data was provided to address the matter, Wuhan’s lockdown was endangering not only the lives of coronavirus-infected individuals but also those of thousands of people who required medications and occasional treatment for such things as HIV infection, kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension. Hospitals no longer welcomed them, medicines were running out, yet there is no count of their numbers or deaths."

"As the makeshift quarantine facilities filled, questions arose about their safety, as people were stacked side by side and shared toilet facilities. There was clear evidence that the coronavirus disease could be spread via feces or the off-gassing from overused toilets and taxed plumbing."

Sounds like they've been everything but competent.

Trust and theatre perhaps; and there is certainly a lot of precedence for it from China. And I don't think anyone is taking the news and numbers from China at face value.

Flip it around a bit. China has taken the actions they have to contain the virus, there are some indications of success. You think it's not enough or not done correctly. What would you have done instead?

Mind you, the US currently has a President that blames the milk going sour on Mexicans, thermometers showing higher temperatures on China, and the colour of his hair on LED light bulbs. Half the country does not believe that this makes him incompetent...

> Sounds like they've been everything but competent.

If you think that our cities are any more prepared for an epidemic of this magnitude... I don't know what to say.

I will point out, however, that the US has fewer ICU beds across the entire country (Most of which are currently occupied), than there are documented COVID-19 cases in one city in China.

If an outbreak occurs here, do you really think that we will have enough medical resources to provide quality care for everyone? If yes - what are you, and your legislators doing, to put us in that situation? Because with our current medical infrastructure, we are not in that situation.

They actively tried to cover it up and waited until it was too late to take action, and they're engaging in a lot of sterility theater.

Never heard of that vile substance before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

It is interesting how in times of crisis, people start looking for a heavy handed, authoritative response to the situation. Moderates will be brushed aside as weak and impotent.

I do not disagree with you on the point that China's response has been herculean, but we must not forget that this also comes at a hefty price, one that I am personally not willing to pay.

> I do not disagree with you on the point that China's response has been herculean, but we must not forget that this also comes at a hefty price, one that I am personally not willing to pay.

One that you're not ever willing to pay, regardless of what you'd get for it? Even if it saved a million lives?

Given N=1, we obviously don't currently know how effective these quarantine measures have been so far, compared to whatever platonic ideal that does not come at a 'hefty price'. [1]

I think it's more likely then not that we will have a better grasp on it in a few months, when other countries start having outbreaks, especially if they don't react seriously to them. It's becoming quite clear that travel restrictions on their own are not going to keep the virus isolated.

[1] I have no idea what exactly you mean by that, so I'm going to assume you are not a fan of the quarantine, as implemented in China.

Edit: Thank you for clarifying your point, by pointing out that your concern is for the overall context - the other repressive systems of the CPC. I am very deliberately not addressing them in this sub-thread.

By hefty price, did not mean any potentially mishandled quarantine measures. Quarantine is a compromise, a hard one, and I am certainly in no position to form an informed position on this matter.

I meant the human rights violations perpetrated by the regime. This is always the price we seem to have to pay for a "competent crisis handling". I would indeed rather choose a free, but impotent country.

It is ironic that personal freedoms and public health are not often compatible. Doubly important to be aware of what we are being sold.

EDIT:

--- As the replies to my comment indicate I have totally misunderstood the paper. And there IS in fact evidence that the temperature changes the transmission. Sorry my bad. leaving the rest as is ---

> I'm hoping Spring ends up curtailing the pandemic; letting warmer temperatures do their work requires slowing down the virus' spread as much as possible, and that requires significant disruptions to people's everyday lives.

from this paper "Temperature significant change COVID-19 Transmission in 429 cities": https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.22.20025791v...

> There is no evidence supporting that temperature changes COVID-19 transmission. Methods: We collected the cumulative number of confirmed cases of all cities and regions affected by COVID-19 in the world from January 20 to February 4, 2020, and calculated the daily means of the average, minimum and maximum temperatures in January. ....

EDIT: I'm also very worried about this point you mention:

> the PRC is putting the entire country on what amounts to wartime footing (in a way that's unimaginable to most HN readers),

the effect of isolation/quarantine can have massive psychological damage and after-effects (especially on kids), such as PTSD, depression, ... years after the virus is gone:

"The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Very much underrated. There isn't enough dialogue right now with the public about what they are likely to expect.

To be clear, the "There is no evidence supporting that temperature changes COVID-19 transmission" is part of the background statement of the paper. The paper establishes evidence that temperatures do significantly effect transmission rates.

correct, I have messed up here. edited the orig. post to make it clear. thanks for pointing it out everyone.

Note that the quote above is the background of the paper, not the conclusion, which states:

"The study found that, to certain extent, temperature could significant change COVID-19 transmission, and there might be a best temperature for the viral transmission, which may partly explain why it first broke out in Wuhan. It is suggested that countries and regions with a lower temperature in the world adopt the strictest control measures to prevent future reversal"

That paper correlating temperature with transmission is comically bad. As stated above, the likelihood warmer temperatures by themselves will have any affect on COVID-19 transmission or deaths is close to zero.

I've been seeing comments all over that the temperature will reduce transmission, and even heard it cited in the news today. I'm very skeptic about this since citing SARS research is useless here.

fwiw trying to find evidence of this claim in studies relating to covid19 (peer reviewed or not) has so far yielded no results.

"citing SARS research is useless here"

Huh? SARS is the closest studied virus there is to COVID-19. It is certainly not useless. Of course there are no/few results for COVID-19, it didn't exist until a few months ago and even then was relatively unknown until about a end of January.

Did you move to Hubei? I have been in Shanghai through this entire thing and have an extremely hard time believing you saw any corpses ferried out of your apartment complex. 94% of the reported deaths are in Hubei - what city are you in exactly?

My mining through his comments shows he is from Beijing [0].

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22149446

Broadly speaking, I was trapped in a lower tier city for a couple weeks after LNY, which is where I saw two corpses removed from my apartment complex. Not in Hubei. Recently allowed to travel back to Beijing.

I agree with this sentiment, to a point. Economic growth is, at least to Western eyes, the main point of derived legitimacy for PRC. If the calculation is that blowing containment of the virus was a worse threat to that than 2 quarters of negative growth then, yeah, this is a big deal. I think I disagree a little with Western countries' governments not being able to enact policies for containment. What I'm more concerned about is people who live in Western countries actually following them, and the government failing to force compliance.

"letting warmer temperatures do their work"

The likelihood that warmer temperatures per se will have any affect on COVID-19 transmission, morbidity, or mortality is close to zero.

I guess this comment has garnered some negative reactions from people. I have yet to read/hear/come across a plausible explanation regarding how the warmer temperature will actually curtail transmission or improve health outcomes. Is there an actual theory here or are people just paraphrasing our genius President's semi-coherent remarks regarding same.

For the same reason(s) the common flu is more prevalent in the winter. Wikipedia has some proposed explanations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season#Cause.