The Chinese government (not doctors) have a general principle of wanting to control information and this was certainly the case in the beginning, when this virus first appeared. If you're bringing Trump into this, he did very similar, seeking to downplay the issue and deny that there was a spreading infection in the USA. There's a lot of back tracking, cognitive dissonance and "oh, but he actually meant..." about what he very clearly did, which was to downplay, deny and lie about the spread of the virus, exactly like the Chinese government did initially. Except that it was not known what the potential for this virus was in the early days when the Chinese government was attempting suppression, but Trump did or should have known when he started talking about it's spread in the US.

To lump all Chinese doctors together as untrustworthy liars seems to be a mix of ignorance and narrow minded racism. It was Chinese doctors that identified this, reported it and then went whistle blower to make the knowledge widely available. It was them that dealt with this first, worked with the WHO to identify the disease symptoms and progression and fed a lot of the scientific research about this. Without them we'd be even further behind.

If you looked through your stupefying fog you'd see that China is now taking the opposite approach and using their knowledge and resources for soft power influence around the world. It is in their interest to be effective in tackling this around the world and they are providing equipment and people to other countries (although some of the receiving countries are paying for this). so they've gone from early days of suppression, to building & strengthening future relationships by sharing their knowledge.

The regional government tried to shut down the news. That's inexcusable, but they are hardly alone on this.

Looking at your own reference from (the incredibly anti-China) National Review it was only Dec 25 that hospitals started taking it seriously (ie, they quarantined staff) and Dr. Wenliang sent a text about it on Dec 31 to colleages.

China notified the WHO on the same day (Dec 31), and gave infection numbers on Jan 3[1].

As someone who spends quite a lot of time trying to track down data in Australia I'd say 2 day turn around on the data isn't too bad.

I think people who want to blame China for this will, no matter what. I'd note that news on infectious diseases that didn't originate in China often took even longer to be widely known (eg MERS, Ebola outbreak, Zika outbreak)

[1] https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unk...

> The regional government tried to shut down the news. That's inexcusable, but they are hardly alone on this.

Indeed - an Austrian ski resort is under investigation for deliberately hiding the extent of the infection as recently as February.

Its human nature.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/24/criminal-investi...

An Austrian ski resort is not the state, and does not have unlimited powers of censorship and arrest like China's one-party government.

You managed to miss the entire point.

I don't think I did. Please re-read the HN guidelines on comment etiquette, and then explain what you think I missed.

To expand on my own comment: when a private business (a ski resort, for example) decides to cover up the outbreak of a disease in a more-free country like Taiwan or the U.S., there are ways for the rest of society to route around this. When it's the government engaging in this cover-up, especially an authoritarian government with near-total information control, it's much harder to route around that kind of information suppression.

> … when a private business…

Ischgl isn't a private business: its a municipality* and the reports suggest that the cover-up included the entire valley: Galtür, Mathon, Kappl, See, etc.

* Something that would have taken you < 5 seconds to confirm for yourself.

Hence this is the government, i.e. similar (but yes, not identical) to a regional or national state authority in your example.

So,

1. to reinforce you point: 'cover-ups are prevalent in authoritarian states'. Agreed

2. and to re-make my point: '… apparently also in stable, affluent, western democracies where information flows like wine'.

It would appear that your attachment to your hypothesis that authoritarian states get away with this kind of corruption because of their control over information is preventing you from assimilating new information that this kind of corruption can happen just as easily in free democratic states.

Which should worry you, if you do indeed live in such a state and are hoping that information freedom and democracy is enough to protect you and yours.

You linked to a login-walled article where the section above the fold does not clearly make your point. The subtitle "hidden from authorities" would imply it wasn't authorities doing the hiding. You could have clarified this point in your initial response, instead of leaving an ambiguous sarcastic remark.

>if you do indeed live in such a state and are hoping that information freedom and democracy is enough to protect you and yours.

Never said that. I do think information freedom is preferable to the alternative.