False. It took much longer than five days. The WHO was indeed notified on the 31st but the Chinese government organs knew about this long before. First CCTV report that I recall was around the 15th. First confirmed cases were early December. There’s even US intel reports dating back to November.
But when this started, the Chinese system did what the Chinese system always does: try to save face and pretend all is okay. I do not share any optimism that this trait will change especially given the crushing blows to press freedom in the last ten years.
Could you link to a source? I have not been able to find any sources that definitively point to something concrete (as opposed to merely rumors and heresay).
> There’s even US intel reports dating back to November.
Ah yes, the CIA reports from November. I find this highly suspicious. How did the CIA know about it that early? And if they did know about it that early, why did they not do anything about it, like preparing America for the coming onslaught?
And please forgive me but US reports about China are not exactly the most trustworthy given the current environment.
> But when this started, the Chinese system did what the Chinese system always does: try to save face and pretend all is okay.
Believe what you will. I believe otherwise (or at least, I believe in a more nuanced story than you do): there was indeed face-saving going on by city-level authorities, but once human-to-human transmission was confirmed, the central government stepped in and kicked the city-level authorities on their asses. Now, the city-level authorities have been fired, and I believe the central government will do something to discourage similar behavior in the future.
The Chinese government is not a monolith. See also https://twitter.com/dbey85/status/1246370465209188357?s=20
COVID-19 is not SARS. It's less lethal but far more contagious. SARS would not have been such a big issue because it doesn't spread as easily.
Sars 2 is to Sars 1 as Mario 2 is to Mario 1. About the only thing similar is the characters.
How many times have we seen another variant of bird flu in the past 15 years? I lost count. Some of them even jumped to humans. But when that happened, we didn't immediately raise alarms of an upcoming pandemic: a virus jumping to humans does not always mean human to human transmission is possible.
You can read the effect on Toronto hospitals in 2002 by SARS-1 to get an idea of the panic it caused, wiping out whole ICU teams. Just like SARS-2 (Covid-19.)
It doesn't matter how wrong other people are or how bad some thing some people do in some country is. Two wrongs don't make a right and you can't vandalize HN like this. If you want to trash-talk, there are other places to do it.
This is an important issue, so please be careful about verifying your claims before you make them.
If anybody in public healthcare seriously wants to know more, contact me and I'll narrow down the dates, symptoms and locations and you can verify if it was corona virus or a different illness.
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devas...
Based on those dates, it's possible Covid-19 was on Chinese airliners as early as Dec. 1 - 8. Wuhan has an international airport that connects to Shanghai (Pudong), which is a major international hub.
So that moves the onset possibly back into November.
Researchers should be looking at Chinese death certificates for the month of November if they're looking for patient zero.
(I've read about one unconfirmed US flu case in October that sounds like corona, but I'll look around for some more info.)
The first patient was admitted to the hospital on 16 December 2019,[1] and the first lab result indicating a SARS-like coronavirus came back on 27 December 2019.[2]
> First confirmed cases were early December.
Those cases were not known about in early December. They were discovered after-the-fact, when people went over hospital records to try to find earlier, previously undetected cases. As I wrote above, nobody had any idea that there was a new coronavirus until 27 December, when the first lab results came in.
1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
2. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how-early-s...
3. The Caixin article is reprinted here: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/how-early-signs-...
And the hospitals. Not even China can just one day decide, out of the blue, to build two large-scale specialized hospitals in 10 days. Having that capability requires recognizing the need for it and preparing beforehand - which is another thing they've learned from the past pandemics.
I disagree. They took many months to report SARS to WHO, yes. But this time, reporting to WHO took ~5 days. It was discovered by dr Zhang Jixian on Dec 26, then reported to WHO on Dec 31. Then it took them about another week to sequence the genome and share it with the world. Plus the whole lockdown shows that they obviously made plans beforehand. The difference is huge.
Take a look at this timeline by the American Medical Association: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130
We've now been able to trace the earliest case back to November, but nobody knew about it until late December, so that doesn't count as cover-up.
It wasn't good enough, that's true. And before human-to-human transmission was confirmed, they should have been a bit faster, though I would argue they couldn't have been much more faster than about a week or two.
Mistakes definitely have been made, and it still isn't good enough, but "they haven't learned and they won't learn" is quite simply not true, and is more based on prejudice than fact.