New York Times health correspondent outlines why Chinese measures against coronavirus spread worked – and how different they are from US (and UK) approach
An interview with New York Times (NYT) health correspondent Donald McNeil has rightly gone viral, in which the New York Times (NYT) health correspondent gives detail about exactly how the Chinese government’s fight against the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus is organised, why it works – and how far it is from the ‘fiasco’ of the approach taken by the US government.
An approach that is almost as reckless as Boris Johnson’s ‘herd immunity’ plan:
McNeil also warns that what the media are calling ‘mild’ symptoms vary from almost none – to ‘walking pneumonia’.
This video is a must-watch for everyone concerned about the coronavirus epidemic that killed ten people in the UK in the last 24 hours, doubling the country’s death toll overnight.
And it is a must-watch for Boris Johnson: if he ignores this, he is doubly culpable for the deaths – hundreds of thousands or even millions – in this country that will follow.
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Whilst it is quite evident that the chaotic, eugenicist-ideology-saturated, Johnson regime is behaving like a rabbit in the road in the face of oncoming headlights during the vital opening stages of this UK bit of the global pandemic, to suggest that the extraordinarily authoritarian measures adopted in the centralised command police state , with its thoroughly permanently intimidated citizenry , could be adopted in the ramshackle individualist (bourgeois) democratic society that is our UK, is surely naïve .
From the US journalist’s explanation in the video clip of the conveyor belt-like process in China, to identify, and separate out, the carriers of the coronavirus, one has to wonder, for instance , what happens to the children or other dependents back home, when someone with those responsibilities falls into that conveyor belt system by being identified as infected, and gets carried off by that process into one of those special isolation holding centres ? This extreme mobilisation is only possible in a society in which, for instance, millions of the Moslem Uighurs are currently incarcerated in ‘re-education camps’ for being ‘infected’ with ‘anti state separatist ideas’.
In the UK we have to compare the confused and constantly shifting Tory government response so far with other, better co-ordinated, democratic societies , and the apparently different advice of their scientific experts, not fruitlessly compare the response of the shambolic UK government with the semi-militarised authoritarian response and processes of a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.
Communism Chinese style is refreshingly effective. Of course the West wants to see it as a Police State but let’s be fair, look at America and it’s attitude to blacks, leftists and foreigners and ask which is the most successful? Almost every day we get a news story about millions (sic) of Muslims in “concentration camps” even though nobody has ever seen these camps. What they never mention is the 8000 strong Chinese Jihadi army fighting like devils in Idlip Province, proof China does have a radical Muslim problem just like many other countries.
The Chinese ‘Communist’ state simply IS undoubtedly a brutal police state, Paul, run for the main benefit of a relatively tiny ruling elite (there are more billionaires on the Communist Party Central Committee than there are in the US Congress !) . ‘Refreshingly effective’ in this instance , maybe so, but it is also a, authoritarian, undemocratic police state with endemic systematised oppression on a scale you personally would find deeply unacceptable if you had to endure it, a state incarcerating millions of Uighur ‘dissidents in re-education camps . A state holding the entire Tibetan people in utter bondage, with an ongoing, decades-long, policy of cultural destruction, in Tibet, which is simply unacceptable. This is a state (nowadays run by a (nowadays mainly hereditary) ‘Communist Party’ elite, rapidly emerging as the oppressive instrument of a new private-property-owning conventional capitalist bourgeoisie , that has for a decade or more now operated a state-sponsored system of enforced ‘organ legging’ from its prisoners (ie, stealing their vital organs), for re-sale to rich individuals , Western as well as Chinese !
So spare me your ignorant, tragic apologia for one of the most viciously oppressive regimes on the planet, which during its baleful reign since 1949 has killed over 40 million of its citizens, via unnecessary famines and straightforward murder. But , as with Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Russia, ‘they have made the trains run on time’ ! Chinese Stalinism has nothing to do with any form of socialism. Even before its recent turn to a more conventional bourgeois capitalism, it was always a state capitalist tyranny .
JPenney appears to uncritically believe everything the west wants him to believe.about China. I prefer to keep an open mind
China is now America’s chief enemy. Russia has been shoved to one side because if push came to shove Europe (Germany) wouldn’t support an attack. And China is much much bigger and more wealthy. But what really gets their rag is the communist system is not only working but clearly welcomed by the population. Their system works which is more than can be said for capitalism on steroids (Trump).
“Communism Chinese style is refreshingly effective.”
… and don’t tell me : Mussolini got the trains to run on time! 🙂
FFS – China’s first response was to ignore the virus (in November) and suppress information – they learned the hard way.
Talk about delusion!
I can certainly agree with your last observation! But who knows you may get over it?
Marty, if you seriously believe, in 2020, that the murderous state capitalist tyranny ruling China since 1949 is anything other than just that, a murderous, self-serving tyranny, then your mind isn’t just ‘open’, but utterly vacuous , with the wind able to blow through your ears, laddie. There is so much solid, carefully collected, evidence now available (available with just a few button clicks on the internet, never mind innumerable academic works), of the crimes of Chinese Stalinism since 1949, that the only excuse for being prepared to believe the regime is anything other than that , is a toxic mixture of sheer ignorance and wilful self delusion .
When it’s a matter of life and death people seeing a foreign government actively saving its population’s lives and their own government adopting a laissez faire wait and see policy will likely demand more intervention from the latter.
We should be more concerned about the most incompetent British prime minister in living memory taking the powers of a dictator and applying them with the mind of a spoiled 13-year-old than the brutality of a foreign government acting rationally.
The government causing the fewest deaths among its population wins this argument.
The fact is that the Chinese government was a case of the Tories on speed – dictatorial and deceptive, leaving action until the epidemic had got out of hand.
Too much Washington Post RH! China (and Thailand) are the only countries making headway. Is the UK government in danger of leaving action until the epidemic get out of hand? Don’t tell me you’re offering a critique of your beloved Boris?!
J penny….when was the last time you were in China comrade,and were do you get your twisted rambling info on China.?Just for the record I visit China twice a year and have been involved in business with them before retiring.and still have contacts there.I would suggest you are wrong .in your veiws.and have no comprehension of running a society of 1.5billion people.and even less knowledge of coping with a pandemic.
humm depends if you think a Jurno even one with the title Health Jurno is a credible source of advice .
I’ll stick with the WHO
The UK tries to deal with its radical Muslims by a nationwide system of government informers (teachers, social workers etc) who report likely suspects under the Prevent banner. Quite a few turned in by teachers are under 10. Thankfully Tory governments are reluctant to spend any money on doing anything with the information they receive; no way would they ever establish re-education schools. The best those reported can hope for is to be taken on by the Intelligence Services to inform on their communities and family. And if they decline – well, then it’s obvious they are terrorists!