zlacker

>>datafl+(OP)
For me it felt allways a bit strange how fast china acted. The virus was very fresh, nothing was known, just a few cases and china totaly locked down millions if people. Two, three months later, when we already had high numbers if cases in the west, lockdowns started in the west also. But everybody said, "we know nothing about this new virus". For me it allways like, china knew much more about the virus early on.

>>_tramp+sF
This is easily explained by a combination of past experience (SARS), Chinese dictatorship (Western countries can’t realistically solder people into their homes), hubris (“our medical system is so good that we could easily handle a pandemic”), wokeism (locking borders is evil) and scientific failures in medicine (if it’s not proven by randomised controlled trials, it doesn’t exist). Add a bit of political infighting in the mix (which presumably doesn’t exist in China) and ...

>>tomp+RG
That's a mix of some 5-6 factors... what does "easily" mean here?

>>datafl+NI
Maybe I should have written “obviously” instead. Basically, no need to invent “non-obvious” factors like “China had prior knowledge of the virus”. It’s definitely possible, but you can explain China’s success vs Western failure without that “hidden” factor as well.

>>tomp+KJ
I'm not trying to quibble on the wording of your comment, but the thing is maybe you find it easy/obvious/whatever to combine those factors to explain this, but to me it's a fair bit of a jump.

Here's one way to look at it: if we had asked "how will China respond?" back in the beginning, how well would you have been able to predict their response if you had known the virus was of zoonotic origin? What if you had known the virus was of lab origin? I would think in the second case you'd have a lot more people betting that we'd get a swift (& deflective) response than in the former case, but it sounds like you disagree?

>>datafl+hL
Swift response in China is easily predictable by their experience and dictatorship. Taiwan reacted similarly, taking the disease seriously, because of their prior experience with SARS.

The suppression of information and subsequent deflection, I find much more problematic. They can also be explained by China’s dictatorship and their aggressive PR management, but still... one of the easiest ways for China to dispel any “lab leak/release hypotheses” would be full transparency. So far they haven’t done that. But refusal to do so can again easily be explained by accidential lab leak / accident hypothesis, whereas the original parent was proposing that China had superior information in advance... again, possible, but not necessary to explain the current sequence of events.