On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 06:41:28PM +1000, Karl Auer wrote: > On Fri, 2020-05-15 at 15:55 +1000, Kate Lance wrote: > > They're nice charts but I was startled at the bottom one - 'Autocrats > > aren’t necessarily better at dealing with coronavirus.' Whoever said > > they were! > > I think it's a fair statement to make, because I can imagine many > people might think that autocratic governments ARE better at it. At > least if you assume the autocrats have their populations' best > interests at heart (big assumption). They aren't delayed by any need to > convince opposition parties, pass laws or cajole people, they can just > lock doors, block roads and generally Get Things Done. On the other > hand, they are no faster on the uptake than anyone else, and no more > intelligent or sensible. And most non-autocratic governments have laws > on the books that let them Get Things Done when they really need to.
Given that autocrats by definition are anti-democratic, it would be odd for anyone to think they'd ever have their populations' best interests at heart. But I guess there are people who'll believe anything, eg Trump cultists. > > This statement is also bizarre, and perhaps reflects the blame-China > > propaganda now circulating: 'The autocratic nature of the Chinese > > Government meant measures to detect a pandemic weren’t effective and > > the virus was allowed to spread initially.' > > A Government that pretends there is no problem is not helping, and > there seems to be a bit of evidence that they did pretend. What evidence would that be? China informed the world (clue: WORLD Health Organisation) it had a potential problem on 31 December. At that stage they had only 27 cases of 'unknown viral pneumonia', no one had yet died, and it was the middle of the usually-lethal flu season. But due to SARS experience the Chinese recognised there could be a problem and told the world. The world yawned. How did they 'pretend'? Forget the vague insinuations - proof? Timeline as of 21 January: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf > And did things like abuse and sideline people who tried to sound the alarm. > Maybe that is what the authors of that article are referring to. > On the other hand, the supposedly democratic government of the USA did > exactly the same thing. > > I find it hard to believe in those charts that the Chinese numbers have > flattened out so perfectly. Perhaps when you're trying to count cases in a quarter of the world's population it's not easy, especially if there are only a few cases and resources are stretched. But why assume it's a matter of deception? Not like the US, for instance, where states (eg Florida) are being told openly not to release their deaths statistics in case it hurts Trump's re-election. Regards, Kate > Regards, K. > > -- > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) > http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer > http://twitter.com/kauer389 > > GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170 > Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D > > > _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > Link@mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
