Hong Kong flagged tanker seized by Iran in Gulf of Oman

Lee 1, I believe you asked about evidence of China’s role. It is interestingly and very telling that you are keen to do is divert attention from China’s failings with the later failings of others.
If for one moment you believe that even these later amended figures of China are near to the truth I have a handful of magic beans to sell you.

I am not deflecting anything. It is important to see the whole picture and not just a snapshot that suits a particular narrative. China is untrustworthy, that is for certain. However that does not mean other countries have been much better and given that this is a world problem it is important not to single out China as the only issue here as otherwise we let everyone else off.

Chinas cases have been revised and are 50% higher than they first thought. This could indeed be a sign that they are not telling the whole truth. However it could also be that just like the UK and every other country, they are finding out previous deaths have also now been linked to the virus, and they could also be finding out previous cases that were not reported correctly. The UK is having a similar issue. We have no idea how many cases we actually have. We only know how many have been identified through testing. Given that our testing is way under what it should be, it is likely that we have a huge number of cases that are unreported.

“China were the first to get this. They were not initially aware that it was capable of jumping from Human to Human.”

Where is your reference for this statement? British Intelligence reports are quite clear that China knew of human to human contact long before they acknowledged it. There is also strong evidence (published) that this was an incident from the wuhan lab.

“They could certainly have been quicker but then others were also not particularly quick off the mark either.”

Given the fact that China covered up the evidence and were supported by the WHO who praised them it is not a surprise. It is now broadly acknowledged by other governments that Trump’s criticisms of the WHO in accepting China’s lies are appropriate (but are not accepting his subsequent action in cutting off funding) it is therefore not surprising that other governments were slow to act. Although some mistakes were independently made.

“I mean look at Trump. He spent many weeks claiming that this was not a problem and ignoring scientists. In fact he still contradicts all his scientific experts on a daily basis. Is that not even worse than China?”

A straightforward lie. His Medical and Scientific advisers have publicly stated that he has listened to their advice and followed it. He has aspirations to end the lockdown to protect the economy which they accept as a ‘political pressure’ but NONE of them (name one) has said that he has acted against their clear advice.

I see a synergy here. There is no vaccine currently for COVID – 19 nor is there one for the equally rampant TDS.

I am amazed that the China apologists still have the nerve to show themselves.
Simply keeping up on current affairs will show that China had done many, many things that should bring about change in the way the world deals with them. From ‘dissapearing’ doctors, dissenters and journalists, to employing poor judgement and standards n the research of bat viruses amongst other areas does them no credit.
What’s the betting that China will be the one country to do nicely out of the pandemic and have a vaccine ready first?

They were not aware certain for a few weeks that it could jump human to human. They did then take a few weeks more to tell the WHO which should have been immediate, but to claim they knew straight away is a not true. Unless you care to share the Intelligence reports you have?

China were not supported by the WHO to cover up anything. The WHO are not a political organisation and are made up of health professionals and scientists. The WHO shared everything they knew immediately. Their evidence showed that travel restrictions were not necessary at the time and Trump agreed. In fact Trump did not impose travel restrictions until two weeks after the Who advised they should be put in place! All that time Trump was also praising China.

On Jan 24th

“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

And on 29th Feb

“China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down. … I think our relationship with China is very good. We just did a big trade deal. We’re starting on another trade deal with China — a very big one. And we’ve been working very closely. They’ve been talking to our people, we’ve been talking to their people, having to do with the virus.”

He actually praised them a further 13 times in between those.

Remember that the WHO advised of travel restrictions on 30th January. So Trump was still praising them 1 month after that. So it seems it was perfectly okay for Trump to praise Chinas efforts while accusing the WHO of being corrupt for doing exactly the same thing at the same time…

Trumps Medical and Scientific advisers have constantly disagreed with Trump. In fact Trump threatened to sack the chief medical officer (Anthony Fauci) because he was criticising Trumps actions. Trump also categorically denied shutting down the Pandemic department (he was the president that shut it down…). Remember Trump also hired a group of business leaders rather than scientists for the scientific advisory group… Trump has constantly been touting miracle drugs that can cure corona virus despite them not having been tested at all and with evidence based on a study that was widely criticised. He even offered these drugs to Johnson when he was ill (they are totally untested and could in fact have made Johnson worse!)

Trump has also said “I think the 3.4% is really a false number… Personally, I think the number is way under 1%.” About the WHOs claimed infection rate of the Virus. We know it is actually around 3.4 so the WHO were correct. No one knows where Trump got his figure as scientists in the US also came up with the 3.4% figure.

He also said this of the faulty tests they had “What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken, which somebody should eventually say. Not only were the cupboards bare, as I say, but we inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing.” In fact as the Obama administration had no idea about Corona Virus (unless they had a time machine that transported them to the future) the tests were created under the current President in January. So His administration was responsible for the faulty tests but he tried to blame others (Really is quite a pattern forming there).

His attack on the WHO was unwarranted and in fact our own Government are very supportive of the WHO as are most of the governments around the world. His attack was simply to deflect attention from his own failings as it was in response to a question about just that.

Lee, again you have devoted three quarters of your reply to talking about Trump’ failings. I get it, you think is an idiot, so do I, however, that was not what Derek and I were talking about.
He is not why I have a problem with China apologists, if anything his initial supportive comments about China and their response, alongside the WHO’s response are a measure of how real world politicking has to be conducted when dealing with the leaders of China, and it could be said, it was objectively more presidential behaviour than could have been expected of such a person. Any criticism of China is met with deflection, distraction (a bit like your couple of posts) and threat. As to the back room dealings between the WHO and China, ask yourself, if China acts like a tyrannical bully in public when we are all watching, what are they like in private?
If you search for and read any of the different sources concerning China’s research into bat and other mammal viruses, coupled with their dealings with several other viral outbreaks shows you that any remotely sensible response to a viral outbreak would be to presume human to human infection is occurring unless proven otherwise, so I do not believe for one moment they were telling the truth, unless they were totally incompetant. If anyone believed them, sorry, that is a reflection on their critical and mental capacity.
Could you possibly tell us why you are such a China defender? Again, rather telling that you berate Trump extensively, but ignore the part about disappearing journalists, doctors and dissentors and Dereks comments prior.
Thanks for the replies though.

No, I am not a China apologist. Is am simply a rational person. I understand how China is a dictatorship with dubious human rights qualities. However that is not a free ticket to make up stuff. We need to look at the whole thing within the context of this outbreak. My comments on Trump were in response to the outbreak in general. People seem quick to blame China while letting what is possibly even worse behaviour from Trump go. Why is that? Why are we not looking at how our own UK government have perpetuated the spread initially? Why are we letting the UK government off when it comes to the preparation they should have done for precisely this scenario that they have failed to out in place?

Yes we need to know the truth from China but putting out lies about them creating this virus and letting it out is dangerous for many reasons sort of like blaming 5G masts… And no your first reaction is not to assume human to human infection as many viruses appear every year that don’t do that. Also the infection rate was not known initially either so could have been nothing much to worry about. Let’s not forget that China released the genome to the world very very quickly and that is why we are now able to have vaccinations going through testing. This is not about letting China off the hook it is about looking at the situation from a scientific rather than political view point.

As for Trump… He is now stirring up protests aimed at breaking the lockdown. Is that the actions of a sane president or is that more of a tyrannical dictator style? Is the sacking of people that disagree with him not similar to how China are being criticised?

What we do know is that after this there are lots of governments that will have to answer serious questions. China will be one of those along with the UK government the US and obviously Brazil who are still denying anything is wrong and has sacked the health minister for suggesting people should be careful!

Lee, I havent seen any journalists, doctors or dissentors being disappeared from America. I believe that the American public will also have the opportunity to remove Trump very shortly, so that’s also a bit different to China too, isn’t it?
I have reread the posts you were replying to, and yet can find no lies or making stuff up about China, there are perhaps two pieces of speculation based on available facts. Remember what I said about diversion and deflection?
And yes, when you are such a big researcher of viruses, with the track record of originating pandemics, you do assume human to human transference until proven otherwise, that is common sense.
You proclaim to be rational until talking about Trump, but that is something I hear from a certain leaning of the population. I’m not here to defend Trump or Brazil, and I’m not here to defend this countries preparation and actions, that’s not what I, or indeed Brian above said.
I am critical of China, and people who defend its actions, whilst ignoring its faults with an almost indecent fervour. Sorry.

Where am I ignoring the faults of China?

Also yes there were lies in this thread. One of which is the totally false accusation that they manufactured the virus. This has been categorically refuted by the worlds virus experts for very clear reasons.

Also we do not know if they have covered much up at all and if they did whether it had any real affect on the spread of the virus around the world. Again the spread around each country is the domain of those particular countries. China also has many such viruses each year due in part to their large bat populations. Bats are able to carry these viruses with no Ill effects so they are perfect hosts in which a virus can mutate. We do not automatically assume every such virus can jump either to humans or from human to human or from human to other animal almost all cases are contrary to that. If we did assume this then we would be in constant lockdown! Also you do not assume every virus can transmit itself so freely as again this is not common at all or we would again be in constant lockdown… Now, in the US it has been found that a tiger has been infected from a human, have we heard much about that? Given that it is quite an important finding as it suggests some significant mutation of the virus. Now Corona virus is not hugely deadly (it is about the same death rate as Flu (which is in the same family of viruses), did China think it was not as much of an issue as it has been due to that in the early days? We just don’t know.

Again it is important to deal with facts rather than pure speculation.

As for the US. Yes people do go missing for political reasons. It is rare but it happens. Also the US puts more of its population routinely in prison than any other country on earth.

That is not to defend China’s terrible actions in this regard but it puts it into some perspective.

@LEE1 – enjoy your 50 cents for the post.