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Vietnam figured it out - Printable Version

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RE: Vietnam figured it out - oregontim - 04-23-2020

There's no way any of us can do a 'compare and contrast' essay on past presidents, other nations, and bureaucrats. All of that is deluged by the overwhelming impact of this:

(04-23-2020, 03:23 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Here's a list of Trump comments as the epidemic spread:

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Feb. 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 4: “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.” (to be fair to Trump, this statement is factually correct, so maybe exclude it)

March 9: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power ... to inflame the CoronaVirus situation.” (speaks to some people's point about this being a bipartisan blindness)

March 10: “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

It wasn't until March 14 that Trump finally acknowledged the seriousness of the pandemic, when he declared a national emergency: “We’re using the full power of the federal government to defeat the virus, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
BC

And BC's list doesn't include the ongoing circus of half-baked theories. Today, the UV and disinfectant variation. A couple of weeks with the hydroxychloroquine theory. There's no indication, as this crisis rolls on, that there is or will be leadership from the top.

RE: Vietnam figured it out - M T - 04-23-2020

(04-23-2020, 02:50 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  Of course, all the crisis planning in the world doesn't do you any good if you don't know there's a crisis. The more I read, the more I'm struck by the quantum of activity that begins about January 28th. People begin to buy face masks in bulk. A White House staffer writes a memo on January 29th. Trump imposes a travel ban on the 31st. 

My sense is that the critical factoid is the date of the social chat by the mainline Chinese doctors, the ones who were so unfairly sanctioned by the government. I'd lay odds it was about then. I hope they get the immortality they deserve. Then, in early February, the Italians chime in, and the rest you know.

What odds would you have given? 

The rather unimportant social chat which you I believe you are talking about was half the lifetime of the disease earlier, on December 30.  (The "unexplained pneumonia" was mentioned in the paper that same day.  The national health organization had been called in.  The WHO was notified the next day.  Fauci talked to China about it on Jan 4 & 8.  One prominent virologist in the US said he heard of the disease on Dec. 15 (I'm not sure that's accurate, but that's what he said).  It was about that Jan. 28 that the virologist flew to China to talk to the doctors & the political leaders.)

(04-23-2020, 03:23 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  And the WHO issuing its first situation on January 21.

That is the date for the first WHO SitRep. but it wasn't as if WHO was silent or idle until then. 

It refers to earlier publications.
On WHO's page on Coronaviruses, WHO stated
  "Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people."
I suspect they believed that this was the case for the novel coronavirus.

For MERS, WHO wrote
  "The current pattern of disease in humans appears to be the result of repeated introductions of the virus from dromedaries to people, resulting in limited human-to-human transmission, but not in sustained transmission."

  "The virus does not seem to pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact, such as occurs when providing unprotected care to a patient."

I suspect that WHO (and, for that matter, China) was inclined to believe the same was true of the 2019-ncov. 

If you read the contemporaneous 2019-ncov surveillance guidelines, you see the same theme.  They expect the disease to be associated with Wuhan (where the presumed infectious animals are), and they are looking out for "sustained human-to-human transmission" (my emphasis).

RE: Vietnam figured it out - Goose - 04-23-2020

(04-23-2020, 05:45 PM)2006alum Wrote:  The notion that staffing and appointment quality in this Administration has been equivalent to every other administration is not an empirically credible claim. My professional network includes many staffers of the past three administrations (Bush II, Obama, and Trump), and even my friends who work for the Trump administration would admit they are not as qualified as their predecessors, but because most of the best people were either blocked due to political affiliations or else refused to have anything to do with this Administration, for precisely that reason had access to opportunities well above their qualifications grade.

There is no question that the current administration has had lots of trouble finding competent people that are willing to work there. Even when such people could be found, they quickly left because they couldn't work in what they considered an irrational situation where reason and argument had no value, and where true today would be false tomorrow. Many of the people that have served in other administrations would certainly not serve in this one, and that is a big problem. We are in agreement there.

Now for the hard part. I am entering a mine field here, but it has to be done. I know some of the people who had these jobs in previous administrations are part of you network and possibly are your friends. I also am quite willing to believe they are good people who did the best they could. But do you really believe they were the best persons for the job they held? How many had an educational background tailored to the job they held? How many had experience in the departments they led before they got the job? How many were of the opposite political party from the president? How many served in more than one administration? How many ended up running for office either before or after serving in the government?
I am sure there are some that pass these gates, but how many?

I think one has to face the fact that these appointments are political and are not jobs people aspire to when they chose their vocations. They are stepping stones or holding patterns. Nobody dreams of being undersecretary of defense. Most of the time this sub-optimal system does little harm. Sometimes it does a lot of harm. In either case IMHO it is very sub-optimal. Making all these jobs civil service has some appeal, but it isn't going to happen. I am not sure it would actually improve the situation, but rather trade one set of problems for another. However, I do not believe that the Federal government in general gets "The best and the brightest" in these positions, and pretending that we do is unrealistic and occasionally dangerous.

RE: Vietnam figured it out - Genuine Realist - 04-23-2020

(04-23-2020, 07:55 PM)M T Wrote:  
(04-23-2020, 02:50 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  Of course, all the crisis planning in the world doesn't do you any good if you don't know there's a crisis. The more I read, the more I'm struck by the quantum of activity that begins about January 28th. People begin to buy face masks in bulk. A White House staffer writes a memo on January 29th. Trump imposes a travel ban on the 31st. 

My sense is that the critical factoid is the date of the social chat by the mainline Chinese doctors, the ones who were so unfairly sanctioned by the government. I'd lay odds it was about then. I hope they get the immortality they deserve. Then, in early February, the Italians chime in, and the rest you know.

What odds would you have given? 

The rather unimportant social chat which you I believe you are talking about was half the lifetime of the disease earlier, on December 30.  (The "unexplained pneumonia" was mentioned in the paper that same day.  The national health organization had been called in.  The WHO was notified the next day.  Fauci talked to China about it on Jan 4 & 8.  One prominent virologist in the US said he heard of the disease on Dec. 15 (I'm not sure that's accurate, but that's what he said).  It was about that Jan. 28 that the virologist flew to China to talk to the doctors & the political leaders.)

(04-23-2020, 03:23 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  And the WHO issuing its first situation on January 21.

That is the date for the first WHO SitRep. but it wasn't as if WHO was silent or idle until then. 

It refers to earlier publications.
  • A travel alert was issued on Jan. 10.
  • Several other recommendations, guidelines, etc. linked by the Jan 15 (date of archive. I don't know date of creation) page on Coronavirusess
  • Jan 13 info about a traveler from Wuhan who was sick in Thailand.

On WHO's page on Coronaviruses, WHO stated
  "Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people."
I suspect they believed that this was the case for the novel coronavirus.

For MERS, WHO wrote
  "The current pattern of disease in humans appears to be the result of repeated introductions of the virus from dromedaries to people, resulting in limited human-to-human transmission, but not in sustained transmission."

  "The virus does not seem to pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact, such as occurs when providing unprotected care to a patient."

I suspect that WHO (and, for that matter, China) was inclined to believe the same was true of the 2019-ncov. 

If you read the contemporaneous 2019-ncov surveillance guidelines, you see the same theme.  They expect the disease to be associated with Wuhan (where the presumed infectious animals are), and they are looking out for "sustained human-to-human transmission" (my emphasis).
I must not have been communicating properly, because the statement you have embolded is the narrative I have been pushing throughout this thread.

I guess the technical phrase is 'not zoonotic.' The difference in viewpoint is in your second phrase - 'inclined to believe'. I think China had good reason to believe the virus was extremely transmissable between human beings and, for reasons of its own, chose not to disclose it. I am thankful for the correction of the social chat to December 30. Will someone please provide an adequate rationalization for the decision of the CCP to sanction these doctors? For disclosing information the CCP did not want publicized?

The deception lured every health service in the Western world into a fatal overconfidence in the adequacy of its resources. See the other thread I started, 'Timelines'. The US in fact was neither better nor worse than the others.

RE: Vietnam figured it out - M T - 04-24-2020

(04-23-2020, 11:38 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  
(04-23-2020, 07:55 PM)M T Wrote:  I suspect that WHO (and, for that matter, China) was inclined to believe the same was true of the 2019-ncov. 
I must not have been communicating properly, because the statement you have embolded is the narrative I have been pushing throughout this thread.

I guess the technical phrase is 'not zoonotic.' The difference in viewpoint is in your second phrase - 'inclined to believe'. I think China had good reason to believe the virus was extremely transmissable between human beings and, for reasons of its own, chose not to disclose it. I am thankful for the correction of the social chat to December 30. Will someone please provide an adequate rationalization for the decision of the CCP to sanction these doctors? For disclosing information the CCP did not want publicized?

The deception lured every health service in the Western world into a fatal overconfidence in the adequacy of its resources. See the other thread I started, 'Timelines'. The US in fact was neither better nor worse than the others.

Have you ever been made to apologize for publicly stating a falsehood?  Perhaps yelling "Fire" in a theater?  Or yelling "SARS" in China?
I already responded to you once about Dr. Li Wenliang.   An admonition and being required to sign an apology is not what I'd call a "sanction" as you put it.

You and I are on different planets. No, we are NOT saying the same thing. We may both think each of China and the WHO believed they had another zoonotic disease, but you seem to believe that China knew differently and were deceiving the WHO.

First off, you seem to believe that everything coming out of China is from the CCP, or at least, everything you want to believe is from them.  That seems to be just as true as saying everything out of the US is from the White House.  Yeah, there's stuff that is, and there's stuff that isn't.  Was the Santa Clara County's originally pronouncement of the first death in Santa Clara County on March 9 part of some sinister plot of the White House to hide the seriousness of the outbreak in the US?  It turns out that wasn't the first death, but that's what she believed at the time.   The deaths that SCC missed, were they part of that same plot?    When cases went untested early on because of the bad CDC test kits, was the US covering the disease up?   If the US tests miss some cases, is that part of an evil plot?  That seems to be what you believe about China.  

You've complained about China not doing things fast enough, but then it seems you have confusion over when things actually did happen.  For someone who created a thread "Timelines", maybe you should research this more.  The WHO-China Joint Mission Final Report has some of the info.  But, if you want to really dig into the original documents, go look at Google Translate of the Chinese language Wikipedia, starting here.

Why in the your world do you believe that the CCP is going to distort the information about an unknown disease that is killing their citizens?  They were facing an unknown threat.  Look at how much we don't know now and imagine the situation when it was just dawning on them that maybe they had another SARS or MERS.  A lot was happening fast, and I'm sure Monday Morning Epidemiologists can go back and find things they should have realized.   It's much more believable the local doctors (Wuhan Municipal Health Council) thought they had yet again a disease, like MERS, that was being spread mostly from animals.  Probably they should have known better.  You seem to see this as intentional deception by the CCP.   (The WMHC were the original organization to report that there was no obvious human-to-human spread.)

WHO has said that they had personnel on the scene in Wuhan from early January.  Do you believe evil China was hiding the patients and their info from them, just to preserve some grand deception plan?  Do you think the doctors from WHO would have not seen through it, if it is obvious to you?  

Yes, there was apparently something wrong with China's tests, produced within a day after the virus was sequenced.  That led to case counts that don't make sense.  But it was in the first 10 days after the sequencing!  Things don't always work the first time.  Ask the CDC.  (IMO, this apparent test failure, leading to the absence of new cases being confirmed shortly after the closing of the seafood market probably enhanced the belief that the new disease was mostly spread from animals.)

I know it won't convince you one iota, but in China's 2003 (ie, right after SARS) "Emergency Regulations for Public Health Emergencies" is
  "Article 21　No unit or individual shall conceal, postpone, or lie about emergencies or instruct others to conceal, postpone, or lie."


The China government is antithetical to what I believe a government should be.  But I think your conspiracy theory of deception is not justified.
Indeed, I would say that such an attitude may have been shared by those that didn't appreciate the gravity of what was being reported out of China.

RE: Vietnam figured it out - 2006alum - 04-24-2020

(04-24-2020, 03:35 AM)M T Wrote:  Have you ever been made to apologize for publicly stating a falsehood?  Perhaps yelling "Fire" in a theater?  Or yelling "SARS" in China?
I already responded to you once about Dr. Li Wenliang.   An admonition and being required to sign an apology is not what I'd call a "sanction" as you put it.

You and I are on different planets.  No, we are NOT saying the same thing.  We may both think each of China and the WHO believed they had another zoonotic disease, but you seem to believe that China knew differently and were deceiving the WHO.

First off, you seem to believe that everything coming out of China is from the CCP, or at least, everything you want to believe is from them.  That seems to be just as true as saying everything out of the US is from the White House.  Yeah, there's stuff that is, and there's stuff that isn't.  Was the Santa Clara County's originally pronouncement of the first death in Santa Clara County on March 9 part of some sinister plot of the White House to hide the seriousness of the outbreak in the US?  It turns out that wasn't the first death, but that's what she believed at the time.   The deaths that SCC missed, were they part of that same plot?    When cases went untested early on because of the bad CDC test kits, was the US covering the disease up?   If the US tests miss some cases, is that part of an evil plot?  That seems to be what you believe about China.  

You've complained about China not doing things fast enough, but then it seems you have confusion over when things actually did happen.  For someone who created a thread "Timelines", maybe you should research this more.  The WHO-China Joint Mission Final Report has some of the info.  But, if you want to really dig into the original documents, go look at Google Translate of the Chinese language Wikipedia, starting here.

Why in the your world do you believe that the CCP is going to distort the information about an unknown disease that is killing their citizens?  They were facing an unknown threat.  Look at how much we don't know now and imagine the situation when it was just dawning on them that maybe they had another SARS or MERS.  A lot was happening fast, and I'm sure Monday Morning Epidemiologists can go back and find things they should have realized.   It's much more believable the local doctors (Wuhan Municipal Health Council) thought they had yet again a disease, like MERS, that was being spread mostly from animals.  Probably they should have known better.  You seem to see this as intentional deception by the CCP.   (The WMHC were the original organization to report that there was no obvious human-to-human spread.)

WHO has said that they had personnel on the scene in Wuhan from early January.  Do you believe evil China was hiding the patients and their info from them, just to preserve some grand deception plan?  Do you think the doctors from WHO would have not seen through it, if it is obvious to you?  

Yes, there was apparently something wrong with China's tests, produced within a day after the virus was sequenced.  That led to case counts that don't make sense.  But it was in the first 10 days after the sequencing!  Things don't always work the first time.  Ask the CDC.  (IMO, this apparent test failure, leading to the absence of new cases being confirmed shortly after the closing of the seafood market probably enhanced the belief that the new disease was mostly spread from animals.)

I know it won't convince you one iota, but in China's 2003 (ie, right after SARS) "Emergency Regulations for Public Health Emergencies" is
  "Article 21　No unit or individual shall conceal, postpone, or lie about emergencies or instruct others to conceal, postpone, or lie."


The China government is antithetical to what I believe a government should be.  But I think your conspiracy theory of deception is not justified.
Indeed, I would say that such an attitude may have been shared by those that didn't appreciate the gravity of what was being reported out of China.

+1. Very well said.
(04-23-2020, 10:07 PM)Goose Wrote:  Now for the hard part. I am entering a mine field here, but it has to be done. I know some of the people who had these jobs in previous administrations are part of you network and possibly are your friends. I also am quite willing to believe they are good people who did the best they could. But do you really believe they were the best persons for the job they held? How many had an educational background tailored to the job they held? How many had experience in the departments they led before they got the job? How many were of the opposite political party from the president? How many served in more than one administration? How many ended up running for office either before or after serving in the government?
I am sure there are some that pass these gates, but how many?

I think one has to face the fact that these appointments are political and are not jobs people aspire to when they chose their vocations. They are stepping stones or holding patterns. Nobody dreams of being undersecretary of defense. Most of the time this sub-optimal system does little harm. Sometimes it does a lot of harm. In either case IMHO it is very sub-optimal. Making all these jobs civil service has some appeal, but it isn't going to happen. I am not sure it would actually improve the situation, but rather trade one set of problems for another. However, I do not believe that the Federal government in general gets "The best and the brightest" in these positions, and pretending that we do is unrealistic and occasionally dangerous.

Goose, I'm not even sure how to respond to this because I'm not sure how to falsify your claim about the platonic ideal - it seems impossible to prove whether there were always better qualified individuals out there than the ones who were hired for every single high-level executive branch position. I'm sure there were, in many instances. I'm also not sure how relevant it is to our present circumstances if we both agree that whether hypothetical better qualified individuals existed out in the world in prior administrations, actual better qualified individuals exist now and either quit, refused to join the Administration, or were blocked. 

What I do know is this:

-In my work experience in the for-profit, non-profit, and public sectors, I have rarely found that the "best and the brightest" always rise to the top. Connections and nepotism, luck, and dubious hiring criteria often result in the "best" person for the job being passed over. I have observed this to be true in academia, in industry, and in government. I don't think government is unique here. But I also think there are often many more well qualified people than there are positions, so at the margins, those factors prove dispositive. We could argue all day and all night whether one person was slightly better qualified than another, but I've rarely seen wholly unqualified people hired/appointed to such positions from within my professional network.

-I'm not sure that I think running for office is evidence of nefarious intent: unlike both the non-profit and for-profit sectors, a tremendous number of leadership positions in government require winning a public election, at the local, state and federal levels. If LeBron James had to "run for office" to be elected to the Lakers, would we think that's evidence of nefarious intent or mediocre capability?

-Finally, from my observation and experience, it is no more true in the for-profit nor non-profit sectors that "educational backgrounded tailored to the job" and "experience in the departments they led before they got the job" is a requirement, let alone a priority. I just read Bob Iger's memoir and he openly talks about having neither the perfect education nor the perfect experience for the positions he achieved. On several occasions, he was brought in from the outside and initially viewed with suspicion. Yet by all accounts, he was an excellent head of Disney and of every organization and sub-unit he led prior.

My sense, for whatever reason, is that you are setting higher goalposts for government hiring than for other kinds of hiring. On some level, that's no unreasonable, insofar as those individuals hold the public trust in their hands. But my observation has generally been that government hiring is, on the whole, no better and no worse than private and non-profit sector hiring, at least within the parts of the executive branch to which I have firsthand knowledge.