The corona virus was first observed in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is a massive city with a population of more than 11 million. By comparison, New York has 8.6 million. After the virus spread through Wuhan the Chinese authorities locked down the city. Over 3000 deaths were recorded there. Now, Wuhan is reporting that in the last week there was only one new case of the virus.
Does anyone believe this? Can we believe that something like 60,000 cases appeared and the lock down stopped the virus dead in its tracks? After all, life in the city did not end. People still had to eat so they needed to get food. That means either going to a food store or having food delivered. I don't know how the Chinese handled this, but even with social distancing, getting food to 11 million people had to involve some measure of contact that would allow transmission of the virus, especially since many people who had the virus had no symptoms or extremely mild symptoms. The measures in Wuhan certainly could have greatly lessened the number of cases, but it seems essentially impossible that there would be no new cases.
These figures can be explained by a variety of possibilities.
1. The Chinese are lying. That would not be unusual. China lies all the time. For example, Chinese economic statistics are always pumped up to the point that they cannot be relied upon to measure how the Chinese economy is doing. Of course, if the Chinese are lying, that means that people are continuing to die from the virus in Wuhan, but we are just not hearing of it. It seems unlikely that such news could be contained, but maybe it just hasn't leaked out yet.
2. The Chinese have a cure. Again, this is the sort of explanation that would seem totally impossible to keep under wraps. Imagine that China has a cure but it is keeping it quiet because it wants to inflict maximum pain on the rest of the world to help China's relative position. That sounds like the plot to a James Bond movie more than the likely course of conduct for a country the size of China. If it were found that the Chinese held the cure and kept silent about it, there would likely be a world war against the Chinese.
There are others, but they get more and more fantastic as you go along.
The sad thing is that we cannot trust what China says about the virus. It's just one more thing that puts us in a bad position in fighting the disease.
Does anyone believe this? Can we believe that something like 60,000 cases appeared and the lock down stopped the virus dead in its tracks? After all, life in the city did not end. People still had to eat so they needed to get food. That means either going to a food store or having food delivered. I don't know how the Chinese handled this, but even with social distancing, getting food to 11 million people had to involve some measure of contact that would allow transmission of the virus, especially since many people who had the virus had no symptoms or extremely mild symptoms. The measures in Wuhan certainly could have greatly lessened the number of cases, but it seems essentially impossible that there would be no new cases.
These figures can be explained by a variety of possibilities.
1. The Chinese are lying. That would not be unusual. China lies all the time. For example, Chinese economic statistics are always pumped up to the point that they cannot be relied upon to measure how the Chinese economy is doing. Of course, if the Chinese are lying, that means that people are continuing to die from the virus in Wuhan, but we are just not hearing of it. It seems unlikely that such news could be contained, but maybe it just hasn't leaked out yet.
2. The Chinese have a cure. Again, this is the sort of explanation that would seem totally impossible to keep under wraps. Imagine that China has a cure but it is keeping it quiet because it wants to inflict maximum pain on the rest of the world to help China's relative position. That sounds like the plot to a James Bond movie more than the likely course of conduct for a country the size of China. If it were found that the Chinese held the cure and kept silent about it, there would likely be a world war against the Chinese.
There are others, but they get more and more fantastic as you go along.
The sad thing is that we cannot trust what China says about the virus. It's just one more thing that puts us in a bad position in fighting the disease.
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