How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw
How did Xi Jinping—the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, who has been consolidating his power since taking over the post in 2012—let things get to this point?
It might be that he didn’t fully know what was happening in his own country until it was too late.
Xi would be far from the first authoritarian to have been blindsided. Ironically, for all the talk of the technological side of Chinese authoritarianism, China’s use of technology to ratchet up surveillance and censorship may have made things worse, by making it less likely that Xi would even know what was going on in his own country.
Let’s hope.
One aspect of this whole thing that I’ve not yet seen is the abuse of antibiotics over the decades. Essentially, a vast majority of the Western civilizations have not solidified a strong natural immunity to disease, because whenever they get the sniffles they run to the doctor and receive a prescription. It starts very, very young and the practice continues throughout life.
This may surprise you, but China was overusing antibiotics significantly (and still is). In fact, they actually instituted the National Essential Medicines System to combat the abuses which were rampant. But, studies have shown there is a still an overuse in China.
Just saying.
– So you know, antibiotics do not work on viruses. Never have.
My understanding is that antibiotic abuse can cause a lower bodily production of interferons.
Ah, no. You do not strengthen your immunity to viruses by suffering bacterial infections. Your immune system is not a muscle you can exercise. Antibiotics don’t actually wipe out all infection in the body in any case. Antibiotics slow the infection down until the immune system can deal with it. Think of it this way. Each infection requires a specific antibody reaction like a specific key for a locked door. You can have 10,000 keys or 100 keys but if you don’t have the key to the particular door you want to walk through, you have the same problem. You have to call in a locksmith and get a another new key made.
well orson, I find physicians are reticent to shell out antibiotics in the array and volume of yore. except chirer where over half the lies currently generated originate. /sarc off
but, the horse bolted long ago and antibiotics did some damage by cleaning out the weaker members of the various pathogen species.
fwiw, I take 500 mg vit C daily, work out regularly:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5911985/
from the link:
“Lifelong physical activity1 is a potent means of reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic inflammatory disorders (1). Evidence also shows that . . . .”
, eschew sugary stuff, etc
Most of the generic drugs are made China, and Canadian Dr’s hand them out like candy. They are crippling & killing us. Refuse them. Trade names only!
My doctor yesterday told me a major concern is people self medicating and sharing pills, especially new immigrants where this is a common practice.
aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.
those damnable unknown unknowns eh?
easy peasy with a more than modicum but less than thorough sense of and knowledge of history to
drum up a quick baker’s dozen examples whereby tyranny gets T-boned by whatever.
and that is because wese ALL subject to the 24 hour day, aka NOT enough time at the end of the day to spot all the trends that could turn into the drunk driver faintly noticeable until the last secoWHAM!!!!!!!
Reminds me of that scene in Dr Zhivago when the dr tells the state apparatchik.
“They are dying from something else that doesn’t exist in Moscow”
Oh and one more thing wrt to link title.
It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.
Yeah, makes perfect sense. Bad news is always punished, punishment is always very severe, so people stop reporting bad news.
There is only good new. Thank you for my daily ration.
– and a further nifty feature of Chinese officialdom, that had grisly effects a number of years ago, is a feature of their consumer protection apparatus. If they inspect a place, and problems subsequently crop-up with the merchandise being produced there, well obviously the inspectors didn’t do their job – so it’s blamed on the inspectors. This naturally makes them very reluctant to conduct any inspections.
As well, back when Chinese toothpaste and cough syrup were killing people in central America because there was glycol in it, the consumer protection apparatus was raked-over-the-coals internationally, and they couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. “Well, that’s for export – it’s none of our business…”
yep.
kinda related to the FACT that chirer also exported their quality control along with the products.
end user becomes the inspector!!! doubleplusgood !!!
its fcukin insidious the way they’ve done it.
a while ago I noticed SERIAL NUMBERS (which support warranties) on power tools from chirer started to disappear.
howcum?
because the NEW chirese warranty required one to ship the product somewhere after a couple months.
(at a cost matching that very attractive purchase price)
etc etc
hb, once you understand the western world’s buying policies, you may understand Chinese junk, their QC is dictated by what western importers are willing to pay for the chinese products, which in turn is dictated by what western consumers are willing to pay.
I’m happy to pay more for a drill that will last longer, I’m tired of replacing broken junk. Where do I find one? One that isn’t online?
And that is why Americans buy junk, and then are blamed as the “consumer.” Most of us don’t have a lot of time to scour the internet looking for quality. We work to pay the bills. We rely on our local stores, who only seem to stock junk these days.
tq Deb.
taht’s more my view. rev131`8 is correct, but only to a point.
there’s a scale somewhere called ‘who decides what shows up on the shelf’
one end is the demanding consumer who WILL pay for QUALITY, the other end is the chirese who foist whatever where ever, whenever. and it is US who put them there because of the likes of wlmart where PRICE is the ONLY criterion.
If you can read it on line it was not suppressed. More and more evidence points to the Wuhan lab yes. However the virus itself is nothing unusual in terms of new viruses and we know that because we have the sequence. It was not manufactured de novo as a new bioweapon. My personal guess is that the staff were making a little money on the side taking animals out of the lab and selling them instead of incinerating them. I also heard some staff took animals home as pets. The other thing to keep in mind is China needs a good scapegoat for their great leader to take out and shoot, so regard blame articles as suspect especially ones that blame Americans or Israelis. (Yes they are already blaming Jews in Iran.) Finally, who cares? The virus is out there now and we have to deal with it. We can worry about fire squads after this is over.
“It might be that he didn’t fully know what was happening in his own country until it was too late.”
“He” sounds a bit like Blackie.
Waiting for Comrade Sanders to come up with some positive spin on Communist China’s handling this matter. Pass the popcorn…
There is a reason I avoid all Chinese imported food especially their oranges, seems to be a very good way of avoiding the flu.
Exactly. Shopped my local grocery store yesterday. Heh, was aiming to buy some white fish, Tilapia, Sole or Cod. Didn’t. Read the label. CHINAH sourced. Every. Last. Bag.
I don’t care if they caught the stuff off BC coasts, I’ll still not buy from CHINAH. Need a reason? I dunno, how about the source of COVID-19. They don’t wash their hands? Spit on the stuff? They just don’t care.
You pay money guai lo. This much (spit).
This is only the latest of China’s public health problems. For years now they have been experiencing and failing to deal with an epidemic of swine flu. This only makes China’s food supply problems worse. China’s basic problem now is that it does not produce enough protein to feed its population. This should sound familiar and in principle it’s no different than the mass starvations and agricultural collapses of the Great Leap Forward.
Did President Xi admit the Coronavirus escaped from their lab? ‘A national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place “to protect the people’s health,” Xi said, because lab safety is a “national security” issue.’
https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab/
Xi didn’t actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swaths of China had escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.”
He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.