| Comment | Because they're more than a month ahead of us, and when they imposed a lockdown, they really meant it
The Chinese strategy wasn't "smooth the curve" but "there is no fucking way we're letting this out of Wuhan and if that costs more lives there so be it"
if you're in Wuhan, there's a sensor fitted to the outside of the front door, so the authorities know the instant you try and leave your flat, as well as all the mobile phone tracking the CPC already has in place. This also meant they massively increased the intra-household spread, so like I said probably increased deaths locally. It's also meant that they have been able to immediately lock down on any new infection centres - as opposed to countries like the UK, which really have no idea of how the virus is spreading.
In short, they could do things only a dystopian authoritarian police state could do, which was very successful in a case such as this. See also South Korea, which has very similar state apparatus even if it is ostensibly more liberal.
This doesn't mean all their reporting should be taken at face value, we know they covered up at the start, but their huge drop in deaths is entirely consistent with their strategy. We should also ask what they would gain from covering up at this point - it's pretty obvious that, as with the first cases, that would be doomed to failure by the nature of the illness itself. |
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