Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53816511

by dazhbog • 6 years ago

85 164 6 years ago

tristanj• 6 years ago

I'm confident Wuhan does not have community spread of Coronavirus. To eliminate the virus, China tested all 11 million residents of Wuhan for coronavirus in just 14 days [1]. That's more than 500,000 people per day. Dozens of asymptomatic carriers were found, who were then quarantined. Wuhan hasn't had new cases in weeks.

China used a similar mass testing strategy in Beijing. When an outbreak appeared at the Xinfadi wholesale market in June [2], the government had a short (several weeks long) lockdown and tested more than half the city's population. Some days they did ~400,000 tests per day [3]. This was possible because they sent in testing resources from across the country to Beijing. The outbreak was eliminated within a month.

I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus. It's impossible to have a widespread outbreak if you preemptively test and isolate all carriers.

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/30/asia-pacific/sc...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinfadi_Market#COVID-19_outbre...

[3] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-08/One-Million-Tests-a-Da...

finnh• 6 years ago

I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus.

Yep - and then wait for the rest of the world to catch up =(

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

An additional measure that is effective at keeping people isolated but that would be unthinkable in the West where even tracing apps raise issues:

Everyone has an app that displays a QR code to identify them. Then, they put people at the entrance of buildings, buses, etc. whose job is to scan everyone. This is not only a track and trace technique because the tablets of the people doing the scanning are linked to a central database in real-time: If you're listed at risk, when they scan you their screen will display an alert, they will prevent you from getting in the building, on the bus, etc., and the authorities will immediately know that you are not self-isolating as told.

Basically, if you're told to self-isolate you have no choice.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Taiwan also quickly put a very extensive location tracking system into place for quarantined invdividuals and they also seem to have very impressive results.

"The monitoring system in Taiwan is described as a “digital fence,” whereby anyone required to undergo home quarantine has their location monitored via cellular signals from their phones. Venturing too far from homes triggers the alert system, and calls and messages are sent to the confinee to ascertain their whereabouts. Anyone caught breaching their quarantine can be fined up to NT$1 million ($33,000). As the National Communications Commission, which was involved in setting up the tracking system, put it: “They’ll find you and fine you.”

https://qz.com/1825997/taiwan-phone-tracking-system-monitors...

mikepurvis3• 6 years ago

Another way is to post codes at the entrances to public spaces, and insist that people beep in when they enter. Example from New Zealand:

https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/...

Obviously you need an alternative workflow (paper guestbook?) for those without devices, and either way without a person stationed there it's harder to police if people are actually complying with it.

makomk3• 6 years ago

Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work. We know that these kinds of swab tests have a fairly substantial false negative rate - initially from Chinese research, and then I think confirmed pretty much everywhere else - especially when trying to detect pre-symptomatic carriers of the disease. (Also, based on other results elsewhere, I think we'd expect to see a few people out of a Wuhan-sized outbreak testing positive even if they'd long since recovered from the disease and were no longer infectious.)

jquery7• 6 years ago

Like a lot of the Chinese solutions to Covid-19, this is interesting because it really shouldn't work.

Are you suggesting China is putting out propaganda?

simonh• 6 years ago

Antibody tests like this are very limited. They only detect positive after you've had the virus for several days and they have a significant false negative rate. They are very poor at identifying if this person right here has the virus.

However if what you're doing is trying to assess the prevalence of the virus in a population of hundreds of thousands, or millions, they could be very useful. They will help identify clusters of infection so you can then use the PCR test on known associates to pinpoint cases.

I think this is what the Chinese government did in Beijing, they used mass antibody testing, but PCR testing of everyone in the food market where they knew there were cases.

James_Henry5• 6 years ago

Even with a fairly substantial false negative rate, mass testing is incredibly effective for a disease that is contagious while you are asymptomatic.

Suppose the test only caught half of the asymptomatic cases and that anyone with symptoms was properly self quarantining. Then you would stop the spread of the disease by half! and if you had an R0 of 2, then you'd half it to 1.

Obviously, reality isn't as simple as this. It could be thought that these tests have false negatives when the viral load isn't high and when people are less contagious.

The fact that the US hasn't used antigen tests on every person in the country or at least in communities with high amounts of spread should be considered one of the great scandals of our day. A great article on the subject, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/how-to-te...

Also, the fact that we don't do mass pooled tests in communities at the beginning of an outbreak like they did in the Xinfadi and later Wuhan outbreaks is also disappointing.

We could have had this under control by now.

jdietrich3• 6 years ago

China did a lot of things beside testing. Extremely strict lockdowns in affected areas, a near-total shutdown of passenger transport to and from affected regions and very rapid contact tracing.

China isn't a unique outlier in this respect - South Korea and Singapore followed a similar strategy and got similar results. New Zealand faced a different set of circumstances and used a somewhat different strategy, but they're down to about a dozen cases per day.

bigpumpkin2• 6 years ago

One feature that is overlooked from the Chinese response is the rapid contact tracing on a community level through the communist party's Neighborhood Committee. This could be duplicated in the west without authoritarianism through more effective community engagement. For more information, read this article by a New Yorker journalist:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/how-china-cont...

taeric• 6 years ago

This has been one of my largest mental blocks on all of this. Per the main reports we see about how this can spread, it feels like that nothing that has worked, should have worked.

Such that I'm sceptical of pretty much all coverage on this now. And I don't think that is a healthy thing to be. :(

sitkack• 6 years ago

They should still be wearing masks and distancing until it has been removed everywhere. It is most certainly in China proper and could re-infect the city. I only play an epidemiologist on the internet, but this is highly improper dancing.

mrtksn• 6 years ago

They apparently did some cover up attempts but was there virus denialism like in the west? I hear that among the older people there’s denial of germ theory and general distrust to western medicine but they seem to be able to tackle down the Sars-Cov-2 spread very well.

The west, especially USA denied the Covid-19 at highest level until there were too many victims to deny, which is very disappointing. The west was supposed to be the one acting on reason.

peacefulhat2• 6 years ago

Alternstive medicine is big business in China...but not like it doesn’t have a big hold here in America too. Administration of the coronavirus vaccine will be a big hurdle since so many Americans are afraid of vaccines.

bigpumpkin2• 6 years ago

I have never heard of people denying germ theory or western medicine, but there's wide belief in the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine. They take a syncretic view to medicine just as they do to religion.

FooBarWidget4• 6 years ago

Supposedly, at first, older people didn't take it seriously and didn't wear mask. Younger people did take it seriously, en encouraged their elders to wear masks.

I've never heard of anybody deny germ theory. Germ theory is pretty well accepted even if they don't think all diseases are caused by germs. Many people trust traditional Chinese medicine a lot, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it distrust of western medicine.

Budabellly• 6 years ago

Probably not an advisable strategy because there are many ways it would adversely affect certain groups, but as a thought experiment, what if a pre-requisite for future COVID stimulus checks in the U.S. (individuals or businesses) was taking a covid test or antibody test?

brendoelfrendo• 6 years ago

This plan assumes that tests in the US are readily available, cheap, and fast. I can assure you they are not, with public testing facilities in short supply, private tests costing hundreds of dollars, and test results taking upwards of a week.

Maybe an incentive would mean that people would actually go get tested instead of ignoring contact tracers, but as with anything healthcare in the US, they'd probably be more concerned with taking time off work.

dustingetz• 6 years ago

Is there a single democratic country that was able to respond like this?

AnotherGoodName2• 6 years ago

Melbourne Australia is taking this approach right now. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&obj...

Everything closed except food retail. Unlike the US where essential was defined slightly more broadly to include hardware stores and such. Contact tracing every individual who tests positive. The highest testing rates in the world. etc.

It even gets into the extent where some sections of the city have buildings locked down completely. No one in or out. This is enforced with armed police. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8491177/Victorians-...

Americans might look at this in horror but in Australia the policy is popular and most people are accepting it as a necessity. There's also healthy competition between Australia and New Zealand here. We can't let the Kiwis embarrass us on this!

gruez4• 6 years ago

taiwan, japan, south korea?

foobarian• 6 years ago

I believe mass testing is an effective way to reign in the coronavirus.

Prerequisite: unarmed population. Testing is not enough, you have to lock down the positives too.

ChuckNorris89• 6 years ago

Europe has an unarmed population and raigning in the virus during the summer proves impossible as everyone wants to go on vacation or suffer the FOMO of watching their friends' beach photos on Instagram instead so nobody gives two shits about the virus anymore.

sadfklsjlkjwt• 6 years ago

So if you own a gun you suddenly don't care that your actions will kill your parents/grandparents?

tim333• 6 years ago

So they are unable to lock people up in the US due to arms?

animal_spirits2• 6 years ago

Its not unlike China to hid details of disasterous death tolls that can reach hundreds of thousands. See 1975 Banqio Dam Failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

FooBarWidget4• 6 years ago

While past coverups did happen, I think it's unfair to compare current administrators with past ones because past administrators from the 70s have long retired.

ecf• 6 years ago

Meanwhile I was exposed to a known positive carrier and the only option I have to get tested is a chain-pharmacy like a CVS/Walgreens. Even then, it would take over a week for me to get my results back.

I’m not stepping into one of those places when I only potentially have the virus because that’s an easy way to make sure I actually do contract it.

The government handling of this and the overwhelming show of people being proud for not wearing masks makes me realize I want nothing to do with the United States and I’m actively looking to move away in less than 10 years.

meowface3• 6 years ago

The issue is the US is so big and has so many different parts. I live in a metropolitan area and I see zero complaints about masks or vaccines. If I read certain kinds of news stories that come across as very absurd to me, I definitely start thinking about maybe moving someday. But if I look at the people around me and who I associate with, I have no reason to want to get away from any of them. This just happens to be a time where the (in)action of some can affect others on a national scale.

I'm not saying I would want this, but in 100 years from now I wonder if the US is still going to contain all of the states it has now. I feel like the division we're feeling now may not ever go away and may ultimately end up in some (very hopefully peaceful) agreement where there are now two countries instead of one. I really don't know if this would be good or bad, but just practically speaking, it seems plausible.

AI_UI_UX• 6 years ago

Do they not have drive through testing where you are? The ones I saw handed you a kit through the pharmacy drive through drawer, you test yourself and then drop the provided package in the mail. They don't even want your sample to enter the building, let alone you...

alphabettsy• 6 years ago

It seems as if an aggressive and extended lockdown at the start has worked?

save_ferris• 6 years ago

We're starting to see just how misguided the US was by not taking lockdown seriously early on and pushing to keep the economy going despite the long-term risks to mortality and commerce.

Here we are months later, and ground zero for the epidemic seems to largely be operating business-as-usual while the US is still seeing ~1k deaths per day as we approach flu season. I was watching an Aussie rules football game the other day and they're allowing fans back in the stands. I couldn't dream of going to a sports event in many areas of the US right now.

briffle• 6 years ago

It is entirely feasible to keep things going on, as long as you have a high enough level of testing (not just people with symptoms) and strong contact tracing. We have neither.

xur17• 6 years ago

And we don't seem to be making very rapid progress towards having significantly higher levels of testing in most of the US.

troughway2• 6 years ago

And these fans have gladly taken to the stands haven’t they?

You cannot have a nanny state and a free country at the same time. This is the sort of thing you have to accept and live with.

At this point anyone still complaining about “covidiots” is severely misguided at the general level of proaction/intelligence/mentality of people, and how it translates into having a stable, productive society. Learning to live with it should be groundwork for anyone who actually wants to do bigger things in life than just a 9-5.

As much as I love the panic and the incessant doom posting from every which way, the stark reality is that everyone’s time is running out anyway. The panic, when not driven to sell clicks, is driven by people who haven’t had an awakening with what it means to be mortal.

Upside: I do hope more people pick up general life philosophy and stop shopping and drinking as a means of ignoring their purpose in life, but I doubt that will happen.

jagraff• 6 years ago

How does someone find "their purpose in life"?

ianleeclark2• 6 years ago

You cannot have a nanny state and a free country at the same time. This is the sort of thing you have to accept and live with.

You have to live with hemorrhaging 1000 lives daily to be free?

Tarq0n• 6 years ago

The epidemic is not just about mortality, the disease could severely impact your quality of life without killing you.

ibejoeb• 6 years ago

I was watching an Aussie rules football game the other day and they're allowing fans back in the stands

What other day? Victoria is totally locked down. Melburnians can't leave 5k from their homes, and they may only go outside for 1 hour per day for solo exercise or collecting essentials, or be subject to arrest.

JimTheMan• 6 years ago

They're all being played outside of the state of Victoria, as was organised.

I'm in Melbourne and while I 'may be subject to arrest' if I violate the rules, I am not in fear when I move about outside. Like I could go walk about the streets for the next 8 hours before curfew and I highly doubt I would attract any police attention unless I did something stupid.

On top of that the police here aren't really like the US police.

Romanulus• 6 years ago

Welding folks into their homes was a bit extreme... but at least they can get back to their normal lives now! /s

paganel• 6 years ago

No need for /s, judging by some comments made above Australians are as happy to house-arrest thousands of their fellow citizens with no trial, no anything, just because said citizens happened to live in the same building as some other people who got the virus. And all this is presented as healthy competition with neighboring New Zealand.

If someone would have told me one year ago that this discourse would have been seen as normal in a non-dictatorship country like Australia I would have branded said person as a lunatic.

zozin3• 6 years ago

I beg to differ. We still have no idea which policy will prove correct in the long run because the Covid-19 timeline (6–8 months) is still too short. It's not outside the realm of possibility that letting the virus burn through the population is more beneficial; it's possible that in 2-3 years the United States will have herd immunity and Covid-19 is in the back-mirror, while countries that followed China's model still has to shut down cities relatively frequently as outbreaks inevitable occur.

SpicyLemonZest7• 6 years ago

And note that this isn't a "oh maybe in the future" thing - coronavirus lockdowns in China never stopped, they just fell out of the news cycle. The city of Urumqi has been under full lockdown for the past month or so.

liuliu• 6 years ago

Have we reached herd immunity against other coronaviruses?

xster3• 6 years ago

It's a bit of reductionist false dichotomy. I think it's fair to say that China is putting a decent amount of weight on vaccine development as well.

umvi4• 6 years ago

Is there any way to independently confirm China's claims? AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.

wnevets3• 6 years ago

Is there any way to independently confirm Florida or Texas' claims?

drcongo• 6 years ago

Not while the "president" bans independent journalists from asking questions.

jquery7• 6 years ago

Pretty sure journalists from around the world have free reign to examine any of Florida or Texas’s claims. Can you say the same about Wuhan?

xtony• 6 years ago

Maybe ask a friend who lives in China or a friend who has friends that live in China? They're also subject to fake news, but at least they can give you their experience of what daily life is like where they live. It's not like China is so locked down that it's impossible to communicate with their citizens.

gruez4• 6 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201310

blacksmith_tb2• 6 years ago

But it may be unwise for them to say anything overly critical via electronic means. We'd almost need pen and paper (which might be eccentric enough to attract attention too).

quercusgrisea• 6 years ago

That they've eradicated coronavirus in Wuhan? The photos are pretty self-evident. If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.

I'm not able to find a source to confirm that, but I do see some news articles from earlier this year abiut China revoking press credentials for journalists from 3 US news outlets. AFAICT from searching, journalists from other countries and news outlets are not affected.

xboxnolifes3• 6 years ago

If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

I disagree with the conclusion here by looking at what people are willing to do locally.

SpicyLemonZest7• 6 years ago

Don't we have evidence from other countries that some people will, in fact, put themselves at risk when the virus is spreading? It's certainly not the Chinese government's official position that the virus is gone forever and everyone's safe now.

nitrogen• 6 years ago

wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

Aren't music festivals exactly the place you would expect high levels of risk taking around crowds?

umvi4• 6 years ago

That they've eradicated coronavirus in Wuhan? The photos are pretty self-evident. If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

I think you underestimate the power of government propaganda.

If Chinese citizens are told by their government that covid is no longer a risk to the general population and that western media outlets are fear mongering to damage China, they will believe it regardless of the truth. The CCP is the truth in China.

It's not like covid is the black plague, bodies don't pile up in the streets no matter how bad it gets. Some elderly die here and there and life moves on (and plus it doesn't spread all that fast because mask usage is a cultural thing there anyway).

I just have a hard time believing that a country with as much corruption, pollution, and just general lack of sanitation as China does has "completely eradicated" the virus, meanwhile South Korea is taking containment measures for its latest wave.

I think more it's more likely China just put on a dog and pony show for the world, but really they haven't eradicated covid at all and the citizens are just kept in ignorance. This is, of course, gross speculation with no evidence to back it up. But in my mind it's like "the most populous country on the planet claims they've only had 4,634 deaths total due to covid, hmm..." and I start to think I'm being lied to by a country that wants to save face on the world stage.

Then again, maybe this is a scenario where having a dictator is advantageous to having an inefficient collection of bumbling democracies. When you have a god king that can force 11 million people to take a medical test within 14 days (or else?), you have an upper hand over countries where stuff like "due process" and "deliberation" slow down policy making.

swiley3• 6 years ago

If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

If the coverup was effective why wouldn’t they? We know the Chinese government is extremely good at propagandizing their own citizens.

xster3• 6 years ago

And for context, the 13 journalist ban that was in direct response to the US initiated banning of 60 Chinese journalists one month earlier.

youdonotknowme• 6 years ago

My undergrad university is in Wuhan. I can personally confirm this since all my family and friends in China live almost like normal now. If I am being honest, I am disappointed and astonished to see how anti-intellectual, selfish, and conceited some Americans are. I do not like China's politics, which is one of the reasons that I do not go back. But I do not think U.S. should blame China for being in such a bad situation. More disappointedly, I do not see it getting better... I do not believe U.S. can contain it without vaccine.

jdietrich3• 6 years ago

AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.

You'd be mistaken. Some American correspondents have had their visas revoked and Tibet and Xianjing are effectively off-limits, but there are huge numbers of foreign journalists working in China.

arslonga• 6 years ago

Here's Peter Hessler in the New Yorker on life in China over the past few months: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/how-china-cont...

Basically it seems they do have things well under control.

codemk82• 6 years ago

Lol I posted the same link 2 mins after u

codemk82• 6 years ago

A recent report from New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/how-china-cont...

rsynnott• 6 years ago

AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists

No, that's not correct.

It would be hard to verify, of course, and there could well be some unreported cases, but it's simply not plausible that China's seeing a US scale outbreak, or even an EU-scale one, without anyone noticing.

draw_down• 6 years ago

Over here in the US we're stuck in the stage where we get really mad at everyone but ourselves for how badly we've blown it. I saw the video of the party, it looked fun (though someone should really teach those kids how to dance). Meanwhile, we're just watching social media videos where people scream at each other for wearing masks, or not wearing masks.

1MachineElf• 6 years ago

If the US had taken the same approach as China, it would have been both 1) effective and 2) unconstitutional.

xboxnolifes3• 6 years ago

There is a pretty large landscape between what the US has done in response and what would have been unconstitutional.

James_Henry5• 6 years ago

If we had the political will, we would have had weekly mass testing by now. The US has spent trillions to try and keep people afloat when they could have used that money to try and keep people safe by stopping the virus.

A combination of ignorance (throughout society), what seems to be FDA incompetence, and of political games is what is killing the economy and thousands of lives.

matz1• 6 years ago

1) effective

Maybe if the virus is as deadly as anthrax or ebola, but for covid its not worth it.

rossdavidh• 6 years ago

None dare call it herd immunity.

parserman• 6 years ago

good job

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

there have been no domestically transmitted cases in Wuhan or Hubei province since mid-May.

I'm somewhat suspicious of this when New Zealand wasn't able to keep it to zero. China might be able/willing to impose stricter policies, but New Zealand is an island.

AnotherGoodName2• 6 years ago

I have no doubt New Zealand will get back to 0 cases since they reached 0 from a far higher rate earlier in the year. It's currently ~10 cases per day they are detecting.

They haven't identified the gap in the quarantine that allowed this current outbreak but it looks like an edge case regardless since they stayed at 0 cases for almost 6 months now.

flukus• 6 years ago

China hasn't been able to keep it to zero, new cases have been imported and there have been flare ups but they keep them from growing with mass testing and lockdowns, the same as New Zealand is doing now.

but New Zealand is an island

Every country can effectively be an island if they want.

dehrmann2• 6 years ago

Not really. The US has more than 7,000 miles of land borders, not to mention sea crossings. Closing European borders to that extent is equally impractical.

michaelgiba4• 6 years ago

I'm honestly pretty disappointed in the BBC for covering this like it is fact and not calling into question the data integrity issues China is infamous for. Nevertheless, I do think China, at least before re-opening, had less community spread than most other countries due to the severity of their lock-down. Authoritarian countries are able to impose measures like this much more quickly than democracies, for better or for worse.

bllguo• 6 years ago

so where are the mountains of dead bodies? where are the macro indicators?

what I'm disappointed in is even in the face of evidence that much of the nonsense about fake data and coverups was exaggerated, Westerners will continue to believe it

system2• 6 years ago

I think we can call this authoritarian silver lining. I wonder what is actually happening in North Korea.

peacefulhat2• 6 years ago

How many people do you think have died from covid in China? America has 200x deaths per capita according to official numbers.

dole• 6 years ago

Last time I checked about a month ago, China reported ~6,700 total deaths, I would guess ~8,000 now.

I'm still surprised this isn't a more publicized, aggravating, and/or disputed figure, even given China's questionable reporting.

chillacy3• 6 years ago

I've been treating the covid death count like GDP out of China. It's probably padded (e.g. you can count a death as "pneumonia" instead of covid), but it's probably not an order of magnitude off.

The reality is that surveillance states and collectivist societies like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc will have an advantage when it comes to coordination. China is very much one of these types of societies.

nelaboras2• 6 years ago

It might well be true that Wuhan currently has no known community transmissions but this is also pretty obviously a propaganda/public relations move. Weird that the BBC covers it so uncritically.

xster3• 6 years ago

Wuhan went into a then unprecedented lockdown on 23 January - at a time where the virus had killed 17 people and affected more than 400.

It hasn't been that long ago but I almost feel like I forgot how to count this low now.

Wuhan coronavirus: From silent streets to packed pools

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