we have now had more deaths from covid 19 than China!

[EricaNernie]

That is so shocking and awful.
remembering how impressed and worried we were about china building new hospitals almost overnight, and the lockdown
and now it is here.

@ShanghaiDiva

may I ask, how bad was the lockdown outside of Wuhan? I would have thought that if the other provinces have it, even starting from a tiny number of cases, then every province should have been put under a severe lockdown as well? Or were they able to do contact tracing in the other provinces to minimise disruption?

Without doubt it was far easier for China to lockdown and command obedience during lockdown
BUT
I don't believe the low death rate either. Face saving exercise.

They lied, reports I've read suggest atleast 10 times what they'd said died,
If you believe other sources even the figure of 32000 is a drop in the ocean.
Also, the figures reported here are not correct.
Figures reported in the states arent even correct. Everyones massaging the figures.

All provinces had restrictions in place, but Hubei was the strictest and restrictions varied/increased depending on number of cases.
I can only comment on what happened on my area, although some of this will have been standard for other areas too.
All shops closed except supermarket and pharmacy
Schools closed
Public holiday extended
Access to compounds limited to residents only
No access to supermarket unless wearing a mask
Compulsory to go to hospital if showing symptoms
Quarantine measures (14 days) between cities and provinces
Temp checks everywhere
Strict self isolation procedures including taping your door and twice daily temp checks. Groceries delivered to your door and rubbish removed.
Detailed contact tracing and checking of travel history.
Not all measures were in effect all the time eg office workers went back on 24th Feb and some takeaways opened, then closest, then opened again.
There is now strict quarantine in place for those returning to China (no foreign entry currently allowed as border was closed last week) with testing and temp checks and 14 days in a quarantine facility.

@jhj67
Details in post above.
The Chinese were through in tracing contacts eg if someone three rows ahead of you on a flight developed any symptoms, low and behold a couple of officials from the public security bureau would appear at your home to take you for testing.

@jhj67
Different provinces had different rules. In guangdong we had to wear masks in public since the 24th of January. There were tempreture checks at train stations, that was still Chinese new year so many small businesses were shut anyway. After about a week restrictions were brought in about not visiting other people's apartments and security guards were pretty struck about not letting people into compounds but in the compounds there were some people walking around the grounds with children etc (masks on). Shortly after this restaurants and cafés all either shut or only available for takeaways or delivery. As compounds weren't allowed non-residents inside people had to collect deliveries from the building security. Supermarkets and pharmacies were open, some shopping malls were open but most of the shops were shut. Many convenience stored were open but a majority of other small businesses didn't open after Chinese New year. Parks and public gathering places were closed and taped off with red and white tape and security guards. Local busses were runing a reduced service. I left China in the middle of February.

Thorough, not through.

I almost forgot, Temperature checks everywhere, getting in the bus, entering shops, building security.

I think the temp checking is interesting. Increased temp is often the first sign of various disease processes so would probably catch a lot of people who were starting to shed virus but weren't yet coughing or showing other obvious respiratory signs.

I can well imagine the death toll has been under reported. However everyone is wearing masks so it is feasible the infection rate could be much lower than in the west.

I also don’t understand temperature checks. Not everyone’s is raised.

@ShanghaiDiva @cockcrowfarm
thank-you very much for the detailed responses, most informative

True, not everyone’s temp is raised and likewise a high temp does not necessarily mean you have the virus. However, temp checking has been a fundamental part of the Chinese approach.
My dd’s school has started a staggered reopening and students have to bring a printed form to school every day stating that they are healthy and there are temp checks on arrival at school and then again at lunchtime.

This form also asks for student’s temp that morning too so that is three checks per day just for school.

As many others have said, you'd be a fool to take the Chinese figures at face value.

China put Wuhan on lockdown on the 23rd January, when they had less than 50 deaths and under 1000 active, identified cases according to the official numbers.

The level of panic they displayed (before anyone else, remember) to lock down first a city of over 10 million, then a region of 60 million, suggests very strongly that they were much much more afraid of this virus than they had any right to be at 50 deaths and less than 1K cases.

Nobody believes China's figures due they? They haven't been honest from the start - not for a single second.

It’s even more worrisome that we now also can’t trust the WHO: foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/china-coronavirus-who-health-soft-power/

I don't trust China's figures at all and WHO are clearly in their back pocket.

China lies

The WHO kowtows to China so we can’t trust the WHO either unfortunately.

Than China said they had... 🙄

So if we never trusted the figures from China and always ‘knew’ they were higher, why didn’t we take action earlier?

@alloutoffucks

Its already started about WHO and China

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8187901/Chinas-toxic-lackey-head-stands-accused-putting-lives-risk.html

You seem to slavishly follow the fact that Chinas figures are accurate (they are very clearly not there is no way the rest of the world have handled it so badly there are so many differences) to prove this Government screwed up.

We havent handled it as well as we should - testing/PPE/failing to be prepared/totally ignoring lockdown but that doesnt mean that China didnt cover it up as well.

Studies of the virus have shown that it is a fairly stable virus now and its mutations have not made that much effect on its virulence or lethality. The Chinese Government are covering it up - its coming out now about asymptomatic cases

@ShanghaiDiva because that is on the UK Government incompentence as well and not wanted to harm the economy. And because we are absolutely useless as doing things like this.

UK/US may well end up worse that the real figures from China because of our inability to lockdown very well or indeed want to. The Chinese lockdown was brutally effective and we just wont be able to do that.

As I have said the Chinese Government can be lying about figures and our government can have made many mistakes in handling it - they are not mutually exclusive events.

SARS, MERS and H1N1 started in similar ways but self-limited over time.
Neil Ferguson proposed a similar doomsday scenario for swine flu which thankfully never came to pass- I think his model predicted millions of deaths and in the event it was 18,500 iirc.
I think a degree of caution before removing everyone’s freedom is reasonable.