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China is furious that environmental readings have exposed lies around COVID-19 deaths. The data collected shows a clear mismatch from the information released by the Chinese government about how many people died and at what time. This is a very sensitive subject with China engaging in a cold trade war with Australia over the origins of COVID-19 while providing support to affected smallers countries as calls are made for China to pay billions in penalties due to their coverup.
Before Beijing's crackdown, China's bureaucracy had been conducting business as usual – analysing, assessing and reporting on everything about its citizenry. The researchers from Washington University and Ohio State University say they have tracked down this early government data and combined it with reports in state-controlled and social media.
Among this data was the activities of eight crematories in Wuhan. By January 25 these were inexplicably operating around the clock.
Based on such sources, the researchers argue the total number of infections and fatalities before February was at least ten times that of the official figure announced by Beijing.
[...] The study tracked the sale [of] funeral urns to verify these estimates. In the January-March period during which the crematoriums were operating at peak levels, some 36,000 had been distributed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @07:47PM (41 children)
At which point, you can't rely on the data coming out of China.
Or anybody else. Nobody is telling the truth. Singling out China is political campaign bullshit.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @08:04PM (34 children)
I could see you saying that about this piece:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says [bloomberg.com]
And would have said, you've got a leg to stand on. The report you're responding to is with regards to someone digging into a perceived discrepancy and running with it. Unless, you're saying that the USA is deliberately under-reporting. In which case, I'm going to say that you're very likely, wrong.
Perhaps, everything would have happened the way they did, if China had reported honest figures. We will never know. What is highly likely and seems to becoming apparent, is that China has been covering up the extent of the spread of SARS-COV-2 infection in China. Why? To save face? To cover up something worse? Just poor planning / decision making? Beats me and I doubt we'll ever know. Similar to the question of "Who killed JFK?" and that one was caught on camera. Sure, crappy black and white film, that doesn't hold a candle to today's technology, but still.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @08:19PM (32 children)
Unless, you're saying that the USA is deliberately under-reporting. In which case, I'm going to say that you're very likely, wrong.
Under, over, it doesn't matter. The mere thought of an inaccurate count, or corrupt incompetence in the US or anywhere else but China is simply waved off, dismissed out of hand.
Sorry, this is scapegoating to distract from domestic issues
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @10:56PM (31 children)
Inaccuracy is one thing, sure you might be off a bit, but overall the numbers should be predictable. Someone in a backroom going, hey, we should make the number be X amount or no more than X amount, is an entirely different matter.
This was reported by an Australian news service, by what seem to be legitimate professionals. Two MDs from Washington University and one professor from Ohio State University, with a random AT&T person, that I have no idea what they do.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday June 15 2020, @11:12PM (29 children)
All those people have to clear what they say.
I'm not doubting the story per se, it's the exaggeration and targeting for political reasons, by the time it gets to us, well, you remember that kids game, ironically called Chinese Whispers?
Sorry, at this point there is nobody. We are in the dark.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:48AM (28 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:30AM (27 children)
Sorry, yours maybe, not mine
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:38AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:41AM (25 children)
Sorry, I didn't make your shameful defense of China. Such as:
If this is true, it's not a mere "thought of an inaccurate count" or corrupt incompetence, but a great evil that due to the spread of covid throughout the world has caused an enormous amount of human suffering and looks to cause a lot more.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:32AM (24 children)
Damn! You do just like the democrats about Trump... You actually think I'm defending them and saying they don't lie? How dumb can you be?
You people really are confused.
No, can't be, you're just clowning around, can't take you seriously...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:44AM (23 children)
Wrong. There are more ways to defend tyranny than that. This is a classic example of whataboutism. Dismissing a great evil because someone did a lesser evil.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:14AM (22 children)
You're nuts, but thanks for clarifying
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:36PM (21 children)
Sorry, reality doesn't work that way. Your first post [soylentnews.org] was a whataboutism and many of the rest were as well.
So what that there's "secrecy and lies all around"? The story is about a very specific set of alleged secrecy and lies.
Whataboutism is a typical evasive fallacy which supports evil through dilution, moral equivalence, and redirection of the argument. There's all this secrecy and lies so what does this particular secrecy and lies matter?
The obvious rebuttal to this nonsense is two-fold. First, it's obviously one-sided, you only bring up the argument with particular parties (other examples being bringing up [soylentnews.org] US elections when discussing the bogus Russian-run referendum in newly occupied Crimea or bringing up [soylentnews.org] a global map of corruption when confronted with evidence of Chinese illegal organ harvesting, and the Trump journals and observations are generally coupled with digs against the Democrat side). There's a clear pattern of biased evasion to these. You never excuse US flaws by claiming that China or Russia do them too.
Second, the accusation or evil act is still there no matter how many other people and countries do their own bits of evil. Whataboutism got its name in the first place because it became a standard cliched ploy in Soviet rhetoric for dodging accusations. But the evil of the Soviets remained no matter how many flaws they brought up about others.
You don't fight evil by saying others do it too.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:58PM (20 children)
You just sound like your regular democrat there, refusing to clean up your own house. All you have are distractions. I expected better from you
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @12:58AM (19 children)
Why should my country be treated any different from China or Russia? You excuse worse in this thread.
Tu quoque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:51AM (1 child)
Is this a China vs. Russia robit flame war?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:15AM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:14AM (16 children)
Why should my country be treated any different from China or Russia?
Because you're not in China or Russia. You don't pay taxes there.
Curb your own damn dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:32AM (12 children)
And what country are you a citizen of, so that we may know what country you are allowed to criticize?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @08:23AM (11 children)
You have to make at least a feeble effort to control yourselves before complaining about others.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:28PM (10 children)
You already checked that box off for us. Recall we're quick and agile [soylentnews.org]? Democracies, especially those with careful separations of power, have built in control mechanisms.
The precondition was always satisfied, you just choose not to recognize it. So what other flimsy excuses do you have for why I can't complain about genuine evil of the world?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:15PM (9 children)
Everything is personal. You can be as quick as agile as you want to be. Your choice
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 17 2020, @11:51PM (8 children)
Not a good excuse.
Sorry, but quite and agile is not a synonym for gullible. You haven't even presented a reason why this is supposed to be a good idea.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 18 2020, @12:22AM (7 children)
Not making excuses. That's your department
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 18 2020, @06:39AM (6 children)
or conflate those alleged actions with generic "secrecy and lies", you're making excuses for China's behavior as I already explained (and which echoes a larger pattern throughout your posts elsewhere).
And notice how you just assert stuff, Mr. "Not making excuses"? You can't even defend yourself.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday June 18 2020, @08:05AM (5 children)
Harping on China will get you nowhere. It is superficial bullshit.
You pointed out nothing. You're only making excuses for your own self.
Your problems are much closer to home, in fact, they are at home, not in China
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @02:10AM (4 children)
What makes you think I'm harping? If I bring up China again and again as alleged, it's because they do these things again and again. Let us keep in mind that a half century ago, this very government was one of the worst of history. It's extremely unusual in history to see a government of that level of brutality become so much more humane. I think a big part of what made that happen was the harping - the repeated, truthful nettling that embarrassed leaders and citizens alike.
Rather than go nowhere, I think we have the potential to see the most humane and beneficial government China has ever seen.
How many people have to die before it's something?
Ignore the beam in your brother's eye, because you have a little something, if you squint carefully... no the other eye...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 19 2020, @04:40AM (3 children)
*sigh* your psychosis is showing
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @12:26PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday June 19 2020, @04:26PM (1 child)
No, the fallacies are all yours, you're just repeating yourself. I don't feel like following your example at the moment.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday June 19 2020, @05:58PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 28 2020, @03:21PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:01PM (1 child)
Some dogs just don't stay on their own lawn.
As the whole world is painfully aware
Worry about your own first
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 29 2020, @01:45AM
You've already acknowledged that box is checked.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:27AM
It appears to have been published by the murdoch media which are, despite the ".au", most unAustralian.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:55PM
So when Florida died that analyst for not changing the numbers, they weren't trying to deliberately underreport?
(Score: -1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:09PM (5 children)
This pokes a giant hole in the "America has the most coronavirus infections of any country in the world! OMG, Trump is a murderer!" story that the Democrat media keep repeating over and over, and that nobody with honesty or a brain would believe, given China is so much more populous and the source of the virus. It's pure Democrat election year propaganda of a crudeness you'd expect out of North Korea.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @09:01PM (3 children)
No it isn't.
Trump's fuckups are very clearly his own, and there is no need to make him seem worse than he is. From pushing against lockdowns, for preemptive re-openings, all the way to inspiring fatal remedies yes he is very responsible for many deaths. Directly responsible for the wife of at least one conservative, I haven't been keeping tabs since that story but I've heard of more people drinking chemical cleaning products.
Call them idiots all you'd like, but there is one idiot with a lot of instiutional authority who is planting the ideas in their heads.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:11AM (2 children)
No, that wife murdered him and used Trump as the excuse. She had a history of abuse against him and gave him a significantly higher dose than she put in her own drink. Last I heard she was being arrested.
People are drinking chemical cleaning products because they think it'll sanitize their mouths, just like teens were eating laundry detergent because they thought it was a cool dare. People do stupid things under emotional distress. Trump was acting like a business CEO telling his engineering department "Wouldn't it be cool if we synergize these two things? Why don't you go look into that." The proper response is to nod your head yes then walk away and get back to doing what you were originally doing.
If people misunderstood him that's on them. If blogs and news agencies had highly misleading headlines then they should have been sued into bankruptcy. People are responsible for their own actions. If they choose to follow the advice of any person that's their choice. If they choose to think before acting then that's their choice too.
Trump is a bad president, but some of the things he does is actually great (a positive side effect is still a positive outcome). For the lockdowns, it's far far far better that the states set their own lockdown policies than the federal government locking everyone down. By Trump just bad mouthing things and not acting, he's giving power back to the states were it was supposed to be. That reduces the power of the federal government, reduces the power of the head of executive branch, and causes state government to grow up and act for themselves instead of being spoon-fed what to do. It is far easier for a population to make changes to their local government and Trump is slowly making those position matter again. Yes he's pushed for earlier openings, but he hasn't forced any. It's still up to the states and towns. If they're too cowardly to do it right then that's again on them and they are more easily replaced.
In the long term, he'll be an okay president for all the things he failed to do. He's also really bad at corruption. I'm very glad we don't have a president who's good at corruption, which normally is the case. Stop looking at the negative side of everything. (and don't forget Fake News directly brought down the Berlin Wall. It isn't always a bad thing)
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by fustakrakich on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:05PM (1 child)
Yep, Trump is fairly normal [caitlinjohnstone.com], but some consider him to be a bit too revealing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @04:10AM
Flamebait
Heh, so funny, still lots of democrats in the room...
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Rich26189 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @06:43PM
+1 just for that first sentence.