Originally posted by sasguru
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I know something about this as I'm working in the area and in the last few days have had to read as much academic literature on Covid as I can.
It seems an unusual form of what was then thought to be pneumonia started appearing in Wuhan in late December.
By late December/early Jan (uncertain exactly when) some doctors attempted to spread the word that it was an unknown and possibly dangerously transmissible virus.
The authorities clamped down on them for about a week or two (time unknown for sure).
There was then a standoff between the Chinese leadership establishment and its scientific community which the latter won and the WHO was notified.
At this point the exact method and rate of transmission was unknown as with all new diseases.
Seems to me that at all points WHO put out what they knew. But in the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009-10 discouraged them from crying wolf too early.
They were heavily criticised during that episode for declaring a pandemic too early.
With an R number of 3 (which is very high in terms of exponential spread) Covid spread faster than Chinese authorities or WHO could keep up.
That's been the case even in some countries which had plenty of notice and time to prepare like the UK.
To summarise, yes the Chinese did cover up to start with, but their scientists rebelled and it was all out in the open by mid to late Jan.
(I have the advantage of working in the field and I postponed booking holidays in late Jan as I would otherwise have done, as I thought this would become big).
Could they have prevented it spreading if that week or 2 cover up hadn't happened?
Hard to tell.
Its so transmissible that I doubt it. Just 10 people visiting China and contracting it would have spread it to 30, those 30 to 90, 90 to 270 etc.
As we have seen in the UK you only need a few tens or hundreds of travellers/tourists to China/Italy to start a raging community transmission.
And since it can be spread asymptomatically, the Chinese would have had to have banned all travel by everybody at that time.
It seems an unusual form of what was then thought to be pneumonia started appearing in Wuhan in late December.
By late December/early Jan (uncertain exactly when) some doctors attempted to spread the word that it was an unknown and possibly dangerously transmissible virus.
The authorities clamped down on them for about a week or two (time unknown for sure).
There was then a standoff between the Chinese leadership establishment and its scientific community which the latter won and the WHO was notified.
At this point the exact method and rate of transmission was unknown as with all new diseases.
Seems to me that at all points WHO put out what they knew. But in the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009-10 discouraged them from crying wolf too early.
They were heavily criticised during that episode for declaring a pandemic too early.
With an R number of 3 (which is very high in terms of exponential spread) Covid spread faster than Chinese authorities or WHO could keep up.
That's been the case even in some countries which had plenty of notice and time to prepare like the UK.
To summarise, yes the Chinese did cover up to start with, but their scientists rebelled and it was all out in the open by mid to late Jan.
(I have the advantage of working in the field and I postponed booking holidays in late Jan as I would otherwise have done, as I thought this would become big).
Could they have prevented it spreading if that week or 2 cover up hadn't happened?
Hard to tell.
Its so transmissible that I doubt it. Just 10 people visiting China and contracting it would have spread it to 30, those 30 to 90, 90 to 270 etc.
As we have seen in the UK you only need a few tens or hundreds of travellers/tourists to China/Italy to start a raging community transmission.
And since it can be spread asymptomatically, the Chinese would have had to have banned all travel by everybody at that time.
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