This is China today:

2/6 #coronavirus

In today’s Wuhan, forced quarantine is becoming a “Martial Law”. Another whole family was forced to go to quarantine center, where no medicine, no doctor, no water, no bathroom close by, no nothing is available. People won’t go no matter how good CCP painted❗️ pic.twitter.com/w6iNtoR3Us

— 西行小宝 (@htommy998) February 7, 2020

The New York Times‘s coverage of the coronavirus outbreak has been exceptional, and a reminder that no matter how angry their cultural and editorial coverage makes me, my subscription is worth it. Today, the paper reports that the WHO and the CDC have been offering to help China for weeks, but Beijing, in its totalitarian pride, has refused. Excerpts:

Current and former public health officials and diplomats, speaking anonymously for fear of upsetting diplomatic relations, said they believe the reluctance comes from China’s top leaders, who do not want the world to think they need outside help.

In 2003, China was badly stung by criticism of its response to SARS, another coronavirus epidemic; it has also been embroiled in a trade war with the United States for more than a year.

Some experts also say that outsiders could discover aspects of the outbreak that are embarrassing to China: for example, the country has not revealed how many of its doctors and nurses have died fighting the disease.

But China does need help, experts argue.

In private phone calls and texts, some Chinese colleagues have indicated that they are overwhelmed and would welcome not just extra hands, but specialized expertise in a couple of fields.

More:

The two fields in which China appears to need outside help, experts said, are molecular virology and epidemiology.

The first involves sequencing the virus’s genome and manipulating it to refine diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccine candidates.

The second involves figuring out basic questions like who gets infected and who does not, how long the incubation period is, why some victims die, how many other people each victim infects and how commonly hospital outbreaks are occurring.

“This isn’t rocket science, it’s basic stuff — but it’s been five weeks and we still don’t know the answers,” one expert said.

So not only are more Chinese people getting sick and dying because their Emperor is too arrogant to ask for help, but the entire world is more endangered by this thing. Read the whole story. May God help those poor Chinese people, at the mercy of both this disease and an incompetent government that asserts the right to control everyone’s life, but which cannot cope with this epidemiological crisis.

To be fair to the Chinese authorities, in that clip above, it is possible that all the people being hauled out of their homes have coronavirus. The government announced earlier in the week that it was doing a house to house search for the infected, and would remove them to quarantine centers. Let us assume for the sake of charity that that’s exactly what is happening here: the forced removal of the infected. But think about what that looks like to the infected (if indeed these people are): being dragged from the comfort and safety of your home to a center where you cannot be cared for because the system is overwhelmed. Why not leave those people at home, where they might at least have a better chance of survival?

I know this blog has readers who have family and friends in China. What are you hearing from them?

UPDATE:

⚠️ #CoronaVirus ⚠️
Another Leaked Video of Chinese authorities WELDING SHUT whole apartment buildings with residents inside. What if there’s a fire?

Note: Videos of people being welded in…Not a single video of them being cut back out…or delivering Food/Water/Meds after… pic.twitter.com/2BldGbK13Q

— Terrence Daniels (Captain Planet) (@Terrence_STR) February 8, 2020

UPDATE.2: Reader RJames:

If this goes worldwide and has a fairly high mortality rate, then globalization and mass immigration will be over. Populations everywhere will be demanding that borders shut down and a ton of manufacturing will repatriate back to their home countries.

There will also be a LOT of hostility towards China. The CCP is going to be blamed no matter what they do going forward. If you think the Hong Kong protests were bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Imagine SE Asian countries ejecting Chinese companies or Taiwan declaring Independence. There is already a lot of hostility to China in places like Vietnam or the Philippines. Imagine if they have a massive health disaster because of this. World wars have started over far less.

UPDATE.3: Reader Secular Misanthropist:

By their own admission the CCP was incompetent and callus enough to starve 15 million of their own citizens during the great famine. But the actual number is higher and likely 45 million. There’s also that little event in 1989 they keep trying to flush down the memory hole. So mass killing of their citizens is nothing new to the CCP.

Heck if you really want to ruin your faith in humanity Google “Chinese organ market” or “treatment of the Wiegers”.

But SARS and the coronavirus demonstrate an Achilles heel of the CCP. Officials lower down in the chain have an incentive to suppress information to maintain appearances. When citizens attempt to blow the whistle they are detained (e.g. Li Wenliang) for spreading rumors about an illness. This desire to keep up appearances, control information, and punish people will eventually let a crisis like this one escalate out of control because they’ll always be a few steps behind it.

Moreover those quarantine centers are worse than leaving people at home. Inevitably some of those people may be sick, but don’t have coronavirus, but now you’re detaining them with people who do, so they’ll likely get infected. The lack of supplies and sanitation could also let other illnesses spread. Once the population sees cooperation with the authorities as a death sentence, they’re likely to stop cooperating, which won’t help matters.

tl;dr The rulers of China are really bad people. It is a stain on our society that we’re so willing to do business with them.

China has a total surveillance state. The Chinese Communist Party has boasted that the extraordinary use of electronic data-gathering, plus artificial intelligence, allows them to see problems (= things that threaten their rule) far in advance, and deal with them before they get out of hand. But the coronavirus catastrophe just goes to show that the total control environment has not only not worked, it has positively made things worse, even just from the point of view of maintaining the party’s control of society.