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Comment by loyukfai | Hacker News Reader

>This one likely came from one bat contacting one human in Wuhan.

AFAIK, most researchers believe that there is an intermediate between the virus-carrying bat and patient zero.

Also, this is not the first time the wild animal market is suspected being the place the crossover happened. This one sounds strikingly similar to the 2003 SARS.

>Did someone in China attempt a cover-up? Maybe. Is that all of China's fault, as a nation? Only insofar as China's government, like many other governments with worldwide political influence, has a secrecy culture within it that punishes uncontrolled release of information that is damaging, or even just embarrassing, to the state.

In western societies, there is the concept of free press, which may alleviate this issue.

Cheers.

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Freedom of the press prevents punishment for open publication of facts, but it does nothing to protect the sources for those journalists. For all the lip service given to whistle-blower protections, the whistle-blowers get punished anyway. Every time. It is always career-suicide.

Sad but true.

Individually, sacrifices or delayed justice are common.

As a community and society, let's hope they pay off in the long run.

Cheers.

In theory yes. But how long did western societies sit on the virus before doing anything, even with a couple of months of early warning time?

Yes there wasn't any government attempt to cover things up, but not like information was free flowing either.

In this case, direct comparison between countries' responses is not so practical because the Western countries don't have the SARS experience, which led to the seemingly out of proportion responses like here in Hong Kong from the beginning.

For instance, a significant portion of our medical staffs went on strike when our pro-PRC government officials refused to clamp down the borders, and we were part of the gang who scooped up face masks worldwide.

Also, WHO seem to be downplaying the risk all along until recently.

The principle of ceteris paribus needs to be considered.

I don't disagree with anything you said. I was just pointing out that having free press while a great thing didn't seem to be much of a positive factor in handling this pandemic in western societies. Information was either ambiguous, ignored or the significance severely down played. All of what's happening in Europe or the US was predicted and warned about. Just not much was done about it.

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