As nCoV19 information spreads, Reddit needs a reality check. So does China.

RE: My open letter to Reddit

From CNN: “At a news conference on Thursday morning, officials from China’s National Health Commission announced there had been just 34 new cases in the past 24 hours — all imported from overseas — and eight new deaths, all in Hubei, the province where the virus was first identified. There were there no new reported cases in Hubei at all on Wednesday.” (https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/asia/coronavirus-covid-19-update-china-intl-hnk/index.html)

If China wishes us to believe there are just 34 new cases in the past 24 hours (in China), they may as well tell us that Bigfoot has just been sighted on the outskirts of Winnipeg. WHO has no idea what’s actually happening on the ground there, no doubt without the assistance of The State Department.

The Atlantic: “Forty people were killed in the [high speed train] accident, with almost 200 more injured. It was the third-deadliest high-speed rail disaster in history, and the first fatal crash to befall China’s gaotie network. And yet, within 24 hours, the line was back in service. Several of the carriages were buried in the fields where they fell, and the incident did not make the front pages of the following day’s national newspapers.” (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-went-wrong-chinas-weibo-social-network/584728/)

• The Diplomat: “China’s Weibo Hires 1000 ‘Supervisors’ to Censor Content” (https://thediplomat.com/2017/09/chinas-weibo-hires-1000-supervisors-to-censor-content/)

  • “Weibo asks that each supervisor censor no less than 200 pieces of content per month.”

  • Incentivized Censors: “Weibo said it will grant each supervisor membership, a special identity label on the platform and an online subsidy equal to 200 yuan (around $30). Furthermore, Weibo said it would reward the supervisors who have the best performance each month with iPhones, other smartphones, notebooks, or other prizes.”

Foreign Affairs: “As cars idled bumper to bumper on one of Hong Kong’s busiest highways, a gaggle of young people clad in black darted into traffic. Cars swerved. Buses braked. Hundreds, then thousands, of teens and 20-somethings flooded the streets, their yellow construction helmets bobbing past red Toyota taxis. Like nimble spiders, a few dozen men used plastic ties to knit metal stanchions into road barriers. On nearby roads, other crews did the same. In roughly 20 minutes, demonstrators had choked off Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, the city’s quasi-parliament, and ignited one of the largest protests since Britain returned this former colony to China in 1997.

“On June 12, lawmakers were poised to debate a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong to extradite suspected criminals to mainland China.”

 

Advertisement