Worrying on many levels - M16 say today that China covered up the coronovirus ?

Chestnut. I don't need to work it out - it's perfectly logical. Imagine it started here. Say, for instance it began when we ate Mussels or Grouse.

We simply wouldn't have a cat in hell's chance of 'containing' it, given present day international travel, would we? OK, they can be blamed for trying to silence the voices of concern, but that's all.

hetty I totally agree with your post If it had started anywhere in this day and age of travel it would have moved around the world in just the same way there is absolutely no need for the blame game which is totally counter productive and achieves nothing but hatred

suzie we have no longer any choice in the matter. China will be the premier nation within a very few years, and this crises will only help to speed things up,

I don’t often agree with you suzie but I’m afraid that its a mess and we seem to be getting closer to China rather than stepping back.
Maybe they would be a far worse enemy than a close ‘friend’?

I lived in Hong Kong for 9 years just before the colony was returned to China - note under British rule - come winter snake soup was sold in the main street market in Kowloon from baskets of live snakes ready to be skinned and boiled. Live frogs were sold in the food markets heads chopped off and skinned like pulling off a jacket which were sent to the factories to be make into things like watch straps. The skinned frog meat popped in a plastic bag and handed to the customer. Live fish were chosen from tanks of water and the scales removed with a rasp while the fish squirmed on the block.
Trump will do and say anything to detract from his foolish statements at the start of all this. I believe Spanish Flu' was traced back to a farm in America and transported to France on the American troops ships and Aids started in the west coast gay community. My daughter was a young nurse then in the intensive care ward of a London hospital. They had no idea what the problem was. She is now in A&E for this session.
To suggest that China should have kept the virus (this unseen enemy) within its boarders is asking a lot how would this be possible?

Chestnut Wed 15-Apr-20 14:35:30
Your perspective is definitely persuasive.

China seems to always magically escape censure for all its abuses. Yet most of the rest of the world can have sanctions dropped on them almost at a whim.

Let's not forget that China has such economic power on the world stage because it has a huge cohort of very cheap labour which is often used abusively. People are forced to work in sweatshops.

Another source of its economic power is its state organised theft of intellectual property rights and consequent manufacture and sales of goods made from stolen patents.

Manufacturing there does not have to follow stringent environmental and pollution regulations and agreements, thus saving them $billions.

Off-shore banking/financial dealings are also offered.

I'm afraid we and the rest of the world have turned a blind eye to all this underhand and widely destructive activity. Just so that we can buy cheap stuff and elevate ourselves to what politicians seem to consider a 'higher status' as service economies. It seems that good, honest manufacturing is beneath us now.

IMHO we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves and decide what values we really want to uphold and whether we're ok with farming out our dirty work to far eastern nations to do as they please - or whether we want the whole world to conform to decent standards and ethics.

This virus apparently arose because of the West's laissez faire attitudes to very minimal operating standards applied by the Chinese government to all aspects of health and safety. The many, many dangerous debacles over the years are

If the Chinese government withheld information and tinkered with numbers etc, (and there is strong evidence that points to this) then they are responsible for this pandemic. They do need to be held to account, just as they would hold us to account if we'd unleashed a horror on them.

Our intelligence services very rarely comment on anything. When they do, everything is vetted and scripted precisely. No doubt there's a lot of behind the scenes politics and diplomatic activity going on and this little intimation was there for a reason. I'd float a guess that the public is clearly being invited to draw our own conclusions, maybe to build a groundswell of support for whatever renegotiations will follow when we're out of the Covid woods. I note that Commonwealth countries and the US have all made similar noises, in some cases more forthrightly.

I think that the virus has spread far more quickly than people ever imagined. A little timeline:

07/01 A new corona virus - Covid 19 identified

23/01 Lockdown imposed on Wuhan

24/01 First 3 cases identified in Europe

27/01 First cases confirmed in Germany

28/01 English man returns to UK from Singapore

31/01 2 Chinese in Rome tested positive

31/01 first confirmed case in Spain

1 week later Italian man repatriated from Wuhan tested positive

08/02 Flight fro Wuhan with Brits - they were immediately quarantined

Between 28/01 and 8/02 English man from Singapore stayed in a ski chalet with other Brits of whom 4 adults and 1 child tested positive

12/02 As at this date, 45,179 confirmed cases in 25 countries

21/02 16 cases confirmed in Lombardy

22/02 60 further cases confirmed in Lombardy and the first deaths

China reacted fairly quickly in imposing a lockdown on Wuhan

4 days after the first Italy created a quarantine zone around the Lombardy cases first confirmed. The 16 cases believed to have had contact with the man repatriated from Wuhan

I'm not sure but I seem to remember hearing on the news that the people in the ski lodge passed the virus on (unwittingly) to others in the area.

All the above is intended to remind people of the speed at which the virus spread as Bluebelle has written above. If blame is to be attached anywhere, surely it should be to the governments throughout the world who, to varying degrees, were slow to react. And some still are, notably Trump and Bolsanaro.

China is the only country in the world able to pull the world out of economic slump

Really WWmk2?
Even if that were true (? evidence please) I’d not be sorry if we slumped a bit longer!

During the campaign for Brexit someone said without the E.U. the U.K. would be = to Guernsey. Punching above it’s weight on the global stage.

All I remember thinking at the time was ‘I bet it’s lovely to live in Guernsey’.
?

Absolutely fantastic point dinahmo re blaming slow to act leaders

suziewoozie Wed 15-Apr-20 15:00:53
Totally agree with you and Oops

IMHO we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves and decide what values we really want to uphold and whether we're ok with farming out our dirty work to far eastern nations to do as they please - or whether we want the whole world to conform to decent standards and ethics

Hear, hear GrannyIggle
Such a good point.
?

ug that wasn’t me that was the mi6 chap this morning. You obviously didn’t listen to him

Your timeline misses out the most important date Dinahmo which is when did China impose lockdown on the country?
You say lockdown on Wuhan was imposed on 23 Jan but I would argue that should have been lockdown on the whole country, not just Wuhan. Instead, people were still flying out from other parts of China to the rest of the world. If the numbers arriving in other countries had been stopped or kept to an absolute minimum those individuals could have been quarantined and their contacts traced. As it was the whole thing escalated far too quickly.

I looked for the evidence myself after thinking about what he said and discovered that China is almost the only nation in positive growth, it seems that this virus has hardly skimmed the surface of its economy unlike the west.

The outcome of this is that China is almost certainly going to be the biggest economy in the world long with the power and influence with it.

Just because people flew out of China, nothing was stopping the receiving countries from denying them entry.

Blame isn’t solely with China. We all need to accept that our patterns and choices contributed to this.

Oopsadaisy
i don't think there is anything we can do Yes there is? Just stop buying anything made in china.
And to you Whitewave the world needs china as much as it needs another nasty virus.

Summerlove - It's not practical for receiving countries to deny entry. Unless they ALL do it, every single country, it would be possible for someone to fly to one country and then to another. The virus could still spread. It has to be the country with the virus who shuts its borders and allows no-one out.

Frankly who is to blame pales into insignificance besides the need for the world to work together in order to defeat this crises as well as others speeding towards us including antibiotic resistance and climate change. Both of which makes this look like a picnic in the park,

But just like the way this virus was approached it is so easy to fiddle while a Rome burns.

ms no choice I’m afraid

Not buying from China is a drop in the ocean. Just work out how much in debt the world is to China including the USA. Look at the massive infrastructure China is delivering in the U.K. alone, the x that by the rest of the world.

Look how dependent the world is on Chinese banks.

You missed out something from your timeline Dinahmo

14-01-2020 WHO states that China has assured them there is little chance of human to human contagion regarding the new virus

AIDS didn’t start in the west coast gay community; it began in Africa and jumped from apes to humans.

Chestnut, and the UK is an island. It could have closed its borders.

This isn’t as simple as “it’s all China’s fault”. I’m surprised how many intelligent people seem to think it is.

Meryl already done that, along with actually not buying anything new, reuse, recycle and repurpose, climate change has paused, single use plastic though has probably soared causing pollution on an epic scale.
Anyway, off soap box!
Summerlove if China had been honest, that it started in 2019 ( the clue is In The name - Covid 19) and their death rate , then we could have been better prepared .
Anyway Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Thanks for pointing out the dates that I missed.

I do think that it will be difficult to ignore China in the future. Many of our cheap clothing is made there and masses of other stuff. I remember a few years ago fireworks being banned in the UK because they were dangerous and also some toys because they didn't meet EU health and safety standards. Also I think that China was one of the countries that used to take shiploads of our refuse for recycling.

it would be good if there could be a global rethink about international trade but I can't see that happening any time soon.