Just trying to have a discussion and seem if we can get a good intellectual conversation going. We're all obviously worried about the virus and its impact on the economy. People are not sure what will happen to the economy and how long the impacts will last. I have been hearing an argument from bulls out there that China is operating near capacity prior to the outbreak in December. So it took them three months to recover, based on that logic, would the US recover quickly as well or is there a bigger picture we're missing. I am actually slightly bearish and believe this will extend further and that the stimulus package is just a short term bridge to keep the economy surviving.
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well the us has human right laws so it might be different
In China, it was pretty much stay inside and social distance, or face the potentially huge consequences. Honestly, that may have played a role in why they recovered quicker than people expected. Whether their numbers are accurate is a different story, but it's been proven that if more people stayed home, the virus is less likely to spread.
It's different here in the US. People don't respect the government here, and will choose not to listen - and that's a big factor as to why the US may take longer to recover from this than other countries. People here don't like being told what to do - especially if it imposes even the smallest inconvenience to their freedoms. Most people here in the US will stay inside, but there will be a few that ruin it for everyone.
You heard this last night on Bloomberg, China Open session. Quote the creditor next time.
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Literally >10% are Americans are bad apples who are too stupid and ignorant to not spread COVID19. Americans also don't wear face masks or respect authority. It's absoutely ludicrous to compare the US to China or SK or Taiwan.
Yup
It will depend on if we 'flatten the curve'. The testing will let us know if we have succeeded or not.
I think it is pretty clear as to what is going to happen to the economy...I would like to get opinions from the sell side analysts here to see what they might expect for earnings in Q1 and Q2. Of course, the US will recover, but the economic losses are likely to be very severe.
Well for one, we aren't welding people's doors shut
We aren't doing roadside checkpoints and dragging possible infected people out of their cars
We aren't knocking on the doors of people who say the govt is hiding/downplaying the numbers.
What do you think?
The videos and pictures that got out of China were pretty terrifying. I have no idea how it will play out in the US but I am growing more and more pessimistic each day. My June 1 hope of things looking back to "normal" isn't looking so good...
Full stop agree. China was able, via various "means", to keep people home. If we can halt the spread, or treat it, and get the equipment/supplies everywhere needed in time, then yes, maybe we can V-recover. Let's hope so!
The fact that we can't even confirm they have "recovered" and that they haven't updated their total case count in nearly a week should tell you something.
this
The fatal flaw here is to assume that China is telling the truth.
Sadly, so totally agree. Especially after the comments back and forth this week. They reported no new cases - how can we be sure that's true? It sounds awfully "too good to be true."
I work in APAC equities (yes despite my username) and tracking Chinese factory/consumption resumption has been a common practice. China's industrial utilization level is already back to 50-70% of normalized level. Workers have been back to work since 3-4 weeks, and have not had a second wave of confirmed cases. It's mind boggling the Chinese govt was able to pull this off. To those who refuse to believe any numbers out of China or that China has done a good job - congratulations, you're brainwashed by western media and good luck living in your own bubble.
How about we just accept the fact that China has handled the situation better than any other country in the world? Sure the Chinese numbers might be under reported, but I don't believe for one second that US/European countries are truthfully reporting theirs. Remember 2-3 weeks ago when CDC tried to change the disclosure from reporting number of cases per state to reporting "Yes/No" for each state, before changing it back due to complaints?
We were laughing at China 2 months ago when this virus first started, and now US is the laughing stock of the world for 0 demonstration of leadership (Trump trying to shift blame didn't help - come on, why calling it Chinese virus when people don't call H1N1 the American virus). Maybe it's time to be humble and accept that US has done a poor job about this virus.
Well you left out the part where China has an authoritarian government and could impose certain restrictions that other countries wouldn’t be willing to
I don't want to get into a debate about political systems - it's pointless on this online forum. But we are all pratical finance guys - the results is that China is handling this humanitarian crisis quite well so far, to the surprise of many.
I'd also argue other govt are not acting as responsibly as they should. Just look at the UK PM whose strategy is to give up and let a mojority of the population get this virus in the hope of developing "herd immunity". Even if this strategy is successful (it's highly controversial in the global healthcare community), it means hundreds of thousands of deaths for the British people. How is the a responsible response from a first world govt? And boy don't let me start about US/trump... I'll just say his usual strategy of denying criticism and blatantly lying doesn't work against virus.
Another data point to put things into perspective. The Chinese govt started building 2 mega hospitals with 1K beds each near wuhan (which were completed in 7-10 days btw) when the country's confirmed cases were only 200. Yes you didn't read wrong. Sure this number is underreported because not enough people were getting tested, but even if the real cases were 10x or at 2000, China was already taking drastic actions to protect its people at initial stage. This is absolutely mind boggling to me.
I just wish to bring another perspective on WSO before we launch a anti-china campaign instead of solving the problem at hand. Shifting blame is an easy way out for cowards, but taking responsibility requires actual courage.
Oh yeah, talk about human rights all day? Hey, it's his/her own right to eat bats. And you know where talking about human rights all day got the US? The numbers are skyrocketing. We need some drastic measures for a couple/few months. Do you want to live in a zombie city or live happily after 1-2 months of limited social activities?
It's too early to tell, situations outside of Wubei were never that bad to start with. Even in Wuhan it took the virus a few months to spread quitely before most people can notice.
What if most places in China now are where Wuhan was at back in December?
Not most, but ALL places in China have been taking preventive and medical actions the same as in Wuhan. So no 'what if'.
Not a "'Murika fuck yea" guy but this post is asinine.
1.) Your initial premise that China handled this well might be bullshit. China is lying about both their dead and the number of cases - U.S. intelligence has surmised this. That lack of visibility means we actually have no idea whether there's been a second wave of cases, and I'm not sure they'd tell us if there were. I do know they recently had to shut down all their cinemas again. 2.) You gloss over the gross human rights abuses China committed to allegedly manage this better than everyone else. 3.) You gloss over the fact that China hid the initial virulence/seriousness of this disease which left Europe/U.S. flat-footed in their response which you criticize. The U.S. has done a bad job, yes, but part of it is due to China - who you blindly praise in your post. 4.) Just because China has sent fucking factory workers back to work, COVID be damned, doesn't mean they've handled the virus, only time will tell. For all we know they are sacrificing a portion of their populous to get the economy going again, as some in the Republican party have suggested we should do. U.S. companies could send factory workers back to work as well if they just said fuck the virus.
Your entire post reads like communist propaganda and it's kind of amazing it was SBed. Any amount of scrutiny exposes it's idiotic premise and logical flaws.
Posts like this are exactly why I don't personally dislike you Bob, even if we agree on something maybe once a year.
I think the actual cases and deaths in China are definitely higher than reported, but I wouldn't attribute it to "lying". I would say it's more due to "purposeful exclusion". What I meant by that is during the earlier days in Wuhan, the hospital system was definitely overwhelmed. A large number of patients (mostly elderly) died before they could be tested or be treated in the hospital. Those people who died, were not included in the official numbers. Also some people recovered before being treated, and those were not included in the numbers either.
I think it's not mutually exclusive that China tried to cover it up initially, but later on contained it relatively well given the population and timing (when hundreds of millions of people were traveling through the country, Chinese New Year). That said, I think everyone was worried about a second wave, which seem to be looming right now. That doesn't mean China is lying after they opened up though. This virus is just hard to deal with.
I wrote a long post earlier discussing how even if China didn't cover it up, it wouldn't make huge difference. But that is all in the hindsight, so I don't want to bother copying and pasting.
Do you know the US lies about numbers as well? Last Septembre-October more than 10,000 people died during the "flu" season...how many of us saw the news back in Oct'19? Earlier this year public officials finally admitted that a lot of people died during that time and some of them might be due to COVID-19.
There are currently more than 240K cases in the US, compared to 80K+ cases in China. Sure, the Chinese government could be hiding some numbers, what about the US government --- do you think every single number is just 100% true? Look at where your human rights abuses got that China: 80 compared to 240. How could you be talking about human rights when you are seriously ill or dead?
"Part of it is due to China" --- the US has done a terrible job in dealing with the virus --- better than the UK --- but what part exactly? Chinese top health experts are communicating with their American peers on how to deal with this and hey, check out Dr. Fauci and an experienced reporter from NYTimes who know very well what the Chinese have done so far. What the US is doing belongs to the US so tell me, what part exactly are you referring to? Oh, you are talking about not delivering face masks to the US for free?
What specifically do you mean by "sacrificing a portion"? Right now in almost all cities, only students haven't gone back to school yet. Pretty much everyone else has gone back to work, and I'm not talking about remotely.
Your entire post criticizes China blindly without accurate references to what exactly you want to criticize the country for.
Quite frankly, you seem a bit brainwashed. I know, brainwashing people is not what we do here, but focusing on who did it instead of what they did, in my opinion, is exactly what communist countries do to their people.
It's reasonable to believe CIA before China, but until we have something concrete, it's no final verdict.
I honestly cannot imagine being this gullible. British intelligence estimates they underreported cases by 45 times, videos came out of them welding doors shut and you actually believe they hvae completely recovered and have no second wave of cases. This while they have shut down movie theaters for a second time and all of the satelite imagery shows far less consumption.
The comparison to western countries also "lying about their numbers" is similarly laughable. Your arguments further down about confirmed cases being 200 is also laughable, if you actually studied chinese industries you'd read the reports of them ordering over 9500 urns in one funeral home despite a national 'tally' of only 3000 deaths.
Your argument is automatically disqualified saying China has handled it the best when it originated there. Anything after that instance where the virus began renders China as not handling it the best when they did not prevent it from occurring in the first place
China response was pretty good but they didn't handle it better than any government in the world - they mishandled it iniatially pretty badly in Wuhan. Taiwan has had the best response out of anywhere in the world.
So people here actually believe the numbers coming from China?
I'm no expert, but do you really think a communist country that's competing for global domination is going to report anything but positive numbers/information about their 'success'?
The same could be said for the US or for UK.. Or for France, Japan, Russia etc. I don't believe the Chinese are playing with open cards but neither do i believe the US are.
I haven't seen any positive news headlines about US or any of the mentioned countries other than the fact that Drake publicly admitted to having a kid, finally.
No, these countries are not equal. Stop this narrative. Two are relatively authoritarian states with limited to no free press while the others are democratic states with a free press. So yes, I buy the US/UK/Japan/France's numbers much more so than I do China or Russia. This false equivalence is garbage.
China's numbers are shit. We have no idea what happened in there.
Who cares about China....we have no idea what's happening HERE.
Here's the thing...China DIDN'T RECOVER.
All the numbers coming out of China were 100% fabrication. 21 MILLION Chinese died from the virus. ALL the numbers coming out of China...number infected, number dead....ALL MADE UP.
21 Million cell phone accounts disappeared from China. Why? Because they died.
Where'd you get this data? Interested.
I agree China fabricated #s but people would be just as dumb to believe an anonymous post on a web forum ;)
no, thats ral..the chiese telecoms published subscriber numbers a week or so ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/china-s-mobile-carri…
Who knows. But honestly, if I were on lockdown and out of a job or short on money, I'd cancel my cell plan too. Can do the same things on wifi at no additional cost, saves money, no one calls anymore, no need for GPS
Tbh, the biggest reason why all of you think China was hiding things is that you don’t read Chinese. Most of the things that US intelligence claims China was hiding from the world were already widely known to Chinese months ago.
So the number of deaths and confirmed cases can't be understood because we don't speak Chinese? Elaborate. That doesn't add up.
I think what he was trying to say is that the claims from US intelligence (that China's numbers are flawed) was old news to people who can read Chinese. There were already countless articles (in China) with the same claims, months ago - just written in Chinese... because it is in China.
In other words, the US is just repeating what people in China have already been saying - but in English.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/whistleblowing-coronavirus-doctor-mysteri…
**Whistleblowing coronavirus doctor at Wuhan hospital mysteriously vanishes **
Believe the Chinese government or else.
Wait, did you see the photo in the link you provided? It has date behind her, 2020-4-1. So you are saying she was forced to take that photo? Also she just participated in a live online session with other doctors discussing the virus. Of course you can say that was fake or forced too, then I really don't know if there is any other way to prove she wasn't detained.
I'm sorry? Where did I say anything like that?
When people start with ''so you are saying'', it's immediately followed by a strawman that forces someone to defend something he never said to begin with. Fucking Cathy Newman level.
China isn’t sharing the secret sauce. Xi is still mad at us for the Tariff War.
It’s so bizarre how defensive many mainland Chinese (first and second generation even, though of course not all) are about any criticism towards the Chinese government.
Like, it isn’t an opinion that the Chinese government intentionally undercounted their cases - they admitted earlier this week that they did not and have not been including asymptomatic cases in their count. This is despite knowing they are confirmed cases.
No other government is intentionally doing this - though there are of course extreme limits on testing ability which results in a lower total case count - but any confirmed case is counted, regardless of if it’s symptomatic or not. No one intentionally undercounts because there is no compelling reason to intentionally change the case count. No one else even cares enough to even do this.
This raises two questions: 1. why the Chinese government would even bother to do this, and 2. why would many mainland Chinese people feel so compelled to defend this practice?
There seems to be a level of “face saving” among many mainland Chinese that approaches brainwashing.
I had a Chinese born coworker - who has not lived in China since the age of 10 or so - tell our boss that the concentration camps of muslim minorities are fake, and that wet markets selling exotic animals don’t exist in China. Of course, everyone knows these things both exist, so her absurd attempts to lie are even more humiliating than simply admitting their existence.
This is a from a person who is otherwise completely rational, grounded, and pleasant to work with. Yet they have no problem reflexively lying to (in their minds) protect the image of a government they aren’t really part of, and certainly aren’t responsible for in any way.
Do these defenders not realize that having a reputation for dishonesty is more damaging than whatever the hell they are trying to “hide”?
It's like China's learning from the US...
As an American, it's a little worrying that everyone here is so caught up pointing their fingers and criticizing China, Europe, and other parts of the world when people here are literally dying by the minute. We don't have the enough of the basic infrastructure to treat people. In NY, a lot of the hospitals don't have enough masks for their own medical staff. But Trump gets up there everyday and says we have more than enough. Don't we have bigger things to worry about right now? We can criticize all we want later.
Honestly, it is such a shame how hypocritical our country is. Trump downplayed this entire thing for two months and let it balloon - and here we are. Every single American news agency was criticizing China for that doctor in Wuhan mysteriously disappearing / dying after he blew the whistle. But... we literally just fired the Captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt for blowing the whistle that sailors on the ship were getting infected. This isn't just some random US citizen causing a stir - this is someone very senior who has dedicated his life to fight for our country - and we fired him to "save face". His boss said " It unnecessarily raised the alarm of the families of our sailors and Marines with no plans to address those concerns." The principle of saving face is the same here. Just like that doctor, he was concerned about his life. He was also worried about lives of other American warriors, and our country as whole. Is this how we are supposed to treat the people that dedicate their lives to fight for us?
I don't believe the numbers from China either, but it's very hard to point fingers at people when we have blood on our own hands. We should focus on ourselves for now, and then we can point fingers all we want - when people aren't just dropping dead here.
Spot on. Two things can, and are true.
1) China caused this, downplayed, and our over reliance on their supply chain is compounding our problem
2) An outbreak in the U.S. was unavoidable but the Trump administration's reluctance to acknowledge it and mobilize resources quickly has exacerbated our issue
Denying either of these obvious truths means you have an agenda.
The shameful thing is the false equivalency you create here. The idea that Trump is under-criticized is ridiculous, as is the comparison between publicly relieving someone of command and “disappearing” them.
To compare those two things is lunacy.
This is the precise type of “Whataboutism” you see from Chinese troll farms.
Lol, your coworkers’ alleged behavior is a bit extreme, but it’s no secret that many US politicians are habitual liars as well. The funny thing is, most Chinese or Chinese Americans would talk shit about Chinese government most of the time, and the fact that they are “defending” China in this instance says a lot about the situation.
There’s two situations - the concentration camps for Muslims and the wet markets in China.
What exactly does this defense say about the situation?
That's a dumb chinese chick. Is she hot by any chance?
White veteran here. Fought for this country to protect morons like you. You're welcome. People like you are the reason I regret it sometimes - I have to constantly remind myself that not everyone here is a complete fucknut.
The numbers are clearly total bullshit. I had some suppliers tell me they are reopening/shipping product now but still down a ton of employees/workers and will have issues getting to capacity for a while.
...so where did these factory workers go? They aren't people that can afford to skip work for 3 months.
Unlike US, savings rate is incredibly high for China, so even many of the poorest can get by without work for a few months. It’s no secret that Asian countries in general have much higher savings rates
Imagine believing the Chinese numbers
This thread predictably devolved off topic into what the Chinese government did, or didn't do. That's largely irrelevant, because the pandemic was going to happen whether you believe their govt or not.
"But they should have warned us and been more transparent!" I'm no expert, but shutting down a large province(s) of millions and millions seems like a BIG warning. So all of this outrage is largely irrelevant to the problem, and to the question above.
Could we recover quickly (like China) was the topic. There's evidence that China has i.e. Manufacturing reports, satellite images, Apple opening stores, etc. I'll let people like @Chinese RE Guy" address the conspiracy arguments.
So, could we become more functioning quickly like Japan, Singapore, S Korea? Not until we get a handle on the virus. Recovery won't happen until this happens. Besides staying home, testing needs to be ramped up. The US is still only completing just over 100,000 tests per day. It needs to be many multiples higher so we know what's happening. For example, testing in Texas is virtually nonexistent given the population (28 million).
So stay home, work if you can, and have a cocktail. Cheers!
This is nonsense. Ofc the thread went into what the Chinese govt. did and didn't do - it's literally the topic of the thread. You have to buy the premise that China has recovered quickly to assess whether the U.S. can do the same, I don't buy the premise.
They massively underreported cases and deaths, hid the seriousness of the disease, and continue to underreport cases and deaths. This isn't up for some philosophical debate, this is the conclusion of several intelligence agencies in the world. So, no, I don't believe China has recovered "quickly". What I do believe is they are trying to go back to business as usual while sweeping cases and deaths under the rug, which the U.S. should absolutely not do.
In related news, some counties are resuming lockdowns and China's basketball league is cancelled after they tried to restart it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/chinese-county-back-…
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28975749/china-delays-re-start-bask…
Ask the author, but the primary question of the post was: Can the US recover quickly? You're correct, he did mention China as an example. So it would be fair to argue that "No, I don't think the US will recover quickly, because I thinl Chinsese workers are going back to work under duress". But, I haven't seen that point made until you just made it.
There are other areas that seem to be functioning, Japan, S Korea, Singapore. The focus on China, to me, is a waste of time.
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