Providing An Enlightened Scientific Socialist Voice From A Political-Hardline Perspective 2020.04.06Reacting To A Hit Piece Attempting To Debunk The FactsA foreign news rival, of which we will kindly not call out their name, writes up an article as a reaction to our recent COVID-19 related article, this time from a different perspective An oversimplified image of how some nations are reacting to COVID-19
When you pour salt all over a slug, the creature will recoil and shrivel up as it dies from the amount of salt being poured on top of it. It’s the same thing when you call out the flaws of capitalism and its bootlicking followers will recoil and handwave criticism by using re-hashed responses ranging from no-true scotsman fallacy of “That’s Not Real Capitalism, That’s Just Crony Capitalism” to “BUT MUH NORTH KOREA, MUH VENEZUELA, SOCIALISM BAD”. When you strike deep into the heart of western capitalism you strike the nerves of those who worship on the altar of the free-market. One western corporate news group in particular got their panties in a twist by trying to handwave criticism of the west’s handling of COVID-19 by simply going “but ‘Murica sucks, Chyna sucks, muh two sides of same coin argument”. We kindly call these people ‘centrists’ or ‘liberals’, mistaken as being ‘leftist’ by reactionaries to the point that liberals now unironically think of themselves as leftist too. But let’s not delve into the news writer, but rather, at the hit-piece article instead and go point-by-point to go across the article quickly. Before we go take a look at this article, let’s applaud the writer for thinking that a socialist nation is a political monolith, nevermind that just like with capitalist nations, socialist nations also have their own forms of factionalism. For Zhouran, there’s the political-moderate and political-hardline. Not to mention that Zhouran doesn’t have a single source of news and instead has various news sources, but for neoliberals out there it’s easier to lazily disregard socialist media as ‘propaganda mouthpiece’ and over-generalize the politics of other nations as a ‘mere monolith’ without needing to fire a couple neurons in their brain. We don’t know if the writer is ICly being deliberate or is OOCly too lazy to learn about another nation, but it’s most likely the latter since the writer also thinks that Zhouran and China are the same nation. Kinda serves as a reminder of how westerners can’t tell Asians apart, but that’s what happens when you’re too arrogant to learn about the cultures of non-white nations. Anyway, let’s get right into the news… - So one of the first things you see is that apparently if you criticize the west you’re a ’50 Cent Army CCP shill’, a braindead low IQ response made by both radlibs and reactionaries because it’s easy to parrot and requires no usage of higher brainpower at all. Real classy.
- The writer claims to use ‘unbiased’ news source from, you guessed it, western corporate media, not to mention that the writer literally handwave actual criticism from even left-wing sources, but what do you expect from corporate bootlickers who think that western corporate propaganda is ‘unbiased’ and ‘rational’. At least the writer admits that neoliberals are awful, but at the same time implies later on that ‘bad capitalism’ is what neoliberals do and that ‘good capitalism’ exists from local businesses. This will be brought up later on.
- The writer claims to not be a fan of the free-market, but then goes on to support ‘small-business regulated capitalism’, in other words, ‘capitalism with extra steps and a smiley face on top’. Yeah, small businesses are so cool and un-crony, screw the big bourgeoisie, let’s worship the petit bourgeoisie instead like this kind hoarding gentleman or them ‘hard-working’ family-owned farms. Remember, capitalism is capitalism regardless of what flimsy façade it’s putting up. Also, the writer says he/she isn’t a fan of the free market, but low & behold, still defends the free market because capitalists simply think that way. Yes, markets change, but that’s one of the numerous problems with capitalism. A change in the market isn’t a good thing as hard-working people get screwed over while capitalists get bail-out money from, you guessed it, THE GOVERNMENT. Geez, it’s as if the free-market is just really crappy and that neoliberal nations need government intervention just to barely function at all. Capitalism is neoliberalism no matter how much corporate cheerleaders try to pull a no-true-scotsman fallacy. Comrade Corona has kindly showed us the absolute state of capitalism and how capitalism sucks at handling a massive pandemic. Huh, it’s as if business-centric models of economy don’t give a damn about ordinary lives compared to human-centric models of economy. Really makes you think, huh?
- On to the part where the writer claims that the situation in China isn’t “good” compared to that in the west. Ah yes, the “CCP ain’t providing real numbers” meme, another mouthbreathing response from radlibs and reactionaries that doesn’t require the usage of a single brain cell. Doesn’t make it any better by the usage of biased western corporate media, yeah real ‘unbiased’ there. The World Health Organization & Canada’s health minister both praise China’s response to the pandemic, while pseudo-fascist Viktor Orban personally welcomes the arrival of supplies from China as a token of respect. Some Western Europeans are starting to feel the heat on the EU’s response to the outbreak, like these ordinary Italians throwing away the EU flag and rising the Chinese flag instead due to China’s assistance to Italy compared to that of the EU’s. Also, another talking point western corporate propaganda loves to peddle is that the “CCP is silencing and kidnapping all doctors who speak out” and other falsified source-less claims. Yeah, it’s as if these doctors are spending more time doing their jobs and less time smearing sh*t on social media like what radlib and reactionary pundits do. If Chinese whistleblower doctors exist, then Dr Ai Fen should of disappeared for days now, except that in reality she’s literally not and she actually does livestreams and updates on her personal Weibo account. Let’s try and understand the ‘logic’ (lack of) of western propaganda: Why would China falsify its numbers? Why would the CCP kidnap and silence doctors? What is the end goal of the CCP in this pandemic? If you ask these questions to neoliberals, they’ll spout out conspiracy not out of their rear but surprisingly out of their mouths instead.
- Cherrypicking and creative accounting: debunking western media disinformation about China's death tolls.
Claim: 40,000 COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan alone
The claim that 40,000 people died due to covid-19 in Wuhan is making the rounds on western mainstream and social media (example: businessinsider). The original source of this claim is from a Radio Free Asia article. These are based on extrapolations of cremation data. Radio Free Asia is American state-sponsored CIA-backed agitprop media, but let's entertain their numbers.
RFA provides 3 estimates around 40,000. Let's examine each.
42,000 deaths:
”Since the start of the week, seven large funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of around 500 people to their families every day, suggesting that far more people died than ever made the official statistics.
Some social media posts have estimated that all seven funeral homes in Wuhan are handing out 3,500 urns every day in total.
Funeral homes have informed families that they will try to complete cremations before the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5, which would indicate a 12-day process beginning on March 23.
Such an estimate would mean that 42,000 urns would be given out during that time.”
Here, RFA assumes that
- each funeral home in Wuhan gives out 500 urns of ashes each day
- every day is exactly the same during a 12-day period
- all 7 funeral home is exactly the same
- 7 * 12 * 500 = 42,000
46,800 deaths:
”It can't be right ... because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?" an Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told RFA on Friday.
Another popular estimate is based on the cremation capacity of the funeral homes, which run a total of 84 furnaces with a capacity over 24 hours of 1,560 urns city-wide, assuming that one cremation takes one hour.
This calculation results in an estimated 46,800 deaths.”
The math here seems incompletely, but a quick look at Falun Gong media (Crazed cult group rightfully banned by China’s government) provides the answer:
” 另据自由亚洲电台报道,如果以焚化炉数量推算,武汉七座殡仪馆84个火化炉,假设65炉可正常工作
Translation: According to RFA, if we extrapolate based on furnace count, Wuhan's 7 funeral homes have 84 furnaces, assume 65 furnaces can operate normally”
Here, RFA (and Falun Gong) assumes that
- All funeral homes cremate bodies 24-7 non-stop
- each cremation takes 1 hour
- 65 out of 84 furnaces work continuously (why 65?)
- This happened non-stop for 30 days
- 65 * 24 * 30 = 46,800
40,000 deaths:
” Social media users have been doing some basic math to figure out their daily capacity, while the news website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in one day alone -- double the official number of deaths.
Some social media posts have estimated that all seven funeral homes in Wuhan are handing out 3,500 urns every day in total.
A resident of Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, said most people there now believe that more than 40,000 people died in the city before and during the lockdown.”
But this doesn't seem to add up. A look at some other media articles, such as this Time article, reveal that this calculation uses 8 funeral homes:
” The families of those who succumbed to the virus in the central Chinese city, where the disease first emerged in December, were allowed to pick up their cremated ashes at eight local funeral homes starting this week. As they did, photos circulated on Chinese social media of thousands of urns being ferried in.”
- 5,000 urns delivered to 1 funeral home
- all 8 funeral homes are the same
- 5,000 * 8 = 40,000
It doesn't take a genius to see that there are wild assumptions being made in these estimates, it’s as if anti-CCP propaganda is churning out low-quality crap into the toilet they call ‘free & unbiased western media’.
Though not explicitly stated, these articles imply that all 40,000 dead are due to covid-19. This is certainly the conclusion that many on social media draw from these articles. It is as if no other forms of death are allowed in Wuhan during these 2 months.
Where did the 5,000 urns and 3,500 urns figures come from? These figure came from Caixin. The 5,000 urns were delivered from the supplier to the funeral homes recently after the deceased have already died and cremated, so I don't see the relevance of this figure in the estimates.
The 3,500 urns figure largely came from counting urns from this Caixin photo of the Hankou funeral home. You can get 3,500 urns if you consider all these boxes urns and count generously.
”Outside one funeral home, trucks shipped in about 2,500 urns on both Wednesday and Thursday, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin. Another picture published by Caixin showed 3,500 urns stacked on the ground inside. It’s unclear how many of the urns had been filled. (time)”
These estimates also assume that all Wuhan funeral homes are exactly the same. This is not the case. A government directive published on Feb 4 stated that since January 26 (3 days after Wuhan lockdown), all covid-19 deaths must be cremated at the Hankou funeral home, and other deaths must be cremated elsewhere:
” 全员上岗,全力做好疫情防控的服务保障工作。对殡仪馆的分工进行了调整,汉口殡仪馆负责全市因新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎死亡患者遗体处理工作,在馆内开通专用通道和专用火化炉,从1月26日起免收因新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎死亡患者遗体基本殡葬服务费;武昌殡仪馆负责汉口片区正常遗体处理工作;青山殡仪馆负责武昌片区正常遗体处理工作。”
Ironic that this information was also published on Caixin, where western media cherrypicked a lot of other figures from. The Hankou funeral home is also where the photos containing the "3,500 urns" came from; if all coronavirus deaths are cremated at the Hankou funeral home, the 3,500 figure is within the same ball park as the official count of 2,535 deaths.
Claim: 21 million COVID-19 dead in China
This one is pretty ridiculous, but it doesn't stop it from being spread all over disreputable social media (example: laowhy86). This claim is based on the fact that 21 million cell accounts were terminated between November and February.
But let's look at the actual data. This is the data for November 2019 by region, and this is the data for February 2020 by region; all figures in 10,000.
As you can see, there is indeed a 21,030,000 drop in mobile accounts. However, you'd expect Hubei, the epicenter of the outbreak, to be hit the hardest by this mass dying. Instead, Hubei only see the deactivation of 1,265,000 mobile accounts. Where as Guangdong saw the deactivation of 8,269,000 accounts and Sichuan saw the deactivation of 2,214,000 accounts. Anyone from Guangdong to verify that your province is actually the true epicenter of the covid-19 pandemic?
Here is a logical explanation for the drop in mobile subscriptions from AP:
”It was mainly due to reduced business and social activities resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak,” a spokesperson with the company confirmed to the AP. “Many customers in China have multiple SIM cards and it is common that they use their non-primary SIM cards to do these activities.” - Continuing on about the falsified BS regarding China’s supposed “fake numbers”, if that’s the case then why are the number of coronavirus cases they exported not showing that? Late January-early February constituted the majority of Chinese cases for those bothered to screen and track to prevent outbreak. For neoliberals out there with single-digit IQs: Imported Coronavirus Cases From China To Other Countries Are Relatively Low, Showing that China Is Not Massively Undercounting Its Cases. Plus just look at the numbers in this screenshot and this is despite the fact that western nations have smaller populations than China.
- While not the deliberate intention of the writer, the unintentional implication that any defective face masks from one Chinese manufacturer being somehow representative of all face masks from other Chinese manufacturers is quite strong in the article. Ironically enough if Chinese masks were so ‘defective’ and ‘low-quality’ then how come every western nation is still desperate for more Chinese-made face masks including the US? How come the US is willing to pay big bucks to divert shipments of Chinese-made face masks to the US rather than Europe? If the free-market was so superior then how come western medical companies still fail to supply the entire world with face masks and not increase production at sky-high levels? You could keep asking such questions to radlibs and reactionaries, but they’d rather pull off a Houdini instead.
- The writer just subconsciously admitted that decentralization of national control is inferior to the centralization of national control. The fact that the federal government of the US failed to do anything proper about the pandemic and how each state has to fight for survival is enough to show how shoddy decentralization is. At least in China, the national government reprimanded the local Hubei officials for not reacting quickly enough to SARS-CoV-2.
- Ah yes, the BS falsified GHS index in which apparently the west was supposed to be well-prepared for the outbreak compared to China. Yeah, just look at those numbers, the west was definitely so prepared for this outbreak, it’s as if the western world had two months to prepare themselves for the pandemic but took long because they thought the Asia would be more affected than they are because ‘west so rich, foreigners so poor’, yet unironically enough it’s the western world that got f*cked harder by SARS-CoV-2 instead of poorer nations. Huh, really makes you think, doesn’t it? Also, kinda funny for the writer to handwave America’s massive number of COVID-19 cases by stating that they have a bigger population than New Zealand, funny enough China has a billion people and yet they’re doing better than the entire western world. Again, it really makes you think.
- The writer thinks the Defense Protection Act is there to solve America’s pathetically low amount of PPEs. If the Americans were smart enough, they’d throw away the need for profit and actually just bolster their own production of PPE, but instead like the leeches they are they are paying a lot of money to divert shipments of Chinese medical supplies to the US rather than Europe.
- A centrist is not a ‘leftist’, they are centrists who are still complicit in the neoliberal system. It doesn’t matter how much they make fun of reactionary politicians and calling the US president “Orange Man Bad”, centrist liberals are still complicit in maintaining the system of capitalism like their reactionary counterparts. Pretending to be “woke” & “progressive” doesn’t make you left wing, especially if you are too busy parroting CIA/NED propaganda about “socialist states bad” and supporting western institutions of power such as banks, corporations, western police, western military, etc. If Bernie Sanders was a “socialist” (in reality he’s a social-democrat pretending to be a socialist just like most western ‘socialists’) then that means Anarcho-Capitalists really are ‘anarchists’ (protip: they’re not).
- At least the writer admits to bad bureaucracy existing in the US Navy, but what if we told you that it’s so bad that the US Navy literally fired the USS Theodore Roosevelt captain days after he pleaded for help for sailors with coronavirus for merely telling the truth (whistleblowing). Funny that all that talk about being transparent and China “rounding up whistleblowers” is nothing but a mere projection of western governments, just like their projections about China making up fake numbers. The infected carrier may point to COVID being at San Diego in early or mid January:
”The deployment history of the COVID-infected carrier, USS Roosevelt, shows that it embarked from San Diego on Jan17, and had an intermediate stop at the US military base at Guam island from Feb7 to Feb10. After discovering COVID on the ship, it returned to Guam on Mar27.
So, the Roosevelt sailors were either infected at San Diego before Jan17, or got infected at Guam in Feb7-Feb10.
We can rule out the latter possibility, since the first reported case of COVID at Guam was March 15, more than month after the Guam port of call.”
COVID-19 pandemic in Guam.
If Guam didn't have COVID in February, then we must conclude that the virus was present at the San Diego base in mid January or even earlier, in late 2019. This is possible given the incubation period, in which symptoms don't appear for around two weeks; and patients with developed symptoms may not have been diagnosed on the ship, or had been misdiagnosed as regular pneumonia. If that's true, then the timeline suggests it may be an outbreak independent of Wuhan.
Perhaps the reason the carrier commander was fired was failing to deal with early signs of COVID infection.
This is a very interesting case, since the carrier's deployment history gives us precise dates for isolating when the virus got on board the ship. And more broadly, it can fill in the timeline for COVID cases on US territory. - The writer largely skips a chunk of texts by stating “I don’t have time to research them all” and “I largely agree with it”. We will kindly respect the writer for his/her honesty and for not telling a lie. Even if the writer did use sources from western corporate media, that still doesn’t mean the writer is lying. However at the same time the writer comes to the baseless fence-sitting conclusion that “Chyna Bad, Murica Bad” while propagating certain sources from the US. Being a fence-sitting centrist and not taking sides doesn’t make you woke or above the left or right. Plus, the writer seems to only bother at looking our most recent COVID-19 article and not the articles written before it which also have additional info. Anyway, the topic of the argument isn’t any particular news group or writer, but rather the topic is instead the specific arguments laid out on the article.
- Since the write claims that Chinese medical supplies are supposedly “low quality”, that still doesn’t answer the fact that many nations especially US and various European nations are still accepting Chinese supplies. If the EU was supposedly well-prepared for this outbreak, then how come there are Italians who are more satisfied with China’s assistance than the EU’s? How come 67.3% of Slovaks believe China helps Slovakia in fighting COVID19, with 26.5% believing China is very helpful and 55.9% of Slovaks believe EU is not helping? Let’s think about it for a second. All of the EU member states aren’t individually industrial giants like China or the US, fair enough. But even when combined into a big union, somehow the EU can’t even supply its own medical equipment to its own members and just like the US most of the member states took long to respond efficiently. The only EU member state that actually responded competently was Germany, the same European nation that didn’t shut its borders to China.
- Going back to whistleblowers, western corporate propaganda loves peddling this big meme of the CCP silencing whistleblower doctors, yet here we are: The true hero and whistleblower in the Coronavirus saga is ... Dr. Helen Chu of Seattle. She disregarded the cease and desist order from US gov and tested people and found the first community transmission case in the US. Without her, the situation would have been much worse. The US is like the titanic that saw the iceberg 3 miles out (3 months ago) and did nothing thinking its indestructible then when the ship got hit and sinking fast, it started the blame game like, Chitanic didn't tell us how big the iceberg was, Chitanic covered up the size of its damaged hole, Chitanic this, Chitanic that. While American ‘intelligence’ (or lack of to be more accurate) peddles myths about China hiding its true numbers, American doctors on the other hand will lose their jobs if they speak out. The great American Empire with an annual military budget of $800 billion can't even provide basic PPE for nurses who're battling COVID-19 in the frontlines, thus those hardworking healthworkers such as this poor nurse had two choices: either stop wearing her N95 mask or get fired. She quit. Now compared that to China where healthworkers are starting to return home after risking their lives on the frontline.
Some westerners are starting to wake up, though not all of them as western governments are too arrogant to even admit the effective response conducted by a socialist non-white state like China. Funny enough, all that reaping of resources from the Global South means that the west can boast about having a ‘superior system’ (despite such system being built from resources taken away from the Global South since the era of colonialism) and yet Comrade Coron… er, SARS-CoV-2 has shown the opposite. Some western writers are admitting to the reality, like this man: “Decisions on what is appropriate need to be made by experts and need to be based on science. This is exactly the wrong time to allow geopolitical rivalries and a specious belief the West is in an “existential systems competition” with China to colour our analysis of best practices for containing this crisis to the extent that simply recounting what the Chinese have done is labeled propaganda.” The existence of capitalism is literally on a tight walk-rope because of COVID-19. For the future of the EU’s economy, they’re smart enough to be at least cooperative with China, which means that EU could still be economically functional but with a slow-moving economy of course. America on the other hand is at greater risk of stagnation and recession, simply because of their own government. They way US economy is set up is that you have a vast underclass living paycheck to paycheck and working overtime constantly in order to make rent. Rent then goes to a small amount of real estate owners who in turn pay it to the regime through taxes. The regime has connections with all major companies which employ the underclass. In order to quell rebellion, the leaders also have complete media control over the underclass, convincing them they are living their best possible existence and how every other scary foreigner is out to end their (slave) way of life. This setup funnels all the money into the elites in the government and company higher ups while keeping people obedient. But what happens now is that people cannot work, and their wallets have been stretched so thin there's no buffer. Rent cannot be paid, and companies start collapsing, starting from the small ones which don't have deep connection with Washington. Their media can say anything but it becomes hollow when people don't have necessities. They can plainly see for themselves that everything is not OK. The end result is that all the cash generating mechanisms will fall apart, leaving the lower and middle class in anarchy and totally bankrupt while oligarchs will still sit on big piles of money and assets, but they will be worthless because their companies cannot mobilize workers. Even if a ‘miracle’ happened (highly unlikely because the ‘invisible hand of the free market’ isn’t gonna save a nation compared to a centralized pragmatic government) and US oligarchs decided to redistribute wealth back to the people for the sake of the country (impossible since capitalism is all about profits and not the wellbeing of humans compared to socialism), it’s not that easy because you can't just give everyone 1 million dollars while there's no goods to buy with that money. Unless a larger economy like China or EU (in this case probably needs both) bails them out, the future looks very uncertain at best. Huh, capitalism killing innocent people, didn’t know that (inb4 “socialism bad cos stalin n mao genocided 10 gazillion people, the privileged bourgeoisie who fled to the west told me so”). This is the current state of capitalism right now. Sadly things might not go well for underdeveloped nations economic wise as the west continues to harvest and exploit their resources in order to take to the west and continue propping up the façade that the west is ‘wealthy because capitalism & hardwork’ even though China (a country that was impoverished at one point) became the powerhouse it is now by lifting millions out of poverty, building infrastructures such as highways and high-speed rail across even their less-developed provinces, and focusing on research & development, all thanks to pragmatic technocratic planning (a concept that doesn’t even exist in the west at large scale). In the end, the writer of that hit-piece article was simply doing his/her job and reaffirming his/her beliefs and bias. However, to go on about being 'impartial' & 'unbiased' is just intellectually dishonest and purely disingenuous. No one is unbiased, no news group is unbiased. People will always look for sources to reaffirm their biases because the last thing they want is having their view of reality shattered by facts & logic for facts & logic do not care about people's opinions. Fence-sitting doesn't mean you automatically win the game, that's like claiming you're the winner of a chess game by simply not participating in the first place and not taking sides. But hey, at least the article was decently written and the writer took the time to write it up in the first place. We kindly thank said writer for sparking a potential conversation, but sadly there's a high chance that others will simply derail it instead.
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