Data and Anti-Chinese Jingoism around COVID-19

Short, skinny - The statistics of the spread of COVID-19 show that recent demands of an inquiry into China's response to COVID-19, led chiefly by Donald Trump and echoed by his allies around the world are based on a jingoistic attempt to find a foreign scapegoat for Trump's own policy failures in response to COVID-19.




Below are a list of the last day on which a given country had one hundred or less cases of COVID-19.  It provides a handy timeline of how much advanced notice each nation had of the characteristics of the disease, and how dangerous it is.  Thus, China has zero days notice.  In fact, China had more than a hundred cases before they knew that COVID-19 was lethal, or that it could spread from human to human.  That is not true of any other nation on Earth.  Even China's near neighbours, South Korea and Japan, had forty nine and fifty days additional notice (respectively).   For the United States and Australia, they had sixty two and sixty nine days additional notice.  

• January 1st, China, 80 cases.
• February 19th, South Korea, 58 cases.
• February 20th, Japan, 94 cases.
• February 22nd, Italy, 79 cases.
• February 28th, Singapore, 98 cases.
• March 1st, Spain, 84 cases.
• March 3rd, United States, 100 cases.
• March 4th, United Kingdom, 87 cases.
• March 9th, Australia, 93 cases.
• March 18th, Taiwan, 100 cases.
• March 21st, New Zealand, 52 cases.

This advanced notice matters because it gives governments time to see what was necessary to contain the disease, and how to prevent it becoming widespread in the population.  It gives them time to realistically assess the threat, and respond. 

You would presume from that advanced notice that nations who took longer to reach one hundred cases would have been able to respond better, and to contain the disease more efficiently than nations with less notice, or with zero notice as was the case for China.  Your presumption would be wrong.

This graph shows the cumulative cases by country, since the 100th case in each country.  Because the starting baseline is essentially the same in each case, it shows directly the effectiveness of the response to COVID-19 in each country.  The lower the slope of the initial increase, and the lower the plateau where new cases each day are radically reduced, the better the response has been.  Conversely, the higher the initial slope, and the higher the plateau, the worse the response.

Thus we can compare Singapore and Australia's responses to COVID-19.  Australia has relied heavily on social isolation across the society to limit community  transmission.  Singapore adopted a more targeted approach, with far more rigorous isolation of those identified as having, or of being at significant risk of having, the disease; but far more relaxed social isolation for everybody else.  The results show that Singapore's response was better than Australia's at controlling the initial spread of the disease (based on the lower slope); but that by not sufficiently containing community transmission from non-symptomatic carriers, it has permitted a greater overall spread.

By this metric, it is very plain that the response to COVID-19 in the United States has been far inferior to that of any other nation with an advanced medical system.  In particular, the United States response has been far inferior to that in China, even though China started with zero information about the disease; while the US had around two months advanced notice to prepare and refine an appropriate response. 

When considering the various claims that China's response is inadequate - claims being primarily pushed by the United States and its close allies, this is the key fact.  If you were to ask Donald Trump about how effective his response to COVID-19 is, he would insist that it has been fantastic; that nobody could have done better.  The facts, however, show otherwise.  In particular, it shows that even with advanced notice, his response has been far inferior to that of China, or South Korea, or Japan.  Most tellingly, it has been far inferior to that in Australia or New Zealand - so the difference does not lie in 'advantages' of closed societies in dealing with pandemics.

This discrepancy between the purportedly inferior and inadequate response of China being pushed by Donald Trump and his allies (despite Trump's own response being clearly worse than that of China) has an obvious explanation.  Donald Trump is seeking a scapegoat for his own policy failures.  Faced with very predictable anger over his own failure to protect the American people, he is seeking to raise jingoistic hostility against a foreign nation.  And while doing that, he is encouraging Americans to attend mass gatherings to force the end of social isolation in the United States.

Unfortunately, the Australian government is lending its voice to Trump's jingoistic crusade.  Their motivation is different.  It appears to be a form of perverse patriotism found in some Australians, particularly of the political right, which says not "My country, right or wrong", but "The United States, right or wrong".  It is the same perverse patriotism that dragged Australia into the Vietnamese War and the second Gulf War.  In this case it will merely antagonize China to no purpose, and on no basis.

Sources: 
1) Chinese 100th case - https://cdn.onb.it/2020/03/COVID-19.pdf.pdf
2) 100th case, other nations - https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
3) Graph - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704