Told You So

Anyone else see this article in the New York Times and think of this post of ours from last spring?

Yeah, we didn’t think so. Well, in it, I was arguing that China’s hardcore quarantining response wasn’t the gigantic disaster everyone in the West was making it out to be, and even had the gall to suggest that it might be the right thing to do:

As I see it, the government has several options, which I’ve listed below along with best and worst-case scenarios.

1. Ignore the students, let them enter China unhindered.
   • Best case: Nothing happens.
   • Worst case: They infect Chinese people and the disease begins to spread through the Mainland.
2. Test the students as they arrive, then let them into China.
   • Best case: Nothing happens.
   • Worst case: One or more students was a carrier too early to show symptoms or return a positive test; they infect Chinese people and the disease begins to spread through the Mainland.
3. Quarantine the students for a week in a nice hotel.
   • Best case: Nothing happens.
   • Worst case: The government takes some flak from the international press and some Canadian students learn that TV in China is generally awful.

Given these options, the right choice seems fairly obvious. Furthermore, it’s not that far from the choices many Western countries made during the SARS outbreak.

Many people, including Richard over at the Peking Duck, did not agree. Turns out, though, the experts (both Chinese and foreign) seem to think China did a pretty good job, and that those controversial methods were effective. From the New York Times:

To protests from around the world, China isolated entire planeloads of people entering the country if anyone on the plane exhibited flulike symptoms. Local authorities canceled school classes at the slightest hint of the disease and ordered students and teachers to stay home. China was virtually alone in taking such harsh measures, which continued throughout most of the summer.

Now, Chinese and foreign health officials say that some of those contested measures — more easily adopted by an authoritarian state — may have helped slow the spread of the disease in the world’s most populous country. China has not had to cope with a crush of cases, and it began administering a vaccine for swine flu in early September, the first country to do so.

Foreign officials also say that China demonstrated an unusual openness to sharing information about H1N1 with its citizens and other governments, in contrast to its secretive approach to the near pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a few years ago.

Oh snap!

Only kidding. Obviously, the “experts” don’t verify everything I wrote, and it’s pretty irrelevant now anyway. The actual purpose of this post is to direct your attention to the top right of your screen (you may need to scroll up) where we’ve added links to recent and interesting stories on other China blogs to our “Read This” section.

Obviously, if you’re reading this via RSS, you can’t see that, which brings me to the next point: anyone know a good WordPress widget that would display links in the same place easily and have it’s own separate RSS feed?