Talk:China COVID-19 cover-up allegations/Archive 1

Archive 1

POV fork

This is an obvious POV fork. You can publish it on a personal blog, but it's completely unsuitable as a Wikipedia article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:22, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Specifically a POV fork of what article in your opinion? Adoring nanny (talk) 13:17, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

This is not about the outbreak generally, merely about the cover-up of it. A POV fork is an article about the same topic, which this is not. That should become more clear as the portion about suppression of research is expanded. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Thucydides, let's call it a Fork and comment on how it adheres to the WP:NPOV policy. Remember this: Since what qualifies as a "POV fork" can itself be based on a POV judgement, it may be best not to refer to the fork as "POV" except in extreme cases of persistent disruptive editing. Forich (talk) 17:00, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@Forich: This draft was created explicitly in order to argue a particular POV, and it is written in an extremely non-neutral manner. The whole draft just comes across as a highly selective (and sometimes downright false) collection of information, presented in a highly argumentative style. Just take this paragraph as an example:

By 27 December 2019, the local Government knew there was an outbreak of pneumonia. At least one healthcare worker had already been infected, which, under international healthcare regulations, requires a country to report an outbreak to the World Health Organization, as it is considered proof of person-to-person spread. However, China did not report the outbreak at that time. Instead, the WHO noticed a media report of the outbreak on 31 December. On 3 January, when China acknowledged the outbreak to the WHO, it called it "viral pneumonia of unknown cause", even though it had the complete genetic sequence at that time. It also said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, even though 20 cases had already been confirmed among medical workers.

Nearly every claim in this paragraph is wrong, and the paragraph is written as an argument, not as a neutral presentation of facts. First, the government did not know what was going on by 27 December 2019. That's the date that the very first patient test result came back. To expect the hospital, much less the central government to understand the magnitude or nature of an outbreak of a novel virus because of a single patient's test result is just unreasonable. Secondly, the "media report of the outbreak on 31 December" refers to official Chinese government announcements of the outbreak, both issued by local health authorities and announced to an audience of hundreds of millions of viewers on CCTV (one of China's English-language state media outlets, CTGN, also announced the outbreak on 31 December 2019). To claim that China did not report the outbreak at that time and then to reference this media coverage, without mentioning that the coverage was in official government outlets is deeply deceptive. Finally, the claims of concealing the cause of the pneumonia on 3 January rest on genetic sequencing that would have been, at the time, barely a day or two old. The argument seems to be that unless every breaking, possibly uncertain diagnostic test was publicly announced within 24 hours, there was a cover-up.

All of this information is already covered in a far more neutral manner in COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. This draft is just POV fork of that article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Your edit summary states that the draft uses a deprecated source. Which source is that? Obviously if something is from a deprecated source, I don't want to use it. Adoring nanny (talk) 14:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I didn't put that in the edit summary. That's an automated tag that gets added whenever you link to CGTN, which is pretty silly, given that I'm explicitly discussing what Chinese state media reported.

The problems with this draft are not minor issues, such as which exact source is used. The problems are much more fundamental: it is a POV fork meant to push a particular point of view. The entire presentation is highly selective and misleading, and much of the information is actually false (such as the claim that the Chinese government did not report the outbreak on 31 December 2019). -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:38, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that I could have written the "failure to report" better. The failure was a failure to report it to the WHO, which they are supposed to do. I've fixed that, so thanks. However, December 31 is not December 27. So the failure to report "at that time" is correct. As for the claim that the presentation is selective, you are more than welcome to add parts you believe I've missed. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:04, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Thucydides411:, all right I'll look deeper into the issues you raise, I'll try to find a free hour tomorrow. Forich (talk) 20:00, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Forich: You seem to be pretty neutral among the editors here, so I'm certainly happy to have you take a look. One reason I don't think it's a POV fork is that multiple portions would be off topic at the Covid in China article. Furthermore, much of the Covid in China article would be off-topic here. A POV fork is by definition a second article about the same topic. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:37, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

The material that is not a POV fork of COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China is a POV fork of Investigations into the origin of COVID-19. Creating forks in order to pack in POV material that has been rejected from other articles is poor form. Even the title of this draft gives away the intent, not to mention the outrageously POV style the body is written in. -Thucydides411 (talk) 15:42, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

additional references

[1] NYT Taiwan News. WSJ Adoring nanny (talk) 00:57, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

the cabal will never let this be moved to mainspace. and if it gets enough coverage, it will completely be removed by select admins. have fun! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:9200:1310:1467:8d30:fcf1:26f7 (talk • contribs)

lol

Chinese top official defected to US, gave Biden administration info about Wuhan lab, report suggests

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/international/us/chinese-top-official-defected-to-us-gave-biden-administration-info-about-wuhan-lab-report-suggests/articleshow/83626518.cms

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:9200:1310:f05c:e555:cebd:40a9 (talk • contribs)

I'm aware of the report. I don't think it's sufficiently well sourced to add at this time. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:49, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion on key issues with the draft and its conversion to article

The title

This issue was raised by @Bakkster Man: above. Per WP:NPOVNAME and being a descriptive title, we should check whether "China COVID-19 cover-up" is judgmental, which we should avoid. The best treatment of a cover-up in Wikipedia is when one can write about it a posteriori, as historians would do, for instance: Dreyfus affair, Iran–Contra affair, or Watergate scandal. The most recent of these is the Iran-Contra affair, which ended in 1987 and had its Wikipedia entry created in 2001, already with the "affair" adjective. In fact, searching through the archives of news agencies I found an AP report from 1987 that already calls it "affair". I performed google searches with the keywords China COVID-19 pandemic affair scandal, and there seems to be almost no results.

An explanation of this void in results, could be that the expected timeline of a cover-up in any country depends on it having a functioning free press. In the US or Norway, for example, we can expect such a story to develop from ongoing cover-up -> a newspaper brokes the scandal -> a formal report from an independent comission is published -> encyclopedias call it "scandal" or "affair". I am hesitant to expect that a similar timeline applies to a scandal from China given that it is in position 177 at the World Press Freedom Index, only above Turkmenistan and North Korea.

In fact, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests are to this day not named massacres, or not even scandal in Wikipedia. Nonetheless, the Tiananmen Square Protest page has a section called Media coverage that is divided into official narrative and foreign media, which I guess was done as a device to more properly account in a NPOV way the event.

In summary, the most non-judgmental title I can come up is "Censorship of health matters in China during the COVID-19 pandemic". Or, if we are to follow what Wikipedia did to cover doping in Russia, we could try to pick the worst offense and name it by its main characteristic with no adjectives. For example, if the worst offense in the discussed draft was the circumstances that led to the death of Li Wenliang, the article may be named "Squashing of dissenting reporters and whistleblowers in China", and inside the article we report whether that is a systematic practice.

How about COVID-19 Transparency in China? Of course, the article would most likely report on "Lack of COVID-19 Transparency in China". If there's one thing there are almost no RSs for it's "how amazingly transparent the CCP is."

With all of the anti-conspiracy zealotry, I think any page with "Cover-up" is likely to get dive-bombed by constant speedy-deletion tags and edit-warring.

That said, there is definitely a place for a page like this one. The last thing we want is for another page to go up and then get permanently blocked through some official preceding. Just my 2 cents.KristinaLu (talk) 22:01, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Draft's notability to be a stand-alone page

The cover-up needs to have significant coverage in multiple RS that treat it with a deep level of detail. This coverage should have emerged spontaneously, that is, not as a result of promotional activity or indiscriminate publicity. Finally, the notability should not be a mere short-term interest. In my opinion, notability by these criteria is reached by China COVID-19 cover-up.

If we follow the anecdotal evidence from "Doping in Russia", at the time of its creation in 2016, it had only three sections and its edit summary justified the creation as stand alone with this note: "(major doping scandal which has been compared to East Germany and has received significant international media coverage for over a year)". We can do a similar analysis for "China COVID-19 cover-up": is there an extant page on a cover-up from a country's without freedom of press? Again, "Doping in Russia" fits well as a precedent here. Does the China COVID-19 cover-up has received significant international media coverage for over a year? I believe so.

Is there enough non trivial material to have at least a couple of sections in China COVID-19 cover-up? The draft as it is now already has a lot of information. We are allowed per WP:ROC to include "Factors that have influenced subject's form, role, history, public perception, or other noteworthy traits. The effects of these factors on the subject should be plainly apparent; if they are not, additional context is needed. Groups of disparate facts lack such context, and should be avoided."

Another sign that this draft has enough material that is relevant is that the COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China#Government_response section has this template since April 2020: This section may be too long and excessively detailed. Please consider summarizing the material while citing sources as needed. So a split of it can be considered a natural progression from this section, IMHO.

As per my title suggestion above, having the article deal more generally with "transparency" than "cover-up" means that the notability would go way up. So would the number of reliable sources.

There is definitely a need for this page. Since this page is further removed from the WP:MEDRS hegemony that goes on at other pages, editors won't have to deal with the same tedious (and at times unreasonable) constrictions as on at other COVID-related pages.KristinaLu (talk) 22:12, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

POV Fork

Now I address the concern that inserting content of fringe issues, or content that is already managed in other articles as "Controversy" or "Criticism" may constitute a violation of WP:POV Fork. This issue was raised by Thucydides above. He also went on to find many errors in the information, and an unacceptable tone of argument, instead of neutral presentation of facts. Here I will limit my comments just to the POV Fork part, but note that I think the factual errors found can and should be ammended simultaneously as this discussion advances.

Per WP:Weight we notice that we already have an article on COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China with a section called Censorship_and_police_responses. The size of this section is a proxy indicator of how much negative coverage the reactions of the Chinese governement to the pandemic has received . If we create a spin-off of this section that expands its content, multiplying its size, we would be indirectly breaking the balance of the original article by zooming in too much on a subject that perhaps was kept short in the original article exactly because it merited little coverage. The proper way to handle this issue would be to reach consensus on the talk page of the mother article, see if the section can grow, and at some point in its natural growth, editors will feel like the section may deserve its own article to handle size better. Incidentaly, for this draft, that seems to have happened, because COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China#Government_response section is already too big for its original page.

A fair question we should respond about this issue is: Does the positive coverage given in RS to the reaction of the Chinese governement to the pandemic merit that we omit creating a whole article on the negative coverage because it would give a false balance that the negative far outweighs the positive? In my opinion, the negative is much more notable and widespread, so I don't see a problem to launching the draft into article space, at least in this regard. Other editors are invited to comment on this issue, of course.

Per WP:PROFRINGE, some of the facts presented in the draft can be seen as parte of fringe ideas (in Wikipedia's sense) and should be either omited from articles or included with minor or tiny weight in relation to mainstream accepted ideas. By this filter, much of the proposed content on the origin of the pandemic would have to go (at least until further notice in the ongoing discussions in "Investigations on the origin of COVID-19" and related pages, which you may be aware of), much of the praises that the WHO has given to China has to stay, and much of the cherry-picked speculations have to be treated with little weight, attributed to individual opinions, and not in Wikivoice, unless they are explicitely grouped as a systematic pattern in top RS.

An objective question we should pose, is after stripping the draft of the possibly pro-fringe ideas, does it still merits to be a stand alone article? That would be an interesting exercise, perhaps Adoring Nanny can put up a sandbox of how it would look after cutting the controversial parts, and ask us to take a new look. Forich (talk) 12:34, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

@Forich Every time in the past Wikipedia has had controversial articles, 911, for example, after a period of argument, reflection and discussion, consensus has prevailed and the eventual articles forged from consensus have morphed into excellent examples of the community's best work. We are best when we discuss, and work only from policy.

I make no comment on the contents of your commentary, but I thank you for placing it here Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 20:28, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The draft indeed appears conspiratorial and to be created to push conclusions that are not necessarily those of reliable sources. Something more neutral would be China's local handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, although that is obviously a subtopic of the already existing COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China article... Thus the POV-fork alarm. —PaleoNeonate – 11:09, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate makes a good point. I still think "transparency" covers it. There may be a few sources by Tedros and Fauci et al praising China for their "valiant cooperation with humanity", but not much needs to change. In other words, while keeping a ton of content the current concept could be easily worked into "The state of transparency that exists regarding the Chinese government (both in China and worldwide) around COVID-19". All of the sources with their click-thrus will be up and the readers can then draw there own conclusions.KristinaLu (talk) 22:22, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Move to mainspace. Outstanding issues

I've moved this to mainspace, see Special:Diff/1033645030/1034196661 for the rationale. It clearly needs an NPOV title, but a suitable one is not apparent to me. "Chinese government involvement in COVID-19 investigations" is the best I could come up with after a few minutes of mulling. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:33, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

This should not have been moved to mainspace. The MfD discussion has not been closed, and the severe problems noted in the discussion have not been addressed at all. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 12:59, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

NPOV issues are not addressed by deletion. WP:ATD, WP:PRESERVE, etc. Anyone can edit the article and improve it. It is not so lengthy or problematic that it's a WP:TNT case. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:12, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Template text: "You are welcome to edit this page, but please do not blank, merge, or move it, or remove this notice, while the discussion is in progress." —PaleoNeonate – 18:59, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

China's government hindering the WHO's research in Wuhan

You removed the section about China's government hindering the WHO's research in Wuhan, but that's very much relevant. --Leo Navis (talk) 09:02, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

will try to start addressing these issues, help would be appreciated - then do address these issues you're seeing and lets discuss em, but don't just remove, please. --Leo Navis (talk) 09:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Why is the WHO investigation relevant to this article? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 09:06, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

You are seriously asking why a long-term delay of an investigation is relevant to claims of cover-up? --Leo Navis (talk) 09:09, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Are there reliable sources saying that it's connected to a cover-up? If so, I can see an argument for including it. Otherwise, I don't see why we would.

I see that you've also reverted my other edits trying to fix some of the neutrality and verifiability problems in this article. Can you please explain why? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 09:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted all of it, yes. You removed for example the word "delayed" from the release of the genetic sequences; they were delayed, one could even argue that the government tried to surpress them. That's not "neutral", that's taking a side; that of the Chinese government. --Leo Navis (talk) 09:20, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Delayed relative to what? To my knowledge there wasn't some kind of deadline the labs missed, and in any case Zhang's lab submitted the virus's genome to a US database on January 5, the same day they sequenced it (and not long after Shi's lab sequenced it). For some reason this information is omitted from the current version of the article. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 09:47, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Very good, now we're getting somewhere. I put that in with a source and took the delayed out. You might want to review the changes and change it to your convinience. I am wondering if we shouldn't take it out altogether, since apparantly it has no significance to the topic. --Leo Navis (talk) 10:49, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Removed accordingly. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:12, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

To the question if there are "reliable sources saying that it's connected to a cover-up" - open your eyes, please. If you deliberately hinder investigations into a pandemic, that sure looks suspicious - that's why it's relevant. --Leo Navis (talk) 09:28, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

The article should be based on what reliable sources say, not based on what you or I consider suspicious. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 09:47, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

We're still in disagreement here though. ;-) I do think it's just common sense that hindering an investigation of a worldwide pandemic is strange behavior when you have nothing to hide and should be mentioned. --Leo Navis (talk) 10:49, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

You're welcome to your opinion, but Wikipedia articles must be based on what reliable sources say, not based on what we personally consider suspicious or objectionable. Can you provide any sources that say the WHO investigation is related to a cover-up? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Seeing no response and no indication of a connection, I'll remove this material again. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:42, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be any consensus yet. as a WP:3O, The point about the WHO investigation being impeded by cover-up isn't actually disputed, and the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom, stated that the team had experienced difficulty accessing raw data on early COVID-19 cases.[2] Additionally the paragraphs removed are both relevant and notable to the article. Accordingly, I'm going to restore the content until a more coherent reason is detailed. Aeonx (talk) 01:44, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The investigation was delayed (like many other things have been in the past 18 months or so) and clearly there was some disagreement about who should have direct access to what data. But are there any sources that say this was related to a cover-up? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 10:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it's been widely reported as the reason for doing so, for example "The delay by Chinese authorities fuels concern that Beijing is obstructing international efforts to trace the origins of a pandemic that has now killed over 1.8 million people worldwide."[3], other sources: [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. It's standard Delaying tactic. The fact the Chinese authorities came out to specifically deny delay [10][11] is evidence of how much attention the delay got.Aeonx (talk) 02:30, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

A reminder that per Dictionary.com, a cover-up is "any action, stratagem, or other means of concealing or preventing investigation or exposure."[12] That's what we need, not the words "cover-up".Adoring nanny (talk) 02:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Recent changes re: Australian reaction

I thought we should "outsource" the discussion, since it gets a little far in with all the points and what-not. We could go point by point. --Leo Navis (talk) 10:51, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

So to the next point: Why do you want to take out the aggressive reaction to Australia's call for an independent investigation? --Leo Navis (talk) 10:57, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I can't see any indication that it's related to a cover-up. Are there sources that say it is? —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 07:07, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Per Dictionary.com, a cover-up is "any action, stratagem, or other means of concealing or preventing investigation or exposure."[13] Adoring nanny (talk) 12:06, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

How is that related to the diplomatic tiff between China and Australia? Please provide sources. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 05:03, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

It's right there in the first couple of paragraphs of the two sources for the text. [14] and [15], i.e. "Locked in a diplomatic brawl over Canberra’s call for an independent global inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 . . ." Adoring nanny (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, the Economist article does speculate that the conflict could be related to a cover-up. I'll add that to the article so that the connection is clear. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:02, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases

Rather than having a slow revert war about this material, I suggest we talk about it! The question here is whether or not this material is about a covid cover-up. Here is the definition from Dictionary.Com[16]: "any action, stratagem, or other means of concealing or preventing investigation or exposure." It does appear that Chinese authorities are preventing an investigation here, so I'm not sure what the objection is. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:18, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I replaced the source with a Foreign Affairs article authored by two well-reputed health security experts. I would also like to add Zhang Lifan's comments to DW but I am not sure of which section to add them to. What do you think of adding a new "Motivations" section? 79.70.190.198 (talk) 13:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

No images?

Why are there no images in this article? Frankly, it's a little bizarre. It feels dry and colorless. Mebigrouxboy (talk) 03:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)