<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">On Mar 17, 2020, at 6:34 AM, John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Yesterday only one new case of locally originated COVID-19 was reported in China, it occurred in Wuhan where it all started. So the virus is not invincible it can be defeated, but of course China had a functioning federal government something the USA does not have.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">China has a president for life who disappears people. It has a highly centralized authoritarian government with attendant corruption. Its government also hid details about the problem early on and continued to be quite hazy on what was happened until it reached the international crisis stage. Their behavior here is like the Soviets during Chernobyl. Hardly something to emulate.</span><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">And this isn’t to praise Trump. No doubt, Trump would love if the US were as authoritarian as China, especially with him being able to silence critics and control the media. (He’s already shown his proclivity got this, though thankfully he doesn’t yet have that power... I imagine we’ll see future US presidents achieving that.:/) <br><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> Sample my Kindle books at:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://author.to/DanUst</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>