time to rewatch "Chernobyl"?

The miniseries "Chernobyl" (recently reviewed here) is an excellent primer for how the Chinese government is handling the current outbreak of 2019-nCov coronavirus. First deny, then obfuscate. While that's going on, delay, delay, delay taking any real action for fear others will notice what you're doing and put two and two together.

A lot of wild-eyed people are screaming "pandemic" right now, mainly because China has placed travel restrictions on over 40 million of its citizens (how binding are those restrictions, do you think?). I think that, until I hear otherwise, the best thing to do is stay calm and practice commonsense infection-control measures, like masking up when in crowds and enclosed spaces, and frequently washing my hands. One snarky commenter on Instapundit remarked that this outbreak is a good argument for putting up walls. Heh.

Meanwhile, China's got other problems, as the following China Uncensored video interview shows. I'd recommend that you watch every second of this video, which divulges some information you doubtless already know or can guess, but which goes further and gives us a glimpse of the Chinese government's inner workings, its terror tactics, and what the average Chinese citizen is actually thinking these days. I watched the vid at 1.5X speed and could still follow the subtitles with no problem. Chen Guangcheng's fury is palpable.


The horrors described by the interviewee are nightmarish. What I found fascinating was how similar his testimony sounds to that of escapees from North Korea. China really is that bad, which I suppose means we can't expect much good to come out of this coronavirus outbreak. All the same: keep calm and carry on.