The Chinese government learned a lot from SARS: That was the message that Beijing and the WHO have been trying to hammer home for the past few weeks, even as the WHO on Thursday declared the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak a global health emergency.
Instead, as we saw with SARS in 2002 to 2003, the contaminated milk scandal of 2008, avian flu outbreaks and the outbreak of African swine fever in August 2018, to name but a few crises, the instinctive response of local governments and Beijing has been denial, obfuscation and the harassment or arrest of whistle-blowers, followed by downplaying the problem, and repeated pronouncements that everything is under control and will soon be over.
