China is having a beastly storm season...
... And it's just getting worse. Reuters says half a million people have fled in the face of Typhoon Saomai, expected to hit just south of the city of Wenzhou. It's looking to be the biggest storm to hit China in forty years. The BBC says 1.5 million have been evacuated.
More than 1.5 million people have been evacuated from their homes in south-east China as the strongest typhoon in decades swept ashore.
At least two people died and 80 others were injured when Typhoon Saomai struck with winds of more than 200km/h (124 mph), state news agency Xinhua said.
The Chinese authorities have deployed 20,000 soldiers for rescue operations in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.
I hope the Chinese government's response is better than our Katrina response. So far it seems to be. But then, the Chinese military isn't all deployed in ill-conceived imperial adventures overseas.
Saomai is the eighth powerful storm to hit China this year.
Typhoons and tropical storms are common in the region between July and October, but this year they have been unusually frequent.
Only a week ago, Typhoon Prapiroon killed eighteen people and forced 530,000 people to evacuate, while Tropical Storm Bilis hit on July 14th and killed over 500 people.
You probably think I'm going to point global warming, but if you've been reading Liberal Rage at all, you can draw those connections yourselves. I'm gonna take a left turn here and talk about bird flu for a sec.
The official number of those killed in Tropical Storm Bilis rose to 518 after journalists visited the town of Pingshi and found that the initial death toll had been too low.
Media reports suggest the difference was partly due to cover-ups.
The state government in Hunan threatened to punish officials who misrepresented the number of those killed.
Correspondents says Chinese local officials are often known to conceal bad news for fear of being punished.
What does this have to do with bird flu? Well, it's the same system of hiding bad news that led China to only admit it had bird flu cases in 2005. China has only just admitted it had a human bird flu case in 2003, and that's only after Chinese scientists published the genetic data on that case in the New England Journal of Medicine, and somebody in China ham-handedly tried to pull that report. From the Times UK:
The UN health agency called on Beijing to re-examine other pneumonia cases of unknown origin to ensure better transparency. But a Health Ministry spokesman said the 2003 case was not evidence of an outbreak then and said the Government had no plans to review other cases.
So the state government in Hunan is threatening to punish officials for low-balling the number of dead in a recent tropical storm. But the Chinese government only recently passed a law making it a crime to report on a "sudden event" in China without permission. They still see covering up bird flu as in their best interests. Plus, local officials are under pressure to maintain and improve productivity, rather than protect public health. This has negative consequences for Chinese workers on an ongoing basis, but it's also bad news for the rest of us. Should a flu pandemic (or other infectious disease event) begin in China, you won't hear about it there first.
As always, for up-to-date bird flu news, see Crofsblog, and for expert analysis on bird flu and other public health topics, see Effect Measure.
More than 1.5 million people have been evacuated from their homes in south-east China as the strongest typhoon in decades swept ashore.
At least two people died and 80 others were injured when Typhoon Saomai struck with winds of more than 200km/h (124 mph), state news agency Xinhua said.
The Chinese authorities have deployed 20,000 soldiers for rescue operations in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.
I hope the Chinese government's response is better than our Katrina response. So far it seems to be. But then, the Chinese military isn't all deployed in ill-conceived imperial adventures overseas.
Saomai is the eighth powerful storm to hit China this year.
Typhoons and tropical storms are common in the region between July and October, but this year they have been unusually frequent.
Only a week ago, Typhoon Prapiroon killed eighteen people and forced 530,000 people to evacuate, while Tropical Storm Bilis hit on July 14th and killed over 500 people.
You probably think I'm going to point global warming, but if you've been reading Liberal Rage at all, you can draw those connections yourselves. I'm gonna take a left turn here and talk about bird flu for a sec.
The official number of those killed in Tropical Storm Bilis rose to 518 after journalists visited the town of Pingshi and found that the initial death toll had been too low.
Media reports suggest the difference was partly due to cover-ups.
The state government in Hunan threatened to punish officials who misrepresented the number of those killed.
Correspondents says Chinese local officials are often known to conceal bad news for fear of being punished.
What does this have to do with bird flu? Well, it's the same system of hiding bad news that led China to only admit it had bird flu cases in 2005. China has only just admitted it had a human bird flu case in 2003, and that's only after Chinese scientists published the genetic data on that case in the New England Journal of Medicine, and somebody in China ham-handedly tried to pull that report. From the Times UK:
The UN health agency called on Beijing to re-examine other pneumonia cases of unknown origin to ensure better transparency. But a Health Ministry spokesman said the 2003 case was not evidence of an outbreak then and said the Government had no plans to review other cases.
So the state government in Hunan is threatening to punish officials for low-balling the number of dead in a recent tropical storm. But the Chinese government only recently passed a law making it a crime to report on a "sudden event" in China without permission. They still see covering up bird flu as in their best interests. Plus, local officials are under pressure to maintain and improve productivity, rather than protect public health. This has negative consequences for Chinese workers on an ongoing basis, but it's also bad news for the rest of us. Should a flu pandemic (or other infectious disease event) begin in China, you won't hear about it there first.
As always, for up-to-date bird flu news, see Crofsblog, and for expert analysis on bird flu and other public health topics, see Effect Measure.