1/ I lived in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics and this was exactly why i got worried early.

This was during H1N1, and between that disease and the olympics, I was awestruck at how good they are at getting shit done on a massive scale. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1237502400199626752

2/ They built an entire new, modern, 10+ story office building across the street from me in 5 weeks. It was incredible, they worked day and night (it's awesome to see welders work at night). They painted a whole street near us (Chaoyang Park) grey overnight, storefronts and all.

3/ During H1N1 I was on a one-year tourist visa where you had to "visa run" every 90 days. The cheapest method was taking a sleeper train to Shenzhen, then literally just walk across the border into HK and turnaround and come back.

4/ They fever checked every single personnwho crossed the border at least 2 times I went through there (so 90 days apart). I thought this was nuts. They did not care how long the line was, EVERYONE got checked.

5/ This is why a forehead thermometer was one of the first things I bought. They are insanely useful if you need to check a lot of people's temperature rapidly.

6/ They also kicked out every single Mexican in the country while I was there, because Swine Flu aka H1N1 originated in Mexican. I think they gave them a week.

7/ The Olympics was insane. They built the equivalent of several small cities within the city of Beijing, and the whole thing went off perfectly. Arguably the coolest Olympics in living memory for a lot of us.

8/ The chinese don't give a shit, they will do ANYTHING to achieve their goals, and are very, very proud of this. And China can work at a scale heretofore unseen by mankind.

Whether you agree with those goals, (and believe me, they don't care) it was awe-inspiring.

9/ And Then came Covid-19. And the moment I realized that China, the country that could do literally anything, seemed to be losing? I started to get frightened.

10/ And then we all saw what they had to do to slow down the virus. Insane quarantine lockdown. Cideo of building being blockaded in. People being dragged into quarantine camps. It didn't surprise me that they went there, but they went AlL the way.

11/ "China vs Covid-19" was the match of the century, I feel bad for people who missed it. But China went 100%, and they've only landed in a stalemate.

12/ There are other countries that would go to the lengths that Chinese does, but they can't. They don't have the manpower nor money nor technical sophistication.

13/ China versus Covid-19 was Batman vs. Superman. And no other country can hope to replicate through sheer governmental power alone. Countries like Japan and Hong Kong are largely succesful purely do to social behaviour (isolation/distancing/mask) and very early prevention.

14/ Korea is doing a mixture of social behaviour (voluntary distancing) and governmental (tons of testing).

Iran had neither, and only time will tell the toll.

15/ The US is tepid on the social stuff, and insanely slow on the governmental side. By all accounts, this may cost us many American lives.

16/ I read a lot from complexity geniuses like @normonics @financequant and the Great @nntaleb. At they're one week class (RWRI), we modeled pandemics.

These guys were stocking up like crazy in January. We were "alll seeing the same movie" as @ScottAdamsSays would say.

17/ And that's why I agree with this article (see #1). I know China, and China gave Covid-19 everything they got, more than we (anywhere else) can possibly imagine giving, and they are tied. So I beg, please isolate as much as you can, please stay home, please be safe. 再见.