rejection<\/a> of an opposition motion calling for the establishment of a parliamentary research commission on the spread of the coronavirus on 30 January did not bode well for the full transparency and effective control required for this global health crisis.<\/p>\nChina should set an example in how not to respond to a major health scare.<\/p>\n
A one-party state with no free press, China initially arrested people who posted about a mystery disease as early as the beginning of last December, They were accused of spreading fake news and not being patriotic.<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organisation of the coronavirus outbreak on 31 December, before informing their own citizens.<\/p>\n
The SARS outbreak in 2002, was also initially hidden.<\/p>\n
As a result, there is little public trust in the Chinese government.<\/p>\n
Internationally, trust in Chinese government\u2019s full transparency is also low.<\/p>\n
Yet, the success of the containment of the coronavirus elsewhere depends on how well China controls the infection rate inside China.<\/p>\n
Full transparency and trust in authorities would also help the fight with another disease: misinformation.<\/p>\n
There are so many conspiracy theories, false and alarmist information circulating about the coronavirus in many countries, including Turkey.<\/p>\n
More worryingly, it is feeding xenophobia against people from China and other Asian countries.<\/p>\n
Like SARS and MERS outbreaks before it, the coronavirus will be contained and dealt with in matter of months; but the poison of racial hatred and paranoia will linger around much longer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This post was edited for correction of a figure relating to SARS outbreak.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The level of threat to Turkey from the rapid spread of the coronavirus, with its health implications as well as its economic impact, is not yet known. According to Turkish Health Ministry, there are no known cases of coronavirus in Turkey; but the virus that has already spread to 18 other countries outside China will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29682"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29691,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29682\/revisions\/29691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}