Les États autocratiques tels que la Chine sont-ils mieux équipés que leurs homologues plus démocratiques pour répondre aux
épidémies ?
Est-ce le signe d’un avantage autoritaire dans la lutte contre les épidémies ?
Authoritarianism, outbreaks, and information politics - The Lancet Public Health
▻https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30030-X/fulltext
For Amartya Sen, authoritarian states face serious challenges in information and accountability.6
Governments in closed political systems, without open media and opposition parties, struggle to receive accurate information in a timely manner and to convey urgent information to the public. Governments can be the victims of their own propaganda, because the country’s political institutions provide incentives to local officials to avoid sharing bad news with their central bosses and await instructions before acting.
Information politics in China undermined a rapid response to the 2019-nCoV outbreak. Health-care workers suspected an outbreak in early December, 2019,7
but information with which the public might have taken preventive measures was suppressed, and communication channels that might have alerted senior officials to the growing threat were shut down.8
Police detained a clinician and seven other people posting reports on 2019-nCoV, threatening punishment for spreading so-called rumors. Social media was censored; a preliminary analysis of Weibo and WeChat published on China’s biggest online platform9
showed outbreak discussions were nearly non-existent through much of January, 2020, until the Chinese Government changed its official stance on Jan 20, 2020.
Through much of January, 2020, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission reported no evidence of human-to-human transmission, no infection among health workers, that severe cases of disease caused by 2019-nCoV infection were confined to those with underlying conditions and older people, and that the Huanan seafood market was the source.11
Reports in The Lancet7
and New England Journal of Medicine,12
however, show that half of patients admitted to intensive-care units were aged 25–49 years, and two-thirds had no underlying illnesses. Human-to-human transmission and health-worker infection were evident before the Chinese Government made an announcement.12
This information either did not make it to authorities or the public were misinformed. The Mayor of Wuhan has said publicly that not only was information not revealed in a timely manner but also they did not use information effectively.10
By the time quarantine went into effect on Jan 23, 2020, five million people had left the city of Wuhan for holiday travel.10
Outbreaks were subsequently reported throughout China.
Without open media and an opposition to check on bureaucratic hierarchy, knowledge from the front lines of the 2019-nCoV outbreak did not reach Beijing. Weeks into the outbreak, leaders were forced to publicly threaten that officials withholding information “will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity”.4
