Comment by Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee on What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?

Being so close to China, North Korea couldn’t be in a position to escape being one of the first to suffer. Kim Jong-un spent the first part of it saying it didn’t exist. What’s worse is health in North Korea is poor, so there were more casualties. Any true response was too late.

one of the first to suffer.

It didn’t outbreak until 8 May 2022 according to your source, so they made it until after Omicron evolved.

What they meant was there wasn’t an outbreak reported, not that there wasn’t one. Here’s a clearer source (same one as well) as long as someone else asked for one too.

The NPR article also has no evidence for an earlier outbreak. They just report what the North’s government stated, and add that the reader shouldn’t believe them.

Sure they share a border with China, but China had COVID pretty well controlled for a significant portion of the pandemic. That combined with the DPRK’s survival strategy of self-reliance make it seem plausible to me that they were clear of it until the vastly more contagious variant became dominant.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to the contrary.

Let me ask you something for the sake of discussion. What do you consider evidence of an outbreak?

epistemology is a big topic and we’re clearly operating on some contradictory premises/priors but I’ll continue to engage in good faith.

I think I’d consider the following as evidence of an event: photos/video, eyewitness testimony, and measurement data; each provided with provenance/traceability through the entire chain of reporting. Each reporting agent’s credibility on the topic plays a role in weighing the evidence.

Finally the believability (another big term) of the claim itself plays a important role in how much evidence is necessary for me to believe it. Here’s where I put on my internet atheist hat and reference the “Sagan Standard”: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and it’s corollary: a claim asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

The reason I asked is an outbreak is usually “in the shadows” until the community of medical professionals confirm it. And it’s not this I intend to reference though, but the fact many would be quick to jump at one country falling under the definition but not another (as well as individual states, as different states handled it differently). However we define evidence (even witnesses are hard, many people will say people dying in front of you wouldn’t be proof unless indicated by professionals), we’d have to apply it universally; the time period between the first suspected patient zero to the first confirmed case to the last confirmed case should be treated by the same rules in both countries, and in all countries. Depending on the standard, either you have both countries faring well or both countries not faring well.

Given North Korea is more private, that makes the latter the heavier choice, at least if you ask me.

It’s always the same bullshit. If they are handling covid well “they’re lying about their numbers”. If they report high numbers it’s “evidence they’re incompetent.”
What reason do I have to mistrust their numbers? They’re not the ones having lied to me for decades.
And it’s not like the US wasn’t lying about its own numbers

Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they’d murdered 20% of it.

This is your point? A snide one-sentence comment completely failing to engage with any bit of the argument? Do better. Interrogate why this is your reaction to being challenged

Those three words sum up every response I have for each point.

You’re gonna need a better source than Wikipedia, which has a ridiculous level of slant against the DPRK (look up “Propaganda village” if you need convincing)

Wikipedia, the neutral website that also somehow happened to protest with a Reddit-style blackout when Donald Trump tried passing those internet bills, has a slant against the leader’s party? Alright, I’ll humor you.

Also, completely unrelated question about that, how does one square someone having a slant against a political party, being on good terms with the political international that party is in, that party being in said political international, and that party being in a nation that works against anything about itself being publicized?

I’m confused, can you elaborate? The DPRK is North Korea’s name for itself. WPK is its majority party. Are you claiming they’re part of a political international that wikipedia is on good terms with?

Yes, I counted a few (there are eighteen Communist internationals).

Okay but which one is wikipedia aligned with? Could you link to your information? I’m trying to learn.

It’s not so much Wikipedia is aligned “with” anyone (in a favoritist sense) but that they are on good terms with them. Wikipedia lists a few of the internationals here, note how Communist internationals take up the bulk of internationals, some which share countries. The two most relevant ones are this and this one which star North Korea. Having never heard of a slant towards the WPK before yesterday, how this might be still piques my curiosity given the internationals seem fine, and the only thing that comes to my mind is how North Korea has, let’s just say a digital reputation.

What I was trying to imply was “if anything” is going to suffer their bias, Marxism is on their unlikelihood list.

Hahahaha ah yes the website with a massive nazi problem is going to be unbiased against Marxists, okay buddy

Did you even read your first linked article? It echoes what I’m saying now.

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