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S.Korea is also effectively an island - water 3 sides + sealed N.Korea border. I don't think it's useful comparing large interconnected EU countries response ca

S.Korea is also effectively an island - water 3 sides + sealed N.Korea border. I don't think it's useful comparing large interconnected EU countries response capabilities against Asian Tigers islands (Korea, Singapore, Taiwan) with deep collectivist cultural roots and large demographics that still remember living under centralized authoritarian rule. In the case of Singapore and China, still are. Italy has too much travel, old demographics and interconnected borders to respond the way Korea did. And we don't even know if Korea is out of the woods yet, they got more clusters recently.

Fnoord 7y ago
> [...] deep collectivist cultural roots and large demographics that still remember living under centralized authoritarian rule. In the case of Singapore and China, still are. From Singapore's Wikipedia page: > Freedom House ranks Singapore as "partly free" in its Freedom in the World report,[137] and The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Singapore as a "flawed democracy", the second best rank of four, in its "Democracy Index" [1] Singapore is a flawed democracy, just like Hong Kong. Its unfair to mention it in the same breath as China which, according to the mentioned index, is Authoritarian. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
- Aeolun 7y ago
  And unlike HK, at least Singapore might stay that way.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  It's a valid comparison in the sense that both Singapore and Chinese governance structure allows extremely despotic interventions that other representative forms of governments cannot. The broad point that the countries that responded effectively so far either have the benefit of authoritarian mobilization capabilities or still have vast populations that experienced living under the shadow of authoritarian regimes. I don't think we'll see similar levels of compliance in the west, on top of actually having very difficult borders to police.

Fnoord 7y ago

> [...] deep collectivist cultural roots and large demographics that still remember living under centralized authoritarian rule. In the case of Singapore and China, still are. From Singapore's Wikipedia page: > Freedom House ranks Singapore as "partly free" in its Freedom in the World report,[137] and The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Singapore as a "flawed democracy", the second best rank of four, in its "Democracy Index" [1] Singapore is a flawed democracy, just like Hong Kong. Its unfair to mention it in the same breath as China which, according to the mentioned index, is Authoritarian. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Aeolun 7y ago
And unlike HK, at least Singapore might stay that way.
dirtyid 7y ago
It's a valid comparison in the sense that both Singapore and Chinese governance structure allows extremely despotic interventions that other representative forms of governments cannot. The broad point that the countries that responded effectively so far either have the benefit of authoritarian mobilization capabilities or still have vast populations that experienced living under the shadow of authoritarian regimes. I don't think we'll see similar levels of compliance in the west, on top of actually having very difficult borders to police.