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Which non-capitalist countries have handled it better?

by travisoneill1 7y ago

lucian1900 7y ago
China, Vietnam, Cuba.
- rstuart4133 7y ago
  China: yes. Vietnam: it's gone exponential, so no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_V... Cuba: too early to tell. South Korea: looks to be under control, despite having patient 31 who is the worst super spreader of covid-19 on the planet. They are a capitalist economy. Taiwan: a capitalist country that looked to have it under control early (like Vietnam) but it now seems to have escaped and gone exponential. So far I'd say whether a country has got it under control depended on a whether a few key individuals in power decided to enact expensive decisive and control measures immediately. (Of course in hindsight they weren't expensive compared to what was to come, but it took a lot of balls to do it nonetheless.) The rest of us (including the USA) had to wait until most of civil society understood the risk and took action. I think that's happening on a large scale in every democratic capitalist nation now. Even if you have a Trump in power, the forces that unleashes are irresistible - everyone moves as a group to protect themselves. A hallmark of capitalist economies is they are very good at self organising. Those same forces aren't so irresistible in a non-capitalist non-democratic country, and they aren't so practised at self organisation. We now have a benchmark for how fast that happens in the internet age. Apparently in one month you can go from zero to the bulk of population on the same page, providing the facts are reasonably clear. (The highly infectious nature of SARS-Cov-2 was pretty clear from the start. The implications of what that meant were also clear to those who understood the math - but most had to learn and that takes time.) I find that speed kinda amazing, and it's a blessing bestowed on us by the Internet.

Which non-capitalist countries have handled it better?

lucian1900 7y ago

China, Vietnam, Cuba.

rstuart4133 7y ago
China: yes. Vietnam: it's gone exponential, so no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_V... Cuba: too early to tell. South Korea: looks to be under control, despite having patient 31 who is the worst super spreader of covid-19 on the planet. They are a capitalist economy. Taiwan: a capitalist country that looked to have it under control early (like Vietnam) but it now seems to have escaped and gone exponential. So far I'd say whether a country has got it under control depended on a whether a few key individuals in power decided to enact expensive decisive and control measures immediately. (Of course in hindsight they weren't expensive compared to what was to come, but it took a lot of balls to do it nonetheless.) The rest of us (including the USA) had to wait until most of civil society understood the risk and took action. I think that's happening on a large scale in every democratic capitalist nation now. Even if you have a Trump in power, the forces that unleashes are irresistible - everyone moves as a group to protect themselves. A hallmark of capitalist economies is they are very good at self organising. Those same forces aren't so irresistible in a non-capitalist non-democratic country, and they aren't so practised at self organisation. We now have a benchmark for how fast that happens in the internet age. Apparently in one month you can go from zero to the bulk of population on the same page, providing the facts are reasonably clear. (The highly infectious nature of SARS-Cov-2 was pretty clear from the start. The implications of what that meant were also clear to those who understood the math - but most had to learn and that takes time.) I find that speed kinda amazing, and it's a blessing bestowed on us by the Internet.