3 ms·

> Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. You realize there are dozens of other nations that saw the same virus, right? T

> Without a counterfactual, it is hard to know what could have made it better. You realize there are dozens of other nations that saw the same virus, right? That seems like a nonsensical response to me, as if you're asking "Well, who could have known?". Well, Germany. Germany seems to have known. Also Japan, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (especially those guys)... Even nations like Spain and Belgium, which had disastrous early outbreaks got it under control at a time when we had a huge second wave. You really don't think we have anything to learn from that data? > my money is on prior exposure to corona and sars being the largest contributors to places that have "done better." Uh... what? Let's ignore the pseudoscience argument and just talk demographics: you're saying that the United States, alone among all nations in the industrialized world, was unique in that it had no prior exposure to pre-existing coronavirii. Everywhere else in the industrialized world, every nation, had large pre-existing immunity? That's what you're going with? And you think that makes sense?

taeric 6y ago
There is decent evidence that the US did a worse job than other places. That I cannot and do not disagree with. What we don't have is evidence of what exactly would have been different if the US did other things. So, in that, we don't have perfect counterfactuals and I think most of the news has been more speculation on how much better it could have gone than folks are admitting to. There is also the chance that things would have been just as bad as this basically no matter what. (The cynic in me asks "could native populations have just followed social distancing to save themselves from measles and smallpox?" The answer could be "yes", but that feels off to me.) I'll ignore you being a jackass, and claim I am not saying we are alone in anything. This is a global pandemic of a novel virus. That is not really in dispute. The US is marked in how the numbers are, and there is every chance we remain that way. I just have a hard time reconciling much of the news of how contagious this is, with how well anyone contained it, without using something like vaccination. That would make this not just a novel virus, but a new one that has been contained in ways that we have never contained a virus before.

taeric 6y ago

There is decent evidence that the US did a worse job than other places. That I cannot and do not disagree with. What we don't have is evidence of what exactly would have been different if the US did other things. So, in that, we don't have perfect counterfactuals and I think most of the news has been more speculation on how much better it could have gone than folks are admitting to. There is also the chance that things would have been just as bad as this basically no matter what. (The cynic in me asks "could native populations have just followed social distancing to save themselves from measles and smallpox?" The answer could be "yes", but that feels off to me.) I'll ignore you being a jackass, and claim I am not saying we are alone in anything. This is a global pandemic of a novel virus. That is not really in dispute. The US is marked in how the numbers are, and there is every chance we remain that way. I just have a hard time reconciling much of the news of how contagious this is, with how well anyone contained it, without using something like vaccination. That would make this not just a novel virus, but a new one that has been contained in ways that we have never contained a virus before.