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I don't think Covid-19 has shown that. A lot of world leaders maybe took a bit longer to react than they should have, but once it was clear that the virus was
by elihu 6y ago
I don't think Covid-19 has shown that. A lot of world leaders maybe took a bit longer to react than they should have, but once it was clear that the virus was spreading they acted sensibly to prevent widespread contagion and those countries now have rather low infection rates.
Some other leaders (i.e. Bolansaro, Modi, Putin, Trump, and probably some other leaders of countries where we don't even know how bad the situation is) have reacted poorly, leading to less good results.
Even in places like the United States which has been doing a terrible job, I am amazed at the scope of sacrifice that has been made to prevent the potential of millions of deaths, and by the generally high level of compliance with social distancing. It's not good enough, mind you, and those sacrifices will be for naught if we don't eventually get things under control, but having 90% of people in stores wearing masks is a lot higher than just about anyone would have guessed if one were to suggest this scenario as a hypothetical a year ago. I think most health experts expected about 50%.
Really, the whole world has been quite united I think on average despite poor leadership when you look at the actions of individual people. On the other hand, as pandemic fatigue sets in that early solidarity seems to be getting weaker.
- jarym 6y ago> but once it was clear that the virus was spreading Yes, once it was ostensibly too late to prevent a huge economic hit and significant loss of human life. The European response was atrocious, let’s not rewrite history - Italy happened because no one took action. And while Italy was happening the rest of Europe was debating whether its a violation of Schengen to be closing borders. And then as Spain happened finally other countries started locking down. Yes, once they too could no longer pretend it wouldn’t be a problem for them. If the same approach is taken with ice sheets then no country will care until they’ve lost a city or two. And no other country will care unless the ‘problem’ becomes obvious for them. And by then it will be FAR too late - a vaccine won’t exist to make seas levels fall again and undo all that damage.