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I do not look to China's Covid-19 response as worthy of emulation. People were literally bolted into their apartment complexes. China has a gross disrespect for

I do not look to China's Covid-19 response as worthy of emulation. People were literally bolted into their apartment complexes. China has a gross disrespect for individual rights that the West should never, ever adopt. We don't even know what the extent of Covid deaths are in China. We actually have no clue, because all information is tightly controlled by the CCP. Anything coming from China should be viewed through a lens of skepticism. Meanwhile, from the viewpoint of Covid, I think Sweden showed that it would have been just the same results if we simply left people to make their own choices and decisions about how to react based on their own personal risk profiles and tolerance. This idea of centrally managing a mega region like Europe or the United States is absurd, and bound to fail. The states in the U.S. with the tightest regulations on Covid have had the highest death rates and the highest amount of social unrest. It's really hard to argue from that perspective that tighter, more centralized control of the citizenry is warranted, even without addressing the moral implications of it.

blululu 6y ago
A lot to unpack here. China's response to Covid is maybe not the best, but Taiwan provides an excellent example of how a democracy can responsibly react to a crisis. The author's point that western governments have become woefully ineffective can be seen in other examples. A lot of civil institutions in the west are languishing and this should be improved regardless of what's happening in some foreign country. Finally, the Sweden example is pretty demonstrably false. Compare the death rate between Denmark and Sweden (very similar cultures) and you will see the effect of doing nothing. The reality is that the US has broad bipartisan consensus to do very little about Covid and consequently we have seen very little progress in putting a stop to the disease and getting things running properly again. There are loose regulations, but they are not enforced. Most of the country's response has been purely voluntary on the part of citizens.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  When you actually dig into the deaths in Sweden, the vast majority were in the over 75 demographic, which is vulnerable to any disease or cause of death. They had several early outbreaks in nursing homes and assisted living facilities and once they got those under control, the virus fizzled out on its own among the younger population. There are currently only 13 hospitalizations in the whole country at this point in time. Sweden's economy has suffered the least in the Euro zone. There's also no great reason to not compare Sweden to France, UK and Spain. While Sweden and Denmark may have Scandinavian culture, it's not as if Covid discriminates based on culture. If you want to make some sort of genetic argument, you're going to have to back that up with some data and studies. Hospitalizations in the U.S. are currently plummeting, we've never hit anywhere near capacity for hospitalization, and the virus is fizzling out on its own. Each state has gotten to choose its own policy for Covid-19 (as they should, by the way), and some states have banned gatherings of more than 8 people, mandated masks in public, issued various stay at home orders, jailed business owners for daring to reopen, etc. Some states like South Dakota have never issued any restrictions whatsoever. There is no clear pattern in the data for policy, between countries or states. Indeed, there's a lot of confounding factors that make it difficult to infer the effectiveness of any region's policy choices. Taiwan, for example. Are their results on account of that they are an island nation with tight inflow and outflow controls or the fact that SARS1 and other weaker coronaviruses already disseminated in the population and therefore a higher amount of the population have natural immunity from fighting off a similar disease? If they haven't developed herd immunity, are they simply kicking the can down the road in the hopes a vaccine works? If not, will they forever be isolating visitors in 14 day quarantine to avoid an outbreak? That doesn't sound sustainable to me.
- hartator 6y ago
  > China's response to Covid is maybe not the best, but Taiwan provides an excellent Taiwan is not China.
  - cttet 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
ska 6y ago
Notwithstanding your point about the desirability/practicality of a China style response outside of china, this: " I think Sweden showed that it ..." has not been established yet so remains only one of a number of (potentially) interesting noisy data sets. Of course the range of response is much broader than US style incoherence to China style authoritarian control. There are bound to be a variety of interesting learnings from this range if we can get past personal/regional/national blinders.

blululu 6y ago

A lot to unpack here. China's response to Covid is maybe not the best, but Taiwan provides an excellent example of how a democracy can responsibly react to a crisis. The author's point that western governments have become woefully ineffective can be seen in other examples. A lot of civil institutions in the west are languishing and this should be improved regardless of what's happening in some foreign country. Finally, the Sweden example is pretty demonstrably false. Compare the death rate between Denmark and Sweden (very similar cultures) and you will see the effect of doing nothing. The reality is that the US has broad bipartisan consensus to do very little about Covid and consequently we have seen very little progress in putting a stop to the disease and getting things running properly again. There are loose regulations, but they are not enforced. Most of the country's response has been purely voluntary on the part of citizens.

chrisco255 6y ago
When you actually dig into the deaths in Sweden, the vast majority were in the over 75 demographic, which is vulnerable to any disease or cause of death. They had several early outbreaks in nursing homes and assisted living facilities and once they got those under control, the virus fizzled out on its own among the younger population. There are currently only 13 hospitalizations in the whole country at this point in time. Sweden's economy has suffered the least in the Euro zone. There's also no great reason to not compare Sweden to France, UK and Spain. While Sweden and Denmark may have Scandinavian culture, it's not as if Covid discriminates based on culture. If you want to make some sort of genetic argument, you're going to have to back that up with some data and studies. Hospitalizations in the U.S. are currently plummeting, we've never hit anywhere near capacity for hospitalization, and the virus is fizzling out on its own. Each state has gotten to choose its own policy for Covid-19 (as they should, by the way), and some states have banned gatherings of more than 8 people, mandated masks in public, issued various stay at home orders, jailed business owners for daring to reopen, etc. Some states like South Dakota have never issued any restrictions whatsoever. There is no clear pattern in the data for policy, between countries or states. Indeed, there's a lot of confounding factors that make it difficult to infer the effectiveness of any region's policy choices. Taiwan, for example. Are their results on account of that they are an island nation with tight inflow and outflow controls or the fact that SARS1 and other weaker coronaviruses already disseminated in the population and therefore a higher amount of the population have natural immunity from fighting off a similar disease? If they haven't developed herd immunity, are they simply kicking the can down the road in the hopes a vaccine works? If not, will they forever be isolating visitors in 14 day quarantine to avoid an outbreak? That doesn't sound sustainable to me.
hartator 6y ago
> China's response to Covid is maybe not the best, but Taiwan provides an excellent Taiwan is not China.
- cttet 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan

ska 6y ago

Notwithstanding your point about the desirability/practicality of a China style response outside of china, this: " I think Sweden showed that it ..." has not been established yet so remains only one of a number of (potentially) interesting noisy data sets. Of course the range of response is much broader than US style incoherence to China style authoritarian control. There are bound to be a variety of interesting learnings from this range if we can get past personal/regional/national blinders.