3 ms·

I think it comes down to a few factors such as being more trusting of their government measures, being used to wearing masks because of poor air quality and als

I think it comes down to a few factors such as being more trusting of their government measures, being used to wearing masks because of poor air quality and also not having transparency. In China, for example, it's hard to tell what the situation was because reporting was very state controlled. Also I'm not sure if Asian countries are battling with disinformation campaigns/conspiracy theories as much as their western counterparts do.

yitianjian 6y ago
They are, but there is still more trust in the government. Speaking for the Chinese perspective - there are objective measures that most people can evaluate to say that their government has been successful. Sure, there's always disinformation on WeChat and such, but in general the central government is seen as competent and corruption is tolerated as an acceptable part of that. Remember that for the older generation, they literally went from rationing, food shortages, no education, etc., to now what we see of Shanghai/Beijing, their kids have decent access to higher education, travel, consumer goods, etc. Even South Korea/Japan/Taiwan have an older generation who can remember the difficulties of a past era. The real question is whether this trend can continue forward. My bet is yes for the foreseeable future, but no power system lasts forever. So while we're seeing the gradual (seeming) decline of the West, we'll probably be repeating the pattern in a few decades for East Asia.
nradov 6y ago
There appear to be other factors at work in Japan. Despite a high level of mask usage, a recent study found their infection rate was one of the highest in the world. Of course it wasn't a random sample so it's hard to tell what's really happening. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v...

yitianjian 6y ago

They are, but there is still more trust in the government. Speaking for the Chinese perspective - there are objective measures that most people can evaluate to say that their government has been successful. Sure, there's always disinformation on WeChat and such, but in general the central government is seen as competent and corruption is tolerated as an acceptable part of that. Remember that for the older generation, they literally went from rationing, food shortages, no education, etc., to now what we see of Shanghai/Beijing, their kids have decent access to higher education, travel, consumer goods, etc. Even South Korea/Japan/Taiwan have an older generation who can remember the difficulties of a past era. The real question is whether this trend can continue forward. My bet is yes for the foreseeable future, but no power system lasts forever. So while we're seeing the gradual (seeming) decline of the West, we'll probably be repeating the pattern in a few decades for East Asia.

nradov 6y ago

There appear to be other factors at work in Japan. Despite a high level of mask usage, a recent study found their infection rate was one of the highest in the world. Of course it wasn't a random sample so it's hard to tell what's really happening. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v...