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This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, ver
by Fezzik 6y ago
This is fantastic news. I do worry about the US though. As far as I can tell huge numbers of people are still treating this like it is nothing. I base this, very expertly, on the sheer number of large Halloween parties I was invited to tonight... and how people (aged 28-40) are still mocking those who won’t congregate with 50 randos in a house. It’s very perplexing. And on the ever-increasing infections and deaths.
Also, don’t forget to vote.
Edit: spelling
- bmitc 6y agoThe U.S. is filled with blind exceptionalism and narcissism compounded with social media and propaganda running rampant along with oligarchs who care about little else than money. This election hopefully provides a temporary relief, but there are seriously deep problems at hand.
- labster 6y agoDon’t be such an wide-eyed optimist, the US election will lead to 3 months of strife in the best case scenario. Both sides expect the other will try to steal the election, so how is it going to relieve anything?
- bmitc 6y agoI honestly can't tell if you're joking or not. What part of my comment led you to label me a wide-eyed optimist? By "hopefully provides a temporary relief", I was thinking on a longer scale as in maybe sometime next year and more along the lines of getting to come up for a breath when we've had a hand holding our heads below water for four years.
- dehrmann 6y agoSomething I read (could have been on HN) theorized the only outcome that doesn't lead to social unrest is a Biden landslide.
- fxtentacle 6y agoMy impression is that both in the US and in most European countries, there is a dire need for new political parties to enter the mainstream. I mean this election is basically a forced choice between two grandpas and both are representing values from before I was born. Where's the political party that I would trust to do what will secure a good future for my kids, because they, too, have young kids? Where's the political party where people roughly my age are calling the shots? US, France, Germany, UK, ... All I see is conservative old people. Germany and France tried to establish new center parties, but in both cases the newcomers quickly got infiltrated by old politicians and drifted far right, meaning conservative again.
- Izkata 6y agoIMO this was the primary thing that got Trump elected in 2016: He was the outsider, a big "fuck you" to both major parties.
- 1_player 6y agoAnd we've seen the result. If I've learned anything atop my 33 wise years old, is that any political candidate that looks like a clean break from the old guard, is exactly the same if not worse than its predecessors. And this is just my cynicism: the corollary is that any candidate, new or old, is a bad choice, except extremely rare exceptions.
- iso947 6y agoUK is polarised by age - a minority of people under the age of 60 voted to leave te eu or voted Tory, yet we are leaving with a massive Tory majority. Labour’s last leader was magic grandpa boomer. The new one is slightly younger, come the next election he’ll only be in his early 60s. Lib Dems had a young leader who (aged 39) managed to convert from being second in the June elections (led by a 70+ year old) to losing her seat in December, with a 7 year old and a baby. There are relatively young leaders - Finland and New Zealand come to mind, but leaders tend to be reflections of the population. When the UK Labour Party was taken over by hundreds of thousands of young socialists via momentum in 2015, they didn’t chose the 45 year old (since christened king of he north), or the 46 year old with teenage kids, or even the 44 year old with no experience. They chose the OAP career politician.
- dehrmann 6y ago> I do worry about the US though Europe isn't looking much different right now.
- bmitc 6y agoWhy is Europe's status something to care about in the U.S.? China is basically operating on all cylinders right now. It's insane how people in the U.S. don't get the damage that's being done on literally all fronts right now. The past year has had irreparable damage to the U.S. It's hard to know where to even start, from slow production due to job loss and just everything going slower, poor health due to active cases and the decades of health care reverberations done from permanent damage and repeat infections, poor education due to an already broken primary and secondary school system basically being put on pause for a year, etc. The U.S. is literally fighting whether to re-elect a person who likely has clinical personality disorders and is probably well below even average intelligence, at the very best.
- dehrmann 6y agoNot long ago, it was popular to criticize the US's handling of the pandemic as a failure. Seeing the surge of cases in Europe makes what the US is going through look less exceptional and more expected. There's also no reason to think the level of containment China achieved is politically attainable in the west. Realizing it's "only" 180 cases, yes, China is firing on all cylinders: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-outbreak-in-china-linked-to-xinjiang-forced-labour https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/large-covid-ou...
- alisonatwork 6y agoDoesn't "the west" include Australia? I would think Australia and New Zealand count, and they've done a pretty good job. Canada has done a relatively poor job by international standards, but still much better than the US and the UK, who have both been roundly criticized in the Anglosphere. Although parts of continental Europe are struggling, there are others that have done okay - Norway and Finland, for example. Outside of "the west", democratic countries in East Asia like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have done alright too. Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have their political issues, but they're less authoritarian than Vietnam and China - the whole lot of them are doing well. Most of Africa is too. South America, not so much. So, it's not just about politics, and it's not just about geographic location, and it's not just about climate. It will be interesting to see the analysis after all this is over. There must be something we can learn from why it was that certain countries failed at managing this virus while others succeeded.
- dpc_pw 6y agoAre you worried about Sweden too? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MljLpcD0VWM Deaths flat in case you were wondering: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coronavirus https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sweden%20deaths%20coro...