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I agree with your sentiment. Simply censoring out arguments that aren't stated offsensively is not how healthy discourse works. That said I happen to disagree

by jpgvm 6y ago

I agree with your sentiment. Simply censoring out arguments that aren't stated offsensively is not how healthy discourse works. That said I happen to disagree with his conclusion. As can be seen from SARS, MERS and now again SARS-CoV-2 swift action by Asian nations has been effective multiple pandemics in a row. On the other hand Ebola, Zika and SARS-CoV-2 in African, South American and Western nations has exemplified what can happen if you react too slowly and without enough force. (worth mentioning African nations mostly learnt their lesson here and used the systems developed to combat Ebola to shut down Covid19 fairly rapidly). As a resident of Thailand I am probably somewhat biased but I see the lockdowns having been very effective here which allowed us to mostly return to daily life after only 4-6 weeks of extreme lockdown. This also follows for Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and even China after they were able to get everything under control. Arguing against something that clearly works and has allowed these nations to reignite their economic engines without fear of health system collapse seems disingenuous to say the least.

graeme 6y ago
OP’s view is indeed rather unusual and insular, and depends on ignoring the Asian and African experience. The West reacted slowly, too heavily (closing parks?), and then declared victory too quickly, and spent little time over the summer preparing any systems to actually beat the virus. I live in one of the few western areas that did beat the virus (the atlantic bubble of canada) and life is much more pleasant than elsewhere. It just took about six weeks more restrictions, and actually aiming at winning. Most of the west adopted a “just prevent the hospitals from collapsing” goal, which is a stupid goal if your only tool to do so is heavy handed lockdowns. You’re guaranteed to have yo-yo lockdowns. The only coherent strategies are developing an effective test/trace/isolate system or local elimination. The west doesn’t seem institutionally capable of the former.

by jpgvm 6y ago

graeme 6y ago

OP’s view is indeed rather unusual and insular, and depends on ignoring the Asian and African experience. The West reacted slowly, too heavily (closing parks?), and then declared victory too quickly, and spent little time over the summer preparing any systems to actually beat the virus. I live in one of the few western areas that did beat the virus (the atlantic bubble of canada) and life is much more pleasant than elsewhere. It just took about six weeks more restrictions, and actually aiming at winning. Most of the west adopted a “just prevent the hospitals from collapsing” goal, which is a stupid goal if your only tool to do so is heavy handed lockdowns. You’re guaranteed to have yo-yo lockdowns. The only coherent strategies are developing an effective test/trace/isolate system or local elimination. The west doesn’t seem institutionally capable of the former.