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Regardless of the dismissive comments from other HN posters, I'm still shocked at how incredibly inept the US has been at containing the virus. From the presid

Regardless of the dismissive comments from other HN posters, I'm still shocked at how incredibly inept the US has been at containing the virus. From the president down to the people, there's a fundamental problem in the US society in how people view this as a 'non-issue'

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
It’s exposed a fundamental flaw in US culture. Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. Individualism breaks down when you have to do something more for everyone else than yourself.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. Lol, what a crock of shit. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generous-country-but-americans-say-debt-is-keeping-them-from-giving-more-to-charity-2019-10-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generou... The issue is not individualism, it’s that a significant portion of the country literally thinks COVID is overblown and that we are shutting down for “a bad flu”. I’m extremely individualist but I take covid seriously and don’t spread it to others. Individualist != selfish.
  - sverhagen 6y ago
    Yeah, there's a lot of charity in the US. Which is then often used as an argument for low taxes, so it may be a net loss. But people here do get to tout their individual donations a lot.
  - kingofpandora 6y ago
    I'd be interested what counts as a charity ... I bet there are a lot that wouldn't qualify as charities by my own personal sensibilities.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. While it's true USA'ians are probably more individualistic than many other cultures and that may translate some way even to selfishness, the above quote is a gross, incorrect and offensive description, and I'm a brit. Please don't broadbrush entire cultures.
- yorwba 6y ago
  Maybe a deeper issue is that people don't think of it as protecting themselves. When the pandemic first got started in China and my Chinese friends started buying particle filter masks en masse, it did not feel like they were doing it for the benefit of others. Same with individual municipalities setting up road blocks or requiring quarantine for travelers from other parts of the country. They were just selfishly trying to keep the virus away. In contrast to that, once the pandemic reached Germany, I assumed the government would handle it somehow. Turns out a large part of the government response is just telling people to behave as if they were trying really hard not to get infected.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    And people in Germany still are shouting how it's becoming a dictatorship... A lot of the things the Chinese government did was only possible because they're not a democracy which has to answer to the courts
- jrs235 6y ago
  I was also going to comment on how individualism plays in this and US culture. It also doesn't help that the visible "leader" of the US happens to be an extreme narcissist. Due to trickle down culture, behaviors, and attitudes things are getting worse. I'm see the following becoming the motto across a large segment of the population: "Rules (laws) for thee, not for me." Which follows the idea of tribalism and the hidden and unconscious idea of the ingroup and outgroup and that government and laws exist to protect the ingroup from the outgroup. I have had less liberal ideas most my life. I have recently come to say "eff it, climate change whether real or not (I think it's real)and regardless of whether we humans can do anything about it or not (the forces of the universe may still be greater than we can handle and out of our control, we can either come together and take on/fight nature, or we can continue to form tribes and fight each other." Humans seem to need an enemy or something to fight and resist. Let's restore the environment. Yes, there will always be humans who want power, money, and control. Not sure what the best solution is to address that.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    I'd suggest that it's the other way around. He doesn't just "happen" to be an extreme narcissist. It's why he was chosen. It trickles up, rather than down.
    - jrs235 6y ago
      Ugh. That may ALSO be true. Which would make this a self reinforcing and growing problem.
sverhagen 6y ago
Is this so very exclusive to the US? Trump takes the biggest spotlight, but there's plenty of trouble in South America, is there not? Europe has generally been a bit luckier, but not by a whole lot, and certainly not Italy, and they're also getting quite nervous again now. But yeah, it seems some Asian countries have done a substantially better job. Yey for South Korea. I'm not saying the US doesn't have the worst numbers, but just that there's still a lot of mismanagement and denial in the rest of the world too.
- makomk 6y ago
  It isn't. The mainstream American media has been actively misleading the public there about how the rest of the world (including Europe) is doing and how it compares to the US for openly partisan political reasons, especially for example the New York Times.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Two party states lead to tribalism. The party that wasn't in power at the time was the first to talk about containing it, and that led the other party to practically be against containing it. Such is how U.S.A. political issues tend to be decided.
- leovingi 6y ago
  What are you talking about? Pelosi was encouraging people to go out and visit Chinatown in February, while Trump was talking about shutting down travel from China in January. Which one of those approaches sounds like containment to you?
  - _jgdh 6y ago
    How racist do you have to be to equate people in Chinatown with the virus? At a time when there were less than 10 cases in the US, the risk of visiting Chinatown was minimal. And it's curious that you focus on Chinatown in February instead of 300 days of minimising mask wearing and calling for LIBERATING states from coronavirus restrictions.
    - leovingi 6y ago
      Yes, I was obviously being racist instead of talking about decreasing the amount of people going out to restaurants and other public places, which is the main focus of the current containment measures all around the Western world. And if you think that one set of containment measures is better than another (masks vs shutting down travel vs closing down public places), then that's a separate discussion to OP's comment who clearly stated that one political party tried to contain it while the other one did not, which is complete tribal nonsense. PS - you should apologize for the racism comment.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    Neither sounds like containment to me. Shutting down flights from China was for show. The virus was already spreading inside the US, and infected people continued to fly in from Europe. Trump's brand is being tough on borders, so he shut down travel from China, declared victory, and then did nothing. Months later, after nearly 300k confirmed deaths, Trump still boasts about closing down travel from China - one minimally impactful measure he took early on. Here's what real containment would have been in late January and early February: ramping up testing and contact tracing as quickly as possible, maybe even locking down cities and grounding flights. That might have been politically impossible back then, but Trump wasn't pushing in that direction at all. He was worried about reassuring the markets.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago

It’s exposed a fundamental flaw in US culture. Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. Individualism breaks down when you have to do something more for everyone else than yourself.

kortilla 6y ago
> Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. Lol, what a crock of shit. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generous-country-but-americans-say-debt-is-keeping-them-from-giving-more-to-charity-2019-10-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generou... The issue is not individualism, it’s that a significant portion of the country literally thinks COVID is overblown and that we are shutting down for “a bad flu”. I’m extremely individualist but I take covid seriously and don’t spread it to others. Individualist != selfish.
- sverhagen 6y ago
  Yeah, there's a lot of charity in the US. Which is then often used as an argument for low taxes, so it may be a net loss. But people here do get to tout their individual donations a lot.
- kingofpandora 6y ago
  I'd be interested what counts as a charity ... I bet there are a lot that wouldn't qualify as charities by my own personal sensibilities.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
> Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves. While it's true USA'ians are probably more individualistic than many other cultures and that may translate some way even to selfishness, the above quote is a gross, incorrect and offensive description, and I'm a brit. Please don't broadbrush entire cultures.
yorwba 6y ago
Maybe a deeper issue is that people don't think of it as protecting themselves. When the pandemic first got started in China and my Chinese friends started buying particle filter masks en masse, it did not feel like they were doing it for the benefit of others. Same with individual municipalities setting up road blocks or requiring quarantine for travelers from other parts of the country. They were just selfishly trying to keep the virus away. In contrast to that, once the pandemic reached Germany, I assumed the government would handle it somehow. Turns out a large part of the government response is just telling people to behave as if they were trying really hard not to get infected.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  And people in Germany still are shouting how it's becoming a dictatorship... A lot of the things the Chinese government did was only possible because they're not a democracy which has to answer to the courts
jrs235 6y ago
I was also going to comment on how individualism plays in this and US culture. It also doesn't help that the visible "leader" of the US happens to be an extreme narcissist. Due to trickle down culture, behaviors, and attitudes things are getting worse. I'm see the following becoming the motto across a large segment of the population: "Rules (laws) for thee, not for me." Which follows the idea of tribalism and the hidden and unconscious idea of the ingroup and outgroup and that government and laws exist to protect the ingroup from the outgroup. I have had less liberal ideas most my life. I have recently come to say "eff it, climate change whether real or not (I think it's real)and regardless of whether we humans can do anything about it or not (the forces of the universe may still be greater than we can handle and out of our control, we can either come together and take on/fight nature, or we can continue to form tribes and fight each other." Humans seem to need an enemy or something to fight and resist. Let's restore the environment. Yes, there will always be humans who want power, money, and control. Not sure what the best solution is to address that.
- jfengel 6y ago
  I'd suggest that it's the other way around. He doesn't just "happen" to be an extreme narcissist. It's why he was chosen. It trickles up, rather than down.
  - jrs235 6y ago
    Ugh. That may ALSO be true. Which would make this a self reinforcing and growing problem.

sverhagen 6y ago

Is this so very exclusive to the US? Trump takes the biggest spotlight, but there's plenty of trouble in South America, is there not? Europe has generally been a bit luckier, but not by a whole lot, and certainly not Italy, and they're also getting quite nervous again now. But yeah, it seems some Asian countries have done a substantially better job. Yey for South Korea. I'm not saying the US doesn't have the worst numbers, but just that there's still a lot of mismanagement and denial in the rest of the world too.

makomk 6y ago
It isn't. The mainstream American media has been actively misleading the public there about how the rest of the world (including Europe) is doing and how it compares to the US for openly partisan political reasons, especially for example the New York Times.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Two party states lead to tribalism. The party that wasn't in power at the time was the first to talk about containing it, and that led the other party to practically be against containing it. Such is how U.S.A. political issues tend to be decided.

leovingi 6y ago
What are you talking about? Pelosi was encouraging people to go out and visit Chinatown in February, while Trump was talking about shutting down travel from China in January. Which one of those approaches sounds like containment to you?
- _jgdh 6y ago
  How racist do you have to be to equate people in Chinatown with the virus? At a time when there were less than 10 cases in the US, the risk of visiting Chinatown was minimal. And it's curious that you focus on Chinatown in February instead of 300 days of minimising mask wearing and calling for LIBERATING states from coronavirus restrictions.
  - leovingi 6y ago
    Yes, I was obviously being racist instead of talking about decreasing the amount of people going out to restaurants and other public places, which is the main focus of the current containment measures all around the Western world. And if you think that one set of containment measures is better than another (masks vs shutting down travel vs closing down public places), then that's a separate discussion to OP's comment who clearly stated that one political party tried to contain it while the other one did not, which is complete tribal nonsense. PS - you should apologize for the racism comment.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  Neither sounds like containment to me. Shutting down flights from China was for show. The virus was already spreading inside the US, and infected people continued to fly in from Europe. Trump's brand is being tough on borders, so he shut down travel from China, declared victory, and then did nothing. Months later, after nearly 300k confirmed deaths, Trump still boasts about closing down travel from China - one minimally impactful measure he took early on. Here's what real containment would have been in late January and early February: ramping up testing and contact tracing as quickly as possible, maybe even locking down cities and grounding flights. That might have been politically impossible back then, but Trump wasn't pushing in that direction at all. He was worried about reassuring the markets.