4 ms·

This is an incorrect take, and deeply frustrating that it is so pervasive, given that there is literal evidence of it being wrong. China, especially Wuhan, was

This is an incorrect take, and deeply frustrating that it is so pervasive, given that there is literal evidence of it being wrong. China, especially Wuhan, was the center of the virus outbreak early in 2020. China successfully locked down and stopped the spread of the virus. Today, Wuhan and China in general has no community spread of Covid. So there is clearly a solution, even with out a vaccine. Our political leadership was too weak to make the decisions necessary to implement these solutions. Some readers may retort that lockdowns are a violation of democratic or constitutional freedoms, but there have been times in the past when these rights were suspended. During the civil war, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and jailed people without a trial. In extreme situations, extreme actions may be warranted. (The US will soon have more Covid deaths than US soldiers died in all of WW2, if you think my war comparison is unfair). China took extreme actions to enforce lockdowns and successfully ended the spread of Covid. America's leadership decided that peoples lives did not matter, and did not. Ultimately, I will be significantly more suspicious of any western politician who demands we go to war to protect lives, or give up liberties for personal safety. 2020 has shown that politicians would not take even the weakest measures to protect personal safety (e.g mask mandates) - exposing their lies in other domains as well. The war on terror was fiction. The war on drugs is a jobs program. And a 9/11 amount of deaths can happen every day and politicians will literally do nothing and people will demand nothing. I am deeply pessimistic about our future.

grumple 6y ago
It’s not just that the political leadership was lacking; our media and the people of the US also collaborated in this failure. There is no sense of community or duty amongst our people, only selfishness.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I mentioned in another thread [1] that COVID-19 was a gigantic game of Prisoner's Dilemma, where cooperation meant staying at home and wearing a mask when you go out, and where defection meant going out and horsing around, and we utterly failed the game. Since, I don't know... WW2, we seem to no longer have the ability as a country to act in coordinated cooperation for some greater good. It's all individualism, now. It's all about me, me, me! My rights! My need to go shopping! My desire to eat at Olive Garden! Other people are dying? Fuck em... I'm going to enjoy my life and not let "the man" tell me what to do! Wait, I got the disease?? Well, crap! Who could have predicted it? God certainly works in mysterious ways. 2020 has pretty much robbed me of what empathy I had left. It's insane how selfish we have become. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25577270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25577270
  - cmurf 6y ago
    You forgot the part where the selfish and decadent, upon becoming sick, demand not only the right to health care services, but the right to cutting in front of the line merely because they paid extra for the VIP health care plan. This is not a civil society. It is a caste system.
  - pbourke 6y ago
    > 2020 has pretty much robbed me of what empathy I had left. It's insane how selfish we have become. When I start thinking along these lines, I consider the doctors and nurses, firefighters/EMS, vaccine researchers, food bank volunteers, grocery store workers, open-source data volunteers, ... “Look for the helpers,” as Mr. Rogers said. I think that many people have been conscientious during the pandemic. They aren’t visible - they only show up in year-over-year measures of reduced traffic, etc. None of this obviates my frustration at the political and cultural response to the pandemic. Covidiots and maskholes still piss me off, but I don’t think they’re the whole story.
ryandrake 6y ago
The "stay at home orders" in the USA were so unenforced, they were jokes. Politicians wanted to seem like they were doing something so they rolled their eyes and enacted these half-assed "orders", making sure to forget to have the police enforce them. In CA, our brilliant governor told everyone to wear masks and avoid restaurants, then went out and had a fun maskless restaurant outing himself. Most people I know took stay-at-home seriously, but enough people didn't that it was totally ineffectual.

grumple 6y ago

It’s not just that the political leadership was lacking; our media and the people of the US also collaborated in this failure. There is no sense of community or duty amongst our people, only selfishness.

ryandrake 6y ago
I mentioned in another thread [1] that COVID-19 was a gigantic game of Prisoner's Dilemma, where cooperation meant staying at home and wearing a mask when you go out, and where defection meant going out and horsing around, and we utterly failed the game. Since, I don't know... WW2, we seem to no longer have the ability as a country to act in coordinated cooperation for some greater good. It's all individualism, now. It's all about me, me, me! My rights! My need to go shopping! My desire to eat at Olive Garden! Other people are dying? Fuck em... I'm going to enjoy my life and not let "the man" tell me what to do! Wait, I got the disease?? Well, crap! Who could have predicted it? God certainly works in mysterious ways. 2020 has pretty much robbed me of what empathy I had left. It's insane how selfish we have become. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25577270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25577270
- cmurf 6y ago
  You forgot the part where the selfish and decadent, upon becoming sick, demand not only the right to health care services, but the right to cutting in front of the line merely because they paid extra for the VIP health care plan. This is not a civil society. It is a caste system.
- pbourke 6y ago
  > 2020 has pretty much robbed me of what empathy I had left. It's insane how selfish we have become. When I start thinking along these lines, I consider the doctors and nurses, firefighters/EMS, vaccine researchers, food bank volunteers, grocery store workers, open-source data volunteers, ... “Look for the helpers,” as Mr. Rogers said. I think that many people have been conscientious during the pandemic. They aren’t visible - they only show up in year-over-year measures of reduced traffic, etc. None of this obviates my frustration at the political and cultural response to the pandemic. Covidiots and maskholes still piss me off, but I don’t think they’re the whole story.

ryandrake 6y ago

The "stay at home orders" in the USA were so unenforced, they were jokes. Politicians wanted to seem like they were doing something so they rolled their eyes and enacted these half-assed "orders", making sure to forget to have the police enforce them. In CA, our brilliant governor told everyone to wear masks and avoid restaurants, then went out and had a fun maskless restaurant outing himself. Most people I know took stay-at-home seriously, but enough people didn't that it was totally ineffectual.