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Legitimately humorous how the article associates America's failure with a communist distribution system, when communist countries worldwide have completely knoc
by ahelwer 6y ago
Legitimately humorous how the article associates America's failure with a communist distribution system, when communist countries worldwide have completely knocked their coronavirus response out of the park - so much so that it is considered unfair to compare America's atrocious coronavirus response with these countries instead of its "cohort" of countries failing just as badly, like the UK.
- est31 6y agoFirst the communist countries deployed extremely autocratic measures that wouldn't befit free societies. Second, their numbers are far more likely lies than the US ones. These countries are extremely adamant about their public image. That's why they sent police to a doctor's home in Wuhan instead of taking the problem seriously and maybe, you know, stopping international movement to that city.
- ahelwer 6y agoThis zombie they're lying about their numbers! cope needs to die. Look at Taiwan. Look at Korea. Both of them handled the virus fairly well, with much less extreme measures, and have good relations with the US so you have no reason to doubt their numbers.
- est31 6y agoThose countries aren't communist though. If something needs to die it's communism.
- ahelwer 6y agoYes, that's the point. You won't believe numbers from any communist country. So I provided nearby non-communist countries who have significant overlap in strategy, with good success, whose numbers you will believe. We can infer that even more stringent measures would have resulted in even better outcomes. Thus the communist countries are likely not lying about their numbers.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoBut neither Taiwan nor South Korea have had stricter lockdowns than the US.
- est31 6y agoAccording to WHO numbers, South Korea has almost as many cases (80k) as China (100k). I believe the SK one, but I can't believe the numbers for a big country such as China. They have 50 times the population of SK. Note that likely the number of infections is larger than the official numbers in the western countries as well. But I trust the ones from the west (or SK) far more than the Chinese numbers.
- loriverkutya 6y agoWhy should this they're lying about their numbers cope should die? They are lying about their numbers so you don't have solid data to argue with.
- peytn 6y agoOne is an island, and the other might as well be an island? I applaud their successes, but a year in, empirically what works in Hawaiʻi and Guam isn’t going to work in Chicago.
- EdwinLarkin 6y agoBoth Taiwan and South Korea's values are in direct contrast with what we call Western Values. Violating the right to privacy is one of them. South Korea's spying on its citizens is second only to China.
- ahelwer 6y agoFeeding grandma into the woodchipper as I somehow happily dream that the US government doesn't have its populace under total digital surveillance
- sova 6y agoAh yes, just lock people in their apartments against their will and they cannot infect other people, genius
- Fricken 6y agoWell, yeah. Hundreds of thousands of people would have died otherwise, like they did in America. Duh.
- ahelwer 6y agoOption one: Pay people to stay home, deliver them supplies & food, call them daily for medical checkup. Three weeks later everyone is free. If community spread is ever detected again, perform a similar citywide lockdown and test everyone (in a city of tens of millions of people) three times. The bureaucrat responsible for overseeing that city is fired. Option two: A year+ of half-assed rolling lockdowns with ever-receding end date, zero support, and a 9/11's worth of deaths every day. No public figure faces any consequences whatsoever. But you can go to Applebees!
- tinus_hn 6y agoUnfortunately option one is the fantasy solution that doesn’t actually work. It has been tried. It doesn’t work.
- ahelwer 6y agoOption one is China's & Vietnam's strategy for combating the virus, which has been extremely effective. Parts of it were also implemented in nearby non-communist countries such as Taiwan.
- EdwinLarkin 6y agoWhy is advocating for violation of human rights not a bannable offense?
- 6y ago
- smt88 6y agoNo one disputes that authoritarian governments do some things better. Even the Romans built it into their republic: they could appoint a tyrant during wartime to make quick decisions before returning power to the senate. It's incomplete (to the point of being irrelevant) to say that communists did Covid response better and not to mention all the other things they do worse. Given the choice, I'd still take a 10x worse Covid-19 over living under Xi or Kim.
- dirtyid 6y ago> they could appoint a tyrant during wartime to make quick decisions before returning power to the senate. That's the entire point - the fact that many contemporary liberal societies can no longer use such tools is worth introspection. Many countries had quarantine act or equivalent emergency power structure designed for pandemics, but what good are they if current political climate make them infeasible. This overlooks the fact that harsh authoritarian responses have been in line with epidemic response playbooks drafted by the CDC. It was what was expected. The myopia is thinking this is a choice between authoritarianism and liberalism, but between society where you can rely on leadership to do difficult things for the greater good versus one that cannot.
- smt88 6y agoWhat is a historical example of a country with a mechanism for "temporary authoritarianism" where that mechanism was not abused to create permanent authoritarianism?