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That's ridiculous - in the US, at least, our failure to contain the virus was clearly due more to a substantial portion of the population not wanting to contain
by s17n 6y ago
That's ridiculous - in the US, at least, our failure to contain the virus was clearly due more to a substantial portion of the population not wanting to contain it (and this ambivalence being correctly reflected in the government's actions) than any failure of governance.
Of course, these people were a minority, but that just leads to the question of the appropriate protection of minority rights in a democracy, to which there is no obviously correct answer.
- pasabagi 6y agoWell, in the UK, there are quite clear policy failures that led to deaths (two late lockdowns, 'eat out to help out', etc). It's not hard to see if you look at the graphs, and match them up to when the lockdowns were put in place. Polls showed that people in general were quite keen on lockdowns, as it so happens.
- neximo64 6y agoThe data is also as close as you're going to get to accurate in the uk. Just on the topic of comparing graphs.. Again you have made so many assumptions. Some countries have different methods for measuring covid deaths. For example you have to have tested positive before you died vs autopsy after vs if you died in a care home automatically covid.
- pasabagi 6y agoI think you're being disingenuous, but there are few raw facts that are worth noting. First, UK excess deaths are worse than the official COVID figures would suggest. This is under-reporting - and it's actually public policy to only include those who die within 28 days of being diagnosed with COVID, so it's not surprising[1]. [1] This policy has some good technical reasons behind it, but its political use is still a bit gross.
- neximo64 6y agoThis data is still not accurate, excess deaths is a very lagged dataset. Countries that have been upfront and honest with their numbers have high rates, another such one is Belgium. The difference isn't the government response it's the data.
- sneak 6y agoGovernance is accurately summarized as getting people to stop doing things they would have otherwise done, or to start doing things they wouldn't have otherwise. In that sense, it is absolutely a failure of governance. People not wanting to contain it didn't happen in a vacuum... except perhaps a leadership vacuum.