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I'm not sure it's fair to compare an authoritarian country to a western country that's nominally free. What western government could pull off welding doors shu

I'm not sure it's fair to compare an authoritarian country to a western country that's nominally free. What western government could pull off welding doors shut the way they did in China? Even if the government had emergency powers that "allowed" it, would they have had willing workers to do it?

coldtea 5y ago
>What western government could pull off welding doors shut the way they did in China? Western governments have pulled all kinds of restrictions themselves, from curfews, closed borders, and "let's close all retail businesses" restrictions, to mandatory movement monitoring. Heck, Italy might not have welded doors, but had the Army patrol to enforce strict lockdown, and citizens in northerns cities stay inside. Sometimes this even meant closing them in-house with the corpses of their dead (from covid) relatives for several days. There were several such reported cases, e.g.: https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-italy-woman-trapped-in-apartment-with-dead-husband-as-country-remains-in-lockdown-c-741018 https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-... https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-italy-family-trapped-in-house-with-infected-body-for-36-hours-in-naples-c-739169 https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-...
- lostapathy 5y ago
  Announcing restrictions and enforcing them are two separate animals. There are not enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses, let alone confining people to their homes. Especially not when half the populace sees it as a political infringement of their rights.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I'm not sure about there not being "enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses". There's not enough police to enforce no traffic violations at all either (what would that be, a traffic cop for every street or car?). That's not how laws work, you just need to make a law/rule and collect fines from the businesses that violated it. If there wasn't the political will to do so in the states, that's another thing. But in at least a couple of countries in the EU I know of, all businesses were closed (by government decree) except explicitly whitelisted "necessary" shopping (like groceries, drugstores, and such) for months on end.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      You say that's not how laws work and then you basically say he's rihght. You say you "just need to... collect fines". And that is the OP's point. Without enforcement you do not get relevant levels of compliance. Just upping the fines seems easy but if your enforcement percentage is 0 (or close enough to 0 as felt by citizens) you will not get compliance. Theres a balance if you ask me. If it costs $5000 to be caught after curfew but police go home when curfew hits too instead of patrolling the streets, you will likely have no compliance. If you get caught at least 50% of the time then $5000 probably isn't even necessary and say $1000 will be 'enough' for most people.
cma 5y ago
I believe in those instances they welded backdoors while the front door was monitored by the community enforcement people to make sure each family only sent one member to the grocery store a week, etc. It was also at the outbreak, so you would hope we would have some strong measures at the very beginning when there is highest risk and greatest benefit to the rest of the country and world from strict quarantine. I don't know that we would have done anything similar for this one if we were ground zero, but hopefully we would have for something like aerosolized Ebola with a contagious yet symptom-free incubation time. We did come close to doing some similar things to welding to the Grand Princess cruise ship early on.

coldtea 5y ago

>What western government could pull off welding doors shut the way they did in China? Western governments have pulled all kinds of restrictions themselves, from curfews, closed borders, and "let's close all retail businesses" restrictions, to mandatory movement monitoring. Heck, Italy might not have welded doors, but had the Army patrol to enforce strict lockdown, and citizens in northerns cities stay inside. Sometimes this even meant closing them in-house with the corpses of their dead (from covid) relatives for several days. There were several such reported cases, e.g.: https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-italy-woman-trapped-in-apartment-with-dead-husband-as-country-remains-in-lockdown-c-741018 https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-... https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-italy-family-trapped-in-house-with-infected-body-for-36-hours-in-naples-c-739169 https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-...

lostapathy 5y ago
Announcing restrictions and enforcing them are two separate animals. There are not enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses, let alone confining people to their homes. Especially not when half the populace sees it as a political infringement of their rights.
- coldtea 5y ago
  I'm not sure about there not being "enough police in most of the US to actually enforce closing businesses". There's not enough police to enforce no traffic violations at all either (what would that be, a traffic cop for every street or car?). That's not how laws work, you just need to make a law/rule and collect fines from the businesses that violated it. If there wasn't the political will to do so in the states, that's another thing. But in at least a couple of countries in the EU I know of, all businesses were closed (by government decree) except explicitly whitelisted "necessary" shopping (like groceries, drugstores, and such) for months on end.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    You say that's not how laws work and then you basically say he's rihght. You say you "just need to... collect fines". And that is the OP's point. Without enforcement you do not get relevant levels of compliance. Just upping the fines seems easy but if your enforcement percentage is 0 (or close enough to 0 as felt by citizens) you will not get compliance. Theres a balance if you ask me. If it costs $5000 to be caught after curfew but police go home when curfew hits too instead of patrolling the streets, you will likely have no compliance. If you get caught at least 50% of the time then $5000 probably isn't even necessary and say $1000 will be 'enough' for most people.

cma 5y ago

I believe in those instances they welded backdoors while the front door was monitored by the community enforcement people to make sure each family only sent one member to the grocery store a week, etc. It was also at the outbreak, so you would hope we would have some strong measures at the very beginning when there is highest risk and greatest benefit to the rest of the country and world from strict quarantine. I don't know that we would have done anything similar for this one if we were ground zero, but hopefully we would have for something like aerosolized Ebola with a contagious yet symptom-free incubation time. We did come close to doing some similar things to welding to the Grand Princess cruise ship early on.