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There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

by hwers 5y ago

iamthemonster 5y ago
Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.
- logicchains 5y ago
  Japan, with a population of around 126 million, only had 16,471 deaths so far from covid, a death rate of 0.013%. As a point of reference, there are around 20k suicide deaths annually in Japan. Japan didn't use harsh/legally enforced lockdowns; almost all their measures have been voluntary: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-surge-japan-sticks-lockdown-lite-2021-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-su....
  - indemnity 5y ago
    High social cohesion will do that.
Nursie 5y ago
Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time. Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily. The West had massively draconian laws during the last similar protracted existential problem, WW2, and gave them up just fine when it finished.
    - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
      Yeah we totlly gave up the New Deal and the military industrial complex...
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        I think you're possibly confused about what we're talking about here - those weren't restrictions on personal freedoms. A better analogy is blackout laws, which people railed against in the exactly the same way as lockdown laws. But obviously those powers went as soon as possible - literally the day Hitler died in fact.
        satronaut 5y ago
        a blackout law keeps an enemy bomber from dropping a bomb on my house. IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea." While in modern times, if you say "shut down the economy, increase alcoholism, suicides, mental health issues, homelessness, poverty, and inflation to defeat a virus with over a 99% recovery rate that really only effects old and unhealthy people" a rational person would raise their eye brow and say "that sounds suspicious and a great way to cover the fact that the last 12 years of money printing is about to implode"
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        > IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea." Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.
- Accacin 5y ago
  Honestly, that was mostly our government being incompetent. If our PM wasn't bumbling from one disaster to another, he probably would have tried to implement something similar to what Australia has proposed.
probably_wrong 5y ago
That's true. But it is also true that, in some of those countries, people fail to follow those rules. For a worst-case example, the Delta variant in Argentina was traced down to a man [1] who ignored the self-isolation rules and visited shopping malls and a restaurant. I can be probably persuaded that some specific regions can do well with voluntary quarantine. But I'd rather trust the local authorities to know what the best approach for their people is. [1] https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/23/case-zero-of-delta-variant-dies-in-argentine-province-of-cordoba https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/23/case-zero-of-delta-vari...
- marvin 5y ago
  Even Norway had lots of cases tracked to people breaking quarantine, after which police started checking up on them. I’d say an argument for not enforcing the quarantine in the hottest phase of a pandemic is in effect allowing such events to compromize things. Maybe you can argue for that, but we need to at least be clear on this detail.
femto 5y ago
When it all started in February 2020 that's exactly what Australia was doing, but a minority could not be trusted and broke quarantine and consequently COVID started spreading. At that point the model changed to mandatory quarantine in a government facility. There was broad community support for that change. In an ideal world people would have liked to have stuck with the voluntary approach, but most were realistic enough to see that an untrustworthy minority were wrecking it for everyone.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  This comment is revealing and truthful. It's almost been 2 years and most people have suffered. They blame and identify a minority for their suffering. It's one way that if you look at history minorities have also been identified. Scapegoat behaviour from the crowd is a response to senseless suffering and pain. It actually makes those who scapegoat others feel better and people want to feel better. Why would anyone volunteer to feel worse? Most people don't have empathy for those who scapegoat others but the pandemic is a great way to see this happening at various stages in real time across the world. Some countries don't have any, others more, some loads, some vary according to lockdown severity, others don't. How can one blame an invisible virus or an abstract political decision when humans traditionally blame each other? What's the end result if you buy into scapegoating as a personal psychological tactic? We will find out.
  - femto 5y ago
    Your comment conflates two meanings of the word "minority". The first meaning relates to a group with a shared inherent property, such as race, and is irrelevant here. The second meaning, which I used, simply means a small number of people. It's not an invisible virus. With the right tools we can see and track it. Up until the recent delta outbreak, COVID was being accurately tracked and contained in Australia, with the source of almost all transmissions known. Under these conditions, quarantine is pragmatic, not abstract.
  - beepbooptheory 5y ago
    These are probably good/important points in a totally different context, but in this discussion, talking about how the virus has been transmitted, and the effect of infected individuals to quarantine or not, it feels a little strange. problematic moral impulses notwithstanding, the virus does indeed transmit person to person

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

by hwers 5y ago

There's a ton of countries that just trusts its people to quarantine without the government checking on them.

Indeed, there are countries that have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people with their policies. But I can't think of a country off the top of my head that has applied laissez-faire Covid controls but also recorded very low numbers of deaths.

logicchains 5y ago
Japan, with a population of around 126 million, only had 16,471 deaths so far from covid, a death rate of 0.013%. As a point of reference, there are around 20k suicide deaths annually in Japan. Japan didn't use harsh/legally enforced lockdowns; almost all their measures have been voluntary: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-surge-japan-sticks-lockdown-lite-2021-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/covid-19-cases-su....
- indemnity 5y ago
  High social cohesion will do that.

Nursie 5y ago

Like the UK, where compliance has been estimated at around 40%?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joshuahughes 5y ago
When the alternative is invasive, Orwellian monitoring and inhumane enforcement by an authoritarian state, I'll take 40% compliance every time. Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Remember... governments NEVER give up these powers readily. The West had massively draconian laws during the last similar protracted existential problem, WW2, and gave them up just fine when it finished.
  - CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
    Yeah we totlly gave up the New Deal and the military industrial complex...
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      I think you're possibly confused about what we're talking about here - those weren't restrictions on personal freedoms. A better analogy is blackout laws, which people railed against in the exactly the same way as lockdown laws. But obviously those powers went as soon as possible - literally the day Hitler died in fact.
      - satronaut 5y ago
        a blackout law keeps an enemy bomber from dropping a bomb on my house. IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea." While in modern times, if you say "shut down the economy, increase alcoholism, suicides, mental health issues, homelessness, poverty, and inflation to defeat a virus with over a 99% recovery rate that really only effects old and unhealthy people" a rational person would raise their eye brow and say "that sounds suspicious and a great way to cover the fact that the last 12 years of money printing is about to implode"
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        > IMO, if you say to a rational person "keep your blinds down or else the nazi's will drop a bomb on your house" they'll say "gee that sounds like a good idea." Your opinion is not factually supported. A million people were prosecuted for breaking lockdown laws in the UK.
Accacin 5y ago
Honestly, that was mostly our government being incompetent. If our PM wasn't bumbling from one disaster to another, he probably would have tried to implement something similar to what Australia has proposed.

probably_wrong 5y ago

That's true. But it is also true that, in some of those countries, people fail to follow those rules. For a worst-case example, the Delta variant in Argentina was traced down to a man [1] who ignored the self-isolation rules and visited shopping malls and a restaurant. I can be probably persuaded that some specific regions can do well with voluntary quarantine. But I'd rather trust the local authorities to know what the best approach for their people is. [1] https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/23/case-zero-of-delta-variant-dies-in-argentine-province-of-cordoba https://en.mercopress.com/2021/08/23/case-zero-of-delta-vari...

marvin 5y ago
Even Norway had lots of cases tracked to people breaking quarantine, after which police started checking up on them. I’d say an argument for not enforcing the quarantine in the hottest phase of a pandemic is in effect allowing such events to compromize things. Maybe you can argue for that, but we need to at least be clear on this detail.

femto 5y ago

When it all started in February 2020 that's exactly what Australia was doing, but a minority could not be trusted and broke quarantine and consequently COVID started spreading. At that point the model changed to mandatory quarantine in a government facility. There was broad community support for that change. In an ideal world people would have liked to have stuck with the voluntary approach, but most were realistic enough to see that an untrustworthy minority were wrecking it for everyone.

thinkingemote 5y ago
This comment is revealing and truthful. It's almost been 2 years and most people have suffered. They blame and identify a minority for their suffering. It's one way that if you look at history minorities have also been identified. Scapegoat behaviour from the crowd is a response to senseless suffering and pain. It actually makes those who scapegoat others feel better and people want to feel better. Why would anyone volunteer to feel worse? Most people don't have empathy for those who scapegoat others but the pandemic is a great way to see this happening at various stages in real time across the world. Some countries don't have any, others more, some loads, some vary according to lockdown severity, others don't. How can one blame an invisible virus or an abstract political decision when humans traditionally blame each other? What's the end result if you buy into scapegoating as a personal psychological tactic? We will find out.
- femto 5y ago
  Your comment conflates two meanings of the word "minority". The first meaning relates to a group with a shared inherent property, such as race, and is irrelevant here. The second meaning, which I used, simply means a small number of people. It's not an invisible virus. With the right tools we can see and track it. Up until the recent delta outbreak, COVID was being accurately tracked and contained in Australia, with the source of almost all transmissions known. Under these conditions, quarantine is pragmatic, not abstract.
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  These are probably good/important points in a totally different context, but in this discussion, talking about how the virus has been transmitted, and the effect of infected individuals to quarantine or not, it feels a little strange. problematic moral impulses notwithstanding, the virus does indeed transmit person to person