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Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

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Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#201

Post by newsbinator »

tomp wrote: post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted ou…

Even supposing politicians all act 100% selfishly, they'd still want to do everything possible to mitigate the effects of the pandemic: for themselves and their own families, even if for nobody else.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#202

Post by Pusha_Drugz »

It depends, a lot of european countries right now are banning events that have more than 1000 people, schools are closing down and simmilar places. Technically, they need to push the agenda even further as everyone should buy more so that the economy would not collapse as it is already near that

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#203

Post by gjm11 »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #114
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway. If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action. If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting. Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting. In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money a…

At the risk of being down-voted, I'm not trying to start a political debate. I'd just like to know, as someone outside the USA, how this is affecting the election campaigns there. Are personal costs of the pandemic encouraging people to support subsidised healthcare, and therefore a left-wing party? Or is the xenophobic rhetoric of "blame China/Europe/travellers/etc" causing people to support a right-wing party? I al…

I don't know the answer to your question, but in addition to the mechanisms you mention there's at least one more: there's some evidence that fear in general, and fear of death in particular, tends to make people more supportive of right-wing authoritarian government.

(I don't mean to imply that right-wing = authoritarian; I pair them together because my recollection is that the research in question was specifically about right-wing authoritarianism and not about rightism generally or authoritarianism generally.)

So (1) to whatever extent the GOP is authoritarian as well as right-wing, or at least pushes the same psychological buttons that authoritarian rightists do, it might benefit from having a population that feels afraid, and (2) maybe Mr Trump would have done better politically with something along the lines of "This is a deadly epidemic, sweeping in from scary foreign countries, and only your strong President can protect you and keep you safe". I guess the restriction on air travel from Europe may be intended as a bit of a pivot in that direction.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#205

Post by theandrewbailey »

fxtentacle wrote: post #43

TLDR: It's cheapest to let old people die, so that the young can continue working. A very cruel view on humanity, but I would be surprised if these thoughts hadn't crossed our politicians minds. Also, many initiatives by young people (e.g. limiting climate change, re-structuring society to be more equal-opportunity) are being blocked by old people who wish to preserve the status quo. So there is a general dislike by…

When was there ever free education in the US? Yes, tuition was vastly cheaper in the past, but it wasn't free.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#206

Post by XorNot »

alfromspace wrote: post #169
tomp wrote: post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted ou…

Wait, been I've been told "you can't just shut down travel", and that closing borders doesn't work, for reasons that are completely self-evident. So I'm utterly mystified that there are virtually no cases and 0 deaths in countries like Russia and Mongolia that closed their borders.

Two countries doing minimal or no testing are not reporting any cases?

Shocking.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#207

Post by macintux »

codingdave wrote: post #150
tomp wrote: post #31

I think it's a different reason. Let's analyze the outcomes from game theory perspective, along two dimensions: virus becomes pandemic or not, and governments do something or nothing. 1) no pandemic, no action -> government was "right", avoided wasting money -> reelected 2) no pandemic, action -> government was "wrong", wasted a lot of money, damaged the economy, inconvenienced the lives of the population -> voted ou…

You may be right.... but it is time to start voting out politicians who put their own careers above the well-being of their constituents.

Unfortunately, in the US system at least, you don’t get to vote out a politician. All you can do is vote in a different person.

That distinction makes for a world of difference in voting behavior.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#208

Post by nmeofthestate »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #195

I think Hanlon's razor applies here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". I'm in Spain, one of the countries that is doing way too little, way too late. When I see the measures and statements from our politicians, I don't see a machiavellian plan, I see stupidity. In fact, a prominent member of the government has been infected after attending feminist demonstrations on March 8…

Except there's not necessarily any malice exposed by this explanation.

To incur massive economic cost is literally deadly. For example, in the UK austerity is blamed for tens of thousands of deaths (some people say 130,000, others 30,000). The unpalatable fact is that trade-offs need to be made when deciding how to tackle this.

In the case of covid-19 I don't envy anyone who has to make these decisions, due to the exponential nature of infection spread making small changes in measures potentially have big results. We are all in uncharted territory. Hopefully the examples of countries such as Italy will help decision makers get it right, or perhaps more importantly will influence peoples' behaviour to reduce transmission.

Also, I think he's wrong about the Y axis equalling "deaths" - the point is to keep cases manageable by the health system, which minimises deaths. Dragging things out doesn't necessarily improve outcomes for at-risk people.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#209

Post by SamReidHughes »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #114
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Besides, it's a lose/lose proposition for the gov anyway. If they do act, people will blame them for the cost of the action. If they don't, people will blame then for the cost of not acting. Nobody will pat them on the back, except a few intellectuals, for acting. In fact, economically, the virus spreading is an opportunity to fire people you couldn't fire before, get rid of an old population costing money a…

At the risk of being down-voted, I'm not trying to start a political debate. I'd just like to know, as someone outside the USA, how this is affecting the election campaigns there. Are personal costs of the pandemic encouraging people to support subsidised healthcare, and therefore a left-wing party? Or is the xenophobic rhetoric of "blame China/Europe/travellers/etc" causing people to support a right-wing party? I al…

Well, it might have some downstream impact on public transportation proposals.

Re: Why some governments appear not to be acting on the Covid-19 threat

#210

Post by taw16092019 »

uk_programmer wrote: post #51
lazyier wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. It's just one guy making up random shit on a blog and is pretending that governments think like him. The reality is probably closer to the fact that there isn't anything governments can do about it. They can try to shut down the borders of the country, but that is going to a lot worse and probably won't stop it anyways. Just because governments can do something and do do something doesn't mean that that…

Russia shutdown its borders pretty much straight away and IIRC they have hardly any cases.

Except this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/17/blast-sparks-f...
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