101–110 of 363 posts
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I'd argue there's no direct correlation. There are societies with lesser regard for rationality doing just fine too. Several countries not in "the path of the storm" can claim credit for anything they did and didn't do as having stopped covid to the point of superstition. Id credit Germans' preference of beer just as much as their February/March response or their penchant for rationality. It's a form of collective su…
> Rational, educated populace doesnt explain away the difference between Italy vs Austria, Belgium & Netherlands vs Germany, the US vs Canada In the case of US vs Canada, perhaps it does. Canadians have a high level of trust in expert civil servants, including public health officials. There is also a general Canadian pragmatism that kicks in: politicians from across the country and across the political spectrum have…
remember that in the US, we're still barely in the beginning of this thing. trying to claim correctness of action is largely meaningless as we neither have herd immunity nor have felt the economic impacts of our policies. 9/10 NYC business can't pay full rent
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574314
personally, it seems the economic dangers are far larger than the health effects at this point. with that lens, id prefer a republican next term, even if its trump. well, id prefer a libertarian (and the first female president at that!) but thats a nonstarter for some reason.
The pandemic is the match, but I’m going to blame the pile of kerosene soaked rags.
Societies with largely rational, educated populace are weathering COVID just fine, wrt. democracy and respect for human rights.
My point is education does not equal to rationality, and democracy is not good but it is the best system we had so far.
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That must be a joke. Bolsonaro endorsed the protests of a far right movement that literally wants to "return to military rule under Bolsonaro"
I thought protests were democratic and A Good Thing™?
See also Paradox of Tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
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> Rational, educated populace doesnt explain away the difference between Italy vs Austria, Belgium & Netherlands vs Germany, the US vs Canada In the case of US vs Canada, perhaps it does. Canadians have a high level of trust in expert civil servants, including public health officials. There is also a general Canadian pragmatism that kicks in: politicians from across the country and across the political spectrum have…
> In the case of US vs Canada remember that in the US, we're still barely in the beginning of this thing. trying to claim correctness of action is largely meaningless as we neither have herd immunity nor have felt the economic impacts of our policies. 9/10 NYC business can't pay full rent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24574314 personally, it seems the economic dangers are far larger than the health effects at…
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Societies with largely rational, educated populace are weathering COVID just fine, wrt. democracy and respect for human rights.
I'd argue there's no direct correlation. There are societies with lesser regard for rationality doing just fine too. Several countries not in "the path of the storm" can claim credit for anything they did and didn't do as having stopped covid to the point of superstition. Id credit Germans' preference of beer just as much as their February/March response or their penchant for rationality. It's a form of collective su…
That only played a role very early on, at the beginning of the pandemic, when imported cases drove spread of the virus.
As the pandemic goes on, community spread becomes the dominant factor, so policies that affect transmission can have a huge effect.
The most dramatic example of this is China. The virus began there, so they had zero time to prepare. They were more "in the path of the storm" than anyone. There was a major outbreak in Hubei province, and the virus gained a foothold in every major city in the country. But then, beginning in late January, China had an extremely strict lockdown that lasted several weeks. Transmission chains ended, and the prevalence of the virus was brought down to a minimal level. Since then, extensive testing and symptom checks in public have kept the epidemic from resurging, and the government has reacted with immediate lockdowns wherever the virus has resurfaced. Compare that to the US (and many countries, though the US is one of the most extreme examples), where the epidemic has been allowed to continue for months.
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QE for 2008 recession will pale in comparison with QE for the pandemic. 22% of all US dollars that exist were created in 2020. Expect some serious inflation to happen in the next few years. But we are still nowhere near Weimar levels of money printing, so that’s something. Except in places like Zimbabwe and Venezuela of course but that was happening before COVID.
I think this is quite telling that the economic aspects almost immediately pops up. I believe that over the decades we have shifted more and more from "people first" to "economy first", to the point that sometimes it feels like people exist only to serve economy.
I don’t see these as mutually exclusive. The state of the economy dictates what we can afford in terms of healthcare, infrastructure, education, defence and much more. It is directly correlated with life expectancy and quality of life. Sure top-line numbers don’t tell the whole story, but they do tell a lot of it.
In my country at least a lot of that has to do with the media and our current supreme court. Despite Brazil having the most advanced constitution in the world regarding human rights, local leaders have been ignoring it outright, and when the president complained the media portrayed the president as a genocidal dictator, and when the president sued the governors and mayors to force them to obey the constitution, the s…
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Because he is in the same ballpark of the other 3, denial of the covid dangers, a strong sentiment of economy over people lives and the call to sacrifice Isn Boris Johnson who said “I must level with you, I must level with the British public, Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” just to keep the business going? I'm sorry but UK had it very bad under Johnson, it's an undeniable fact.
> a strong sentiment of economy over people lives Huh? No you've got it backwards - the argument at the moment is the Johnson is being too careful to protect people at the expense of the economy - the opposite of what you've claimed. https://www.ft.com/content/7bb3e4b5-7dc7-464d-904d-aee5f7eb4... > Isn Boris Johnson who said “I must level with you, I must level with the British public, Many more families are going to…
A variation on that argument, is that careful protection is only an option if the economy is simultaneously protected, by paying people and businesses cash, otherwise people desperate for income will not comply with lockdown directives.
We're seeing that being argued from Manchester right now: They want a national "circuit breaker" rather than local lockdown, because a national one is more likely to be accompanied by financial support, as well as a shorter "tier 3" lockdown in Manchester.
Not mentioned much, but hovering in the background, is a minority but significant number of people who aren't entitled to government financial support of any kind. Some as individuals (no recourse to public funds) and some as businesses (started business at a time that haven't shown figures yet by April, or were in an invest-and-spend phase so low/negative profit). In the absence of any government support, during lockdown they depend on volunteers for food and temporary non-eviction law to keep their homes, so they have a strong incentive to resist lockdown measures.
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You literally can't go 5km from your house in Australia. How exactly is that "fine wrt respect for human rights"? More people have died in a few months from Covid in the US than the entire 5 years of WWI Again, how is that just plain old dandy and nothing to think about?
> You literally can't go 5km from your house I live in Rome, near the Colosseum, I never travel 5km from home, unless I have to. Being stuck in the traffic jam in your car is not a nice experience. EDIT: maybe I should add as a disclaimer that the post tone wasn't obvious. it came out bad. My fault. As someone else said after me, lockdown in Italy meant "stay home, don't leave your neighborhood" I couldn't even go to…
On the plus side, we were doing social distancing before it was cool.