Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 84 posts

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#31

Post by black_puppydog »

cultus wrote: post #18

Trump gets most of the attention, but this whole pandemic has laid plain how liberal republics have been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades. The capability for broad, fast, collective action has been all-but wiped out, even in the supposedly enlightened and well-run countries of Western Europe. The nations that defeated fascism are crippled by a far weaker threat. I can't think of another liberal…

I see you're getting replies that (correctly) claim there are other states that handled it well. But those are exceptions to the rule of "western societies didn't and don't handle the pandemic very gracefully."

Mind you, I am not advocating to follow an authoritarian/Chinese model.

But the analysis that neoliberalism (and the hyper-individualist mentality that it co-evolved with) have undermined any collective effort at containing this effectively seems valid to me, or at least worthy of discussion.

Financially, we have eroded our capability to respond to this in a timely manner. Our healthcare and test/trace capabilities were simply not up to snuff, even though the people that know most about them kept sounding the alarms.

Philosophically (and IMHO this is the more contestable part of my opinion) our individualist societies have eroded our capability to demand (let alone volunteer!) personal sacrifice for a collective good, even one that indirectly benefits us and our direct peers.

Alas, give the developments and debate around this, I don't see anyone working through this after the fact. We'll all want to move on, forget that 2020 ever existed, and hope that economic growth will lead us into the golden twenties we've all been waiting for.

This time it will definitely work and not screw us all over in the next cycle, we'll say. Or at least next time I will be on the winning side! Just you wait!

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#32

Post by trgn »

Insanity wrote: post #16

Belgian here, the covid situation is being handled very poorly. The rules change frequently and are badly communicated, the three main regions (Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia) all have different set of rules and information is contradicting. E.g Flanders: Schools are not a problem vs Wallonia: Schools are a problem. It's frustrating to see.

Also, there's an enormous lack of any personal commitment to make meaningful changes in their day-to-day life, at least among the Belgians I know. Civic-mindedness is most certainly _not_ a Belgian virtue.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#33

Post by makomk »

cultus wrote: post #18

Trump gets most of the attention, but this whole pandemic has laid plain how liberal republics have been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades. The capability for broad, fast, collective action has been all-but wiped out, even in the supposedly enlightened and well-run countries of Western Europe. The nations that defeated fascism are crippled by a far weaker threat. I can't think of another liberal…

The problem is that the definition of "handling COVID well" that everyone seems to expect is stopping it in its tracks and wiping it out, and doing that with a respiratory disease that's this infectious and has such mild symptoms for so many people falls outside the scope of what traditional pandemic planning in Western countries even tries to achieve. Bluntly, no-one knows how to do it. As far as I can tell, the conventional wisdom used to be that it's just not possible. New Zealand has some fundamental advantages that put it in a better position to achieve this than anyone else (island, long way from other countries, relatively low population) but even they're having a bit of a time sustaining it.

Now, you're probably right that a few decades ago the response to something like Covid wouldn't be seen as such a disaster - but that's mostly because expectations were different back then. If you take a look at some of the flu pandemics, they were a mess in terms of things like school closures and other measures, but as far as I can tell this was just seen as normal and inevitable.

(Obviously, countries which had bad experiences with SARS do have very different pandemic planning - but SARS was a much better candidate for cotainment and elimination than Covid is.)

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#34

Post by aspratley »

orwin wrote: post #29
ch4s3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan and Canada seem to have done relatively well, as have the Nordic countries (perhaps with the exception of Sweden which is TBD). The Baltic nations have done reasonably well too. Looking outside of Europe and the OECD, African democracies like Rawanda have kept the virus in check without draconian measures. Having good or at least recently tested public health infrastructure and lucking into a good head of state…

Japan/Korea are not as liberal as US/western europe though. And danemark/norway/sweden/finland or the baltic countries in general are more socialist that enven France, really.

The Nordics are social democracies. Free market, liberal with a strong emphasis on social care. I'm not quite sure what your point is.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#35

Post by Devils-Avocado »

Insanity wrote: post #16

Belgian here, the covid situation is being handled very poorly. The rules change frequently and are badly communicated, the three main regions (Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia) all have different set of rules and information is contradicting. E.g Flanders: Schools are not a problem vs Wallonia: Schools are a problem. It's frustrating to see.

Sweden has lower per-capita deaths than Belgium (and Italy, Spain, USA), and annual deaths are only tracking 2.4% higher in Sweden than in 2018.

Belgium should simply abandon all lockdowns, they only seem to cause harm.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#36

Post by x3iv130f »

makomk wrote: post #33
cultus wrote: post #18

Trump gets most of the attention, but this whole pandemic has laid plain how liberal republics have been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades. The capability for broad, fast, collective action has been all-but wiped out, even in the supposedly enlightened and well-run countries of Western Europe. The nations that defeated fascism are crippled by a far weaker threat. I can't think of another liberal…

The problem is that the definition of "handling COVID well" that everyone seems to expect is stopping it in its tracks and wiping it out, and doing that with a respiratory disease that's this infectious and has such mild symptoms for so many people falls outside the scope of what traditional pandemic planning in Western countries even tries to achieve. Bluntly, no-one knows how to do it. As far as I can tell, the con…

I wonder if mask wearing is the biggest factor and more generally, willingness to comply with restrictions due to experiencing SARS.

Japan's politicans are no less incompetent than other 1st world countries and geographically they should be much worse off but their cases are way down compared to other places.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#37

Post by LockAndLol »

hyperman1 wrote: post #20
Insanity wrote: post #16

Belgian here, the covid situation is being handled very poorly. The rules change frequently and are badly communicated, the three main regions (Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia) all have different set of rules and information is contradicting. E.g Flanders: Schools are not a problem vs Wallonia: Schools are a problem. It's frustrating to see.

I agree the handling by our politicians seems incompetent, visionless, after the fact, ... But I have the impression Belgium is not unique here. Most of the first world is doing bad. I get the impression our political generation is systemically mismanaging for at least 20 years, and this crisis is the first of a level that makes it extremely obvious in all our countrys at the same time.

> I get the impression our political generation is systemically mismanaging for at least 20 years, and this crisis is the first of a level that makes it extremely obvious in all our countrys at the same time.

The new generation won't be any better. There simply aren't enough people who care enough to enter politics or do something about the situation. The system hasn't changed and the people that enter politics will still largely be those who do it for personal gain.

We all like to complain, but the majority won't do a thing because it cares more about which series, useless gadget or trend was released recently. And when we (the majority) do go to the polls, we vote for personal gain, not for the good of others.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#38

Post by NicoJuicy »

cultus wrote: post #18

Trump gets most of the attention, but this whole pandemic has laid plain how liberal republics have been hollowed out by neoliberalism over the past few decades. The capability for broad, fast, collective action has been all-but wiped out, even in the supposedly enlightened and well-run countries of Western Europe. The nations that defeated fascism are crippled by a far weaker threat. I can't think of another liberal…

China and their neighbors already had multiple threats of pandemics.

It's quite unknown for countries far away from them, ironically US was pretty good prepared before Trump.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#39

Post by makomk »

x3iv130f wrote: post #36
makomk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the definition of "handling COVID well" that everyone seems to expect is stopping it in its tracks and wiping it out, and doing that with a respiratory disease that's this infectious and has such mild symptoms for so many people falls outside the scope of what traditional pandemic planning in Western countries even tries to achieve. Bluntly, no-one knows how to do it. As far as I can tell, the con…

I wonder if mask wearing is the biggest factor and more generally, willingness to comply with restrictions due to experiencing SARS. Japan's politicans are no less incompetent than other 1st world countries and geographically they should be much worse off but their cases are way down compared to other places.

I'm not sure Japan had a geographical disadvantage. Generally speaking, the closer countries were to Italy the worse they seemed to do at least at first, and Japan is a long way from Italy.

Re: Covid: Belgian doctors with coronavirus asked to keep working

#40

Post by wombatmobile »

monoideism wrote: post #24
jb1991 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland has done relatively well from what I've read.

Notably, and obviously, all 3 examples mentioned in this thread are islands (NZ, Aus, and Iceland). That seems like more than coincidence.

Thailand.

Population 70 million.

Total cases 3,743

Deaths 59

Post reply on HN