Europe's Vaccine Disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#431

Post by vinay427 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #65

Exmoor wrote: post #46

I've been wondering when these chickens would come home to roost. There are a few countries who have heavily touted how many vaccines they've agreed to buy, but aren't being nearly as vocal about when they're going to actually have them in hand. Having contracts to vaccinate everyone in your country 4 times over doesn't do much good if you don't get those people any dose for another 9 months. It now seems plausible t…

Only a few governments can be smug about how they handled Covid, and they are all in Asia (counting New Zealand and Australia as Asia, which is hand wavy). Even those who can make such a claim are still only one mistake from it all crashing down. Europe likes to think they are doing better than the US, but the truth is they are not very different.

> Europe likes to think they are doing better than the US, but the truth is they are not very different.

That's a bit of an understatement. It's just ignorant nationalism if the numbers are often independently audited and widely available online. The US will probably have a higher death rate than the European average, with some countries faring better and a few worse, but will probably maintain its head start in vaccinations given the later rollout and supply issues in the EU. Hopefully, both sides of the pond will be back to full working order this year.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#432

Post by vinay427 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

HugoDaniel wrote: post #356

ucha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even true when looking at deaths per capita (because how is total deaths relevant?) If you remove micro-states, the top 5 in deaths per capita is: 1. Belgium 2. Slovenia 3. UK 4. Czech Republic 5. Italy 4 out of 5 are in the EU. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Sort by total deaths. It is true. The parent comment did not specify the metric, every death counts and total deaths is a metric that should not to be disregarded. You are disregarding total deaths, like a robot that only looks at percentages and ratios. These are real people. If you remove micro-states, if you filter by this, if you only consider that, if you spin this enough, if you consider that this metric is inv…

You yourself just said, in this thread:

> A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita).

Using absolute counts, Switzerland handled the virus better than Germany on many metrics despite losing a larger percentage of its people just because it's smaller. Alternatively, the UK handled it better than the EU if we ignore populations, while India supposedly handled it worse than the EU.

It's silly to do so because the country's handling of the pandemic through policies and societal responses have an impact on the people in that country (or multinational union). They should be measured based on how well they managed to protect their people. I don't really know how to relate to the logic that a less populous country or bloc deserves less criticism even if they hypothetically lose half of their population to a virus, just because they had fewer absolute deaths than a country with a far larger population.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#433

Post by vinay427 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

HugoDaniel wrote: post #267

exporectomy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response is consistent with the claim you called a lie. Adding "considering that ..." allows you to hold the EU to an arbitrarily lower standard than the other countries.

I am a EU citizen, my standards are much higher. EU didn't had to sell their citizens healthcare data to move up the stack (like Israel did). The EU negotiations with these Big Pharma corps made it wait for these 3 countries (Israel, UK and USA). Vaccinations started 1 or 2 months later in EU (depending on country). A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those count…

> A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita).

Why is this a fair comparison? Was the EU frozen in time for 1-2 months last year during which they couldn't respond to the virus?

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#434

Post by vinay427 » Tue, Feb 02, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

HugoDaniel wrote: post #269

thepasswordis wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US effort is also not a singular effort. Each state is basically running their own system.

Comparing USA states to countries is a very common practice of uneducated Americans.

Without bothering to stoop down to the ignorance in your comment, they didn't compare them to countries. They stated that it wasn't a singular effort, which is factually true as far as I can tell and refutes something you said.