This seems a little hypocritical given that the US still doesn't have an adequate SARS-2 testing regime in place, and will almost certainly see the first real rise in cases once a cluster of locally transmitted infections start becoming severely ill/dying, as in Italy/Iran. Calling China blind while we still have our eyes shut. It is possible we'll luck out and escape Wuhan-level consequences, but I'm predicting this piece may age very badly.
I'm "curious" how things will work out in the US when people
1) show up to work at, say, McDonalds even if they're not feeling great.
2) wait until the last minute to seek health care because it's expensive
And by "curious" I mean "extremely worried".
Edit: I'm certainly no expert though; it'd be nice to consider some actual data about how these things spread (is the flu a similar enough model?). Maybe the above points don't really matter that much. I'm still worried in any event. Several relatives-in-law live in one of the affected areas of Italy.
> 1) show up to work at, say, McDonalds even if they're not feeling great.
The US generally has extremely strict guidelines regarding food safety and hygiene. In terms of food safety, America ranks above all but the Nordic countries.[1]
I can assure you that American restaurants absolutely will not tolerate a food worker with an active upper respiratory infection. If anything US restaurants are more likely to order a worker to stay home, because unlike Europe they generally don't have to give hourly workers paid sick time.
While this is true, what worries me about Coronavirus is its weeks-long incubation period, where you can spread the virus even without any symptoms attached.
The obvious "dude is coughing / sneezing" case simply doesn't apply to Coronavirus. It can spread long before you show any symptoms.
Coronavirus is deadly enough to kill some people, but weak enough that some people's immune system represses it entirely.
In some ways, something like Ebola is easier to control. Because everyone who gets sick with Ebola actually shows symptoms (because Ebola is so deadly).
As above/below though, that goes for pretty much any country and if it's the biggest factor in contagion, then maybe we won't see large differences between wealthy-ish countries.
This is false. Ask any person working in a tip-based position to give up working for 2 weeks because of a sickness and they will more than likely say they cannot afford to (because they will fail to make rent).
"they generally don't have to give hourly workers paid sick time."
..is exactly why you should expect them to take something for their fever, turn up for their shift and say absolutely nothing to anyone about feeling unwell.
> I can assure you that American restaurants absolutely will not tolerate a food worker with an active upper respiratory infection.
I think you're speaking with too much certainty here. It really depends on the restaurant's management, just based on my personal experience. Some will just assign people to jobs that aren't customer-facing because they can't afford to be short-handed and it's difficult to get people to come in on their day off.
"But not all state and local food codes include FDA’s sick worker rules. In fact, 19 states have not adopted these rules. And some food workers work while sick even when their states or localities do have those rules. Indeed, 20% of food workers say they worked at least one shift with vomiting or diarrhea in the past year."
Fair enough. It's just an example though - there are a lot of other low-wage industries with lots of public contact, and people may try and hide their illness if they need the work.
And of course people may be contagious before exhibiting a lot of symptoms, but that's certainly not US specific.
Not sure to what degree you follow the markets, but ^SPX is down over 3%. A number of high level pandemic expert positions have been eliminated in this administration, and I think people are starting to have doubts about domestic preparedness in the US.
Yes, THIS. We're already seeing the U.S.'s fucked system causing consequences, as in this story of a Miami man getting several thousands of dollars in medical bills for getting tested[1].
We have a system where people are too terrified of their insurers to get tested or get medical care, and too terrified of their employers to stay home from work. It's a recipe for disaster in a pandemic.
Incidentally, the fact that authoritarianism and extreme predatory capitalism cause the same kind of fear that impedes things like public health might also suggest that maybe authoritarianism and extreme predatory capitalism are pretty similar, as folks like Elizabeth Anderson[2] and I[3] have argued...
~44 million people have no health insurance in the US, and another 38 million have inadequate health insurance. how many of them will skip the doctor and show up for work because they rather not face a surprise bill?
I got no doubt at this stage that the US will be hit the hardest from all the developed countries. No amount of testing and prevention mechanism the CDC can come up with, effective mitigation will depend on people seeking treatment and be willing to go to a doctor even without symptoms.
I'm pretty convinced that the only reason the US hasn't been hit as hard yet is that they aren't testing on the same scale.
In other news on twitter people from Vietnam, Thailand are currently boasting that the number of /their/ infected is tiny compared to South Korea - SK just tests on a massive scale. Not testing and educating people keeps your numbers low but you'll lose in the long run.
>hypocritical indeed: Miami man who flew to China worried he might have COVID-19. He may owe thousands
Hypocritical? Sounds like a completely orthogonal problem to me. You can have insanely unaffordable healthcare in authoritarian states and liberal democracies. If anything, the US is an outlier considering that healthcare works well in every other liberal democracy.
On top of the 25 million or so uninsured in America, there are a lot of underinsured who have gotten used to avoiding medical care due to the expense of even “covered” costs.
Ooh "diverse", is it because "homogeneous" countries would have the disease better in control, so like many things, it's a problem attributed to "diversity"?
Whenever I read "homogeneous nation" I take a glance at my racism-o-meter...
I think the problem isn't heterogeneity in ethnicity, it's heterogeneity in values. Many western European nations have a good amount of ethnic diversity, but they don't have half the population saying that nationalized healthcare (like in the UK) is "socialist" and they don't want it. The different ethnic groups there seem to be able to all agree on what kind of things are necessary to achieve an advanced, modern nation. We in the US simply cannot.
Where did you get those numbers? It certainly isn't seen in election results. Approximately half the population reliably votes GOP in every election, and they certainly don't want Medicare for All. On the Democrat side, MfA is seen as "extreme"; even in the current Primaries (which is mostly composed of voters who are reasonably strong Democrats), Bernie is only getting about 25% of the vote so far.
I have no idea how reliable these polls are, or how much things have changed since they were conducted, but I've heard the statistic before and I at least got the impression that it wasn't considered a controversial one.
From what I understand, there are similar statistics about various other policies that could be considered 'socialist' (but are more European-style social-democratic). While many Americans are strongly opposed to anything with the label socialism, they seem to often actually be in favor of the actual policy that these 'progressives' propose.
I haven't taken any kind of deep dive into this though, so for all I know this is more controversial than I assumed.
This article is making claims about several polls that Americans supposedly want a bunch of things that very progressive Democrats (not just regular Democrats) want. It sounds to me like their polling methodology is severely flawed, because their poll results are completely different from our election results.
This reminds me of the 2016 election. All the poll results said that Hillary would easily win the election. So much for those polls.
It's possible that the polling methodology is flawed, but I don't see the problem with there being a big difference between what people claim to want and who they vote for.
In fact, I'd say it's rather unsurprising that, whatever people might actually want, they would vote against their interest because 1) socialism is evil, and 2) "my team should win, no matter the policy".
Furthermore, there's a difference between a poll that predicts an election winner, which is notoriously difficult to do, and a poll that simply asks people whether they want <thing x>.
It's possible the wording of the questions is manipulative, or that they happened to poll an unrepresentative sample of the population. I don't know at this point.
But the fact that 1) the results of an 'issue' poll don't align with voter behavior and 2) that the results of an election winner poll doesn't in itself make a good case that the poll must be flawed.
>they would vote against their interest because 1) socialism is evil, and 2) "my team should win, no matter the policy".
If people are honestly this stupid, then why even bother polling them to see what policies they want? This is a serious question: if people don't bother voting based on policies they want, then why is that even important? If this theory of yours is true, then it really seems to call the voting population's basic intelligence into question, not to mention the fundamental idea of democracy itself. If the people are too utterly stupid to vote for their own best interests at least most of the time, then why wouldn't authoritarianism be a better system?
Honestly, I find it easier to believe that the polls are bad. I've seen way too many polls in my lifetime where the questions were manipulative, or just plain poorly worded or chosen. On top of that, the other problem with polls is that they only capture results from people who actually bother to respond to the polls, or are in a place where the pollsters are. Usually, when the latter is brought up, we're supposed to somehow believe that the pollsters have some great methodology that lets them determine what a larger population wants just by sampling a much smaller number of people in that population, but this is completely subject to bias and error. And finally, I point again to the 2016 election: predicting a winner is not as hard as asking if they want <thing x>. In this case, the poll is asking exactly the same thing as the election itself will: who do you plan to vote for? Asking about <thing x> is not as easy, because you can get wildly different results by asking the question differently. Do I want "Medicare for All"? Well, the answer might depend on many things, like how exactly it would be implemented. Is private insurance still allowed to exist as a supplement or alternative? Are non-citizens/"illegal aliens"/"migrants" (pick your term) covered? etc. You would probably get very different answers depending on those points in a large poll in America, so if you just ask a simple "do you want it? yes/no" question, that might not align at all with what actual candidates are proposing. Asking "who do you plan to vote for?" avoids that. And in the 2016 election, the polls were nowhere even close to the election results. That tells me the polls were either garbage, or rigged to try to influence the election.
> If people are honestly this stupid, then why even bother polling them to see what policies they want? This is a serious question: if people don't bother voting based on policies they want, then why is that even important? If this theory of yours is true, then it really seems to call the voting population's basic intelligence into question, not to mention the fundamental idea of democracy itself. If the people are too utterly stupid to vote for their own best interests at least most of the time, then why wouldn't authoritarianism be a better system?
All kinds of things play a role in this 'stupidity': tribalism, decades of anti-socialist propaganda, legitimate concerns based on history, and disengagement. It's completely understandable that one could reject 'socialism' and yet support most of what actual socialist argue in favor of.
> Honestly, I find it easier to believe that the polls are bad. I've seen way too many polls in my lifetime where the questions were manipulative, or just plain poorly worded or chosen.
If you're honestly engaging with me on this, and I'm hoping you are, I'd challenge both of us to do some research and further discuss this. I'm inclined to believe that in this case, with concrete policy questions, the questions and answers are not too manipulative, but of course I don't "know" this. Let's look into it.
> On top of that, the other problem with polls is that they only capture results from people who actually bother to respond to the polls, or are in a place where the pollsters are. Usually, when the latter is brought up, we're supposed to somehow believe that the pollsters have some great methodology that lets them determine what a larger population wants just by sampling a much smaller number of people in that population, but this is completely subject to bias and error.
True, but afaik this generally skews in favor of older, more conservative respondents and, crucially, more socalism-phobic, so to speak.
> And finally, I point again to the 2016 election: predicting a winner is not as hard as asking if they want <thing x>. In this case, the poll is asking exactly the same thing as the election itself will: who do you plan to vote for? Asking about <thing x> is not as easy, because you can get wildly different results by asking the question differently. Do I want "Medicare for All"? Well, the answer might depend on many things, like how exactly it would be implemented. Is private insurance still allowed to exist as a supplement or alternative? Are non-citizens/"illegal aliens"/"migrants" (pick your term) covered? etc. You would probably get very different answers depending on those points in a large poll in America, so if you just ask a simple "do you want it? yes/no" question, that might not align at all with what actual candidates are proposing. Asking "who do you plan to vote for?" avoids that. And in the 2016 election, the polls were nowhere even close to the election results. That tells me the polls were either garbage, or rigged to try to influence the election.
I think with the election polls one of the big issues is exactly the problem you describe earlier. Getting an accurate, representative sample is very difficult. Especially when voting for Trump was, for many people, a kind of social suicide.
That said, you might be right. I am inclined to believe that policy questions, even with all the hidden complication behind implementing said policies, are probably answered honestly and I'm assuming that the sampling is relatively 'honest' too. But I don't know this, and it's absolutely fair to challenge me on that.
What I'll do, one of these days, is look more into this because while I don't think my beliefs depend on the accuracy of these polls, I do think it's important that my beliefs are truthful (as well as my claims). If you're not just interested in defending your beliefs or attacking mine (which I'm not saying you are), I'd very much like it if we could both look further into this and at some point continue the discussion with more than our respective assumptions :). I'm happy to be corrected if the facts are on your side.
>This seems a little hypocritical given that the US [...]
How is it hypocritical when the article doesn't even mention the US at all? It's possible to be critical of China's authoritarianism AND whatever the US's failures are.
Except in the context of propaganda where they are in fact attempting to plant the idea of a dichotomy in people's heads without having to defend one side of it.
the point is the headline and the tone. there is absolutely no empathy in it. you don't need to be for or against authoritarianism to spot that. and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't frankly.
It's easy to point fingers from the sidelines. I'm curious how this would've progressed if the virus had originated in the US instead and how much better it would've been handled.
These viruses don't originate in China by random chance.
Although, ironically, they originate in China because of too little government control over hygiene in wet markets and game meat, not too much authoritarianism.
Isn't it interesting that these deadly viruses don't tend to originate from India? Even though they're supposed to have worse sanitation and are poorer, and a similarly large population, both in density and total.
The Chinese government promotes "traditional medicine" for nationalistic reasons, and I suspect it's playing a significant role in these zoonotic diseases -- not to mention the extinction of rhinos and whatnot.
The last few have all come from miss handled wild and exotic meats/animals. Countries that have proper handling of meat, and rules around what can be eaten and owned don't have these problems.
Granted, there's an underground in every country I'm sure, and if all things were equal with the rules and enforcement, your argument would be much more reasonable.
> I'm curious how this would've progressed if the virus had originated in the US instead and how much better it would've been handled.
The federal and local governments in the U.S. do not have the same power as CCP to suppress the "rumor". The eight doctors would not have been reprimanded by the local police for discussing the new virus in private online groups. The Trump administration would not have power to tell the CDC to shut up. The Trump administration would not have power to force the CDC to under-report counts. The states would not cooperate with the federal government to under-report counts.
You should remember how the AIDS epidemic was handled in the US. A lot of people died before govt even acknowledged it was a problem, there was much lack of coordination between the federal and state/city governments in handling it.
AIDS had the unfortunate coincidence of (at least initially) mostly targeting marginalized groups that governments at the time had no problem with throwing under any bus that came. COVID-19 is spreading to everyone who can catch it across all socioeconomic groups.
The CDC is a federal agency, no? The larger point is that the US, being a democracy is “messier”, to its potential advantage. It’s harder to suppress information.
The dust-up with the NOAA and the White House last year over a hurricane is probably a good model for what a CDC / White House disagreement might look like. Recall that during that episode, the White House directed NOAA to disavow the claims of forecasters that went against the president’s claim that Alabama was in Dorian’s line of fire.
And there’s no way in hell a few states with a total population of 50 million would agree to be quarantined. Imagine they’ll tried to stop all flights from O’Hare and Detroit.
How is it hypocritical for the atlantic to state this? Maybe you dont realize it but unlike China, US newspapers are not mouthpieces for the government
With the Japan/Korean/Italy/Iran outbreak, I think most people that are outside of China are underestimating the impact of this virus and the effective measures that China has taken.
"Calling China blind while we still have our eyes shut."
There is likely already community spread going on especially in places like the SF Bay Area.
Many Chinese language forums in the US are reporting people with symptoms that match Covid-19 and testing negative for the common flu, yet are denied CDC RT-PCR testing because they do not meet the stringent criteria set. Add to this the fact that the CDC's initial test is flawed and a new test is still nowhere to be seen.
This will go very badly in the US. The average citizen need to start preparing for a pandemic.
The degree of blind-ness is what's at stake. See Italy & South Korea. As soon as it becomes obvious there's a problem, the governments start reacting. We can and do criticize the degree our governments respond, and that they're too reactive and not proactive enough.
The point is, it's not like in Wuhan, where you have reports of 10s to hundreds of people dying from a mysterious pneumonia, before the government even acknowledges it. It's not like you have the government telling people everything is okay, and to go back to work, and anyone who says anything differently gets welded into their apartment and shut off from the Internet.
Singapore, too. Singapore was one of the first affected and have been completely transparent on their numbers and how things are being handled. The result is a relatively low number of cases given their population density.
Meanwhile, nobody trusts China's numbers. Initially it was to to keep the narrative under control, and now it's probably because they've lost control of the situation. Now Iran suddenly says, "oops, we actually have coronavirus and it's pretty bad."
yeah, corruption and self-serving behavior among bureaucrats is not unique to authoritarianism and/or communism.
with that said, the underlying critique is valid: there is more overt pressure for information-hiding in an authoritarian regime. but boeing, for example, shows that you don't need an authoritarian communist system to want to look good to people who have influence over your livelihood and stature (and thereby suppress bad information).
It's more about not wanting to take responsibility at all levels than not knowing it. Though party mouthpieces love this angle to spin the supreme leader as kind-hearted whenever possible.
Cersorship serves to make the people feel good, but general hospitals are almost all state-owned thus the infomation flow is not that impeded.
The system punishes those who take risks (right or wrong) and rewards those who obey orders, display loyalty and don't make mistakes.
In this case, low level officials waited for orders, the national level agency went to the site fairly early on but they too waited, here's the catch, high officials and Xi don't want to make mistakes too. The power dynamics were on display when the governor knew he's about to be sacrificed so he went on a high profile live interview to accuse Beijing of inaction, couple days later, Xi released his own version of the story, replaced the local boss with his old sport, gaining even tighter grip on local governments.
Every body in this system avoids doing things with the slightest possibility of harming their political careers, but doubles down on the things that make them politically safe (heavy-handed/draconian lockdown measures).
It seems like in a situation like this authoritarianism is a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, you get fed deceptive information by your local officials, but on the other hand, you have the power to enforce city-scale quarantines rather effectively.
It's not immediately clear to me which of these is actually more important, but it doesn't seem quite as simple as this article is portraying it to be.
> you get fed deceptive information by your local officials
> you have the power to enforce city-scale quarantines rather effectively.
These two things cannot possibly both be true, which is why people are skeptical that authoritarian regimes are good at this kind of thing. If you can't trust what your officials are telling you, you can't organize and maintain a quarantine, an effort that requires detailed coordination to keep the quarantined area well-supplied enough to avoid most escape attempts.
This is not to say that democracies are "good" at it, just that the idea that authoritarian regimes can actually control their people any more than democracies can is mostly a fantasy.
> If you can't trust what your officials are telling you, you can't organize and maintain a quarantine, an effort that requires detailed coordination to keep the quarantined area well-supplied enough to avoid most escape attempts.
That's part of what contributed to various failures explored (I do not know how accurately) by the HBO Chernobyl series. Punish truth and reward lies, and you're bound to end up with fragile systems that can't be efficiently fixed or otherwise addressed when they fall apart, in part because information can't be trusted.
[EDIT] notably it also explores the benefits of authoritarianism: when The System finally decides people who can fix the problem should have what they need to fix it, by god, they'll get it.
Why should a democracy not be able the enforce a city-scale quarantine effectively?
Italy did it on a smaller scale in no time yesterday.
I do not see why this should not work for example for Milano too.
I'm unsure how this would work in the US though. Everyone being on at-will employment, if you're sick you still have to go to work and spread the disease, otherwise your employer can fire you.
Most software adjacent employers maybe. Service industry would rather have you sneezing into customer's food (as long as the health inspector isn't currently there) than have to reconfigure the schedule.
In California people are guaranteed 3 days. That’s not much when dealing with a flu-like illness. Additionally, it gives employers the right to cap the number accrued to 6 days.
My employer resets sick days to 0 at the beginning of the year, and you have to accrue them over time. I was sick very early in January and they were unhappy about it.
One problem is getting anyone to accept beds for quarantined patients anywhere near them. A plan to use an existing, mostly unused facility in the middle of a golf course is being opposed by some residents of Costa Mesa.
> Why should a democracy not be able the enforce a city-scale quarantine effectively?
Because decision making here is less centralized. People have rights, and they will agitate about them. It's not clear where the governmental authority to quarantine an entire city would come from in say, the US. It might be constitutionally challenged, people would get mad and sue. None of that happens in China.
According to Wikipedia the authority comes from H.R. 5122 signed into law by G.W. Bush in 2006, which “gave the president the power to declare martial law and to take command of the National Guard units of each state without the consent of state governors.”
Also, Why should not officials in a democracy be unable to feed deceptive information to their superiors? There was a case in India, where the govt knew there were cases of Zica, but it suppressed the reports[1]
Milan has a metropolitan population of 7.2 million, not far behind Chicago and well ahead of Austin.
Enforcing quarantine in New York would be very difficult, not least because it's in the middle of a continuous urban agglomeration between DC and Boston with no hard boundaries.
Ban all traffic across the George Washington, Bayonne, Goethals, Outerbridge, Lincoln, and Holland tunnels, as well as cutting off the Hudson River rail tunnels. Next, set up checkpoints on all roads accessing or crossing I-287. Ban all ferries to or from Manhattan and Long Island. Shutdown LGA and JFK.
You now have a quarantine zone separating New York City, Long Island, and some of the nearby cities in New York from the rest of the country. The Hudson River provides a pretty decent barrier to travel along the NEC. The Delaware, Potomac, and Susquehanna also provides some barriers, but enforcing quarantine barriers to inland travel is much more difficult (unless you're cutting off the Delmarva entirely).
This is pretty much a useless quarantine given what we know about COVID-19. Millions of people in Northern New Jersey and north of 287 travel into the center of New York every day, so there's no way you would catch everyone exposed in Manhattan that way given COVID-19's 14-day incubation (and some think it's even longer). The northern and western segments of the metropolitan area would be far harder to secure.
You can be bad at authoritarianism. Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well. They were also the first country to stamp out SARS.
> Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well.
The jury is still very much out on that. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia - give it 12-18 months before we make any categorical declarations about these countries.
The fact you are blindly grouping all these countries together tells me you don’t know much about Southeast Asia. I’ll let you continue with your assumptions.
You are referring to the inclusion of Thailand? Major tourist destination for China, but only 35 confirmed cases. Just changed testing protocol to drop travel to China as prerequisite two days ago.
We shall see, I suppose. That's all I was saying - it's very early days to say which country has handled this well or not.
Vietnam has closed its border to China and banned all flights weeks ago.
Vietnam has already started force quarantining passengers from South Korea.
Vietnam operates a ‘brutal’ militarized ring quarantine which is extremely effective. The SK residents will not be going to a militarized area but all VN exposed to them will. SK residents go to a hospital that has been sprayed and decontaminated.
Compare this with the US and I’d argue I’d feel safer in Vietnam than here.
As my wife and I were talking about this, one thing that came to mind was the Chernobyl disaster, which both of us saw on TV as kids when it unfolded. The CPSU also initially attempted to sweep it under the rug, and for about 3 days you could only find out about it from e.g. Voice of America broadcasts (which people would get on shortwave radio in regions which weren't covered by jamming).
After a few days it became clear even to the party bosses that this is not an ordinary disaster, and it can't be swept under the rug entirely, so we got some reporting from the site of the disaster, mixed with a heavy dose of propaganda. They'd show trucks, workers, views of the reactor from a helicopter (which was probably getting a bunch of radioactive dust in the air), speak of heroism of those who tried to douse the fires in spite radiation and later died of radiation poisoning, stuff like that.
What they did not do, however, is make any attempt at explaining the magnitude of the disaster, so while the populace was pacified by "reporting" we didn't really know its true effects until many years later.
I'm not sure I agree with this article - there is plenty of evidence to suggest that China knew about C19 well ahead of the media, but choose to ignore it to save face and/or not create panic.
But did they really sweep things under the rug or is that just what people casually like to say without fact checking? Here is the coronavirus timeline: https://youtu.be/kO5EXjFKE7U
You say it is propaganda but do you have an argument against his actual claims? Can you point out factual inaccuracies or omitted facts that are relevant?
I'm all for hating on authoritarians but this is nonsense. If anything, authoritarianism allowed China to build facilities and implement ridiculous quarantine measures in record time.
if (as the article points out) the regime would have listened to its own physicians, who already identified isolated cases as far back as december, the Mao era crackdown would not have been necessary because the disease could have likely been contained from the beginning.
It's precisely the authoritarian blindness and dysfunction that the article talks about that necessitates its own brutality. So no, the draconian measures that the system is able to enact are not a sign of success, they're the opposite.
It's an absolutely perverse idea. It's as if someone would point at Xinjiang concentration camps and take it as a sign for how great Chinese construction companies work.
It really depends how much you care about your parents/grandparents. If the projections out of Harvard today are correct and 40-70% of the world population ultimately contracts the virus, and if the mortality rates of those over 60 are correct - then there's a very real chance that many of the people on this thread will be attending the funerals of family members within the next 18-24 months.
The internet is full of people in the younger demographic, so it's not surprising they are not overly concerned.
I think the main argument was that the virus had spread very far because people were afraid to speak up and were being silenced rather than the (late) (efficient) response.
You're arguing that China's response to Covid19 has been effective? I don't think so.
"Ridiculous quarantine measures" may look like impressive action, but it's been ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus. It's also been massively inefficient, causing a huge economic impact.
Honest question: what would the correct response have been? What would it look like had this originated in the U.S., for instance, and what steps would have been taken.
I keep wondering about the mass quarantines, their effectiveness, whether they’re more show than efficacy, etc.
While I agree with the point about suppressing dissent being a vulnerability because it suppresses information, I don't think this is something democracies are so great at. The UK's response to mad cow disease, for example, does not look much better, if as good.
The flupandemic in 1918 was not handled appreciably better in the democracies than it was in the empires.
People in authority reacting too slowly to an epidemic, is not unique to authoritarian states.
This and another article today on the Atlantic seems to be implying that this type of epidemics are better dealt with in democratic countries. To me, that isn't that much clear, to see how the AIDS was handled in the United States during the 80's.
Even democratic governemnts are succesptible to staging coverups to save face.
Was that really a coverup or willful neglect due to a cultural atmosphere that was massively homophobic? From what I understand the Reagan administration was reluctant to put resources into something that was considered a "gay mans disease", really wouldn't have played well with the majority of the electorate at the time.
>From what I understand the Reagan administration was reluctant to put resources into something that was considered a "gay mans disease"
indeed, let us not forget that "AIDS" was originally called "GRID", "Gay-related immune deficiency" and was also called things like "gay cancer" and "gay plague". It was unfortunate events like Ryan White's infection [1] that started to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS.
This is an excellent article also showing the danger of censorship, which on HN happens via the voting and flagging system as well as shadow bans. People become afraid to speak their minds and you end up with dangerous conformity.
> One could go so far as to say that from the highest echelon to the very bottom of the system, this lot represent the worst political team to have run China since 1978. That is why I believe that it is imperative that the nation act on and truly put into practice [Article 35 of the Constitution][1]. That is to say [we ourselves should advance Five Key Demands]:
> 1. Lift the ban on independent media and publishing;
> 2. Put an end to the secret police surveillance of the Internet and allow people their right to freedom of speech so they can express themselves with a clear conscience;
> 3. Allow citizens to enjoy their right to demonstrate as well as the freedom of assembly and association;
> 4. Respect the basic universal rights of our citizens, in particular their right to vote in open elections.
From an [essay][2] by Xu Zhangrun, translated and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé.
How is "monoculture" created? Slowly by censoring divergent information, in this case, down voting and flagging.
The irony also appears to be lost on the people downvoting my comment, LOL.
Anyway, I'd also like to point out that the exact same issue mentioned in the article, apart from forums like HN and Reddit, also exists in companies. Any authoritarian system. An example is Boeing.
The same kind of problem also caused the 737 MAX crisis currently underway at Boeing. Criticism wasn’t tolerated in the company and engineers who brought all kinds of design issues up were sidelined by management — silenced and suppressed [1]. This resulted in critical flaws getting into their products, in this case the 737 MAX aircraft, which resulted in two crashes killing a few hundred people.
Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month.
If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site.
Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting?
I ask because some coworkers have the same attitude and I just assumed it was them reacting to the pop-medias (assumed) obsession with it.
> Is the global propagation of a contagious pathogen actually considered not that interesting?
In general it is. With daily updates on the latest speculation and "if this is true, everyone will die" predictions? Not to me, no. It has little value and is mostly just providing a place where people can indulge in their fears of mortality (boring!), their new found hatred of China (boring!), some ideas of pandemics spreading they gathered from Plague, Inc. (fun, but not really that interesting) and their general feeling of uneasiness and tribalism ("it's really Trump's fault, you know?" - "no, it's the progressive's fault!" - "Shut up, you two, it's obviously capitalism, err Russia").
A general recap might be interesting at some point, and so would more details be. Articles that trigger "should I buy face masks and lock down my house now" comments aren't, imho.
> Monoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship.
So-called "censorship" on the level of a forum like HN is of laughable unimportance. That pales in comparison to the kind of censorship the Chinese government practices. (And no, it's not a "slippery slope", or any other hand-wavy argument you can make about similarities.)
> We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month.
Perhaps for the most part hackers don't find it interesting, at least not in this forum. I've been reading about it elsewhere, and have been happy with the coverage I've been getting. I'm certainly not going to downvote/flag an article about it on HN, but frankly I don't come here for that. (Heh, and yet, here I am, reading comments and even posting.)
> If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site.
That's hardly unique to this type of article, or any article, really. People often have uninformed opinions about things outside their area of expertise, and aren't shy about expressing them. I see no more (or less) of that here than I do in most other HN comment threads.
And regardless, who are you to say? Are you a doctor, or, better, an epidemiologist? Are you an expert political scientist? Have you deeply studied this history of authoritarian regimes vs. democracies? Your opinion that all this is just "back-of-the-napkin takes" is no more (or less!) valid than the takes you criticize. And you're the one throwing around accusations of smugness!
While I agree with you that HN has a nasty habit of downvoting if one does not subscribe to the hardcore US libertarian view regarding "freedom of speech", it is nowhere even comparable to the censorship in China.
Hopefully we’ll get lucky with this one and it will “only” be a bit worse than the flu. We don’t know. The risks lie in the unknown.
But, if this thing (or some other thing down the road) is bad, then won’t democracies essentially be faced with the decision to suspend liberty in a martial-law type situation? Effectively becoming (at least temporarily) authoritarian?
If not, what’s the Democratic model for addressing a situation requiring mass quarantine? Seems like a good question to ask before facing such a crisis, even if it seems outlandish or fringe.
I don't think this will be 'that bad' in the end, I think far worse will come in the future though without a doubt. The Chinese growth seems to be mostly just a result of people living in rather large concentrations with generally poor hygeine. The South Korean spread seems to largely stem from a single religious group (and it appears they are a doomsday cult that may be attempting to spread the virus intentionally [1][2][3]).
Ok, I hope this won't be bad. I'm getting married in 89 days and in my religion the weddings are at one of our temples... we've closed 2 in Asia indefinitely already due to the virus and I'm hoping it doesn't get bad here in the United States and result in the same. I'm already looking at a punk concert I have tickets for the week of my birthday next month and thinking "yeahhh, maybe I should just eat the cost and not go" but it also has my fiance and I a bit on edge for our wedding and what the earliest we can get the marriage license and other necessary paperwork so that if things start to get bed we can look at all the temples near us and schedule a different date within a few days to make sure we are married before we see any potential closures. sigh
A thought I've had is I wonder how much genes have to do with the severity of this. I have not looked at the data for a racial component, nor am I remotely qualified to, but I wonder if there isn't some genetic variable in Asian populations that is causing this to be more severe. Perhaps there is something there that will see a less severe response in other populations. shrugs just throwing an idea out there.
So, just one person to another on the internet: best of luck to you both, and congratulations on your upcoming wedding :) I remember very well the stress of wedding planning. In the end we eloped!
Thanks! This is going to be an interesting year for me. I hit 7 months sober last week which is easily the longest sober stretch I've had since the first time I had alcohol around age 15, I'm getting married (never thought that would happen) and she makes more than me plus adding her income will finally give me some breathing room to start to entertain pursuing some sort of training/education other than a degree (college just isn't for me) to try and finally improve my situation as I move into being 35, we plan to try and have a house this year which will be a huge thing and nice to have space I can finally make mine... just gotta get through a potential epidemic that might kill people i know and/or leave me unemployed since I work in international freight wince.
