When or if this hits the US or elsewhere in Europe, and it becomes obvious that despite the quarantine in Italy, the virus still continued to spread, they will question the measures being taken. As time goes on, the West will become critical of government response and may be difficult to control.
In China when the government tells its citizens to do something, they just do it. They don't ask why. They don't deliberate on whether it's the correct choice. They simply follow the directions. In the West, everything is up for debate. People don't like to be told what to do.
Here is the other thing with Italy: differently from other neighbor countries, they have been testing people without symptoms.
Numbers: until February the 24th, Italy performed ~8500 tests (mostly on people without symptoms, but that were in contact with confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infected patients), while UK did ~6500 (focused on people with influenza-like symptoms), Germany ~1000 and France ~500.
This is better from a safety point of view (you get to discover all problematic patients earlier and you can quarantine them before they spread the infection even more). But is makes "your stats look worse" (cit. The wire) because now you look like the epicenter of the infection.
Guess what? The testing method has now been changed ("aligned") to what the other countries are doing, so that the numbers do not look that much worse.
Source: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/02/25/tamponi-coronavirus-italia-...
How is this relevant? For all we know, they might have only tested 200 people by 22nd, when the panic (quarantine, news) first started.
Sigh, this is so cliché… I don't know where you're from, but the “west” as the unified entity you describe doesn't exist. When it comes to authority and how people comply with the rules, France and Germany are more different than China and the US.
This is a different matter, people will comply for their own safety. If goverments or other agencies send the right message things could be okay imo.
How so?
> in England, everything which is not forbidden is allowed, in France, everything is allowed even if it is forbidden
Can speak of Hamburg for about 15 years now, and since maybe about 10 years i have the feeling that at least 50% of traffic participants are absolutely insane, again no matter which mode.
Isn't slowing it the best we can hope for? I mean, I'd rather the pandemic slowly take its course so that there's maximum chance a ventilator will be available if I need one when I get it in six months time. If everyone gets it on the same day.....
If containment slows the virus then it might be wise to slow the virus if any of the following is true:
1. You expect to develop some treatment for it.
2. You think a slowly growing group of infected will allow you to study the infected and possibly discover a treatment (related to 1 but not exactly the same)
3. The virus is not expected to be a problem in the summer.
4. A slowly spreading virus means that you can better ramp up your facilities to take care of the infected. (related to 1 and 2)
Work on SARS resulted in cadidate vaccines, but was abonded before human trials because of succsefull containment.
Work on MERS resulted in a vaccine that is currently showing succsess in humans.
Work on SARS-COVID-2 is starting from those, and already has canditate vaccines based on modifying ones we know showed signs of success against other corona virus.
Maybe this will turn out to be another HIV, where a virus proves ellusive, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that.
There's a bit of a description there about why this approach is different.
<sarc />I guess that's how we in the USA managed to reject the TSA full-body scanners and pat-downs.
It seems to me that most of us complained a lot, the government ignored us, and we knuckled under and complied.
this is immensely racist btw
No, they do not. Chinas propaganda machine just tells you they do. That is why china- even with all its measures couldnt clamp down. Behind the waver thin authoritarian theater presented lurks the same chaos as in africa and india.
Didn't make them right about what?
>The fact that millions of people are still racists nowadays doesn't mean we should accept that either.
You do have to share a country with them, and may rely on them some day to save your skin, so it would probably be a good idea for you to treat them like equals, unless you're looking for a civil war.
>Hopefully, Nazis will be defeated in the long run, but it looks quite far ahead of us unfortunately.
What does that even mean? There are no Nazis today. There's a tiny smattering of people that go around playing dress-up, probably mostly undercover government agents or informants, but the NSDAP is a defunct political organization.
Interestingly enough, this argument works equally well for immigrants. Some fascists have no problem with the idea of a civil war in that context though…
> You do have to share a country with them, and may rely on them some day to save your skin, so it would probably be a good idea for you to treat them like equals, unless you're looking for a civil war.
See I actually think that it's a good thing to call for, say , "stamp out racism". Cause I don't think it's real healthy for a population to just accept racism because, well, you gotta share a country with them.
Would you say this if you believed there was an actual possibility that, one day the target of their racism would be you?
Just imagine that you're living in your country, born there etc, but the brewing racist population happens to not include your particular ethnic group, and it may not be right now, but there is really no reason why they would not continue being racists, well you know, they per definition don't like sharing a country with anyone.
Everywhere in the world and history where such a situation occurred, it happened with some amount of tension and suffering (ranging from economic inequality to holocaust).
I can only imagine someone saying "well they may be racist but you gotta share a country with them" if they were certain to expect to come out on top, given such tensions.
There will also be groups that come out on the bottom, badly. But apparently it doesn't matter if you treat them as equals and share a country with them?
> There are no Nazis today. There's a tiny smattering of people that go around playing dress-up, probably mostly undercover government agents or informants, but the NSDAP is a defunct political organization.
While you are technically correct about the NSDAP ...
I think you're underestimating the amount of neonazis today. Not all of them are quite as on-the-nose with their logo as these guys, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)#...
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These are not just people playing dress-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)#...
Does stamping out racism to you involve preventing people from freely and equally participating in the political process? By which I mean being able to utilize the same means to advocate for their interests and political beliefs as any other law-abiding group would be - able to gather in public spaces without fear of physical retaliation, able to utilize the services of major companies that provide electronic resources like payment processing and social media communication and other internet services, and things of that nature.
>Would you say this if you believed there was an actual possibility that, one day the target of their racism would be you?
Yes, I would still say what I have said.
>Just imagine that you're living in your country, born there etc, but the brewing racist population happens to not include your particular ethnic group
Certainly I would not want to share a country with people that thought that way about me. You must be able to rely on your countrymen in times of serious crisis, and obviously I could not rely on those people. I would advocate for physically removing them if I believed that they posed an existential threat to people of my ethnicity and if I believed that such a removal would be feasible. If it was not feasible due to their numbers or influence or whatever I would get out of there for my own safety.
What I would not want under any circumstances is for them to remain in my country but be prevented from advocating for their perceived interests in the same way that everyone else is able, or in other words for them to see that the interests of others are being openly and plainly put ahead of their own perceived interests - if they are not themselves able to advocate for their perceived interests, why should they trust anyone else to further their interests for them, least of all people that are preventing them from advocating for those interests? That is a recipe for civil war, and that is the outcome I would most seek to avoid if I believed they were too powerful to be physically removed.
>but there is really no reason why they would not continue being racists
How many people are you talking about? Enough to influence the outcomes of a democratic government?
>Everywhere in the world and history where such a situation occurred, it happened with some amount of tension and suffering (ranging from economic inequality to holocaust).
What do you think that telling certain people that they can't advocate for their interests using the same means as everyone else is going to do to tensions?
>I think you're underestimating the amount of neonazis today. Not all of them are quite as on-the-nose with their logo as these guys, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)#....
A neo-nazi is not a Nazi, and only the dress-up types actually call themselves neo-nazis.
Neither fascists nor Muslim terrorists deserve those rights. And if you say it's not comparable, please reminds that for the past 12 months, there has been more terror attacks committed by white racists than Muslim jihadists in Western countries.
Some manifestations of it are in some jurisdictions. How is that an issue with my reasoning?
>You're talking about freedom, but for good reason you wouldn't give the jihadists the rights you're claiming. Neither fascists nor Muslim terrorists deserve those rights.
Do you want a civil war against these "fascists"?
>And if you say it's not comparable, please reminds that for the past 12 months, there has been more terror attacks committed by white racists than Muslim jihadists in Western countries.
How many white racists do you think there are in Western countries?
Ideally, we put ourselves into a situation where it's not a matter of 'giving rights', but removing the ability to remove the ability for people to communicate from people.
You aren't implying anything racist are you?
BTW I way less worried about thugs than about antivax mums and other fakemeds enthusiasts believing about conspiracy theory involving “big pharma”.
Many of mine were also flagged, despite me being extremely polite.
Where do you get that? All I suggested was you express your opinion clearly, rather than euphemistically.
If people in some society like the way their society is, more or less, why should they want to import a whole bunch of people that think very differently from them, who will make their society very different in a way that they are not interested in it becoming? How would that benefit them?
I don't know if you're using this argument to convince the 'normies', and actually you don't like brown people because they frighten you, or if you actually believe it. People often believe in self-contradictory things, but then again, people with unwarranted self-regard often think they can convince other people with obvious nonsense. Perhaps a bit of both?
That doesn't mean you have to want people who happen to think very differently to come in. You can like the fact that people in your country are free to think how they like, and also like the fact that most of them happen to like to think certain ways.
>people with unwarranted self-regard often think they can convince other people with obvious nonsense.
Projecting?
You really have no choice but to phrase yourself in a way that's only recognizable to the in-crowd. Even here, with the polite expression, he is catching flak.
Personally, I don't discuss politics in real life anymore. Risks are too great. Just the Internet, where on some forums (not this one), you can be honest about what you think.
Look at Italy right now.
> Or will instead, in the interest of "the economy" (ie, money) keep too light a hand on things.
Sure, but this has nothing to do with authoritarian states vs democracy. You'll find a ton of authoritarian states doing exactly the same. It's just a matter of who's the ruling class, and in most places in the world (100% of liberal democracies but also most authoritarian states), it's the business owners, so of course they will try and save their business before their people.
> Basically I don't expect the west to be able to react to this any better if it gets big. Their populations are uncontrollable (for mostly good reason) but in this particular case that feature will turn out to be bug.
Western people aren't uncontrollable. The one who are, are the one who are pissed of by their plutocratic governments and have lost all faith in them. I'm pretty convinced that Switzerland will be fine, and I'm not surprised Italy is in the same kind of shit than Iran.
I'm French, and we've been lucky so far, but I expect chaos when it's going to start. The government has long lost all political legitimity here, and people absolutely distrust them, so I don't think they will not peacefully comply to government attempt to limit the propagation.