Yeah, and we don't know the reasoning behind either decision. I can come up with maybe a hundred different parameters that could be relevant or not.

At this point we can trust authorities to have a reasonable approach to this and that they monitor the situation closely. Or we can assume they don't.

In the first case, we follow the action plan. In the latter we do what we can, best based on actions that worked elsewhere. Just complaining about how insufficient actions are in our eyes doesn't help.

Anyway, there plans for stuff like this government drawers everywhere. Ranging from school closures to plan keeping critical infrastructure up. Heritage from the cold war.

And even if the US federal government seems to screw up, states like New York and Washington seem to react rather decisively. And we shouldn't forget that things in China are calming down to an extent ad-hoc hospitals are closed down and medical supplies can be shipped to Italy.

It also depends on the country's government.

Afaik in Germany the country's government can't force schools to close or public events to be cancelled. These decisions have to be taken locally (at state/city or even district level). All the health ministry can do is tell people "you shouldn't do A B C and you should do X Y Z"

No, that's not the real reason.

In the places where they have shut down schools, they can't really do it either. But when government says "do X" and has good reasons, the institutions comply. I'm in the board of a private institution in a country with a shutdown order, and there was really no discussion between the board members that this institution would shut down too, despite there being no legal backing at all.

That seems to be exactly the reason in Germany. The federal government has no say regarding public gatherings or schools. They have given out recommendations, some have followed, others have not. There's no repercussion for cities not following the government's decision.

You can hide behind "I lack the legal authority" or you can act. This is one of the rare occasions that absolutely do call for the old "ask for forgiveness" mentality. Nobody in the lower tiers would complain about central government to take a very difficult decision off their plate. (some people will complain, those who still think they can just pretend that the epidemic does not happen, but they will complain anyways)

The difference is that, in China, if you don't comply the state security detains you and you get sentenced to re-education camp at best.

In other places there are no real consequences for you, even if people die. But there are legal and economic consequences if you shut down without top cover. That is why the government and legislative paralysis is so damaging -- with no safety net, people will prefer the unknown loss over the certain loss.

They do end up complying. But it's not as fast and efficient as in China.

Not saying it's good or bad, but it's definitely a different system.

This is correct afaik, I'm pretty sure the decision to close schools is with the ministries of education of each German state, however if federal institutions put out strong recommendations, state and local administrators will likely follow very soon after. Federal ministries may not have absolute control here (unless they declare a state of emergency or something) but they do have plenty of influence.

Japan has the same limitation, but the government put out a "strong recommendation" for schools to close and all the local governments complied.

Japan has a different culture. When the government puts out a "strong recommendation", the society generally follows. This even happens with corporations. There's a culture of conformity there that just isn't present in western nations.

They haven't got laws on the books to do this? - the UK Passed some enabling legislation in Jan I believe

We do, ever since the cold war.

France has 11x Denmark's population and 4x it's confirmed cases, so it seems like doing nothing worked better.

Don't forget:

a) There's a time-lag of probably 1-2 weeks between someone becoming infected, until their case hits the official statistics.

b) There will be different rates of testing between different areas, healthcare systems, and countries, which will be hard to quantify.

c) There will be fundamental differences between countries (e.g. patterns of population density, quality/availability of healthcare, etc.) which mean that direct per capita comparisons (as you made) are of little value.

Denmark's case number has increased far more than that of other countries in recent days. They probably had to act as they'd overtake Italy in less than a week with cases/capita if growth continues like that.

The case #'s only go up if you test more people. In Ohio for instance they are only testing very few people and there is now evidence of community spread because the 4th person confirmed had no known contact but you basically need to be in intensive car to get tested or have an obvious connection. So the case # in and of themselves could vary based upon testing criteria. Not sure if they have the same standards in Denmark vs France.

France just closed down all schools and universities...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-12/france-cl...

Ah yes, because the pandemic is over and the disease has stopped spreading.

The effects of this will be seen in 4-8 weeks. Revisit this comment then

these numbers don't mean anything anymore. there is no more systematic testing going on

The fact that they refuse to do things like closing borders and immediately ceasing all travel by foreigners or citizens who've traveled traveled abroad meanwhile ending arbitrary social events is the reason you know it's hype up media nonsense.

Most of the actions taken are those most likely not affecting those in the target older or immuno-compromised demographic likely to have the serious consequences.

https://omny.fm/shows/inside-the-huddle/03-dr-laura-power-on...

Shutting down borders helps if the virus hasn't reached your country.

If it has, there's no point in banning incoming people (maybe you can stop people from leaving so other regions don't get infected, but that's a less strong incentive). If you already have the virus in your country, the best thing you can do is slow its spreading, by banning large groups of people from congregating.

Is that why now two countries have had mass quarantines?

It's a balancing act between lowering infections/death and economic impact.

France population: 66.99 million.

Denmark population: 5.6 million.

Doesn't seem like an accurate comparison.

Has there every been a time when, "Country X can't do what country Y can, because X is too [big/small] while Y is [small/big]" has not been a useless comment?

Is there a generic term for this sort of fallacy, where someone brings up a random difference between [cities/states/countries] as an excuse for why one can't do what the other has already done, without ever bothering to explain why the difference matters?

It's even worse than useless. Giant states are often assumed to be much better than small states, because "efficiency". Yet, whenever actual conditions are examined, and (inevitably) small states turn out to be better for humans, we get this sort of "well of course smaller problems are easier to solve" apologia.

I mean, I'm sure in some cases being bigger or smaller is helpful. It just feels incredibly lazy, borderline disingenuous to throw it out there without bothering to connect the dots or analyze how size would matter in that specific case.

> small states turn out to be better for humans

Source/examples of this? In Europe, the larger countries like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain don't seem obviously worse off to me than their smaller counterparts. Like if you compare the UK to Ireland, Germany to Austria, Spain to Portugal, etc.

How is it a useless comment? If you want to compare the actions of Denmark to France, it's more relevant to compare it to a particular region. Grand Est, for example has a similar population as Denmark.

This is almost common sense in the business world. No one thinks BigCo and LittleStartup are capable of the same things or that one's ability or inability to do something is equivalent.

Well, in that case, let's compare: the Grand Est region has about the same population as Denmark, slightly more COVID-19 cases than Denmark (587 vs 514), and more deaths (9 vs 0). And yet, most schools and the administration are still open.

For now. In business, people deciding on the very weak data basis we have to discuss we have, would rightfully be have their asses kicked. Yet, here we are, doing exactly this.