News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by adventured on Saturday April 04, 2020 @08:55AM (#22777966)
Europe outside of Germany has no advanced industrial capabilities at all. They can choose to do anything they want to, however they have three major industrial options to choose from: Germany, the US, China.

Germany can't make enough of anything to satisfy all of Europe's demand. That leaves having to deal with the US and China.

The first thing Germany did was shift to self-preservation mode, abandon their EU and Eurozone partners, and lock down their exports. Germany has been able to hyper test their own population, while the rest of Europe was left running at low rates of testing, including Britain, France, Spain and Italy, along with all of Eastern Europe.

This is partially why Italy's case mortality rate is now a shocking 12%, the Netherlands is 10%, the UK is 10%, Spain is near 10%, France is 8%, Belgium is 7%, Sweden is 6%. And these numbers keep getting worse. Mortality rates like this should never happen in developed nations (Canada's case mortality rate by contrast is a mere 1.5%, Germany is 1.4%). None of them are testing anywhere close to enough. People expect incompetence out of the US healthcare system, however Britain and France are supposed to be among the best in the world and they have completely failed (England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer just said yesterday that there's no need for the healthy general public to wear masks).

The reason why even France and Britain can't test their own populations properly, despite months of lead time, is they have no industrial capabilities to match what Germany can do. Europe is largely left helpless and with the EU collapsing - there is no scenario where Italy and Spain will ever trust the EU again - the infighting and bickering is likely to continue indefinitely.

Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by mnl on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:35AM (#22778125)
>Europe outside of Germany has no advanced industrial capabilities at all

Could you at least google about this topic before going on building a whole theory on top of an absurd statement?

So France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden etc in the EU have no "advanced industrial capabilities at all", nor have the UK or Switzerland outside the EU, really?

Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by funcDropShadow on Saturday April 04, 2020 @12:44PM (#22779410)
As a German, I have to add there is not a single country in the EU without significant industrial capabilities.
Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by Pedrit0 on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:41AM (#22778153)
I think the vision is a bit caricatural : France and Italy still have an important industry. Car, planes, drugs, luxury goods, trains, space launches, fin-mechanics and I miss a lot... Fr and IT are 6th and 7th economies in the world : you cannot achieve that without an important industrial layer. But of course Germany is the biggest industrial actor in Europe and among the biggests in the world.
Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by funcDropShadow on Saturday April 04, 2020 @12:41PM (#22779384)
> Germany has been able to hyper test their own population, while the rest of Europe was left running at low rates of testing, including Britain, France, Spain and Italy, along with all of Eastern Europe

This has almost nothing to do with industrial strength. This is about having lots of distributed, independent, competent laboratories. It certainly helped that the test was developed in Germany in January. Afterwards the developers started immediately to spread the knowledge about the test to the other laboratories. This shows the strength of decentralized laboratories. Other countries organized that differently. Sometimes centralization is more efficient, but often decentralization combined with distributed competence is more capable to adapt to change.

Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by simion314 on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:42AM (#22778160)
> there is no scenario where Italy and Spain will ever trust the EU again - the infighting and bickering is likely to continue indefinitely.

I can see politicians would try to blame China or Germany for the fact their country was not prepared but I hope the majority is not that stupid. I can see and believe my country was not prepared and is in bad shape but there is no reason to blame others when the fault is internal.

Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by funcDropShadow on Saturday April 04, 2020 @12:46PM (#22779433)
And let them experience the European Kurzarbeitsgeld and they will change their mind. Additionally, Trumps behavior is indirectly strengthening the European idea by contrast.
Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by codeisawesome on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:15AM (#22778045)
> with the EU collapsing

Are there real signs of the EU collapsing?

Re:US accused of ‘piracy’ over mask ‘confiscation’ by A4ET8a8uTh0 on Saturday April 04, 2020 @09:24AM (#22778074)
Well, there is an argument to be made that the unity of the nation states was weakened somewhat with Brexit and rumblings of Polexit. So it is not really collapsing, but there is a nonzero chance of dissolving.

Personal opinion, not unlike with the internet, we seem to be intent on fracturing previously somewhat open fora, the global order from previous iteration to 'everyone for themselves' model, which served so well in the past.

edit: made last sentence clearer