Re:Tribalism comes for pandemic science
by ithkuil on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:22AM
(#23464515)
For example, consider Sweden's approach. I have no idea whether their strategy is right or wrong, how should I know? experts disagree.
But it surely takes a lot of confidence to pull that off, knowing that opposition parties will feast on any opportunity to publicly decry your recklessness.
Covid-19 is real and it kills people, it's effects can be and will be measured.
We do make tradeoffs between economy and safety all the times, but we do that for things we're used to (traffic, pollution, diseases prevention, ...), so some people expect we can do the same kinds of tradeoffs with covid-19.
Again, I'm not an expert and have no idea on how to compute such a tradeoff.
But my point is that there is a inanimate force that is just pulling that card off the table.
It doesn't help that in some countries it also became such a heavily partisan topic.
I'm not from the US. I live in a country whose government has been very proactive and the population is generally supportive of the (re cently lifted) lockdown. And that's a country where rarely the populace has anything good to say about the government (a popular saying "it's raining, damned government!")
Playing it safe seems much more effective politically, that unless you want to play some "strong man" narrative like some governments did, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in taking excessive risks.
But it surely takes a lot of confidence to pull that off, knowing that opposition parties will feast on any opportunity to publicly decry your recklessness.
Covid-19 is real and it kills people, it's effects can be and will be measured.
We do make tradeoffs between economy and safety all the times, but we do that for things we're used to (traffic, pollution, diseases prevention, ...), so some people expect we can do the same kinds of tradeoffs with covid-19.
Again, I'm not an expert and have no idea on how to compute such a tradeoff.
But my point is that there is a inanimate force that is just pulling that card off the table.
It doesn't help that in some countries it also became such a heavily partisan topic.
I'm not from the US. I live in a country whose government has been very proactive and the population is generally supportive of the (re cently lifted) lockdown. And that's a country where rarely the populace has anything good to say about the government (a popular saying "it's raining, damned government!")
Playing it safe seems much more effective politically, that unless you want to play some "strong man" narrative like some governments did, there doesn't seem to be any advantage in taking excessive risks.