- Work from home options or in the worst case unemployment benefits for duration of the pandemic - Reimbursement for food/goods delivery fees - N95 masks and training on fitting them properly - Hotel/AirBNB rooms as an alternative to congregate living - Small gated communities with entry quarantines / contact tracing
In the meantime those at low risk could have continued to live more normally and building up some herd immunity as a stopgap measure until vaccines were ready.
Certainly Sweden handled things more along these lines and in the long term their society would be better for it. China caused every single COVID death in the world, whether through labs or wet markets, so I wouldn't sing praises of authoritarian governments.
> in the long term their society would be better for it
No, I think successful suppression was both shown to be very possible and the better option. Political failure means that millions have already died, and more will follow. Of course, suppression is a no-go now, I'm not denying that.
> China caused every single COVID death in the world, whether through labs or wet markets, so I wouldn't sing praises of authoritarian governments.
It's a nation of 1.2 billion, many new viruses are bound to originate there. I think it is disingenuous to blame the governance of China for the outbreak.
We all know how our own government works. Are we honestly supposed to believe if this outbreak had originated domestically that we would have reacted fast enough to contain it? We couldn't even avert it when we had multiple months advance warning, China controlled an active infection within their own borders and has successfully suppressed a potential pandemic in the past (SARS). I don't think we've demonstrated any capacity to do the same.
The goal of the government is not to minimize the number of deaths at any cost.
Maybe not at any cost, but yeah I think there should be a pretty strong presumption towards improving people's welfare and not killing them.
Especially during this pandemic when so much low-hanging fruit has been intentionally left on the table--for instance, if "protecting people" was ever a goal, why has there been literally zero focus on vitamin D deficiency in the general population? This is simple, cheap, efficient, and a potent inhibitor of sars-cov-2, and yet the ruling class has seen to it that it has never been publicly pushed at all.
All of the ruling class's ideas happen to align with profit for pharmaceutical companies and greatly increased social control. Is that a coincidence?
To me, it's pretty clear that the driving force for these changes has been 700k people dying, not pharma profit.
I'm not going to continue replying, just an FYI.
I liked the bit where 3 million people didn't die, whereas 700k people died here.
https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
Saying that it is better for 3 million people to be alive rather than dead is not an emotional appeal, it's actually quite rational if our goal is to not kill people.
Sure, if you only consider first-order effects from car accidents.
A world without easy transportation is a less well off one and one that likely has more people dying/living shorter lives than our present one.
Saying that someone dying is bad is not an appeal to emotion. I'm a consequentialist - I believe we should implement welfare improving policies.
A policy that saved 3 million people, in my view, is a net good one.
Perhaps you should practice what you preach.
Sure, but let's keep in mind what they can do when they are effective.
China averted the deaths of 2.5-3 million people with an effective lockdown program. That's incredible.
I'm not confident I can really think of any policy proposition that would save more lives off of the top of my head.
The fact that we failed to do the same will go down as a tragedy of massive magnitude.
e: The jingoism here can be a bit too much. Any praise of any Chinese policy gets downvotes, even if one recognizes them as a despotic, racist regime. It's nativistic ignorance, plain and simple.