They did. And the continued but relatively mild difficulties they have are most likely because others didn't.
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Our Covid Response
- Thread starter gorfias
- Start date
Those infectious diseases aren't this one. The majority of coronaviruses found to infect humans are endemic. Trying desperately to blame others for a pandemic is both factually incorrect and accomplishes nothing but make yourself more miserable.
The "greed" narrative exists solely to get people like you to redirect your feelings about a virus onto people who never could have stopped it in the first place. Don't fall for Seanchaidh's tankie crap.
Billionaire investors convincing the powers that be to enforce patent restrictions on vaccine production is the very definition of greed
What do you believe is the truly unique characteristic of Covid-19 that transformed it into a global pandemic, where hundreds of thousands of other viral diseases flare out?
It's not infectiousness, because there are more infectious diseases that have failed to spread on anything like this level.
The accomplishment is supposed to be an awareness that when choosing our representatives, we should choose people who have track records of public service, intelligence, and civic-mindedness, rather than charismatic con-men.
The outcome of this pandemic was determined months before the vaccine existed in any meaningful quantity.
Interspecies transmission? Infectiousness prior to symptoms? The say SARS gave out because it didn't really spread prior to identifiable symptoms.
What unique characteristic makes you think this could be contained, while dozens of other viruses persist for generations?
So it's important in your mind to blame people for a natural disaster because it helps you rationalize the thing you already wanted? Understood.
By prioritizing economics ahead of lives, yes
Neither are unique or even terribly rare.
Nothing unique needed to be contained, since the vast, vast majority of viruses didn't explode globally in the same way.
Not blaming anyone for natural disasters; I'm blaming authorities for fucking the response. Similarly, I would hope that if someone fucked up the response to a hurricane by failing to properly construct disaster defences, underfunding the emergency relief services, or underestimating the aid requirements.... we would be able to correctly point it out, rather than pointlessly stating that the government can't stop hurricanes and therefore any level of devastation is fine.
This has almost certainly been posted in here by now but I'm going to either do it again or rectify the mistake if it hasn't
You have to understand, it is entirely possible and reasonably common for disaster defenses to be inadequate and aid requirements be underestimated without anyone doing anything wrong based on the information they had.
Just a reminder, this tangent started with China. While China's reported numbers are complete and total BS and only a single person here is delusional enough to imagine otherwise, I was defending against the accusations of collosal failure (or whatever Silvanus' phrasing was). Nobody has to fail for a pandemic to happen.
The rate of death has a massive spread among countries, even ones that aren't islands. Some of China's contemporaries in the region, like Vietnam and Thailand, have around 300 deaths per million, which is around what the Nordic countries are doing, while the USA is rocking that ~2500 deaths per million. There is very clearly actions you can take to improve your numbers. It just requires not kowtowing to the capitalist class.
Obviously. And it's also entirely possible and reasonable common for short-sighted or callous people to cut corners.
In this case? Was it genuine, excusable ignorance or complacency and greed? Well, we have a situation in which the gene sequence was provided to us ahead of time and numerous governments did fuck-all with it. We have a situation in which employers have forced non-essential workers to head into the office throughout the lockdown. We have a situation in which the health service has been systematically underfunded for 10 years in the UK. And we have a situation in which specific pandemic-response teams were disbanded.
Your argument depends on the idea that if everyone took the same actions, the outcomes would be the same, and that just isn't true. Climate, population density, average age, etc all play roles in the behavior of the virus.
It doesn't have to be either of those. Some things are out of your control.
They do. Which is why I mentioned China's contemporaries. Of course the island nations around China do even better, but the worst performing countries bordering China still only have ~600 deaths per million, which is still notably a quarter of the death rate of the US. Further if we look near the top of the list and who's doing bad without the excuse of being a poor country, it's other conservative led countries. Brazil, Poland, Hungary, the UK. It's really really hard not to see the hand of policy making the biggest dictates in COVID results. And to that end while believing China's official numbers is a terrible idea, it is absolutely reasonable to expect them to be inline with their geographic and political contemporaries. The closest would be Vietnam and if the numbers are consistent that would put China as doing roughly 8 times better than the US in protecting it's population.
This meme wouldn't be so awful if this excuse wasn't the EXACT excuse for not doing something about climate change
You can't break medical confidentiality. That's illegal
Unless, of course, if you're a woman
That doesn't mean they actually are. Whether a disease spreads is a matter of concrete reality and is plainly dependent on human choices.
Good thing you've never been in charge of anything, or we'd still be losing millions of people a year to polio and smallpox.