
Women leaders are responding best to the Coronavirus pandemic - adelHBN
https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/#3f270b9a3dec
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robpal
Apart from a clickbait title this article offers zero evidence (or even
plausible arguments) why the presented responses were "the best".

3k deaths in Germany is already a lot and, as far as I know (correct me if I'm
wrong), they classify COVID-19 deaths with pre-existing medical conditions as
not covid-related. Also, Germany is a very rich country which clearly helps.

Norway and Finland are sparsely populated (with low total population) and New
Zealand / Iceland are isolated islands (also with low population totals). I do
find these explanations more plausible and consistent with other countries.

Taiwan is a different ballgame as they had rough time with the previous SARS
epidemic. Instant lockdown was the winning play here, correctly implemented. I
see zero connection with woman being the leader here.

~~~
op03
I think there are advantages during these kind of events (caveat - no violence
is involved).

Two reasons -

[1] Men respond to stress differently from women -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend)

For men stress response is more or less always fight or flight. And that
instinct increases quick as unknowns multiply as with covid and pressure
builds on leaders.

[2] Its a Hyperconnected world these days. Tend and befriend keeps as many of
those connections intact while fight or flight breaks connections. While
dealing with unknowns/hard problems (like covid) producing good outcomes
really hinge on having access to the largest widest distribution of skills and
knowledge, unlike when dealing with known issues.

Women leaders will enable different outcomes in this hyperconnected world as
they take advantage of that tend and befriend instinct in a hyperconnected
setting.

How much better or worse these outcomes will be we will see in the coming
years...

~~~
rurban
Having experienced the decisions of our fearlful german woman leader, it's
clear that she didn't act by reason, only by fear. Why did no politican look
at the numbers by themselves, and rather trust "interesting" advisers? Esp.
when knowingly throwing the world into a global crisis, which could be worse
than in the 20ies. Which brought us WW2. The numbers clearly tell that the
death threat is no death threat, that flattening the curve will cause at least
two times more dead than letting it running its spike for 4 weeks. Hundreds of
thousands of dead? Give me a break. A flu season has 550.000, how much have we
got now for COVID-19? The normal flu still caused many more dead than
COVID-19.

Every medium flu season is more deadly than this one. By far. Keeping people
locked in at home and keeping the schools closed will only help to keep the
virus alive which should be already dead by now, if people would go out into
the sun. There is no chance for a vaccine, there is no chance to keep the
spread under control with lockdowns with an R0 of over 5. There is no danger
with an IFR of 0.3 - 0.6% (0.4% looking the most reliable number for now).
Italy always has an IFR of 1% for every such flu outbreak. But they went
bonkers when they saw the military vans on TV. Well done.

The women leaders I see were all hysterical. While the men around her (the
neighboring countries) did respond in a more rational and less hysterical
fashion.

4 weeks lockdown ok, why not. Does not do much harm. But the whole summer?
Closing all summer events? Pure insanity. That way they will never get it
under control and reach herd immunity before fall. They already found out
about their massive mistake, now they are only doing damage control by
controlling the message, censorship, fearing a political turmoil in the next
elections.

~~~
op03
You sound pretty hysterical dude to be honest.

~~~
rurban
Yeah, and I spared you from my opinion on Macron, luckily. Should be added to
the same category.

