It continues to astonish me the degree to which a literal concentration camp operating totalitarian state can get away with barely a mention after unleashing a pandemic which has killed 1.5M people. Historians will look back on this with horror.
However the virus broke out, China knew full well after SARS 1 that wet markets and e.g. traditional Chinese medicine were huge pandemic risks and did nothing. After SARS 2 broke out there was a very well evidenced cover up and misinformation campaign which apparently without which could have saved 95% of cases.
But instead of the media keeping that in collective consciousness we get pieces like this.
As they rightly say the next pandemic could be considerably worse. The absolute lack of any political or economic pressure on the country most likely to cause it directly informed by a media who appear to no longer care about that fact will be a big factor.
If you think I am being unreasonable, just do the thought experiment and imagine the US or UK had done what china did. You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.
> You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.
If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.
And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.
China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.
If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.
Edit: China tried to downplay -> China tried to cover up
>If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.
I don't think you've been following much of the recent news about brexit or the trade wars with China. Of course countries can condemn and criticise others for their actions. Nearly the entire western press corps have been non-stop criticising your sitting president for the past 4 years. So I think we live in the same world. Why can't the press at the very least be honest and consistent about China?
>And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.
Jan 14th - as reported by China. They repeatedly lied (demonstrably) about their death figures and the nature of the disease. Evidence emerged that actually China NEVER reported the pandemic nature of the disease but rather it was (still rather complicit) WHO staff on the ground who reported it.
They also permitted international flights but not domestic ones once that virus was known about, hoarded PPE and spread a conspiracy theory about the US having originated the virus.
I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.
>China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.
The contention that delayed lockdowns (delayed due to China lying up until January and continuously lying about their death figures) would have saved all these lives is honestly laughable. The trade off between lockdowns and the economy is very difficult as is contact tracing in a non-totalitarian state.
>If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.
Apples and oranges. Centres of European trade who have considerably wider travel arriving at them and no culture of e.g. mask-wearing and governments ill-adopted to authoritarian measures vs. a communist country with considerably less is not the same at all. And we mustn't forget the impact of climate (hotter climate = considerably less impact).
China had a warning in 2003 to shut down their wet markets and arrogantly ignored it. They reopened the wet markets shortly after covid-19 broke out and covered up the outbreak. This is not even getting into the quite plausible walked-out-of-the-lab theories and it's still clear they're responsible for the pandemic.
The CCP are a dreadful totalitarian government who should be held to account. Instead they sabre-rattle, lie, spread misinformation and attack any country that dares question their narrative threatening economic consequences (see e.g. Australia).
Chinese people are the biggest victims of them. Many more millions will die before that awful group get overthrown. But their time will come.
> I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.
In no way do I think China should be lauded. They should obviously be condemned for failing to contain this while it was a localized epidemic and not a pandemic, and for actively hurting and silencing the doctors that tried to do so. The CCP is a despicable regime that has caused much harm to its own citizens and to the world in general, in this crisis and in others.
However, I can do little to change the regime in China. However, I have much more power to influence and change the regime in my own country, and so I am much more interested in how they handled the crisis at least once information got out, and it is hear where I think the press should also focus, as they rightly have.
China's reputation for covering up should have been ample reason to start pandemic preparation in December or at least January, as Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries with successful responses did.
European countries and the US instead chose to believe China's early lies. They then added their own lies on top once China started telling (some of) the truth, claiming that masks are not useful, claiming that the disease is not that bad, claiming that it will go away in the summer and myriad other lies.
They then avoided as long as possible to take any serious measures that could have curtailed the spread of the disease early on extremely effectively, with some more serious but very short term economic impact, leaving the rest of the year for growth.
Instead, they chose lukewarm 'lockdowns' where many stores remained opened, they chose to only do contact tracing for direct contacts (serious countries were contact tracing and isolating up to 3 levels of contact), they chose to not even recommend masks until the second half of the year (particularly stupid regimes like the one in Sweden have only recommended them last week!) etc.
These are all things for which we can hold our politicians accountable. We can't hold the CCCP accountable.
By the way, I'm neither a citizen nor a resident of the USA, Trump is not 'my president' in any sense of the word.
China is the second largest economy in the world, and at current growth rates, will be number one in about five years.
You can't put sanctions on them. The world economy would collapse if countries stopped allowing Chinese goods into their economies. We can't just retool overnight.
The reason they get away with their concentration camps is precisely for this reason. There is very little leverage the rest of us have to stop them.
The best the world can do is slowly twist the screws until they are less powerful. This is already happening. You can see some manufacturing is already moving out of China into other parts of Asia because the US is making small but steady changes on how goods from China can be consumed. This is the only option right now unfortunately.
> There is very little leverage the rest of us have to stop them.
That is not true. China main product is physical goods. If the western world would stop consuming irrelevant physical goods (like cocktail umbrellas) and limit itself to essential (and food and western media) then China would be gravely impacted. To be fair, the whole world economy would be impacted, not only china.
But the western world only pays lip service to the "Never again" mantra and will do nothing that affects its standard of living, camps or no camps.
Have you ever tried eliminating Chinese made goods from your life? You'd have to start by ditching your phone and computer, because they're pretty much all assembled in China.
We frankly don't even have access to the information we need to make an informed choice. Even things that don't say "made in China" most likely have some Chinese made parts inside.
I think we the people could, in theory, make a difference and stop buying anything else but necessities from China or at least reduce the amount of crap we buy from there. But I don’t really see that happening. Western people are addicted to “cheaper” anything and CCP knows that weakness
The alternative is to shrink government spending to the minimum possible and put everything into the economy, liberalise the economy so that we can start producing cheap products like China does.
But let's be honest, this is never going to happen. Politics keep idiots fighting between each other while our society gets slowly boiled alive by the Chinese Communist Party.
I wonder if it's because they already bought us and we don't know yet or if it's just sheer incompetence.
I think it's precisely an attitude like this which is the problem. The US/UK and China are incomparable. For example, you can say what you just said without consequence. Try that in China. There is no rule of law there, prosecutors get a 99% conviction rate and political opponents are disappeared. The communist government system has killed over 100M and China actively organ harvests political prisoners.
the US and UK may have done terrible wrongs but they are held endlessly to account. I don't want to get into a dreadful endless debate about foreign adventures (I am not a fan of the Afghan or Iraqi wars by the way) but there is just a world of difference between a totalitarian state and a democratic one.
Imagine the police turning up and arresting you for that comment and you disappear never to be heard from again. That is the reality for many Chinese dissidents. Don't undervalue the freedoms gifted to you by the imperfect state in which you live.
TBH, sanctions are inconceivable on China for the same reason - they are now simply too large and too much money is at stake.
There's also the question of effectiveness. Iran has been under sanctions for most of my adult life, and still appears to be islamist. Ditto north korea. Going further to provoke a war is much worse.
The uighur situation is far more concerning than the errors of the pandemic, which was like Chernobyl a mistake and misgovernment rather than intentional.
While I found that sort of intimidation tactic reprehensible, an actual arrest is clearly a step beyond it, enslavement or murder as practiced by the CCP is on yet another level.
A lot of diseases originate in Asia for various biological, cultural, and geographic reasons, not always political ones. Swine flu originated in the US and infected over a billion around the world, and the world didn't have "instant and severe" sanctions against the US.
Swine flu didn't kill 1.5M. Swine flu wasn't covered up at source with doctors arrested and sanctioned. Swine flu didn't come after a very similar outbreak in 2003 where worldwide experts told america 'this particular kind of market is a huge pandemic risk, you should stop that' which america adhered to for a brief period then reopened and promoted. America didn't stop flights internally after the outbreak while permitting international ones. There wasn't indication of the WHO being overtly influenced by the US to cover up the seriousness of swine flu.
America acted to address the issue and prevent future outbreaks. China is doing precisely the opposite, and looking to save face rather than save lives.
Anybody with half a brain should be aghast at what's going on very blatantly right in front of their eyes. The next pandemic might not have a 0.4% case mortality rate mostly affecting those at the end of their lives/with comorbidities.
Taking the point separately about disease prevalence in Asia - absolutely, and there are many reasons as to why - the wide biosphere, the broad consumption of many species not consumed abroad, the prevalence of high risk animals with similar biology to ours but higher tolerance for e.g. fever/respiratory disease (bats are unfortunately extremely good at this) - this is precisely why we have to be extremely vigilent there.
This is also what makes the Chinese refusing to allow serious investigation into the outbreak (now only permitted via the highly questionable WHO) along with them opening wet markets shortly after the initial outbreak and worse of all the undenaible cover up particularly egregious.
Perhaps the next pandemic would be unavoidable even with China doing all they could to prevent it - but for them to play dice with the future of civilisation with what control they have is unforgiveable.
This is not exactly the same, but police searched the home of a Florida data scientist and confiscated her computers, because she kept reporting Florida coronavirus statistics, when the state government would have preferred to keep true numbers secret.
The Chinese government is clearly not great, but I see blaming them for covid as a scapegoat for the massively bungled response in the US. If China did a good job instead, it's still be unlikely to have contained the outbreak entirely within it's borders. It's still each countries own responsibility to protect it's people, and the US had no one to blame there except itself. Sure, China deserves some blame, but I think saying that it's the "real" story is dangerously understating the massive, ridiculous, incompetence of the US response.
Officials covered up covid because China takes pandemic response seriously. A mayor of an American city would have no incentive to hide an emerging disease because they know that report would have no impact on its own. In both cases, nothing is done until shit hits the fan. The difference is that China actually managed to control the pandemic, as evident in how you're allowed to be mask-free in many cities.
As far as sanctions go, they only make sense if you're goals are strictly economically related. Punishing China with sanctions for the pandemic largely ineffective strategy because you're hurting your own side just as much.
I'd be surprised if in your hypothetical scenario there would be sanctions against the US or the UK. Neither country would try and cover it up which is what's been truly despicable about China's response. I do wish the wider world started taking notice of the vile crimes the CCP are committing.
There'd certainly be rigorous demands on precisely how either country would demonstrate that the risk had been mitigated and widespread damning coverage and condemnation.
The CCP (who have all but destroyed and coopted the great history of ancient China) are a despicably evil state who will cause a great many FURTHER deaths if the world doesn't start taking note and action.
What is a journalist for if they don't even tell the truth when the elephant in the room is the size of a meteor? Not a single mention in this article and most I read recently.
Blame China? The truth is the international political system is designed to be adversarial and fueled by lack of trust. To expect China or any country to suddenly "de-rogue" is naive.
There are countries that have done quite well with Covid. Taiwan comes to mind. Others could have done similar. But instead those others put trust in a system of distrust; an unstable system that they actively contributed to and participated in. That's not on China's shoulders.
Furthermore. There were previous respiratory virus pandemics. Where were the lessons learned from that? The stockpile of masks? The stock pile of PPE?
I'm not suggesting China is innocent. But as governments go, it's not alone in its guilt.
Only after watching a short but interesting documentary on youtube about wet markets in China [1] I understood why they are so interested in keeping that industry operational. It's as bad as it is, but unfortunately wet markets also seem to play a massive economic role in some parts over there, where many people depend on it.
I'd sure hope, that the western world would put more pressure on China, but instead it seems we'll be facing even bigger pandemic threats in the future..
“The majority of the people in China do not eat wildlife animals. Those people who consume these wildlife animals are the rich and the powerful –a small minority.”
Thanks for that, I viewed that some time ago and found it very informative. I am not sure I'd agree it plays a big economical role, rather it became an alternative outlet for some producers but mostly it appears to be a luxury item for the rich and thus entirely viable for China to ban.
I'd have a lot more sympathy if poor people ate such animals to survive (as with a lot of 'bush meat' in Africa) however that isn't the case.
China have no excuse for not closing these, at all. Traditional Chinese 'medicine' where they grind down very many animal parts in extremely unclean environments is another big flashpoint.
The risk is at the species-extinction level yet the actions by the world and the coverage by journalists is so low. Astonishes me.
> It's as bad as it is, but unfortunately wet markets also seem to play a massive economic role in some parts over there, where many people depend on it.
Ok, so what? Adapt.
Like the rest of the planet did. As an example, Restaurants also play a massive economic role in the western world and pretty much everything involving gatherings of people. Or my grandparents doing their groceries without risking their lives. So we managed to more or less adapt to the new reality.
Wet market importance pales in comparison to the changes to the rest of the planet, honestly.
The so-called 'Wet market' is basically the counterpart of the farmer's market in the west. It's the concept of the 'market' for average person, not only for Chinese but also for east and southeast Asia, banning it equals banning the 'market'. In my experience, I feel like 99% of the market I've been don't sell exotic animals. Here's a really good example of an average wet market [0].
Also exotic animal trading has been seriously crashed down in China early this year. I bet you won't be able to see it happening in the following decades at least.
As an aside, this thought experiment is currently being prepared in real life. In 20 years when emigration, drought and storms will have started to cost serious money, what will people do with those that even now continue to say 'the sea level is not rising'?
> unleashing a pandemic which has killed 1.5M people
If a similarly dangerous flu mutation jumps from a pig to an undocumented agricultural worker in the United States, and goes viral across the globe, will you also refer to that as 'unleashing a pandemic'?
Animal rights advocacy groups have for decades been reminding us that conditions in modern farms are dangerous and unsanitary, so it's not like we don't have any advance warning for it.
... Also, it became incredibly clear to anyone that was paying attention that COVID was a serious threat in January. Yet, most of the western world collectively sat on its hands for the next month and a half. Will your historians also leave a few chapters on the subject of just how incapable our societies are at dealing with epidemics?
Where China failed was not in allowing the virus to jump to a human, it was in covering it up. I'd like to hope that if the same thing happened in the US, the free press would be screaming about how it started, we'd be taking samples and warning other countries, and we would work with other countries to limit travel of those who may be infected.
> we'd be taking samples and warning other countries
After the first US covid case was detected in Washington state on Jan 20th, the Seattle Flu Study scientists wanted to use their existing flu swabs samples to test if coronavirus was already spreading in the wild in Seattle (it was). But state and federal government did not allow them to. Finally on Feb 25th, they started testing their samples without permission, and found community spread.
There are other interpretations of this story, but any sensation-seeking newspaper would surely run this story as the government attempting to cover up that the virus is already spreading.
> To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China
The coverup was incredibly unsuccessful, and delayed global response by about two weeks.
We squandered a lot more than two weeks of time in reacting to it.
Given the low quality of press coverage, and of public accountability in the US for how the pandemic was handled, I can't imagine how it would have been any better if we had patient zero.
Also, note that the CCP cracked down hard on the leaders responsible for the failure in handling the pandemic. Many senior politicians lost their jobs. The US, meanwhile, nearly re-elected the president, did re-elect the senate, and most of the state governments up for election.
You look at that, and tell me - which of the two countries actually held their political class accountable for its failures? Note that the scope of failure in the US was two orders of magnitude worse...
It does astonish me how poorly people understand different in _magnitude_ between offences and how quickly we get into whataboutism.
>If a similarly dangerous flu mutation jumps from a pig to an undocumented agricultural worker in the United States, and goes viral across the globe, will you also refer to that as 'unleashing a pandemic'?
Absolutely, why on earth would you think I wouldn't? I'm borderline offended by the implication and this subtle-not-so-subtle 'if you criticise x you're racist' narrative is dangerous nonsense. Refrain from it please.
>Animal rights advocacy groups have for decades been reminding us that conditions in modern farms are dangerous and unsanitary, so it's not like we don't have any advance warning for it.
Absolutely, and spillover from ecological incursions is a huge issue. I hope there is more emphasis put on the risks now. I recommend the book 'spillover' on this topic.
However it's vitally important to realise - some countries are at higher risk than others for various reasons, China being a HUGE flashpoint for this issue, and there ARE things we can do.
Wet markets are disgusting horrific places and also HUGELY risky from a spillover event perspective. In 2003 and SARS 1 (note covid-19 is literally SARS v2) this is precisely how the virus emerged. China's response was, as now, to only briefly close these horrific places of animal torture. The world remained silent and no pressure was put upon them to change this. We already had our warning.
They additionally covered up the outbreak and punished those who reported it. Do not defend this either implicitly or explicitly. There are reports that, had they immediately reported it, we could have avoided 95% of worldwide cases. 1.5M * 0.95 is quite a lot of deaths to be directly responsible for isn't it?
As I said in another comment, it is very possible another pandemic could break out even if China did everything they could to prevent it. But to ignore serious points of vulnerability which indeed caused a previous outbreak and then to try to cover it up is unforgivable. There is a genuine case for that being considered at the very least a crime against humanity if not an act of war given the consequences.
>... Also, it became incredibly clear to anyone that was paying attention that COVID was a serious threat in January. Yet, most of the western world collectively sat on its hands for the next month and a half. Will your historians also leave a few chapters on the subject of just how incapable our societies are at dealing with epidemics?
China told the WHO there was no human-to-human transmission in January as per their famous tweet. And it came out later evidence to the contrary came not from Chinese authorities but in fact WHO representatives on the ground. So believing the WHO and China is part of why.
No question most countries utterly fucked this up however, and there is much to improve, but to ignore the totalitarian, evil government responsible for many millions of deaths and who harvest organs and put people in concentration camps and to do the whole 'oh but you'd never say that about the USA lol' thing is really not on. I would be just as firm on any country responsible and if they did not do EVERYTHING in their power to prevent and mitigate this I would castigate them, even if it were my own country.
In China doing that gets you disappeared. Remember that and remember the privilege you have to disagree with me. The Chinese do not have that luxury.
> Absolutely, why on earth would you think I wouldn't?
Because in this very sub-thread, you're making statements like:
> China's response was, as now, to only briefly close these horrific places of animal torture.
In contrast to what? The horrific places of animal torture from where our supermarket meat comes from?
Pardon my skepticism, but I'm not sure you're applying the same standards to their barbarism, as you are to our barbarism. You don't seem to be applying the same standards to their ineptitude and malfeasance as you are to our ineptitude and malfeasance.
It comes off as nationalistic baiting, which is incredibly frustrating, because it's happening in the context of lordnacho's post. There's a prevailing zeitgheist in the US that all our problems are the fault of other, bad countries - which is used as a diversion from finding actual solutions to these problems. We've seen this play out over the past year, to the tune of 250,000 dead.
You're surely familiar with the meme of a an incompetent authoritarian regime that's busy blaming everyone around them for their domestic problems, while their people starve. Over the past year, we've been living this meme. We should be looking back at it with self-reflection, as opposed to cheerleading it.
I don't think it's so much whataboutery as disappointment about the west.
What you say about China is true, there's a one-party state that has done some brutal things.
The disappointment is that we in the west thought we had a better way to govern, but the state where the disease originated is doing quite well despite all those criticisms, and the states where people are supposedly free are the ones where people are locked up in their homes unable to celebrate Christmas with their families.
We had a head start, we had sources that knew the truth about the disease, we'd seen smaller outbreaks before, and we have more money.
It's also simplistic to blame China for the whole thing. "They could have saved 95% of lives" is not the whole ethical story. If you know you're living next to someone unreliable, you need to take your own precautions.
I'm reading between your lines, but by "totalitarian measures" do you mean asking people to temporarily wear masks, wash their hands, stay home, and restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
If so, that is as totalitarian as requiring people to stop at red stoplights.
In the UK law is being passed by decree without parliamentary approval, fundamental democratic freedoms are being specifically prohibited - freedom of speech, assembly and association and prosecution of people conducting hitherto legal and proper businesses.
The pattern is entirely that of emergency 'enabling law' examples from the past when equally scary things gave them apparent justification.
Boiling things down to 'just asking to wear a mask' is at best deeply naive and at worst arrogantly dismissive. Break out of the soundbites and take a moment to think about what's happening in historical context.
If you want a serious and reasoned analysis of the worries, concerns and threats under these circumstances (at least from a UK perspective) I firmly recommend you view Lord Sumption's thoughts on this matter (recently retired judge from the supreme court of the UK with a long and highly respected career in the judiciary) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDv2gk8aa0
Unfortunately under circumstances such as the covid-19 mess we all live under (and thank your lucky stars you are in a 1st world country, the 3rd world will suffer at unimaginable levels, highly likely considerably moreso due to covid-19 aid cuts than covid-19 itself) things are considerably greyer than 'conspiracy theory nuts vs. just asking to put a mask on'. If only it were that simple.
Sorry, I don't have time for an 1h16m video. I skipped the intro and started listening to Lord Sumption's part and quickly got bogged down in politics about the current government came into power saddled by constitutional baggage, blah blah. It sounds like he is trying to score points on unrelated matters and gave up.
There are an infinite number of things which one might be worried could happen, and it is good to stay vigilant to those things. I have little fear that once the pandemic is mostly behind us that these temporary restrictions will be lifted -- we already know that many republicans think it is a political hoax, and I don't know of a single liberal who wouldn't love to get back to normal.
Thank you for taking the time to take a look. It is a lengthily one but I do certainly recommend spending the time to listen, it is of course very UK-centric but a lot of the points he makes are valid globally.
I am not advocating some absolute zero-measure approach but I also don't agree with the lockdowns which have repeatedly failed to work on any kind of permanent basis and whose costs are entirely ignored.
The rational approach is a measured one taking into account all costs. Unfortunately politics, especially partisan ones don't work that way...
The costs are not being ignored. Government frequently talks about the need to keep schools open to avoid some of those costs; we've recently had rapid release of suicide stats (no rise so far, but lots of caution needed); we're v worried about access to other forms of healthcare (London has today said they can't guarantee ambo service to home birth delivery that goes wrong) etc etc.
People are constantly checking we've got the balance right.
But the fact remains: covid kills lots of people and it seriously harms very many others. Those people who are harmed take time to recover and that has long term financial and health implications for them and their families.
I am trying to avoid discussing a particular political position, but rather going by the dictionary definition of totalitarianism as a system where "the state strives to control every aspect of life and civil society" through the use of propaganda, control over economy, censorship, surveillance, limited freedom of movement, and so forth.
Even if you believe these are means to a noble end in the context of COVID-19, I think it is hard to deny that the response has used quite a few tools from the totalitarian toolset. Even explicitly, the early calls for lockdowns used China as a positive example.
Getting into why some totalitarian measures might be reasonable:
I suspect more extreme up-front measures would actually stop the virus up-front. As a result, the other restrictions like masks wouldn’t be necessary for as long. So overall, one might say that the approach of nations like China, while more strict up front, had resulted in less overall restrictions in the long term, many fewer deaths, and even more economic activity. In the case of an out of control virus, people would be too scared to fly, for example, so economic activity would still be severely hindered. (Even with no restrictions at all.)
What are the alternatives for dealing with pandemics which have the possibility to entirely destroy human life and society? If nothing at all is done by governments, it becomes up to individual responsibility and the markets to control the situation. This only works if people are too scared to do anything or go anywhere, which means things would have to get really bad (read: a lot of death) before it would work.
What is the purpose of government if not to provide a safe and stable society to live in? We (unless you’re an anarchist) want laws and enforcement so that we can be free to live our lives without threat from others. You could even argue that infecting others when you knew you could avoid it is something we should restrict. In that way, wearing masks isn’t totalitarian, instead it’s a law which protects us from others.
>I suspect more extreme up-front measures would actually stop the virus up-front.
And if we were to allow these "more extreme measures," what's to stop a hostile actor from weaponizing our submission to totalitarian regime, by creating and releasing more viruses, in order to extend and increase said concentration of power?
You assume benevelonce. You really WANT Drumpf to go full Pol Pot on your ass?
"Only if he does what /I/ say, which is good for society, and not anything else!"
Don't you see the flaw in your logic here? Haven't we see this play out in history many times before?
If it’s just one person or even a group of people arbitrarily saying what we should do, I’d agree with you. On the other hand, we have a genuine health crisis and medical professionals are telling us what we should do. Further, there is an end in sight, and no way to extend those curtailments due to other reasons not related to health. Also, the powers that the states are exercising are ones they have held since before the US was even a country, and have been upheld since, with restrictions. Hand waving about dictatorship doesn’t really apply here, despite the extreme measures being taken.
I think there is an important distinction between onerous measures pursued by most democratic countries due to COVID-19 and those pursued by illiberal regimes.
In the first case, the measures don't benefit the politicians much. People hate wearing masks and not being about to congregate in churches to discuss non-political topics.
In the second case, the measures are usually targeted at suppressing negative sentiment against the political appointees.
But in the cases of the democratic nations and their measures throughout, negative sentiment against politicians and the government who implement these measures are all allowed to run rampant by the government (in some cases by other politicians themselves). Protests are still held, and the government is still scrutinized and criticized by civil society.
So going by your definition, there are important domains of society that the government does not attempt to dominate, that continue to serve as a check. Only those that are essential to the COVID-19 response are temporarily weakened.
No, even by that definition, most COVID restrictions are no more totalitarian in nature than existing health and safety codes. They’re more intense and broad restrictions, of course, in response to an intense health crisis, but they’re hardly different in kind than existing regulations. And yes, I’m sure there are exceptions.
In my mind totalitarianism is a means to an end. The end with these "tools" now is to limit death, but the means aren't working well (in the west, anyways). In a traditional auth. situation, the end is usually perpetual power and/or some ideological bend (genocide or something).
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think we're in a traditional auth. situation now. It's a classic "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" in my mind.
Sure we're seeing some signs of government overreach, but the impetus is to save lives, not some consipriacy to control the masses. Doing so misses the mark and distracts from the real issue at hand.
One problem is, it’s very hard to get a government to give up so-called “emergency powers” even after the emergency is long over. How many times has the Patriot Act been renewed now?
What part of the pandemic response do you think will be difficult for government to give up? Certainly the large measures (lockdowns) will be lifted once we are vaccinated. Is this more of a general fear, or do you have something relevant to the current situation?
What makes you think that the lockdowns will be lifted after we are all vaccinated for this particular strain of COVID? That’s like saying “surely the government will stop monitoring private communications and correlating metadata, and disband unconstitutional FISA courts after Al-quaida has been defeated”
> What makes you think that the lockdowns will be lifted after we are all vaccinated for this particular strain of COVID
Because I think most reps are acting in good faith, and nobody wants these lockdowns - they are just necessary. Why would someone want to continue them after Covid?
Maybe as a show of good faith, those same reps should stop extending the patriot act, to convince the more suspicious among us that advances in tyranny are not permanent. Until that happens, I am not convinced, and I will continue to tell people like you that you shouldn’t fall for it either.
> I'm reading between your lines, but by "totalitarian measures" do you mean asking people to temporarily wear masks, wash their hands, stay home, and restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
Did your government really just ask?
My local government responded by drafting and frequently, but irregularly, updating an increasing complex document—by decree rather than through the legislature—the violation of which was a misdemeanor (or, for businesses, may result in being closed down). To this day, individual businesses are asking the government what steps they need to take in order to operate. The answers they receive are not in any legally drafted document. Effectively businesses are asking government what they need to do to avoid the scrutiny of government; not what they need to do to stay within the law.
This was a massive insertion of government control into the lives of individuals, which is the essence of totalitarianism. I agree that wearing masks, washing your hands, and avoiding unnecessary contact with others are all good things to do. I do those things voluntarily; and would have done so if asked, even if it wasn't a misdemeanor not to do so. That doesn't mean I'm blind to the totalitarian measures some governments took to get there; or to the risks that imposes for the future.
>restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
Restricting the density to... Zero? Is that what they are calling the forced shutdown of indoor and outdoor restaurants, gyms and other places of business and subsequent jailing of violators now?
(And jailing of mask violators as well, despite mounting evidence that mask mandates don't work and/or make the problem worse)
Where I am at (Austin, TX, USA) it is a sliding scale. Depending on a number of metrics (eg, rate of infection, hospital occupancy), the percentage occupancy allowed in restaurants goes up or down. And yes, when it is at stage 5, it changes to zero occupancy, allowing only to-go orders.
I have zero worries that this is part of a power grab by evil overlords; they have nothing to gain from this, unlike the power grab to make encryption have government accessible backdoors, or routing all internet traffic through NSA scrapers.
> jailing of mask violators as well
Where are they being jailed? None in the US that I know of. I'm sure there are a few people who have created such a disturbance that they had to be removed by police, but that is ancillary to the reason they are getting nabbed, such as the guy at a Costco screaming at people and threatening to hurt them because they told him to put on a mask. He was arrested (but not jailed) for threatening people, not because he didn't wear a mask.
Yes, the shutdowns are having bad consequences for a lot of businesses. There is a pandemic after all, and pandemics cause negative consequences.
> mounting evidence that mask mandates don't work and/or make the problem worse
I'm sure such studies exist, but there are plenty that contradict your claim, and I do not believe there is a trend in your direction. There are also people who believe condoms not only doesn't reduce the spread of AIDS but makes it worse [1]. Otherwise smart people can believe also sorts of outrageous stuff if it comports with their existing belief system.
The article you linked to was jailed for not listening to the judge. Yes, it was about his refusal to wear a mask in the court. But if someone in court talks while the judge talks and the judge commands them to be silent, the judge can jail that person for refusal to be quiet. Or if they eat in court and refuse to stop eating. Or any number of things that are completely legal outside the courtroom.
Do you have evidence of the claim that mask mandates don't work? Not trolling - I'm genuinely interested. My understanding was that masks worked to reduce transmission.
Except if you read the papers they aren't saying that. You are trying to spread BS here. We can take a look at China where the lockdown worked quiet well.
>Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions became effective
>From both sets of modelling, we found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders and closure of all non-businesses was not associated with any independent additional impact
>Conclusions: A national lockdown has a moderate advantage in saving lives
AIER is a libertarian think tank which exists solely to reduce any type of government "interference" in freedom. I don't trust them to be honest arbiters of science -- their sole angle is people and companies should be free to do whatever they want (including infecting other people apparently).
Yes, you provided a link to a site which has links to 24 other papers. Providing proof in this case required you to cut and past a URL; you are asking me to read and rebut 24 papers, and I'm not about to. However, I did look them up and the wikipedia article about them [1] said the scientific community has condemned their positions on COVID, which is herd immunity -- everyone should get sick, we should live with 3M deaths in the US, so businesses can get back to selling stuff like normal.
Yes it is astonishing - I think the fact the context ends criticism of measures that would be considered laughable at ordinary times goes a long way to explaining similarly extreme measures we find difficult to understand from the past.
History tells us govts that gain powers during emergencies are extremely reticent to give them up once the ostensible emergency is over.
Gaining the power to shut down businesses that are a public health threat? They already had that power and use it. Most people are glad restaurants are held to cleanliness standards and concert venues have capacity limits per fire code.
Requiring people to wear something in public? They already do that too with shirts and pants. And again, I think most people prefer it that way.
Again you are trivialising things that are far wider-reaching as do many on the 'forever lockdown' side. They are not just shutting down public health risks and asking people to wear masks, they are instituting, at least in the UK, law by decree (as per provisions by the Public Health Act 1984) clearly exceeding the intentions of it, for example. I recommend the lord Sumption video I linked in another comment if you want more details, but authoritarian measures are being used and govts historically do NOT like to let go of powers granted during emergencies.
E.g. the Patriot act...
The thing with stuff like that is people like me who point this out will get sneered at at the time, but later when these powers are abused you'll forget that we warned you. This is NOT trivial. This is NOT small.
> History tells us govts that gain powers during emergencies are extremely reticent to give them up once the ostensible emergency is over.
New Zealand had a 8-week lockdown from late March to early May, and then they had perfectly normal general elections in October. The government that ordered the lockdown 7 months earlier, did nothing draconian to prevent the free elections taking place.
I'm very proud to see this go to negative votes, as it entirely proves my point. Every time democracies abandon that for authoritarian measures there is always a seemingly highly justified reason at the time and those who speak out would be similarly pilloried...
All functional democracies have mechanisms to establish totalitarian control during a state of emergency. Applying this during a pandemic is completely reasonable.
I feel like this take is just overused. This whole line of thinking presupposes that Western Democratic Societies gain anything from locking people down, which I don’t think they do. Our economies are (generally speaking) consumer economies built on a base of individualized consumption and hedonistic pursuit with no regard for collective good. Locking people down and inhibiting the engine of our capitalist economies serves no benefit. Not to mention all the other avenues of control that are already existent and much more obscure. It wouldn’t make sense to destroy the economy and the legitimacy that props up the current power structures in order to gain control that already largely exists either through the state or private industry.
This feels like a way of contrasting the current situation with measures take post 9/11, which I think are much more nefarious and unjustified.
To be clear, I’m sure historians will be interested in the measures taken to fight this pandemic, just not for some “totalitarian control” reasons but rather for the necessity of fighting the virus on a global scale. The scale of the measures are unprecedented, but locking down isn’t some crazy novel idea. I mean even in Camus’ “The Plague” there is mention of that kind of strategy.
However the virus broke out, China knew full well after SARS 1 that wet markets and e.g. traditional Chinese medicine were huge pandemic risks and did nothing. After SARS 2 broke out there was a very well evidenced cover up and misinformation campaign which apparently without which could have saved 95% of cases.
But instead of the media keeping that in collective consciousness we get pieces like this.
As they rightly say the next pandemic could be considerably worse. The absolute lack of any political or economic pressure on the country most likely to cause it directly informed by a media who appear to no longer care about that fact will be a big factor.
If you think I am being unreasonable, just do the thought experiment and imagine the US or UK had done what china did. You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.
But don't worry, at least zoom seems to work ok.