Sweden doesn't "manage" Covid-19 according to the expectations of whoever wrote this article (no lockdowns, no masks, no "social distancing" rules, etc.).
Is Sweden "threatening the world" as well?
Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses to bash right-wing politicians?
My guess is they’re saying if you have a population of 20, you have 20 chances of mutation. If you have a population of 200M, you have 200M chances of mutation. Size matters.
Following that logic China and India should be a lot more problematic than Brazil. As a matter of fact, both of those countries "mismanage" Covid-19 as well.
Yes, and for a fixed mutation chance, the bigger the population, the greater the likelihood that a mutation will happen. Say a mutation has a 1 in 1000 chance of happening. For a disease that infects 1000 people, you would expect 1 person to end up with some mutation. If the same disease infects 1,000,000 people, you would expect 1000 mutations to occur.
If you want something more comparable, how about this: as far as we can tell, pretty much the entirety of Africa completely failed to manage Covid-19. Infection rates there as measured by antibody testing were massive, the population was more than than enough to produce mutations, and it has already resulted in a mutation that's been confirmed to evade at least one crucial vaccine. Yet we haven't seen this kind of narrative about Africa.
If you say so. Here Brazil has always been of particular interest due to our close historical relationship, so nothing has changed (e.g. "Lava Jato" was also covered much more closely than corruption cases in other countries, left or right-wing).
I think it's fair to say that right wing politicians are inherently harmful to society in a global sense given that they primarily care about their own tribe.
You are inferring. I am saying precisely what I am saying. Nothing more.
Dictators and right wing populists are bad at solving humanitarian crises and pandemics which require care, because it is not possible for these leaders to project the strong man image they cling to.
Just look at Bolsonaro and Trump's absymal performances in keeping the covid virus at bay, thus allowing the pandemic to flourish.
This is by the way factual, objective truths not my point of view.
That's not "fair to say". That's your opinion. You can argue that Texas is "right wing" and yet people keep flocking there - wanting less government ("aka California") in their is inherently harmful?
Lol, covid is been managed by the state level in Brazil. The worst states in covid cases and deaths are the ones that are left-leaning and have the hardest lockdowns. This is the worst take I've seen in this website by far
> The shock of the second wave is changing people’s behaviour. Governors and mayors are now tightening restrictions and people are obeying them more. From March 22nd a nightly curfew in Bahia begins at 6pm rather than 10pm. Bahians have recently cut in half the distance they travel, according to mobile-phone data. This is slowing covid-19’s spread. Dr Vilas-Boas estimates that the number of active cases in Bahia has dropped from 21,000 to 17,000. The number of patients waiting for beds in icus fell from 513 on March 12th to 280 ten days later.
This paper talks about different government interventions and their effectiveness and there is no analysis of US states. There is no control group here and this is just bad science
> The virus that causes COVID-19 hasn't been detected in drinking water. Water treatment facilities have processes to filter and disinfect water before it goes into your home.
[...]
> There's no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads through swimming pools, hot tubs and water playgrounds.
Lol, you really need to study science and stop Googling stuff and trying to reply to my comments. You should go back to middle school, really... You just used an appeal to authority fallacy in one of your arguments.... Study a little bit more before commenting it out in something that you have no knowledge about
No, I did not "appeal to authority." I showed you where the Mayo Clinic documented that COVID is not spread by water. You can believe them or not, but they are considered a reliable source of medical information, so, the burden is on you to provide a more reliable source saying otherwise. You telling people to "go back to middle school" does not count as a reliable source.
Again, less snark, more substance, please?
BTW, your comments here are nothing but ad hominem and unsourced assertions. Try a little harder, please?
There's definitely an element of truth to that. For example, Italy's mismanagement of Covid-19 probably did immense damage to the world - early on the European outbreaks were basically a gradient radiating outwards from there, there's some evidence that even the US's outbreak came from Italy, and it seems they somehow managed to report zero cases right up until the point a significant proportion of their population was infected which would require really, spectacularly screwing up their testing program - but that narrative never made an appearance in the media because it'd make it harder to blame right-wing politicians in countries like the UK and US which the media dislikes. Instead, the narrative around Italy is that actually, it was the other countries like the UK and the US which screwed up worst because they should've learned from Italy, as though there was something meaningful that could be learned from a country that collected so little useful data. On the other hand, Bolsonaro was really pally with Trump and gets the full blame for everything. I wouldn't even be surprised if there was some mutation during the first Italian outbreak which made Covid-19 more of a danger; there's not really any way we could tell.
(This also basically completely doomed contact tracing in every other western country, because they had no reason to be looking for cases related to people who'd travelled from Italy until it was far too late to start. It's probably not a coincidence that all the countries which made it vaguely work were ones that were close to China rather than Europe.)
There was so much to learn. When the hospitals in northern Italy were being overwhelmed the UK prime minister was telling us to wash our hands more but continue business as usual. This probably cost UK around 50k deaths.
How do you define mismanagement when state and politicians can lie? I doubt COVID-19 stats are 100% reliable and true in any country in the world starting with China. 5 000 people died in China of COVID-19 I mean c'mon.
Yes, Sweden is quite infamous for its own mismanagement of Covid19, it has been attacked for this everywhere in the press often. However, Sweden is a tiny country with a very good hospital system and a relatively wealthy and healthy population, which has compensated somewhat for the incompetence of its government (they still have several times more dead people on their hands than most comparable countries).
Brazil is a huge country in every sense of the word, with a much poorer population, a much worse hospital system, a much kore important role in the world economy, and so it is perfectly poised to become a breeding ground and reservoir for many new strains of Covid19.
And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
Yes, it is a completely non-partisan article. It doesn't even mention Bolsanaro's political affiliation, it just accuses him of coming up with quack cures and dirrctly opposing efforts to contain the pandemic.
It reads like a completely business-like, dispassionate take on the situation in Brazil, appearing in one of the most respected and well-known right-wing newspapers in the US.
> And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
I'd consider The Economist neoliberal rather than right-wing, as they have a pretty clear editorial bias in favor of free trade and globalization, but also tend to lean left on social issues. That puts the magazine opposite Le Pen on most issues, given her nationalist positions. Trying to lump them together as "right-wing" is incredibly reductionist.
You can go back and read The Economist's opinion of Le Pen if you'd like, and it's distinctly not charitable.
Right-wing and left-wing are always somewhat reductionist terms. I would say though that Le Pen and the Economist would find much more common grlund in practice (and lerhaps Le Pen is a relatively bad example here, Bolsanaro or the Polish right or Modi would be even better) than The Economist and Jean-Luc Melanchon or Jeremy Corbyn or even Bernie Sanders.
Sure, there are specific social issues, mainly related to personal liberties, where they would disahree (and Le Pen's populism is always unpleasant to business interests). But the broader topics of interest to the Economist, the improtance of business interests and using the state to further them internationally, are quite aligned. Perhaps Le Pen really believes and would have put her populist promises in action, but I think its far more likely that she would have done just like Trump - spout populist promises but govern with business interests at the forefront.
Edit: since this account has been repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, including using this site primarily for flamewars and ideological battle, I've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
But which ones? The following experienced epidemiologists agree with the GP, and apparently represent a much larger group of medical scientists who do also:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
Can’t read entire article due to paywall, but the title and preview are hard to disagree with.
Brazil is a huge country and any large country having an outbreak is obviously bad for the world. This much is clearly self evident from the initial outbreak.
If the globe reached herd immunity as fast as possible then there wouldn't be enough time for any variant to become established.
I'm not saying this would be a good idea, but Brazil is unlikely to be able to adequately vaccinate its population in the next year. This should be a consideration, as it was in March 2020 in several European countries before they adopted the chinese strategy.
Reminder that herd immunity is a term only applicable to vaccines; what you mean is most of the population getting the disease and consequences. Please provide your estimate of how many deaths before "immunity" is reached.
The more and the worse the infections, the more the infected serve as a bioreactor which not only generates viral mass but also serves as an evolutionary playing field for accelerated viral development. We are fast-forwarding the virus into the future.
Maybe. But the slower it spreads, the more generations of virus it takes to infect everyone. There are other strains coming from places that handled it "better"
The country is big, with a big enough population, highly movable/mobile, slow vaccination and at least 3 native variants that are more dangerous than the original one. Very good conditions for the emergence of new resistant variants.
What is scaring the world the most now is the possibility of a new brazilian variant that can escape current vaccines. That would move the whole world to the beginning of the pandemic again.
I was curious, so I looked at stats for bordering countries. Some are also at all-time peaks for infection rates: Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana. Some aren't at peaks, but are still at high rates: Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia. Some are very, very low: French Guiana, Suriname.
Ok, Economist. So where’s the Coup? Usually it follows the moment when certain establishments determine that a government is no longer desirable, or convenient. In this case it’ll never be too early
Yet it is the South African variant which is much more dangerous and resistant to vaccines. The South African government is left-wing and has embraced reparations so you won’t hear about how they mismanaged Covid.
It is immensely clear that most (all?) countries in the world are soon going to require proof of covid vaccine before they'll even consider letting a person travel to their country.
If you find this hard to believe, this system already works today, very well. It's already the case for many, many countries in Africa - you can't get a visa, and the airlines won't let you on a plane unless you have proof of Yellow Fever vaccine. You also can't cross land borders. It even goes a step further - when entering a country like Australia they specifically ask if you've been to <given African countries> in the last 90 days, and they won't even let you into Australia if you have not had the Yellow Fever Vaccine.
If you're wondering why the airlines enforce this, it's the same reason they enforce visas. The governments cleverly decided to make airlines foot the bill for anyone that must be sent back, therefore airlines are strict about not allowing anyone to board who they know would be denied entry. It works very well, and has done for decades.
From my experience travelling the world, it's immensely clear this will soon be the requirement to fly essentially anywhere in the world - proof of Covid vaccine and possibly a recent negative test and possibly a short quarantine on arrival and even another test in a few days. (like Iceland now).
This will be an interesting way to "force" citizens to get a vaccine. Your own government probably won't be able to (human rights and all), but foreign governments will force you to, if you desire to ever leave your own country.
I'd be very curious to learn of any country that is going to forcibly administer vaccines.
Australia have tried for years, and the best they can do is tax breaks if you do get vaccinated, and barring kids from school and daycare if they're not.
(NOTE: I am NOT anti-vaccine, and I will be getting it as soon as I'm able. I just don't think it's possible for a country to physically force citizens to get a needle against their will. I've certainly never heard of it)
A significant amount of countries on this planet are not even able to police their own borders. Vaccines aren't 100% effective, corruption causes exceptions, false negatives exist, and so on.
Given the nature of viral disease spread only a few people slipping through the cracks are enough, which is of course why the more dangerous Brazilian strain was already in dozens of countries before we even knew about it. So yes, countries failing to contain the pandemic are absolutely a threat to the world, and no control mechanism is enough to contain variants of rapidly transmittable diseases because one mistake is all that it takes. The only solution is to globally quell the pandemic and this is particular important in large, highly populated countries because they're statistically the biggest source for the generation of the variants.
How about we talk about the actual elephant in the room? China na and its denial of anything serious going on + not sharing information early on which could have prevented a majority of deaths.
In any operational outage, you focus mitigation, then prevention.
We are still in the midst of a global pandemic, and things can still get worse before they get better. Nothing China did or didn't do or lied or didn't lie about a year ago helps deal with OTHER authoritarian governments TODAY contributing to hundreds of thousands of other deaths and potential resurgence with P1.
I think it's instructive watching people try and use their default problem solving technique to solve the problem
A LOT of people appear to solve problems via blame. As in if we can just get people to agree that the Chinese people did something BAD then the problem is fixed.
People that work that way are really married to it. And very resistant to rethinking things.
Full disclosure, as an old crusty engineer when I see a small problem that looks like it could become a big intractable one, I reach for the biggest hammer I can get my fingers around.
China has provided help for dozens of countries, vaccines, health resources, and they managed to control the virus when the West did not care. Remember when the virus arrived in Italy? China was already under lockdown.
And yet there are nonzero number of countries that have had only the smallest number of deaths and controlled community spread almost entirely during this entire pandemic. It doesn't do any good to blame, but we should all be copying as closely as possible what has let some countries emerge unscathed.
I am still perplexed by the fact that no one is holding China accountable. How is this possible? Is it because we don't want to mess with the dope dealer that has us hooked on cheap junk.
How can Peter Daszak be on who commission given his deep ties with the wuhan lab. Why does no one care. what am i missing here.
It seems as though economic sanctions are the modern way of holding countries accountable. This can be done to the country being held accountable or to their trading partners.
Hasn't the US been sanctioning Chinese firms for a while now? If you do a quick search, it goes anywhere from tariffs, banning export of key technologies to outright imprisoning executives.
The latest move is to de-list Chinese firms from American exchanges, which is going to severely damage Chinese tech firms ability to raise capital.
The black death originated in central or east Asia but I don't think there's any indication that it was in China. Given the proximity, China might have been one of the first nations to be affected with the ability to document it, though.
Black Death originated near China in Asia and was brought to Europe by Silk Road traders. None of this pandemics originated either in Europe or US(North America).
Significant harm has been done, for which they very well may bear a certain level of responsibility. Speaking to that effect would be a start.
I suspect people in media are afraid of speaking out against China. For example, there may be consequences to speaking out if China ever invades and occupies other countries - at that point dissidents will be in danger, especially those that spoke against them in the media.
I doubt it. The Chinese communist party isn't really Chinese in origin anyway... it's an imported western idea that destroyed much of Chinese culture and life (see: cultural revolution).
Also, Taiwanese people are every bit as much true Chinese as anyone from mainland China.
Media articles could easily point these things out.
What are you missing? The fact that it doesn't really matter if the virus was transmitted from bats to pangolins to humans or from bats to humans in a cave or from a mishandled synthetic virus. Who cares at this point? The damage is done and we knew with near 100% certainty that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, and China was always a potential hotspot.
I can think of only a few scenario's where China messed up and the West remains silent. One would be where personal interests or blackmail would cause the decision makers to change their tune. A plausible one is where the West does not want to step on any toes, to safeguard that little data coming from China, while it is silently gathering international support for when the pandemic is under control. Another where SARS-2 developed from SARS-1 when it recombined in Wuhan in a HIV-patient (perhaps after a failed vaccine trial). If you are interested in protecting the health of the population, it is more important to shield possible victims of panic and hate, than to have a million negative mentions of HIV, China, and vaccines in the news.
I suspect Peter Daszak will face accountability due to the Streisand effect of his PR campaign against "conspiracies". You can't write a paper condemning scientists for even suggesting it was a lab leak of a human-intervented virus, and then field an objective origins investigation. A lot happened in 2020, but I doubt we forget that blatant mess.
Even if this turns out zoonotic (I hope it does), Daszak will scream he was right suppressing any investigation into opposing hypothesis. No scientist should live that down.
China did everything to stop the virus. When the virus arrived in Italy or U.S soil they were already on lockdown. They have controled the virus and offered help to multiple countries. It seems to me that it's easy to blame "the evil communists" than to realize we've fucked up and our government/social economic system have failed us.
China did everything to stop the virus within their own country, but not to keep it from escaping China. They ripped up roads from Wuhan to other domestic regions, but still allowed citizens from Wuhan to travel internationally.
Lula and Dilma certainly were criminals, but that doesn't make Bolsonaro right.
Partisan mentality is a logical fallacy. It's divide and conquer. Keep people distracted in an infinite tug-of-war while some people collude and benefit.
They were not criminals. Dilma did not commit a single crime, and Lula's trials were completely fabricated. Even if they were, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't let their country in this situation.
People that know Brazil, know that covid is being managed by each state and that the left-leaning states that have the hardest lockdowns. The number of covid deaths have "declined" significantly now that a new State of Health requires that the reported deaths have an identity attached to each death
Adding to that, the worst state in covid cases and deaths, São Paulo, is lead by a left leaning politician that is leading the country with the hardest lockdown
Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
This article is utter nonsense and pure propaganda. The economist should be ashamed of publishing this
Bolsonaro is clearly an idiot, he has refused to buy vaccines many times, and we only have the coronavac vaccine because of the state of São Paulo. Stop being delusional.
> Adding to that, the worst state in covid cases and deaths, São Paulo, is lead by a left leaning politician that is leading the country with the hardest lockdown
Isn't São Paulo the biggest state in Brazil by far? How is it surprising it has the worst numbers?
> Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
Now compare Sweden with the other nordic countries
Blaming Bolsonaro alone is like blaming the scarecrow for the problems in the farm. Brazil is a very complex society that suffered for 3 decades with systemic corruption, poor education and a very problematic public health system. Ask any low-middle class brazilian -- me -- what he thinks about public ICUs and the answer will be: "There is no such thing". Brazil is not a developed country doing bad in covid because of its president, rather, it is a poor developing country struggling to survive covid in spite of any president.
Public opinion is that US handled pandemic bad but US is the most developed country in the world. There is no real public health system in US because health system is largely based on robust private health care sector.
It seems like China handled the best this pandemic so we all should ask them how they did it. We should send our health experts to China so they can learn something.
I don't think there is much room for the public opinion or the press to really inform the rest of the world about what's going on in China. We as outsiders make our opinion out of sheer inference when talking about China and the pandemic.
This is an honest question: by what standard is the US "the most developed country in the world"? The US indeed number one in several categories, but how do you define "development" such that the US is on top?
So you are arguing with me that US is not the most developed country in the world or that it is not developed at all?
"Most commonly, the criteria for evaluating the degree of economic development are gross domestic product (GDP)."
US has the most highest GDP in the world but of course there are other 99 economic metrics and criteria where US is not first but looking at productivity and innovation they are number 1.
"By 1890 the United States had overtaken the British Empire as the world's most productive economy." From my link.
> Ask any low-middle class brazilian -- me -- what he thinks about public ICUs and the answer will be: "There is no such thing".
This is simply not true. I spent 2019's vacation in Florianopolis where it is very common for people to have relatives in the US. I asked some of them "What do you do when you get sick?" and unanimous answer was: "We come back to brazil". Brazil's public health has been continually improving since early 2000's and had a world-class respected vaccination program, generic medicines and free treatment for HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Bolsonaro's encouraging crowding, ineffective medication, downplaying the disease, the pandemic and looking for vaccines too late (even discouraging it) combined with his supporters who argued that the pandemic was a fraud, are surely to blame for a part of such a high number of deaths.
I live in Brazil as a grown adult for 30 years. I can tell you that the public health system in Brazil, specially in regards to intensive care, is a public calamity. Not just now, but for the last 30 years.
You're not seeing the big picture. Our national healthcare system is completely ready to face a pandemic like that. Of course it is poorly funded nowadays, but we've vaccinated 80 million people in 3 months in the past. We have professionals, we have the infrastructure, we just needed strong measures and a federal plan to deal with COVID-19. The reason that did not happen was because of Bolsonaro. He chose to not only ignore the problem, but encourage people to live their lives normally. He didn't buy the Pfizer vaccines when we needed to. Hell, he went on television to say Covid-19 was just a "little flu". He fired the health minister 3 times IN A PANDEMIC. He's the one to blame for this situation.
All my family members who relied on the public health system are now gone. The only one survivor is my rich uncle -- no kidding -- who could afford Sírio Libanês ICU for 40 days.
I don't think the middle class can afford that. The majority of the 300k dead were treated in the public system.
> Our national healthcare system is completely ready to face a pandemic like that
I lost a younger brother to that national healthcare system 10 years ago. Maybe this might be the case for the more developed regions (like the south & southeast), go to the north/northeast and you'll see the abyss.
130 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadIs Sweden "threatening the world" as well?
Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses to bash right-wing politicians?
Your argument is so bad. If that is the case, then alcohol prohibition was successful only if people complied to it. The same with the war on drugs
But sure, The Economist is left wing now.
Almost the definition of whataboutism.
India is indeed struggling. They had the good fortune of being hit later than other countries,but they will likely be hit worse.
Of course, when articles critical of India will appear, you'll probably again complain that they are left-wing propaganda against Modi.
Such as Bolsonaro, such as Trump.
Dictators and right wing populists are bad at solving humanitarian crises and pandemics which require care, because it is not possible for these leaders to project the strong man image they cling to.
Just look at Bolsonaro and Trump's absymal performances in keeping the covid virus at bay, thus allowing the pandemic to flourish.
This is by the way factual, objective truths not my point of view.
> The shock of the second wave is changing people’s behaviour. Governors and mayors are now tightening restrictions and people are obeying them more. From March 22nd a nightly curfew in Bahia begins at 6pm rather than 10pm. Bahians have recently cut in half the distance they travel, according to mobile-phone data. This is slowing covid-19’s spread. Dr Vilas-Boas estimates that the number of active cases in Bahia has dropped from 21,000 to 17,000. The number of patients waiting for beds in icus fell from 513 on March 12th to 280 ten days later.
Emphasis added.
I suggest you read more closely. There are multiple references to interventions at the state level in the US.
BTW, how would you ethically design a study like this including a control group?
Less snark, more substance. Or, at least change up your insults. They bore me.
[...]
> There's no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads through swimming pools, hot tubs and water playgrounds.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/e...
Less snark, more substance next time, please?
Again, less snark, more substance, please?
BTW, your comments here are nothing but ad hominem and unsourced assertions. Try a little harder, please?
(This also basically completely doomed contact tracing in every other western country, because they had no reason to be looking for cases related to people who'd travelled from Italy until it was far too late to start. It's probably not a coincidence that all the countries which made it vaguely work were ones that were close to China rather than Europe.)
Brazil is a huge country in every sense of the word, with a much poorer population, a much worse hospital system, a much kore important role in the world economy, and so it is perfectly poised to become a breeding ground and reservoir for many new strains of Covid19.
And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
Did you read the article? It doesn't follow a "right wing" tone.
It reads like a completely business-like, dispassionate take on the situation in Brazil, appearing in one of the most respected and well-known right-wing newspapers in the US.
I'd consider The Economist neoliberal rather than right-wing, as they have a pretty clear editorial bias in favor of free trade and globalization, but also tend to lean left on social issues. That puts the magazine opposite Le Pen on most issues, given her nationalist positions. Trying to lump them together as "right-wing" is incredibly reductionist.
You can go back and read The Economist's opinion of Le Pen if you'd like, and it's distinctly not charitable.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/03/02/marine-le-pen-letr...
Sure, there are specific social issues, mainly related to personal liberties, where they would disahree (and Le Pen's populism is always unpleasant to business interests). But the broader topics of interest to the Economist, the improtance of business interests and using the state to further them internationally, are quite aligned. Perhaps Le Pen really believes and would have put her populist promises in action, but I think its far more likely that she would have done just like Trump - spout populist promises but govern with business interests at the forefront.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: since this account has been repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, including using this site primarily for flamewars and ideological battle, I've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
Brazil is a huge country and any large country having an outbreak is obviously bad for the world. This much is clearly self evident from the initial outbreak.
It's certainly bad for the people there, but how is it bad for the rest of us? It's a pandemic, it's not like failing to contain the initial outbreak.
I'm not saying this would be a good idea, but Brazil is unlikely to be able to adequately vaccinate its population in the next year. This should be a consideration, as it was in March 2020 in several European countries before they adopted the chinese strategy.
Herd immunity is applicable to immunity and susceptibility in a population. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/7/911/299077
That's obviously false, given that we are observing many meaningful variants without anything close to herd immunity.
Each person infected is an additional chance of a variant with antigenic escape, let alone vaccine escape.
What is scaring the world the most now is the possibility of a new brazilian variant that can escape current vaccines. That would move the whole world to the beginning of the pandemic again.
It is immensely clear that most (all?) countries in the world are soon going to require proof of covid vaccine before they'll even consider letting a person travel to their country.
If you find this hard to believe, this system already works today, very well. It's already the case for many, many countries in Africa - you can't get a visa, and the airlines won't let you on a plane unless you have proof of Yellow Fever vaccine. You also can't cross land borders. It even goes a step further - when entering a country like Australia they specifically ask if you've been to <given African countries> in the last 90 days, and they won't even let you into Australia if you have not had the Yellow Fever Vaccine.
If you're wondering why the airlines enforce this, it's the same reason they enforce visas. The governments cleverly decided to make airlines foot the bill for anyone that must be sent back, therefore airlines are strict about not allowing anyone to board who they know would be denied entry. It works very well, and has done for decades.
From my experience travelling the world, it's immensely clear this will soon be the requirement to fly essentially anywhere in the world - proof of Covid vaccine and possibly a recent negative test and possibly a short quarantine on arrival and even another test in a few days. (like Iceland now).
This will be an interesting way to "force" citizens to get a vaccine. Your own government probably won't be able to (human rights and all), but foreign governments will force you to, if you desire to ever leave your own country.
Australia have tried for years, and the best they can do is tax breaks if you do get vaccinated, and barring kids from school and daycare if they're not.
(NOTE: I am NOT anti-vaccine, and I will be getting it as soon as I'm able. I just don't think it's possible for a country to physically force citizens to get a needle against their will. I've certainly never heard of it)
Given the nature of viral disease spread only a few people slipping through the cracks are enough, which is of course why the more dangerous Brazilian strain was already in dozens of countries before we even knew about it. So yes, countries failing to contain the pandemic are absolutely a threat to the world, and no control mechanism is enough to contain variants of rapidly transmittable diseases because one mistake is all that it takes. The only solution is to globally quell the pandemic and this is particular important in large, highly populated countries because they're statistically the biggest source for the generation of the variants.
In any operational outage, you focus mitigation, then prevention.
We are still in the midst of a global pandemic, and things can still get worse before they get better. Nothing China did or didn't do or lied or didn't lie about a year ago helps deal with OTHER authoritarian governments TODAY contributing to hundreds of thousands of other deaths and potential resurgence with P1.
A LOT of people appear to solve problems via blame. As in if we can just get people to agree that the Chinese people did something BAD then the problem is fixed.
People that work that way are really married to it. And very resistant to rethinking things.
Full disclosure, as an old crusty engineer when I see a small problem that looks like it could become a big intractable one, I reach for the biggest hammer I can get my fingers around.
Seems like every country is trying to point the finger at every other country to cover their own flaws.
How can Peter Daszak be on who commission given his deep ties with the wuhan lab. Why does no one care. what am i missing here.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/who-investigat...
How is this not a big deal.
The latest move is to de-list Chinese firms from American exchanges, which is going to severely damage Chinese tech firms ability to raise capital.
If you ask me how to to prevent future pandemics idk ask experts but something has to be done. Get global public health standards or something.
The Spanish Flu most likely originated in the US.
You're likely right about covid, though.
Black Death originated near China in Asia and was brought to Europe by Silk Road traders. None of this pandemics originated either in Europe or US(North America).
I suspect people in media are afraid of speaking out against China. For example, there may be consequences to speaking out if China ever invades and occupies other countries - at that point dissidents will be in danger, especially those that spoke against them in the media.
could it be because that might cause more anti-asian hate crimes?
Also, Taiwanese people are every bit as much true Chinese as anyone from mainland China.
Media articles could easily point these things out.
ppl who are not total morons.
I can think of only a few scenario's where China messed up and the West remains silent. One would be where personal interests or blackmail would cause the decision makers to change their tune. A plausible one is where the West does not want to step on any toes, to safeguard that little data coming from China, while it is silently gathering international support for when the pandemic is under control. Another where SARS-2 developed from SARS-1 when it recombined in Wuhan in a HIV-patient (perhaps after a failed vaccine trial). If you are interested in protecting the health of the population, it is more important to shield possible victims of panic and hate, than to have a million negative mentions of HIV, China, and vaccines in the news.
I suspect Peter Daszak will face accountability due to the Streisand effect of his PR campaign against "conspiracies". You can't write a paper condemning scientists for even suggesting it was a lab leak of a human-intervented virus, and then field an objective origins investigation. A lot happened in 2020, but I doubt we forget that blatant mess.
Even if this turns out zoonotic (I hope it does), Daszak will scream he was right suppressing any investigation into opposing hypothesis. No scientist should live that down.
There are better sources, but here's one to get started if you need: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/blogs/Whathappensif/how...
Partisan mentality is a logical fallacy. It's divide and conquer. Keep people distracted in an infinite tug-of-war while some people collude and benefit.
It's not left vs right, it's up vs down.
People that know Brazil, know that covid is being managed by each state and that the left-leaning states that have the hardest lockdowns. The number of covid deaths have "declined" significantly now that a new State of Health requires that the reported deaths have an identity attached to each death
Adding to that, the worst state in covid cases and deaths, São Paulo, is lead by a left leaning politician that is leading the country with the hardest lockdown
Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
This article is utter nonsense and pure propaganda. The economist should be ashamed of publishing this
Isn't São Paulo the biggest state in Brazil by far? How is it surprising it has the worst numbers?
> Sweden has been one of the countries that has the least amount of covid cases in the world and has no lockdown.
Now compare Sweden with the other nordic countries
Vietnam had 2500 cases with 96 million population.
Or let's compare with something closer, Norway which is right next to Sweden: 91k cases (5 million population).
It seems like China handled the best this pandemic so we all should ask them how they did it. We should send our health experts to China so they can learn something.
I doubt it.
For example this information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
"Most commonly, the criteria for evaluating the degree of economic development are gross domestic product (GDP)."
US has the most highest GDP in the world but of course there are other 99 economic metrics and criteria where US is not first but looking at productivity and innovation they are number 1.
"By 1890 the United States had overtaken the British Empire as the world's most productive economy." From my link.
This is simply not true. I spent 2019's vacation in Florianopolis where it is very common for people to have relatives in the US. I asked some of them "What do you do when you get sick?" and unanimous answer was: "We come back to brazil". Brazil's public health has been continually improving since early 2000's and had a world-class respected vaccination program, generic medicines and free treatment for HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Bolsonaro's encouraging crowding, ineffective medication, downplaying the disease, the pandemic and looking for vaccines too late (even discouraging it) combined with his supporters who argued that the pandemic was a fraud, are surely to blame for a part of such a high number of deaths.
I don't think the middle class can afford that. The majority of the 300k dead were treated in the public system.
I lost a younger brother to that national healthcare system 10 years ago. Maybe this might be the case for the more developed regions (like the south & southeast), go to the north/northeast and you'll see the abyss.