That European countries very much appear to have this under control
That they did much better than the US and Latin America
Right-wing populist leaders did worse than I expected, in a non-coincidental way (Brazil’s Bolsonaro is another example to add to the list).
“trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases” very strongly agreed. I’m a big fan of this write-up by NunoSempere, and this historian’s touching reflection on the Spanish flu.
I think it’s likely our disagreements are somewhat about framing than actual empirical differences. For example, “they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal” is a phrase I’d use to describe South Korea and Singapore, not Western Europe, where almost every locale had community transmission. I’d use “they caught it enough to prevent spread” to describe places like Mongolia with zero or close to zero community transmission, or contained community transmission to a single region.
I agree that Western European governments should get a lot of relative credit for managing to prevent more deaths, disability, and wanton economic destruction, despite being in an initially bad spot. But thousands of people nonetheless died, and those deaths appeared to be largely preventable (in a practical, humanly doable sense). So while I think we should also a) emphasize the relative successes (because in these dark times it’s good to both hold on to hope and be grateful for what we have), and b) be unequivocally clear that the other Western governments mostly did better than the US, I do want to not lose sight of the target and also be clear that the relative failings of the US under Trump does not excuse the lesser failings of other institutions and governments.
I agree with the following points:
That European countries very much appear to have this under control
That they did much better than the US and Latin America
Right-wing populist leaders did worse than I expected, in a non-coincidental way (Brazil’s Bolsonaro is another example to add to the list).
“trying to control the narrative over dealing with problems is a particularly dangerous approach with infectious diseases” very strongly agreed. I’m a big fan of this write-up by NunoSempere, and this historian’s touching reflection on the Spanish flu.
I think it’s likely our disagreements are somewhat about framing than actual empirical differences. For example, “they seems poised to have gotten it under control before it ended up everywhere, though they didn’t catch it enough to prevent spread at first, which would have been the goal” is a phrase I’d use to describe South Korea and Singapore, not Western Europe, where almost every locale had community transmission. I’d use “they caught it enough to prevent spread” to describe places like Mongolia with zero or close to zero community transmission, or contained community transmission to a single region.
I agree that Western European governments should get a lot of relative credit for managing to prevent more deaths, disability, and wanton economic destruction, despite being in an initially bad spot. But thousands of people nonetheless died, and those deaths appeared to be largely preventable (in a practical, humanly doable sense). So while I think we should also a) emphasize the relative successes (because in these dark times it’s good to both hold on to hope and be grateful for what we have), and b) be unequivocally clear that the other Western governments mostly did better than the US, I do want to not lose sight of the target and also be clear that the relative failings of the US under Trump does not excuse the lesser failings of other institutions and governments.