The Weirdness of Government Variation in Covid-19 Responses

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-weirdness-of-government-variation

by _xnmw • 5 years ago

46 109 5 years ago

richardhanania.substack.com

warning26• 5 years ago

This article was disappointing -- I was hoping it would be a detailed of comparison of different responses and their performance, but instead it basically boiled down to something like:

"Different areas responded differently, which sure is interesting. The end."

Barrin922• 5 years ago

Main reason the author seems to be surprised appears to be that he drastically underestimates the cultural differences in Europe. Political culture and attitudes towards restrictions and liberties vary drastically even between neighbouring countries. Austria might be close to Germany in several ways but it has always been notoriously weird politically. There's also a dividing line between what's (oversimplified) been called historically 'Latin' and 'German' cultures. Greece and Italy work very differently in terms of governance than Northern and Central Europe.

Other point is about the difference of covid responses compared to the lack thereof on other issues. This is pretty much a prime example of what Carl Schmitt called the State of Exception. Covid is a pretty rare occasion in modern times where all the red tape and bureaucracy gets pushed aside and states actually exercise sovereign power, and that just brings differences much more to the surface, both across the pond and here on the continent.

wk_end• 5 years ago

Can you elaborate on how Austrian politics are weird/tend to differ from Germany’s, in your view? I lived in Germany for a bit and have visited Austria, but am otherwise ignorant, so I’m not doubting you or anything - that just sounds interesting.

User233• 5 years ago

Even within the Federal Repubic the difference between the States is huge. Bavaria is a very different place from North Rhine-Westphalia. One could argue that the Bavarians have more in common with the Austrians culturally.

Barrin922• 5 years ago

in particular since the 70s and the 80s and the rise of the Freedom Party centering around the fairly eccentric Jörg Haider Austria developed a very particular nationalism (partially pan-German) that is ironically more or less absent in post-war Germany.

Austria much earlier than a few other European countries had a much more populist streak whereas Germany even now is fairly consensus oriented and stable. It's a sort of mix of libertarianism, nationalism, conservatism and questions of national identity that seem very at the front of Austrian politics in a way that you barely have in Germany.

oceanghost2• 5 years ago

I don't know much about Europe, but I do have some friends in Italy who just seem-- comically inflamed by everything much like what goes on in the US.

Is there a pattern there or do I just have crazy friends?

CRConrad4• 5 years ago

I'd say it's a pattern; people up here in the north of Europe are often also rather inflamed by what goes on in the USA. Not that I see anything peculiar in that; I am often inflamed by it, too. What feels weird to us is more how so many Americans aren't enraged by many things that happen over there.

chrisco255• 5 years ago

The thing to takeaway from COVID-19 policy responses is that there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever. The virus has confounded and mutated and spread in the face of masking, social distancing, triple vaxxing, lockdowns, and medical apartheid.

We are two years into this. It's clear that Covid is endemic and here to stay. That its rate of mutation and spread is too high to contain. Antiviral treatments and therapeutics should be given more heavy support and research. People also need to move on, and live freely, because life is too short to live in a bubble of fear and dreariness. How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses? How much life and joy has been sucked out of the world to stave off the inevitable?

TylerE• 5 years ago

I think part of the problem is that things that work get discontinued... "Oh, we're 70% vaxxed and positive rate is under X%..we don't need to mask anymore.."

majou• 5 years ago

Where I live dropped mask mandate only to bring it back in a few months with a strict vaccine mandate.

mistrial9• 5 years ago

there you go, thinking as an individual -- a voice like a poet. Decisions on governance are made from the point of view of administration .. that is, what are the financial costs, how much attention is on the subject, things like that. The monetary costs to insurers combined with Doctor's Orders (literally) are at stake. Individual people, their work places, social lives, their free will, their own affairs, are counted for naught it seems.

mft_4• 5 years ago

How would you balance harm caused to other individuals?

If someone was walking around a mall with Ebola, I'd assume you'd be comfortable with them being restrained and placed in quarantine?

Everyone that contracts COVID and is seriously harmed (or dies) contracted it from someone else - and through different measures, that transmission and death was preventable. And yet, because in the majority of cases, COVID isn't seriously harmful or fatal, it's okay to be part of its transmission to others?

mft_4• 5 years ago

With COVID rife, and too few people vaccinated, the outcome of "people also need to move on, and live freely" is spread, mutation, infection, and many many deaths - both from COVID directly, and also from people with other conditions who can't get optimal treatment due to hospitals and especially ICUs being (literally) full of COVID sufferers.

That's what restrictions and lockdowns are largely driven by: preventing disasters within the hospital system.

So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?

bserge• 5 years ago

Got Covid, got the vaccine, will get the fucking "boosters", will wear mask and be careful.

Now fuck off with any other restrictions, that's where I think the line is.

throw109202• 5 years ago

So... how do you weigh up loss of human life on a massive scale, against "living freely"?

You know that the vaccine has been available for, like, nine months, right? Anyone who wanted to get it got it months ago, and has been rather safe. ICUs being full points to a problem with the medical system (and, at least in America, the medical system is well known to be broken), and if you don't want to fix that, there's a really easy political fix (which is to de-prioritize unvaccinated COVID patients, given that - again - there's a vaccine available, so if you willingly chose not to get it, then your medical care can wait until those who have unpreventable issues are helped).

We're well past the point where you can make the argument that these restrictions are for the greater good, because we've been in a state where one's health is almost entirely one's personal responsibility (you either take the vaccine and you're safe, or you don't and you're not) for months now.

If other people want to remain unvaccinated and that leads to them dying ("loss of human life on a massive scale"), they can do that.

_carbyau_2• 5 years ago

That is the tricky bit isn't it. In other aspects of life we clearly accept a certain amount of death and injury risk so as to allow things to happen.

Think cars, motorbikes, planes etc. They do all result in events where people die. But we keep them because they provide a lot of utility to many many people.

My view: Lockdowns absolutely help avoid disasters. But they are a temporary measure.

Lockdown while people get vaxxed, procedures updated and social adoption of masks can occur and any other handy measure. Then the lockdowns have to be eased to shift the risk mitigation load onto these other measures.

This is a complicated task. Every country/zone will have different trade offs. Everyone will have an opinion backed by an example from somewhere else.

I think the best we can do is:

- avoid disaster

- give people a fair and equitable chance to save themselves via vaccination

- implement sensible measures where possible/socially acceptable

- open up slowly, adjust as neccessary

- sadly, let the deliberately, knowingly unvaccinated fall as they may. While avoiding disaster...

callmeal• 5 years ago

How many high school graduations, proms, death bed visitations, dance recitals, wedding receptions, music concerts, games and sporting events have been ruined by these awful and ineffective government responses?

I would think that not having a high school graduation / prom /recital /wedding etc to be a lot less ruinous than having a close relative die from one of these?

I agree with you: life is too short. Personally I would hate for it to be cut even shorter because all the hospital beds are taken up by people who contracted an avoidable, extremely infectious disease.

https://people.com/health/college-student-dies-from-covid-af...

https://www.newsweek.com/bride-planning-funeral-instead-wedd...

version_five3• 5 years ago

Your argument is an old and tired one. Maybe we should all be on mandatory medically supervised diet and exercise regimens, not allowed to drive, not allowed any alcohol or caffeine or other drugs. If your dream is to optimize for longevity over all else, you can do that, at home. For many people, living life is actually important, not just living long. You have no right to tell them how to behave, or to rob them of life moments because of your personal criteria you're trying to optimize for.

throw109202• 5 years ago

I would think that not having a high school graduation / prom /recital /wedding etc to be a lot less ruinous than having a close relative die from one of these?

The vaccine has been available for anyone who wants to get it for the better part of a year now, boosters have been released, and it's effective at preventing both transmission and severe cases (to include death).

If your relative is vaccinated, the odds of them getting severely sick from an unvaccinated person are incredibly small, and as such, various gathering restrictions are not only ineffective, but straight-up immoral.

(if your relatives aren't vaccinated, then they've made a choice to increase their risk exposure, and that's on them - given the effectiveness of the vaccine, it's pretty clear that safety is a personal choice, not something that other people impose on you - which is reinforced by both of the links you posted, wherein unvaccinated people died from the virus, not vaccinated ones)

commandlinefan2• 5 years ago

You realize that means we have to cancel all high school graduations / proms /recitals /weddings etc forever, right?

newbamboo• 5 years ago

People will call you an innumerate drama queen but I definitely sympathize with your emotions. Nobody should die, especially for what’s almost certainly the result of some Chinese lab screw up. Don’t take the downvotes to heart.

pangolinplayer• 5 years ago

This is and was always about power. The idea they care about the health of the less than 1% of people who die is laughable. They unleashed a disease on the world, seized further power and mocked you the whole time and everyone let it happen. We slaves deserve our condition.

belltaco3• 5 years ago

"Accidents still happen and people die despite traffic lights, stop signs, some wearing seatbelts and having airbags installed, everyone needs to move on and ignore all road safety rules and laws"

commandlinefan2• 5 years ago

So… you think mask mandates should be permanent?

chrismcb4• 5 years ago

If we discovered that the safety rules add laws don't help, we usually abolish them. But they do help. Mask and vaccine mandates don't really help.

woodruffw2• 5 years ago

Given that the US is sitting at a vaccination rate of around 60% (i.e., around 10% lower than the lowest estimate for "some degree of herd immunity"), I don't think you can fairly blame this on strategy (other than a general failure of public education, but that's a doozy of a failure.)

One way or another, the restrictions are going to eventually end. But they could have ended sooner, with fewer deaths and fewer severely ill, had more people decided to act affirmatively and with their civic duty in mind.

graeme4• 5 years ago

Unclear this is true. There’s no herd immunity for any other coronavirus. Antibodies wane quicker than for other diseases.

We have a SARS virus that we hope is actually just a common cold. That’s the plan. Hope and see.

Even highly vaccinated European societies are seeing a sharp rise in cases now that winter is here. Even Portugal, which vaccinated basically 100% of adults, has seem cases triple in a month.

They seem to be doing alright, but antibodies are currently fresh from recent vaccines. We’ll see how this goes long run.

But there’s no empirical support from any society, anywhere, that we could be done. Before any place can claim victory they have to make it through their traditional flu season.

You can do a year on year comparison to compare deaths. Last year, Portugal had the same number of cases with a similar acceleration on October 21st. This year the 7 day death average is 11. Last year it was 15. So about a 33% improvement. Good, but what happens if/when cases go higher? Portugal already vaccinated everyone.

zimbatm2• 5 years ago

Err. What country has reached herd immunity? Even 99% vaccination doesn't seem to make much difference.

chrismcb4• 5 years ago

Lately a majority of the deaths have been unvaccinated. But that was their choice not to be vaccinated. There is no "civic duty" to be vaccinated (or masked) the vaccine didn't prevent transmission, it really only lowers your chance at hospitalization and death. And cloth masks don't do much. And while other masks work the mask mandates don't. Forcing people to be vaccinated isn't the way to get more people vaccinated. A higher vaccination rate would not have "ended" this sooner.

version_five3• 5 years ago

there is no clear success in any strategy whatsoever.

No clear success from a covid mitigation perspective, but lots of huge wins in gaining power and growing bureaucracy. From the perspective of an advocate that wants a way to push their agenda forward, or a director that wants to get more budget and headcount for their group, covid had been a huge boon. There have been massive losers as well, in politics, business, and personal freedom, but if you look at how some have benefitted it's clear why there are lots of entrenched interests that don't want us to move on.

mmazing• 5 years ago

I disagree that there was no clear success. Look at New Zealand. They took it seriously and took it seriously early. Their cases dropped to near nothing and held that way until September of 2021.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/new-zealan...

I would argue that most of these countries and US counties being talked about in this article were deeply divided from the start, and never had great adoption of mitigation efforts due to politicization of the issue.

Had we all acted like New Zealand, actually having unified messaging and adoption of efforts, maybe we could have cleared this up early on and wouldn't be fighting all these variants now.

newacct583• 5 years ago

South Korea certainly seems like a success, with a per capita death rate about 3% of what the US saw. In fact contrary to your point, there is a very wide spread in covid impact from nation to nation. Here's a graph of all nations with 10M+ populations (scaled to eliminate Peru, which is a significant outlier that makes the graph hard to read):

https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

And while there's lots of confounding issues here, like developing nations or autocracies with underreported or suspect data, it's pretty clear that some countries are doing a ton better than others. And it certainly looks to my eyes that among developed democracies, the nations with stronger popular adherence to mitigation strategies (in particular vaccination rates, but distancing and mask-wearing too) are the ones who are winning.

(And needless to say, the US is pretty much at the bottom of the list of industrial democracies.)

beebmam2• 5 years ago

Seems like China's policy and Taiwan's policy are the only nations that have clear success. And it's the zero tolerance of COVID policy. One that many of us have been calling for near 2 years now.

User233• 5 years ago

We should figure out what Sub-Saharan Africa is doing right and then emulate that, because they've been by far the least affected, despite a 6% vaccination rate. More on that here[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278184

occamrazor• 5 years ago

They are young and spend a lot of time outside.

rsynnott3• 5 years ago

and then emulate that

What they're doing 'right', in general, is not having a lot of old people. It would be rather difficult for most developed countries to emulate _that_.

lezojeda• 5 years ago

I seriously can't fathom at all how anyone could be in favor of lockdowns still.

beebmam2• 5 years ago

It's working in China, one of the only countries that has actual success with their COVID policy.

sofixa• 5 years ago

Do they not do their job ( temporarily limiting the spread of the virus)? There are tradeoffs, sure, but they are very effective and sometimes necessary (e.g. you have exponential growth in cases and hospitalisations, and predict that soon ICUs will be full - do you do nothing or do you lockdown?)

burntbridge• 5 years ago

no clear success in any strategy whatsoever

What is your measure of success? I think for most governments it is preventing hospitals from being overrun and depleted of nurses and doctors through infection. Also allowing time to get the population vaccinated and hence protected. Can't speak for the USA but in Australia we are nearing 95% double vaccinated, the measures to control the virus are broadly supported by just about everyone in spite of what you might hear.

betwixthewires11• 5 years ago

And is it working?

Bayart• 5 years ago

Once in a while someone has the wild realization that European countries are, in fact, different countries. Despite a common background (and even that really needs to be taken with precaution, a lot of the common ground in Europe has more to do with the worldwide uniformization of material culture than anything else), we do have strong differences, especially when it comes to governance, administration and political culture. For example Britain and France have more to do with their former colonies, in terms of how they're structured, than any of their direct neighbours.

koshergweilo• 5 years ago

Man this guy has clearly never been to socal. Otherwise he would never do something so silly as comparing orange county to LA county.

It has three times as many people and twice the population density, and the average person makes significantly less per year. Is it that surprising that a smaller, less dense, richer suburb doesn't need as many restrictions as the largest county in the country?

This is all without even touching the historical political differences between the two counties. Frankly I'm amazed (and very glad, I'm visiting over the holidays) the two counties have such similar vaccination rates.

Edit: Also he neglected to mention Orange County actually has a higher vaccination rate than LA County. Seems like a Federalism success story to me.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

I was struck by another detail: even between "blue" jurisdictions, e.g. coastal US/cities and cities in Germany the details differ wildly. Natural immunity seems to count for something in Germany but not in the US and it's the opposite with PCR tests, those can get you into my US workplace, which has a vaccine mandate, but not enough to get you into some venues in Germany. I'm trying to sort all this since I'll be visiting my parents in Germany for the first time in 2 years.

Also, it's politically very hard to pass vaccine mandates in "obedient" Germany but easy in "wild-west" US. This has to do with privacy laws more than medicine or science.

What's common, as far as I can tell: right-wing=anti mask/vaccine and left-wing=pro mask/vaccine.

detaro2• 5 years ago

Another fun one: as far as I understand at home quick tests are not really a thing in the US, whereas here in Germany they are 1-2€, available pretty much everywhere.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

Depends, my employer (hp) bought a buttload of them and handed them out when we had local spikes. At one point I was doing them every other day, now down to once a week. They cost around $20 for a 2 pack here.

chrismcb4• 5 years ago

Mandates aren't "passed" they are just declared, either as a health issue or an emergency order.

zwieback3• 5 years ago

good point - executive vs. legislative

swayvil• 5 years ago

99% of the population would cut off their silly nose if somebody on facebook told them to.

It's a historical fact.

Don't expect rationality from the crowd.

Kindergartners are getting rashes on their face because school forces them to wear a damn mask.

We quote talking heads to justify our insanity.

AnimalMuppet4• 5 years ago

99% of the population would cut off their silly nose if somebody on facebook told them to.

Wow. Hyperbole much?

It's a historical fact.

No, it's not.

gvv• 5 years ago

I guess the author of the article found it that Europe isn't a country. Disappointing article.

The Weirdness of Government Variation in Covid-19 Responses

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