Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[Pemalite]

EnricoPallazzo said:

In this case I agree with you 100%. Actually I believe a HUGE % of he contagion could have been avoided using just social distancing, working from home, closing internal and external borders, masks and avoiding public transport and etc. Of course we would still have deaths, a huge impact on the economy and unemployment, but it would be much lower than what we had and much less traumatic.

But then we have the cultural factor I mentioned to you and you exposed very well. The western world is very attached to "muh liberties" even when it is bad for us and the others. That is different in Asia for several reasons that wont go into.

Several democratic "liberal" countries didn't have the issues the US had. Again... Australia and New Zealand.
It seems the people of the USA aren't willing to comply with government directives for one reason or another, even if it benefits the entire nation.

Partly that is due to the political climate where Democrats believe that a Republican president isn't their "leader" (Seriously, wake up, Trump is your leader.) and the Republicans believe that a Democrat isn't their leader either. (They are.)

So obviously they refuse to listen or comply.

There is definitely a cultural part of it, but it's very interesting to analyze the reactions when the government does *anything* in the USA.

EnricoPallazzo said:

Also there is the problem of backlash of media and social media. I definitely dont like trump but I like his style of having balls to make some decisions even if the media is going to hate. I remembered when he decided to close the borders for certain regions how he got destroyed everywhere. It was one of the first 1st world countries to close the borders. I said to my wife "now he had the balls to do it, others will follow". Which happened. And now the same media agrees it was the best decision.

Not a fan of him either and he did take swift action on stopping travel from China, he needs to be given praise for that, credit where credit is due, it was the right decision in hindsight.

The fact is, the virus was already world-wide at that point, Trump needed a complete shut down that would have prevented travel from say... Indonesia.