Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[vivster]

Mnementh said:

vivster said:

I did not get the first part of what haxxiy was responding to. I just found it hilarious that he tried to defend his country by saying something completely unrelated. That's textbook deflection. I should know, because I'm German and every other argument is ending with "But we beat you in WW2". What he said sounded the exact same. And it also sounds like what a propaganda machine would teach people to say if someone criticises their great country.

Considering the limited freedom of speech and the seemingly quite successful propaganda I will be careful with accepting any COVID numbers coming from there, just like with China and the US.

We should be really careful in praising any dictatorship for whatever reason, even if it was justified.

As I said, there were multiple posts about the successful fight against COVID in Vietnam and haxxiy reacted by dragging other political aspects into the situation. Yes, you might see HoangNhatAnh reaction as deflection, but actually it was a short and snappy response to a post that wanted to deflect discussion about the methods of vietnam to completely unrelated issues.

For trust into the numbers... do you trust our numbers in germany? After the rules changed and you can't get a test even with direct contact with a proven infected person as long as you show no symptoms. Which is even more hilarious considering you still get the recommendation to quarantine. And to make it useless: the quarantine doesn't expand to your contacts, including other members of your household. The numbers from germany are highly untrustworthy.

But you always have other indications. An infection that isn't under control will spread further and it results in full hospitals and increasing death numbers. That thing you can't keep under covers for a long period of time. These things indicate indeed, that Vietnam is quite successful in fighting the virus. In summer western media also recognized this, I don't find any recent reports though:

I also think it is quite risky to ignore everything a dictatorship does and not to recognize their successes. Because we can learn from them without turning ourself into dictatorships. But to learn from them, we first have to recognize what we can learn. By outright denying every success of such countries because dictatorship is actually not better than denying everything germany does because of WWII. And in the current natural disaster which is the pandemic, it is clear that germany critically fails to properly respond, while Vietnam is quite successful. We should recognize this and try to learn everythign we can learn, not switch to unrelated points. It is justified to discuss the vietnamese authorative regime, but probably not in regards to fighting the virus. There may be some measures that are not applicable in a democracy, but that doesn't mean everything they do is impossible for us to replicate (or even modify to fit for us).

We can learn from other countries without being too praising. International recognition is one of the worst things you can give a dictatorship, even if it's earned.

Germany has had limited success because we're too democratic. I don't have to trust German numbers because they're way too bad anyway. No country will report higher numbers than it actually has so my distrust starts only when some numbers look too good. I think it's useful to talk about politics and authoritarian regimes, because those regimes have a wider toolset to combat spread, than Germany with its limp dicked politicians. Though I don't think the things we'll learn will be all too applicable. I mean I already know where Germany has fucked up and Vietnam didn't.