[sddfd]

The western economic system cannot deal with lockdowns, and more generally, any kind of stop-the-world scenarios.

What will be most important now is how the west will be able to deal with this crisis in comparison to China.

If the Chinese system is able to deal with the crisis more effectively in economic terms, this may put the western system as a whole in jeopardy, in particular values like freedom and privacy.

[throwaway_pdp09]

A very good point (and I'm not a china shill). China's philosophy is The State Above The Individual, so it is willing to trade off a many more deaths, in theory. The west is The Individual Above The State (or at least to a much greater degree), so in theory we should do worse.

However the west has imposed large scale quarantines so the collective is in fact valued (because most people understand them paying a some cost will benefit others).

Also china is not an ant's nest, and the government can't go mad or their government will become unstable and even overthrowm.

We're not so totally far apart. I don't know. My feeling in good times the west does better, in hard times authoritarianism does better. We're in a hard time. Things will change. Also china and the west are entangled economically (so you can't examine each in isolation), so if the west does worse, china suffers economically. Also china's allegedly been misusing cash - the tide's going out, who's (more) naked? It's a good question.

[Taniwha]

But that's not what we've seen is it, China has worked hard to minimize the number deaths by going really hard on a heavy lockdown early, while the US with 1/4 the population has dithered and not really mobilized the resources of its state and has 24 times as many people die as China has.

I think it's more that modern China has been prepared to do everything it can to minimize death in this case and by doing a serious lockdown along with serious contact tracing they've come out early and are able to reopen their economy

Some countries in the West have done the same and are in a similar state. Others have fiddled why their countries have burned.

[0xy]

>has 24 times as many people die as China has

This is predicated on the CCP numbers being accurate, which according to multiple intelligence sources is false. [1]

They also made systematic attempts to withhold information from the WHO. [2]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/02/china-withheld...

[scarmig]

I wouldn't put too much stock in their exact numbers, but it's not realistic to think that China has had 24 or 12 or even 6 times as many deaths as publicly reported, let alone on a per capita basis.

[ac29]

China has 18.7% of the world's population and 0.00018% of the current coronavirus cases [0], if you believe their reported numbers. So yes, I'm willing to believe there are vastly more deaths than reported as well.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

[0xy]

Why is it not realistic? The CCP numbers are essentially propaganda and have no basis in reality.

The CCP claims ~4,600 deaths, while there are reports like 5,000 urns being delivered to a single mortuary in Wuhan alone (Wuhan has at least eight mortuaries). According to some reports 40,000 urns were distributed in the span of just 10 days.

That's one city!

[chiefalchemist]

While data from China is difficult to find (and transparency always questionable), a key issues in comparing the two populations is:

- General health. Covid-19 rarely acts alone, at least in The West. Preexisting conditions play a key role. For example, obesity and its "side effect" diseases pair well with C19.

- How it cares for its elderly. People in nursing homes in the US have been significant contributors to the death count. Is that true in China?

It helps to get into the details a bit. While the proof has vet to be studied, anecdotally, cultural differences appear to contribute to the success (or failure) of a given government's decisions.

[Taniwha]

And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly.

I live in NZ - we've had no new cases nationwide for 2 weeks, we have (AFAWK) 1 active case in the whole country. Our borders are largely closed, anyone coming in is subject to mandatory quarantine. When we went into lockdown it was fast and deep, and people honored it, we started quarantining visitors from China early, as a result many of our cases came from the US. Now we're coming out, carefully step by step, I went for a drink at the pub on Friday night, then went out to dinner - there's still mandatory social distancing and collection of contact tracing data - that may all go away next week.

My hardware hacker friends in Shenzhen describe similar careful steps - apparently street markets may be back this week. But when they arrive they have similar mandatory quarantines as we have in NZ - does the US do any?

As far as nursing homes I think it's traditional for older people to live with their kids they don't get warehoused as much as we do in the West. As I understand it one of the big worries in China was that it was CNY, the whole country was on the move visiting family (those grandparents) they locked everyone down before they could return and then moved people back, directly into lockdown

[chiefalchemist]

I think what you might have is correlation. On the other hand, cause does exist for preexisting conditions. I'll go out on a limb a bit and theorize that elderly parents at home is safer than a bunch of them together in (under funded?) nursing homes.

Acting quicker might help but the fwct remains that underlying cultural issue have a significant impact on outcomes.

Side note: In NY state - and perhaps elsewhere - a nursing home patient with C19 that transfered to hospital and died is _not_ a nursing home death. The percentage of nursing home deaths is high, and - at least in NY - undercounted.

Would we have locked down the whole country is NY and NJ (and Philadelphia) done better with nursing homes?

[throwaway_pdp09]

> And that's sort of my point, countries that are willing to act and act quickly (be they communist or capitalist) are faring well and are restarting their economies, ones who's governments have tried to ignore the problem and hope it would go away are doing poorly.

Shocking stuff indeed. You've set the world of epidemiology on fire. What's your point? That in managing a dangerous epidemic communism/authoritarianism does better, or relatively liberal western government styles do better, or that governmental styles are not relevant? Because that was the original question.

[s1artibartfast]

I think the point is that the attribute most closely aligned with Covid outcome is not liberal-authoritarian, but functional - crippled by political division.

[Taniwha]

No, my point was that decisive governments willing to move quickly who are also able to motivate their populations to move with them (be they capitalist or communist) are doing far better here than governments whose leaders just put their fingers in their ears and tried to ignore the problem.

I lived in the US for 20 years, half my adult life, people there pride themselves in having a national government that is structurally deadlocked and unable to make sudden changes ... while this may be a useful attribute much of the time there are times, and a pandemic is one of them, when the government has to move really quickly - if you've fired all the experts and are more worried that your party's investors will lose money than you are that your voters will die then you get just the wrong sorts of results

[throwaway_pdp09]

I'm talking from a societal philosophy. If you absolutely insist on dragging stats into it, well, here goes:

China is incredibly monolithic in time (50 centuries of similar style of government, at least). The west is far more variable. The current US gov't acted like fuckwits, so deaths are unnecessarily high. Speaking as a brit, we've been even more fuckwitted.

I don't believe china's done as well as you claim. The fucked up early, downplayed covid, twisted the WHOs arm and plain lied about their infection and death stats.

Whether they reopen the economy early is of less-then-100% benefit if the rest of the world is not buying. If their economy isn't as healthy as they like to claim, this will hurt them.

But the bottom line is western governments can and do change. How china will fare I don't know. I remain where I started, I don't know which is better in these situations. The west may collapse, china may collapse, I can't see the future.

[ses1984]

Quarantine doesn't necessarily benefit the state more than the individual. It benefits the collective more than the individual but the state and the collective aren't the same thing.

[throwaway_pdp09]

How do they differ? I considered them interchangeable. BTW, polite request, if you say something like this please give a link to something that explains where I'm wrong, it means I don't have to ask for useful stuff. Thanks.

[ses1984]

I'm not a philosopher nor a political scientist, I'm not making a technical argument.

Are you asking about the inter change ability of the state and collective?

Did George Floyd benefit as much from the apparatus of government as Donald Trump? That's the difference between the state and the collective in my mind.

Or are you asking about inter change ability of individual and collective? I think it's pretty obvious...

[throwaway_pdp09]

I guess I was unclear.

> ...the state and the collective aren't the same thing

What's the difference? How in your view do they differ?

[ses1984]

The state is composed of the institutions, elected and appointed officials bureaucrats, etc. The collective includes everything else. I'm a part of the collective. I'm not a part of the state.

[groestl]

> The western economic system cannot deal with lockdowns, and more generally, any kind of stop-the-world scenarios.

A strong statement, but lacking some proof. My guess is that just like mold, the economy will grow back, adapted to the new constraints. And while the players might be gone, with whatever pain that might incur, the game is still played by the ones who adapt.

[cmsonger]

> The western economic system cannot deal with lockdowns, and more generally, any kind of stop-the-world scenarios.

I kind of disagree, though it may just be a diction issue.

I think it's the western political system and freedoms that can't enforce a lock down rather than the economic system. Countries that have aggressively locked down early, enforced that lockdown, and instituted privacy invasive tracing apps have been able to virtually eliminate the virus from within their borders.

Compare that to the US, for example, where people are insisting on their rights to not wear a mask for purposes of protecting others. It's less about economy and more about individual freedoms and lack of state power to enforce lockdowns.

[take_a_breath]

==I think it's the western political system and freedoms that can't enforce a lock down rather than the economic system.==

Is this true? Even within the US we have plenty of states respecting stay-at-home orders and making things like masks mandatory. Other Western democracies like Germany, Australia, New Zealand have fared pretty well.