| I see you're getting replies that (correctly) claim there are other states that handled it well. But those are exceptions to the rule of "western societies didn't and don't handle the pandemic very gracefully." Mind you, I am not advocating to follow an authoritarian/Chinese model. But the analysis that neoliberalism (and the hyper-individualist mentality that it co-evolved with) have undermined any collective effort at containing this effectively seems valid to me, or at least worthy of discussion. Financially, we have eroded our capability to respond to this in a timely manner. Our healthcare and test/trace capabilities were simply not up to snuff, even though the people that know most about them kept sounding the alarms. Philosophically (and IMHO this is the more contestable part of my opinion) our individualist societies have eroded our capability to demand (let alone volunteer!) personal sacrifice for a collective good, even one that indirectly benefits us and our direct peers. Alas, give the developments and debate around this, I don't see anyone working through this after the fact. We'll all want to move on, forget that 2020 ever existed, and hope that economic growth will lead us into the golden twenties we've all been waiting for. This time it will definitely work and not screw us all over in the next cycle, we'll say. Or at least next time I will be on the winning side! Just you wait! |