[Barrin92]

>are surrounded by miles of open water/ocean

So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

Where you're located when a disease hits gives you either an advantage or a disadvantage, fair enough. But it doesn't explain away repeated and continuous inability to act. If NZ had acted like the UK, they'd look just the same. Once you've got community spread the virus doesn't care if you're on an island.

[ardy42]

> So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

Exactly. If the US population (for instance) had the community spirit to voluntarily comply with virus control measures, and the social cohesion to support those who couldn't work during that time, we probably would have gotten it under control and life would be something close to normal.

The people who make lockdowns necessary (and the subsequent economic damage) are the ones that fight them tooth and nail.

[throwaway20851]

>So is the UK, last time I checked they're not doing so hot either. You can add this kind of argumentation to the list of ailments. Geographic or some other sort of fatalism as an excuse for what is social failure.

What exactly is social failure?

[Barrin92]

not taking health precautions. Not following guidelines. Politicizing the response to the virus, putting individual interests above the interests of society, not listening to health experts, politicians not following their own rules, the list of dysfunction goes on.

If there was actual compliance with relatively modest rules, that just demand that everyone acts with some sense and makes some small concessions, life could have gone on normally, with a lot of people still alive.

[throwaway20851]

This sounds like the thoughts of someone recently born.

This was inevitable in atomized western societies with relatively high rates of health issues like obesity and diabetes. And how were you to muster people in these fractured societies to "comply"? There is no national identity or Philia. Consumerism only brings us so close. Diversity is our strength, remember?

>If there was actual compliance with relatively modest rules, that just demand that everyone acts with some sense and makes some small concessions, life could have gone on normally, with a lot of people still alive.

Citation needed.