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None of these (except maybe the "faking their numbers" one) are just "excuses". It is easier to control immigration if you're on an island vs. if you're smack dab in the middle of Europe with lots of people crossing the border on a habitual basis (e.g. workers, friends, families, etc.). It is true that Asia is better prepared because of the Sars epidemic that never really reached other parts of the world (at least not Europe, to any significant amount). It is also true that certain constitutional rights, as well as matters of political structure such as constitutionally enshrined federalism, make centralised decision making much harder than in some other states. And you also can't deny the difference in mentality between different kinds of cultures. You have to understand things in their cultural, political and geographical context. I live in Germany, the country that GP moved away from. Now I don't want to make any excuses for the myriad failures that Germany, and its 16 individual constituent states, have made, not the least of which was inadequately using the time in summer when the numbers were down to prepare for the inevitable second wave. But Germany is still doing better by far than any of its direct neighbours on basically every metric, and also better than the vast majority of European countries in general. Now do I wish we'd learn more from other countries, that some people took the virus more seriously, that we'd have incidences below 50 (or even 10) cases per 100k people? Yes, of course. But it's not as if nothing is being tried and you do have to balance different aspects. Germany went into a stupid, pointless semi lockdown in November that had basically only negative effects (closing down everything that is nice, such as theaters, while keeping open shopping malls), while not really helping much at all, but it has since been corrected and we're now in a second lockdown which I hope will be kept in place until numbers are sufficiently low again. People here are listening to scientists and they do eventually do things not too badly considering everything, even if it's not perfect. |