[ahelwer]

Legitimately humorous how the article associates America's failure with a communist distribution system, when communist countries worldwide have completely knocked their coronavirus response out of the park - so much so that it is considered unfair to compare America's atrocious coronavirus response with these countries instead of its "cohort" of countries failing just as badly, like the UK.

[sova]

Ah yes, just lock people in their apartments against their will and they cannot infect other people, genius

[war1025]

America's version:

Conveniently remove your own relatives from nursing homes and long term care facilities, then institute forced lock downs and mandate that they accept Coronavirus patients.

The people can't get out, but do your best to guarantee that the virus will get in.

[Fricken]

Well, yeah. Hundreds of thousands of people would have died otherwise, like they did in America. Duh.

[smt88]

No one disputes that authoritarian governments do some things better. Even the Romans built it into their republic: they could appoint a tyrant during wartime to make quick decisions before returning power to the senate.

It's incomplete (to the point of being irrelevant) to say that communists did Covid response better and not to mention all the other things they do worse.

Given the choice, I'd still take a 10x worse Covid-19 over living under Xi or Kim.

[dirtyid]

> they could appoint a tyrant during wartime to make quick decisions before returning power to the senate.

That's the entire point - the fact that many contemporary liberal societies can no longer use such tools is worth introspection. Many countries had quarantine act or equivalent emergency power structure designed for pandemics, but what good are they if current political climate make them infeasible. This overlooks the fact that harsh authoritarian responses have been in line with epidemic response playbooks drafted by the CDC. It was what was expected.

The myopia is thinking this is a choice between authoritarianism and liberalism, but between society where you can rely on leadership to do difficult things for the greater good versus one that cannot.

[smt88]

What is a historical example of a country with a mechanism for "temporary authoritarianism" where that mechanism was not abused to create permanent authoritarianism?

[est31]

First the communist countries deployed extremely autocratic measures that wouldn't befit free societies. Second, their numbers are far more likely lies than the US ones. These countries are extremely adamant about their public image. That's why they sent police to a doctor's home in Wuhan instead of taking the problem seriously and maybe, you know, stopping international movement to that city.

[ahelwer]

This zombie they're lying about their numbers! cope needs to die. Look at Taiwan. Look at Korea. Both of them handled the virus fairly well, with much less extreme measures, and have good relations with the US so you have no reason to doubt their numbers.

[peytn]

One is an island, and the other might as well be an island? I applaud their successes, but a year in, empirically what works in Hawaiʻi and Guam isn’t going to work in Chicago.

[EdwinLarkin]

Both Taiwan and South Korea's values are in direct contrast with what we call Western Values. Violating the right to privacy is one of them. South Korea's spying on its citizens is second only to China.

[ahelwer]

Feeding grandma into the woodchipper as I somehow happily dream that the US government doesn't have its populace under total digital surveillance

[loriverkutya]

Why should this they're lying about their numbers cope should die? They are lying about their numbers so you don't have solid data to argue with.

[est31]

Those countries aren't communist though. If something needs to die it's communism.

[ahelwer]

Yes, that's the point. You won't believe numbers from any communist country. So I provided nearby non-communist countries who have significant overlap in strategy, with good success, whose numbers you will believe. We can infer that even more stringent measures would have resulted in even better outcomes. Thus the communist countries are likely not lying about their numbers.

[est31]

According to WHO numbers, South Korea has almost as many cases (80k) as China (100k). I believe the SK one, but I can't believe the numbers for a big country such as China. They have 50 times the population of SK.

Note that likely the number of infections is larger than the official numbers in the western countries as well. But I trust the ones from the west (or SK) far more than the Chinese numbers.

[SpicyLemonZest]

But neither Taiwan nor South Korea have had stricter lockdowns than the US.