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by reallyagain 1616 days ago
... and if Italy learned the lessons from Asian countries, the initial spike in Italy would not have been so devastating.

I think a more fair take would be that most countries did not take COVID19(in particular, the early variants which were much more dangerous) seriously enough until there was a major source of infections in their country, at which point it was obviously too late.

There are some exceptions(in particular, New Zealand, which is in the Anglo world that you malign), but I think in general it is a true statement.
2 comments
toyg 1616 days ago
The world tends to respect the anglo press more than the rest, because they work in the world's current lingua franca, they are historically less subject to governmental influence, and effectively report (and affect) the state of the biggest superpower on the planet. In some cases (covid, Judith Miller, etc), it becomes evident that such high respect is often unwarranted. I say this from a place of sadness, not anger. It's not a criticism of anglo countries per se, but of cultural attitudes around certain sectors, inside and outside such countries.

> in particular, New Zealand, which is in the Anglo world that you malign

NZ and Australia largely benefited from their geographical and economic periphery to achieve the level of safety that they did. By the time the virus got there in critical numbers, it had already been taken seriously in the anglosphere as a whole because of the UK debacle. I'm not saying their lockdowns didn't help (they very much did), but it's easier to enforce controls on entrance in far-flung corners of the world rather than around the backbone of the world economy.

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jokethrowaway 1616 days ago
That's not it, the problem with Italy was in the way they were treating them and the fact that Italy is mostly old people (after government policies drove out young peoples for decades).

Several Italian doctors criticised the Italian guidelines (in particular about giving corticosteroids) but they were silenced.

We also don't know the real numbers of Asian countries, do you trust the numbers given by the CCP?

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tim333 1616 days ago
Most Asian countries are not China. The standards of reporting in places like Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore are probably better than the west.
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blitzar 1616 days ago
> do you trust the numbers given by the CCP?

No less, or more than for the USA.

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