Another possibility, if you believe the Chinese numbers, is that group quarantine has a huge effect, as opposed to self-isolation. In that case, you’d have to concede that the cost of liberal democratic civil liberties is a 10x-100x higher naive fatality rate.
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Korea is an outlier due to much higher tech use for testing. So more tech can offset the disadvantage of more civil liberties.
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Pick 2 of 3: civil liberties, low tech use, low fatality rate.
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People like to compare China and the west in very abstract, ideological terms, but really I think it boils down to the political feasibility of a *single* tactic: group quarantine. Everything else is pretty much legitimately available within all political systems.
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It would be interesting to apply Dictator’s Handbook lens to this and determine actual extent of power. For example India is nominally a liberal democracy, but Modi probably has tactics available to him that democratically elected leaders generally don’t.
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This is a good point. I wonder how internal connectivity of China compares to Europe.
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Replying to @vgr
Might look more reasonable if you ran your numbers province by province given size of country and concentration of infections.
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One of the difficult questions is: assuming there really is a “cost of democracy” holding tech-level constant, should you be personally willing to pay it? Can’t honestly answer that without normalizing for your relative safety as a function of class/wealth.
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I’m totally willing to accept a 10x-100x higher fatality rate (on a low base like 0.1- 1%) for higher civil liberties but then I’m not most at risk from poverty, crowding etc.
Healthcare workers at least knowingly sign up for a risky profession.
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Replying to
True but that kind of failure is part of the risk, just as crashing is a risk if you choose to become a pilot. The only way to eliminate such risks is to avoid the profession. Systems aren’t perfect. At best you might be able to sue the system later for failures.

