And to the extent the world is a connected web with the fates of these supposedly “better” states dependent on the west in a myriad ways — it doesn’t matter that they’ve done better in short-term local ways. In the long term everybody’s fate is linked to what ha;pens to the west.
Conversation
Country comparisons are kinda stupid anyway. It’s like left leg laughing at the right leg for developing gangrene.
Coupled fates. Either whole world makes it out of this together or there’s so much hurt instore for all it doesn’t matter that you did well for first few months.
1
10
39
The great diversity of the world’s systems of governance is a feature of how it works. “Why can’t we all be like Korea?” makes about as much sense as “why aren’t we all ethnically Korean?”
Because the world doesn’t work that way. It’s a bunch of different places, not one place.
1
1
24
All the objections I get to threads like this sound similar to me to “why can’t we donate excess Idaho potatoes to food banks”
Who’s “we”? Which subset of we is going to organize the truck fleet to do this? Who will pay the drivers?
“Why can’t we be like country X” is the same
3
2
24
In an ideal world, excess potatoes would miraculously be teleported to hungry people because Twitter Saint willed it.
In an ideal world, all diffs between Korea and the US vanish miraculously because Twitter Saint willed it.
1
1
15
Solve for the country/systems you have, not the one you wish you had.
You can ignore constraints to make bad comparisons to blame people you hate, but those constraints don’t actually go away.
Potatoes still need trucking.
The US still has an electoral college.
Deal with it.
2
3
30
It is easy to work yourself up into a self-righteous lather and feel like you’re a better person than the Bad People who are preventing the Obvious Solution that way.
You might even be right about them being bad if not about how the systems work.
But it doesn’t solve problems.
1
7
21
Interesting that test-and-trace people keep trying to tell me it’s not about measurement but containment.
Uh huh.
There’s a reason nobody flags that last bit, as in test-trace-and-quarantine. The political difficulty goes up 10x for that. So we pretend the easy part is it.
1
3
12
There is very little political capacity to do large-scale selective quarantine enforcement in the west. Take your pick:
Group quarantine
Ankle monitors
Trust patriotic self-isolation
Each breaks.
Ship has sailed anyway I think.
4
1
12
I did a thread about this. We’ll have it eventually but not soon enough for this time.
Quote Tweet
Tired: the last mile
Wired: the last yard
Wireless: last-yard NFC contact tracing
Show this thread
3
7
Replying to
If contact tracing is working & two people enter a store, with no prior contact, and one passes the virus to the other, who incurs damages, is the store owner at fault for not implementing distancing?
What if both people took precautions eg. masks?
What about store A/C units?
Replying to
I imagine the people with the most to lose economically would open first while the people with the most to lose health wise would be in a perhaps permanent lock down. There may develop a permanent welfare class of quanrantees.
1
Replying to
You can use the reopening European counties as example. Cautious reopening. Lots of disinfectant everywhere.





