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[Reelya]

What countries are you comparing it to, can you give actual examples there where that backfired?

USA didn't have that "obey or else" rhetoric and they're the ones having all the protests. In fact, the protests are largely because their central government didn't take a firm enough hand.

In Australia, people are complying, and there's been plenty of "do the right thing or we will get you" stuff from the top. In fact, popularity of leaders is skyrocketing precisely where they take a "firm hand" approach. One of the problems in fact is that the jingoistic thing goes too far and people are reporting on their neighbors.

[MorleyDev]

Quote:

New Zealand is of course a small nation - its population is smaller than New York City's - and it is remote with easily sealable borders, which all played in its favour when the virus broke out.

But its relative success - it has among the lowest cases per capita in the world - has mainly been attributed to the clarity of the message coming from the government.

Unlike the countries that declared "war on Covid-19", the government's message was that of a country coming together. It urged people to "Unite Against Covid-19". Ms Ardern has repeatedly called the country "our team of five million".

"Jacinda [Ardern] is a brilliant communicator and an empathetic leader," says Prof Michael Baker from Otago University's Public Health Department, who helped advise the government on its response. "But what she's said also made sense and I think people really trusted that. There's been a high level of compliance."

For a pandemic response to be effective, he says, "science and leadership have to go together".

[Reelya]

That's really just one opinion piece. New Zealand is very small and remote, fairly low population density and easily sealed borders. Comparing the spread there to for example France, which I googled did "declare war on Covid-19" and is 12 times larger in population, has vastly more people traveling through and porous borders is apples and oranges, and can't really be put down to a speech from the Prime Minister.

In a larger nation there also tends to be a larger disconnect between the power of the federal government vs the localities. for example, Australia has 7 states/territories, but New Zealand doesn't have states at all and is smaller than many single states in Australia. Pretty much whatever the Australian Prime Minister says here is moot, because it's the states who control all the health/police/judiciary systems in their areas. We have more of a "mixed message" issue here. Not because our rhetoric is different, but because the leadership of each state are implementing different types of lockdowns, different rules, different interpretations. The biggest gripe here is that some things are allowed in some states, and not in others. That's not down to a failure in message from the Prime Minister, but due to the fact that Australian State Governments are autonomous in many ways.

[MorleyDev]

Like I said, I don't think it's the only cause. But I already agreed with the opinion piece before I read it (which I only did after posting that initial post too xD) that I felt that aggressive terminology like I've seen in UK papers and from European politicans, "obey rules or be fined", "parks will stay open so long as rules are obeyed", "we are at war with COVID-19", is counter-productive. And that's what I was expressing there: my opinion. Not a nuanced well-research standpoint, but a little complaint I've been thinking throughout this that I thought I would share

That aggressive attitude early on I think was just irritating for people and didn't help to actually encourage people to do the sensible thing and follow the rules that needed following. It frustrates people at a time when you really don't want to add to that on top of the inherent frustration those rules cause. And that predisposes people to thinking less in terms of "what can I do" and more "what can I get away with".

I'm not talking about a "oh this is exactly where it all went wrong", but "this is what I think has been one of the many missteps throughout this dilemma" and "that using this kind of language was the go-to approach for many leaders/ministers is in-and-of-itself concerning". It reveals something about the current state of the world that many of our politicians instinct was to try and appear tough at a time when a more compassionate kind of strength was what I feel is needed to be shown.

But that's just like, my opinion man.

[misko27]

There's really only a few countries similar enough that we can do meaningful comparisons. Among them are the Scandinavian states, who are similar enough in broad-strokes (and yet, significantly divergent enough in policy!) that we can try to compare and contrast.

For instance, Sweden has 2x the population of Denmark or Norway, and has about twice as many cases, which is consistent... but 5x the deaths of Denmark... and 10x the deaths of Norway.

[ChairmanPoo]

New Zealand lockdown is not voluntary either. They enforced it with fines and prison time. Really I dont know what people are about with this shit of voluntary lockdowns

[Max™]

Basically there were lots of ways to handle the pandemic decently, more ways to stuff it up but end up in a recoverable state nonetheless, and a few ways to actually jump on top of that shit early and shut it down.

Then... well, there's the US. About to hit 1 million total cases, 805k active, and we've far outstripped everyone else in sheer volume of tests at 5.6 million... that's something like 17k tests per 1 million people, with ~3k cases per 1 million people.

Got around 56k known victims of herr Drumpfuckschtick, and he is *checks notes* ranting about noble prizes and hamburgers on twitter after being made fun of for his totally reasonable suggesting of *checks new stack of notes* injecting UV light and disinfectants for some sort of cleaning to kill the virus.

I wouldn't expect him to know what a virus is, and his ignorance of the mechanism by which bleach sanitizes shit is unsurprising... but it almost sounded like he was picturing lightbulbs like some weird electric faucet, so you just turn it up to UV and squirt that shit into your lungs, bingo bango, no more virus!

...probably no more lungs if you had enough UV to actually do that INSIDE your lungs, but just in case, let's dump some bleach in there for good measure... he's the best at this science and medicine stuff folks.

*blinking morse code that just says 'GODS HELP US' over and over again the whole time*

[nenjin]

Sounds like Omaha, NE is going to start reopening things starting May 4th. Churches, Hair Salons, etc... as long as people maintain a 6' distance.

Lincoln, NE has not made an official announcement yet.

The country has to reopen at some point, but this feels a bit too early to me.

[Reelya]

You'd hope that we've really reached peak idiocracy when the makes of Dettol had to tell people not to inject or drink Dettol because the most powerful and influential person in the world said it was an interesting idea.

You'd hope that was the peak, however he'll probably say something crazier by next week.

EDIT: The current situation makes you look back at Trump almost starting WWIII by assassinating senior Iranian leaders as fond memories of a simpler time.

[Starver]

Ostriches actually don’t bury their heads in the sand, the myth started when people saw them moving eggs around in their nests, but not seeing that they were moving eggs.

Indeed. But hobbits do bury their houses in hills, of course.

It is unfortunate that people are starting to think the virus is gone just because there are no new infections. People who have it still have it. Countries can open up if no one has it anymore, not just if there aren’t new cases

That's why the phasing is so important. Make sure any latent infectors are still not licking other people's eyeballs without good reason (and bleachy eye-baths afterwards if they have?), and scale back the interdictions while (in the lucky position of having no huge outbreaks) jumping on any new suspected case with all the capacity you have for testing, contract tracing and then contact testing and onwards as required.

The (I bet it won't happen) promised 100k daily tests for the UK is currently aimed at Key(=Essential) Workers outside the NHS (after the patients and workers of the NHS have been sufficiently satisfied) but there's a lot of us in the potential reservoir outside that scope. If we were in the NZ situation, imagine even a fraction of the current capacity being used on anyone who just wants to be sure their dry cough is just something mundane (or non-infectious, but they could happily go to the hospital if it's a sign of something needing a biopsy to rule out cancer, etc) or their sneeze was due to an allergy.

It's the not knowing that has meant most rule-breakers have ignored some lockdown restriction or other (I heard a figure of 9%, the other day, which is a lot!) whereas if they tested positive - while feeling Ok and tested at all only because they were in contact with someone else tested/symptomed positive - and can be trivially supported by friends/relatives (who are themselves now sure they could do another shopping trip any time they need to required, because they're clear) for a requisite period then perhaps they will do so.  Right now, an "infective but well" person might be the one doing the shopping for several households who have (initially) less reason to keep at home. But nobody knows of this.


For the same reason, any regime out there that is holding back on testing because "it's not counted if it's not been tested" may end up with zero 'cases', but are actually causing more of a problem than if they were adding thousands of cases per day (and even a number of positively attributed/associated deaths) but then using this knowledge properly to quickly  reduce forthcoming days' figures.


But I'm sure that's just common sense, but a litte bit "armchair simulation" and the Real World™ still is a bit more complex.

[Starver]

Got around 56k known victims of herr Drumpfuckschtick, and he is *checks notes* ranting about noble prizes and hamburgers on twitter

That two-parter message about the media lying about him eating hamburgers was, ten minutes before that, a two-parter about the media lying about him eating "hambergers".

I saw the originals, in passing, wondered what comments would be made (ditto with the "Noble" prizes for journalism, sic) and found there was no thread behind the link. The whole two posts were deleted and resubmitted with "hamburgers" instead.

Some people just can't keep sane in lockdown. Not that he was sane before, nor locked down properly, but... my comment about what happens if he ever gets locked up is probably better in Ameripol. Except that he's the agitator, acting more like Davis than Lincoln despite being the one supposedly at the head of the federal response.

[MorleyDev]

New Zealand lockdown is not voluntary either. They enforced it with fines and prison time. Really I dont know what people are about with this shit of voluntary lockdowns

Pretty sure Voluntary Lockdown is an oxymoron

Don't know where you got the idea I opposed that or was supporting the 'mah fweedoms' people. I'm all for lockdown rules in these times, never said I wasn't. just think the attitude and language matter in getting people to want to follow them and nobody ever followed a rule they didn't want to follow. Following rules has a different tone to it than obeying rules. Tone matters in selling it to the maximum number of people.

[Max™]

Also: jesus fuckbats, Misko dude, weren't you in the NYC area? Only halfway kidding but damn, are you still alive or crossposting from the dusky beyondforums?

[Frumple]

Misk was in NY at some point, yeah. They're also pretty young, though. Pretty good odds they're still alive and not necroposting more literally than the term is normally used.

[martinuzz]

In a press conference, Trump said that it will be seriously investigated in what way China can be held responsible for the spread of the corona virus.
He said "I am not happy with China", and he "believes that the outbreak could have been stopped at the source".
"Perhaps it was inabilty to do something, or maybe it was something else. We are going to find out".
He alluded to financial compensation by China as well.
 "Germany is talking about 130 billion euros. You can count on it that our damages are even higher".

I wonder what he'll say when Chinese nukes fly towards the US.  Probably "hey I was just being sarcastic".