Yeah this pandemic has been described as the perfect middle ground for politicization, denialism, and just laissez-faire attitudes.
Any more deadly (like Ebola) it becomes incredibly scary and people likely do whatever it takes when they see people around them dropping like flies (especially in horrific ways).
Any less deadly (basically the yearly flu) and it becomes easy to ignore and just becomes part of the background process.
COVID is somewhere in between. Deadly enough that hundreds of thousands of people are dying unnecessarily. But can still feel a million miles away for so many people.
Was it not though? I assume you'd want a pandemic deadly enough for that convinces a majority of the populace that it's a serious event (to encourage downstream change to better prepare for a worse pandemic), while at the same time not causing people to drop like flies. As you stated, anything less severe would be taken less seriously. To have something to be taken more serious, it has to be more deadly.
Despite the denialism we currently have, it seems to have made the world recognize the importance of preparation.
"more deadly" does not necessarily mean more deaths in this case. If it kills like ebola more folks could take it seriously ultimately resulting in lower transmission and death rates.
In particular, when COVID19 was first spreading but we knew about it back in February countries could've easily contact traced to flush it out and then quarantined all incoming travelers to keep it out.
But most countries deemed those actions too extreme and economically damaging so instead let it come spread and do way more damage.
Also taking into account that often the balance between spreading the disease and letting people work to feed themselves and loved ones is a massive challenge.
In my country we have destroyed economiy due to 10 years of incompetent greedy politics which had killed it already. People are out of work because of that.
Now the pandemic has made sure no one will recover at an acceptable rate, because new politicians also struggle to find the balance.
At this side of the planet we are screwed at such a hard rate, its amazing I can still feed myself, pay utilities and internet and be medically insured
What you're proposing is highly experimental and probably wouldn't work. There's no single country in the world that has been able to restrain the sars2 virus despite spending millions trying to do so.
Seriously, we can't expect to match the performance of a low income country we bombed back to the stone age just a few decades ago?
Vietnam isn't a paragon of wealth and competent administration today, there is no good reason our public health departments should not have been able to perform equally or better than their equivalents in Vietnam.
Other than Australia, China, New Zealand, and Vietnam, you mean? And China managed that after it had already spread widely domestically; the others were quick on their feet.
Cambodia too. We had our first known case of community transmission three weeks ago. It topped at 41 cases and we’ve had no new ones for three days.
We have mandatory two week quarantine for all arivals, stores lose their business licenses if they let anyone in without a mask. Schools, cinemas, gyms, clubs are all closed.
We’re hoping things will open up again in two weeks.
Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own".
> wanted to close the borders
If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the closure to South Korea when the virus was spiking there?
"Ah yes, "warned", by assuring us that the virus was no worse than the common cold, and we were rapidly "turning a corner", and that it would just "go away on its own"."
I suppose he shouldn't have listened to the WHO at the time, which told us it couldn't spread from human-to-human. Nobody really knew anything about the virus at the time, except China, and the lied about it...but orange man bad.
He was also being impeached at the time and the Democrats were too busy with this to care about the potential spread of Covid-19.
He also talked about hydroxychloroquine, which his doctor was using at the time as a preventative measure for Covid-19.
Was it a cure? No (he never said it was), but Doctors were taking it at the time and many were still were taking it before the vaccine.
Because everything Trump said is bad, it was equated with junk science and possibly lead to the deaths of many more people.
"If he really wanted to, what stopped him? He was clearly fully capable of closing borders, given that he did close the border to China (too late) and Europe (also too late). Where was the closure to South Korea when the virus was spiking there?"
Right. He could easily just make decisions without the Democrats using everything in their power to stop him. Where have you been the last 4 years?
Again, The WHO was warned about this back in December from Taiwan officials.
Trump has been stopped from making decisions every step of the way from the Democrats and then Demonized in the press (which spread false information to the masses).
You really can't then blame him for making the wrong decision.
"It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that."
— Trump, 2020-03-31
That's long after human-to-human transmission was confirmed. So, no, you can't blame the WHO there.
> Right. He could easily just make decisions without the Democrats using everything in their power to stop him.
...Uh okay? Since when has Trump cared what Democrats thought? Again, why did he not attempt to close the South Korean border if he cared so much? I'll tell you why: it's because Trump was just looking for an excuse to close the border to a country he already didn't like. He never cared about the virus, only about his personal agenda.
The China border was “closed” yet we had tens of thousands of Chinese travelers enter the US straight after the closure.
And the European border “closing” was so badly managed that it almost certainly seeded the massive outbreak in the NorthEast in the initial phase by causing hundreds of super spreader events daily in airports across the northeast as people all tried to return from Europe within the same few days and the airports were completely unprepared to handle them safely.
Most countries were unprepared, except for Taiwan. The government of China lied about SARS outbreaks and Taiwan has since had scientists that study disease outbreaks in China. Covid was spotted in December, but the WHO is under the influence of China and didn't listen.....
It's strange how the Chinese government: lied about the disease, allowed it to spread throughout the world without warning anyone, and purchased all of the PPE (creating a shortage and possibly causing even more deaths).
MERS (which didn't reach the US) was probably a better "training pandemic" because of the high rate of symptoms early on in the infection. One could take drastic measures to isolate the infected and prevent many deaths.
It didn't cause billions of people to gain experience in stocking up on supplies, learning how to live while locked down and the problems it entails, and wearing masks and taking other precautions. Therefore, it didn't serve as a training pandemic, except maybe for a small group. (It seems it did serve as training for vaccine developers, at least.)
It was a good "training pandemic". Some countries did quite well (Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, etc.) and some countries did poorly (the US, Brazil, parts of Europe). Overall, being able to develop and deploy a vaccine within a calendar year seems like a success. Though a lack of inexpensive, quick, home administered tests seems like kind of a failure - they exist, but they haven't been backed by governments to the point where they can be manufactured in large numbers.
Ebola requires direct contact with bodily fluids, it's not nearly as easily transmittable as Covid. Note that seasonal flu levels are at historic lows [1, 2], despite Covid raging to the point where many US states' ICUs are filled to capacity.
The more deadly a virus is the less likely you will have super spreaders. If the virus was 5x deadly you would probably also see 5x worse symptoms in most people. So instead of taking a bunch of DayQuil and going to the business meeting that person would be home feeling and looking like shit.
> The more pain we suffer now, the longer the lesson will last.
More evidence of the pervasive political attitude that’s “science-based” but more like modern day fundamentalist fire-and-brimstone “anyone smiling wrought all the suffering in the world” Christianity.
Any more deadly (like Ebola) it becomes incredibly scary and people likely do whatever it takes when they see people around them dropping like flies (especially in horrific ways).
Any less deadly (basically the yearly flu) and it becomes easy to ignore and just becomes part of the background process.
COVID is somewhere in between. Deadly enough that hundreds of thousands of people are dying unnecessarily. But can still feel a million miles away for so many people.
This was not a good "training pandemic".