Hacker News Reader

Comment by moriturius | Hacker News Reader

This post is exactly the essence of why I don't like politics.

It's super easy to retrospectively say "they should've done something else". You might think that even you would do the right choice, but you are wrong.

Such decision is hard for any authority. You may vote for any person in the whole world and the result would probably be similar. Lockdown delivered too early could send whole country into chaos.

Also China managed this so well that it actually could work counterproductive for other countries.

What I'm trying to say is: Don't judge others. You have little idea of the situation they are in, and saying retrospectively "you should've known better" is just childish. Just learn from their mistakes.

With your attitude, you can choose any party and will always be unhappy about the choice.

View on HN

> saying retrospectively "you should've known better" is just childish

European governments were not the first to have to deal with the epidemic (China), nor among the first few (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore etc.). They were fully aware of what happened in Wuhan without early action. They literally just had to follow what Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea etc were all doing. Those countries had less information and less time to act, and yet they're riding this much better than much of Europe.

So why _shouldn't_ European governments have known better?

As I said in my original post: China managed this so well that it could make others think that it was not that big of a deal.

Wasn't until it got Italy hard that most people opened their eyes.

But the point I was trying to make was that saying that somebody should've done something differently is not helping anybody. That's just complaining and nobody needs that.

Accountability is important.

Also - doing nothing until it is too late - not even educating - is not even a choice. It's not a strategy. Its dereliction of duty.

So if the govt waited until there were 30 million cases in the country in a four month period, that would be irresponsible? If it put 300k people in the hospital, that would be an unthinkable national disaster? What if it killed 20k people in just four months in just one country?

Those are the conservative figures for influenza in the USA since 2019 November.

Where was your outrage last year and the year before. Couldn't we have prevented this influenza tragedy from happening all over again. Is this also dereliction of duty?

> Don't judge others.

It is by observing others and judging their decisions and actions that we can learn and avoid other people's mistakes.

Is it not?

Judgement is pointing fingers.

What you are asking about is just drawing conclusions. I wouldn't mix those up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com