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Comment by 9nGQluzmnq3M | Hacker News Reader

> Politics here has changed forever

Unlikely. I think we'll be back to business as usual (at least on the political side) within a year of the end of the pandemic.

I'm also afraid that this is going to be a major setback not just for Europe but globalization in general, which will leave us all worse off in the long run.

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On the contrary, setbacks for globalization may very well leave us better off...after all, globalization is one of the main factors why we're experiencing this deadly pandemic now, and have vast swathes of our supply chain for essential pharmaceuticals and medical equipment farmed out to evil, duplicitous regimes like the Chinese state.

Us = the world/humanity, not the USA. China's economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty, and it would not have happened without globalization.

>China's economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions from poverty

Starting from the point of the great leap forward, yes there has been an improvement.

Lifted millions out of poverty at the expense of millions of middle class American jobs. I believe globalization largely did not end up in the best interest of most Americans because the transfer of technology and manufacturing did not result in a new American ally, but rather a strategic competitor. For over a decade now we've seen a rift in the interests of the common people and the elites in the United States, which is why we've seen the resurgence of populism.

> after all, globalization is one of the main factors why we're experiencing this deadly pandemic now

Not so. Pandemics travelled around the world before globalization. The black death, smallpox in the americas, syphllis.

This just increases the speed.

Speed is, however, an important factor in the severity of the impact.

In a given area, yes. But with globalization we also got forewarning, and information from those in earlier areas.

Under a less intertwined system, this likely would have spread heavily within each area, and that area would have little info form outside on what to do. Every place a potential Wuhan.

syphilis was also caused by globalization!

i hope many travel restrictions become permanent. ban cruises, make tourism difficult and expensive, cut off travel totally between the hemispheres. nature is being completely destroyed by human activity, this is an opportunity to reverse it.

If you're worried about the environment you can just add a carbon recapture tax to gas.

Banning travel between large areas is ridiculous and wouldn't happen. Especially when a policy of quarantine during outbreaks would be equally effective with a vastly smaller cost.

Quarantine completely failed to prevent what was a highly localized disease globally in 2 months. We need to accept it’s simply ineffective across international borders unless draconian measures are applied before they seem required. We might get through this with 100,000 people dying globally or 100,000,000 it’s completely unknown at this point. But, should the second happen expect some significant changes to happen for years if not decades.

PS: China’s case fatality rate broke 4%, though they likely undercounted cases by ~50% if not more.

What country even quarantined everyone coming in on a plane?

I might have been unclear, but I was suggesting quarantine for everyone coming in, as an alternative to banning travel forever.

Quarantine set up once you already have an outbreak is uh, a different matter.

Internal travel was suspended between several countries, though far to late to make a significant difference. A partial list: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/coronavirus-travel-bans/i...

Saying they waited to long is true, but simply means it fails due to politics.

Edit: NM, misunderstood what you where referring to.

Yeah, far too late. I mean the equivalent of locking things down in January, not March.

A total travel ban would also fail due to politics, so that's not a really helpful criteria.

I think the list of things that people believe are 'ridiculous and would never happen' has greatly reduced in size in the last few weeks.

Also, there's a lot more to environmental destruction than excess carbon.

Outside of fuel and labor, the resources spent to enable travel are quite minor. I don't think trying to stop carbon-neutral travel helps the environment in a meaningful way.

I'm not sure modern travel and globalization are the same thing. It only took a few travelers to spread to every state in the union. That doesn't have anything to do with global supply chians.

Very one-sided take on globalization. Unless every country would completely close their borders the virus would have eventually spread everywhere anyway. While medical equipment is temporarily out of stock in some countries, globalization also guarantees that eventually each country will have access to the necessary equipment. Imagine living without global trade and expecting Afghanistan to create an industry for ventilators in a couple of months.

You're taking the other extreme and doing what you accuse the other person of doing: a one sided take.

Backpedaling on globalization doesn't necessarily have to mean going back to no globalization. It just means now being away for the drawbacks and accounting for them. No every country doesn't need to produce their own medical equipment, but enough will that consider it important to do so and have the internal demand to support it and that will create supply-chain optionality for those that don't produce their own supplies.

Every country that doesn't manufacturer their own equipment and supplies will be far better off when they have several countries they can source from.

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