American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map) | Hacker News Reader

American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map)

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23 pointsguptaneil15 comments

These kind of articles are the worst kind of sensationalist clickbait. Calling the United States the "plague states." Citing past data as predictive when it just links to the author's own opinion articles with titles like "Reorientalism: How White Passports Became Worthless."

It's like someone tried to take the worst aspects of twitter and turn them into an article. It's perfectly balanced with some grains of truth to breed the kind of viral flamewars across the internet which I'm sure your average medium blogger salivates over. Really disappointing link.

Sadly, I can see many people in the US saying "Good, who wants to go to those Countries anyway". I know a few already who believe that.

No paywall link: http://archive.is/YGqjl

Someone had to speak out. But I am not sure if the list is entirely accurate. There was this news about EU travel info that's relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/article/eu-travel-ban-explained-usa....

All Passports are Worthless Now!

Hm... As a European on vacation in France right now, I wholeheartedly disagree. Argh... the tide goes up. Gotta hurry to move the towel. Would you excuse me?

What I mean is COVID-19 is affecting all countries. It’s not only US. The title of the article is confusing. And I think it is temporary, hopefully we will get out of this black hole soon.

A hot take, and one that's decidedly untrue. Most of the world that's implemented the necessary controls for this pandemic has been able to slowly and effectively reopen (albeit in phases and in a process that's very much still ongoing).

Sure, in some sense. Any country which hasn't controlled it has by definition not implemented the necessary controls. But the converse is surely untrue. As noted in the article, Liberia reports that it's largely controlled the virus - the idea that this is due to their generally superior public health regime is absurd, given that they have an uncontrolled tuberculosis epidemic.

This is a good example, I think, of the kind of pandemic coverage that actively contributes to America's inability to respond. The author is nominally on the side of controlling the pandemic, but with such a toxic attitude about it, I can't imagine this article swings people to his side on average. He says "it’s too late", we're in the "Plague States of America", "there’s nothing America can do but wait" - why should anyone make personal sacrifices to help control the coronavirus if it's so hopeless?

no one reading this is gonna 'swing to his side', the people aren't already trying to control the pandemic are already too hard-headed to even consider swinging, at least until them or their family members start dropping dead.

the implication that america is unable to respond to the pandemic because A Guy Was Mean in a Medium Post is ridiculous

Obviously it's not this specific guy's fault. But the undercurrent of meanness is something I've seen consistently. It seems to me that the public debate has generally been between "it's not a problem, those guys are just exaggerating it" and "we're doomed, those guys are too stupid to fix it", with the people trying to plot an effective course being mostly ignored. (How likely do you think it is that the author can point to specific proposals that should be implemented, rather than vaguely gesturing at masks and shutdowns?)

the latter is completely caused by the former, we are, in fact, doomed. the effective course was already ignored by those in power, months ago. now the outbreak is big enough in the south to be uncontrollable, contact tracing is worthless, testing is near worthless (7 day test turnaround!), anything other than a full extreme lockdown will not stop this, and that isn't happening.

How can we lock down? As I understand it, we can't even control our southern border.

Are you saying that all the states which are still trying to control it should stop, and reopen everything since control is impossible? I don't believe that and I don't get the impression you do either.

no, of course not, i'm saying that the political will to fix this isn't there, and to a point was never there, and we are now past the point of no return, thus this doomsaying like in the original post is bluntly and sadly correct.

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