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Comment by bwb | Hacker News Reader

When I read this I just think "how American", and I am sad but with a dark smile. It seems like as a nation we are a group of psychological outliers that are a bit messed up. It makes me think how much "DNA" is shared between behaviour like this and entrepreneurship/art/creation? Can America exist without this bullshit and still capture a significant part of our national ethos?

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Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing we need here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That was def not my intent Dang. Just sharing what I was feeling and some of what I am thinking about. Sorry.

I understand. The underlying issue is that conversation feels intimate here but is actually broadcasting to thousands if not millions of people. Spontaneous comments that are harmless and add life to conversation between two or three friends have entirely different effects at this scale. It's something we all have to deal with here.

Yep gotcha, I'll be extra careful going forward and aim to only provide things that are a bit more useful / actionable.

This source[0] shows the rate of mask wearing in public in the US far exceeds the average of Europe. I'm not sure it's "how American" insomuch as it's "how unfortunate this virus was allowed to spread so long before the world was told about it".

[0] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2020/07/...

I am currently living in Portugal, and was in Spain for the last 12 months. Mask use in Portugal is 100% on a day to day basis unless doing sport, Spain was the same where I was.

During the summer we did an outdoor road trip through 5 countries. There were no mandates for wearing it outside, but I didn't see a single person not wearing one inside in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, France...

The initial U.S. response to the virus was to do nothing. It will go away soon. We can blame it on China for not communicating it sooner, but what would we have done? Things would be better if we had done nothing, sooner?

Doing nothing? There was a rapid mobilization of emergency military hospitals (that were not used at all), ventilator development, vaccine development, therapeutic development, lockdowns, travel restrictions, and so on. And, here we are with multiple vaccines being deployed in record time.

Also, China could have locked down travel from China that might have helped.

> China could have locked down travel from China that might have helped.

See [1] and [2] for fact checks on this point.

[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel...

[2] https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search

>how unfortunate this virus was allowed to spread so long before the world was told about it.

Blame China. I'm frankly shocked at how few international repercussions they've gotten. Any sane rational nation would be issuing economic sanctions left and right for their inept, pathetic handling of the pandemic.

If by "inept, pathetic handling of the pandemic" you mean the cover-up or data fudging accusations, I highly recommend the four part series in Quillette that examines the merit of these charges:

https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie...

Here's the Twitter thread where the author introduced the series and gave some helpful backgrounds:

https://twitter.com/phl43/status/1298053847844368386

As he says:

"Again, I know that many of you are skeptical, but this essay has required a ridiculous amount of work and I'm really confident about the conclusions I reach, so I hope you will read it with an open-mind. I will post the other parts in this thread as they are published."

The author also has very helpful comments on the recent CNN leak

https://mobile.twitter.com/phl43/status/1333563577324761091

I remember when Trump issued travel restrictions on China, only to be scolded for being xenophobic.

I seriously doubt that there is meaningful overlap between anti-maskers, entrepreneurs, and artists.

The issue is that misinformation and conspiracy theories are thriving on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and they're received the illusion of legitimacy from one of our minority political party that controls 2 out of 3 branches of government.

Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible.

"Americans were able to make huge, selfless sacrifices during WWII. The only reason they can't do it now is that several very large companies profit from outrage, conspiracy, and polarization, and they have optimized our media to generate as much of those as possible."

Very true, wish more people realized this.

Honest question: How unique is the U.S. vs. other countries, in terms of the fraction of population unwilling to take effective measures to avoid spreading to others?

I've seen occasional headlines about super-spreading events in Europe, but I have no idea how much their attendants are representative of their fellow countrymen.

This is Berlin: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/world-nation/st...

Yeah, I think that event in Berlin was one of the examples I had in mind as far as news-grabbing super-spreading.

Still, I can't really tell how much that crowd's attitude is indicative of the rest of Germany or even of other Berliners.

I'd say not at all, but then I live in the north where we have very few cases and at least in my city there is no mask compliance problem at all. I tend to hear worse stories from further south.

Rates of entrepreneurship are higher in Scandinavian countries.

"Rates of entrepreneurship are higher in Scandinavian countries."

Source ? Genuinely interested.

As an American who has traveled, and has friends, in Scandinavia, I would be surprised to learn this ...

I agree, there might even be a correlation between "incorrect confidence" and creativity. It's important to note though that other countries have been dealing with the fallout of their bad mistakes for centuries, while the US is still relatively young.

I think media (especially social media) is to blame for a lot of what is going on. By lending a voice to irrationality, they sow confusion and resistance.

This happens in other countries too. Most european countries are also dealing with people rejecting masks, lockdowns, etc.

Not to the same extent.

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