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Comment by jayrot | Hacker News Reader

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.

This was not a good "training pandemic".

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> This was not a good "training pandemic".

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.

It’s a shame we’ve forgotten about the incompetence and idiocy that got us to where we are today.

So many failures got us to this point.

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.

It's just not realistic for the US to be able to match the performance of countries with advanced healthcare capabilities and resources like Vietnam.

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.

Australia- It's summer there. Duh. China- I'd prefer to die than live on my knees New Zealand- Summer. and Vietnam- SARS1 cross immunity, remember?

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.)

I would say that it was not, at least not for US because it did not reach it.

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.

> Any more deadly (like Ebola) .....

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.

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-season-never-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03519-3

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.

Totally disagree about the last part. The more pain we suffer now, the longer the lesson will last.

> 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.

That's not how psychology of pain works.

I don't need to hold my hand in a fire to know not to touch fire again.

Giving someone pain/suffering to teach them a lesson is just abuse.

You personally don’t... but look around... A lot of people are playing with fire

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