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Comment by chrononaut | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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"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.

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