Yeah I think the mink culling was an absurd over-reaction and highly unethical. Those poor minks.
(Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)
(Disclosure: I also think the same for the human lockdowns too though)
Melbourne, Australia had a 4-month lockdown which turned an exponentially-rising 500+ cases a day scenario into elimination. Saving thousands of lives.
No other place has managed to do something similar and it shows hotel quarantine of foreign arrivals, aggressive contact-tracing, mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns work. The Swedish laissez-faire approach does not.
I recommend looking at the Victoria section of that page, as Victoria had by far the largest outbreak to cope with.
For a more high-level overview, I like the BBC’s article, which talks about their opinions on the most important steps taken by the government, as well as the most critical mistakes. Note that it dates to October of last year and so doesn’t include mention of the three cases which induced a brief tightening of lockdown for a few weeks after the article was published.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Australia
This is not true. Hard lockdown that people follow seems to work. But lowdown only doesn't work.
1. Not all lockdown are equal, look at Germany how long they have a been in a soft lockdown so that death can decrease? like 2 months? Not sure at this point this is due to lockdown
2. If people don't follow the order it doesn't work, Peru one of the toughest and longest lockdown but yet also the highest mortality in the world
Large fines, arrests publicised on television and a strong police presence across the cities ensured that people weren't given the choice about to whether to comply or not. Now does it introduce questions about whether people's civil liberties were infringed ? Absolutely. But it works.
As a fellow Melbournite I will clarify: Real lockdowns work. End of story.
Most people cannot make money while locked down. Who pays their bills? Are they expected to burn through all savings to become destitute enough to qualify for aid? Are landlords and mortgage holders supposed to deal without any revenue?
Is caging up your citizens to avoid a disease that has a miniscule chance of death (for all but its oldest citizens) really necessary? Is it ok to saddle future generations with government debt to pay for these lockdowns?
There are many “stories” to tell here.
Lockdowns do work, technically speaking, but not in the long-run. Virus doesn't care and will operate as usual, albeit at slower rate. Persistent things those viruses are.
Lockdowns make sense only at the beginning of a pandemic and their only sane purpose is to give the health care segment to prepare itself for the hit. Beyond that it's a lost cause. You're not saving thousands of lives, you're just extending the inevitable further down in the future, while your economy is sinking, which will create even more problems down the road.
So even if you stay inside the cave forever, the bear will still come.
2. Lockdowns occurred during winter.
3. Australia has effectively eliminated COVID-19 and by having so few cases it allows for targeted lockdowns to work over the long-term e.g. Perth just had 1 case today and is having a short 5-day lockdown - their first in 10 months.
Sidney - 423/km2 Melbourne - 508/km2 Brisbane - 155/km2
Paris - 20,000/km2 Berlin - 4,206/km2 London - 5,666/km2 NYC - 27,755/km2
You are effectively out of touch with reality.
edit:
NYC - 27,755/km2 to NYC - 10,716/km2 (27,755 is in mi2 units)
sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin
If we’re talking just about Melbourne’s CBD (which might be a sensible thing to do seeing as we’re talking about people being clustered in the cities and not about the surrounding suburbs, national parks, and rural areas which presumably are included in your “Melbourne” number), then the actual number for Melbourne is around 19,000 people/km2 [1], which is at least in the ballpark of the numbers you’ve given for other major cities. Although again, you don’t give enough details to know specifically what those numbers actually mean.
[1]: https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/theres-a-reas...
We're talking about the cities as a whole, not selectively for this or that neighborhood, or that particular bus.
Would those measures work in similarly-high-density cities? The awkward fact is that most of the cases in greater Melbourne were outside the densely-populated CBD [2], that much of the transmission occurred in lower-paid (McDonalds) and less-safe (meatpacking) workplaces, people whose home language was not English, as well as in shared living conditions.
There’s a temptation to fit the data to the narrative you want, but (as far as I’m aware) the data you’d need to pick any one of these factors as conclusive hasn’t been released. Gestures in the direction of geography as the _one thing_ that enabled elimination are silly and ignore the vast amount of effort and personal sacrifice and organisation and argument and collaboration that went into that result.
Lockdowns do work — even if that’s not quite the end of the story.
[0] https://theconversation.com/where-did-victoria-go-so-wrong-w... [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-14/victoria-coronavirus-... [2] https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/20...
Heretic view - there is no new virus to start with. Some places seem to have declared zero flu cases this year. Go figure.
I don't see how most of the EU countries can follow this strategy. Germany für example has porous borders with Denmark, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, Poland. If they don't in turn all follow this strategy we'd have to militarily secure all these borders and stop anybody from going through. This would cause an enormous hit to the economies and cost a lot of money in military gear and personnel to execute.
Now for the next scenario, say the whole EU + Switzerland + UK decide to follow zero Covid. Then we still have a boatable connection to Africa and a pretty large land border with Asia to defend. Despite the never before seen political coordination this would need, this would create very harsh humanitarian situations along those borders, even worse than what we've seen in recent years.
So all in all I don't think it's that easy to use island nation strategies for mostly land locked nations.
That’s just one of Australia’s states, and we were the only state with a severe lockdown like this. We have massive land borders with South Australia and New South Wales.
But also, having lived in both countries for more than 20 years each (including being in Melbourne now and throughout the lockdowns), I can’t imagine a country like the US ever engaging in a lockdown, or it working if they tried. It just doesn’t match their national role models of how people are supposed to act and what they’re supposed to care about.
The whole defining ideal here in Australia is “mateship”. As you’re growing up, the revered role model that you’re told you should emulate is the “good mate”; being compassionate, taking people as they are, taking care of each other. That’s what they tell each other it means to be Australian.
The equivalent mythic figure at the center of US society is the cowboy. It’s all about rugged individualism over there. And sure you take pains to protect your own family, but certainly not anybody else’s. Anything which requires one to take an ounce of inconvenience to help the society as a whole, that’s just not what Americans are generally raised to value. Those other folks ought to be taking care of their own families, after all. So you’ve got a whole society of people where the majority say “I’m not going to wear a mask if it mostly protects you.” And you’re certainly not going to convince a large enough percentage of people to obey a mandate as inconvenient as a requirement to stay inside their house for months at a time for it to be effective. They just won’t do it.
I don’t know what realistic options they have in the US. I hope they find one. It’s indisputable that lockdowns do work if followed.. but it’s also true that the US will never be able to make the majority of their population comply with one. It just doesn’t fit the country’s stories about themselves.
EDIT: In the above, I make a bunch of sweeping generalisations about huge populations of people, and I’m obviously not saying that everyone in those populations think those ways. I’m just pointing out the difference in what America says being American is about, and what Australia says being Australian is about.
As cruel as Corona itself is - it did bring a few good things, killing the Mink industry was definitely one of them in my opinion.
Morally, raising mink for fur is equal to eating meat or consuming dairy products.
Meat and dairy products feed humans, which is a necessity (that, in our day and age, may or may not be achieved by other means while still maintaining a healthy diet), while fur is a luxury product - by no means necessary. It isn't even a byproduct, the fur is the sole reasons the minks are killed.
I can't even fathom how you can see these two things in the same light, morally.
Clothing is a necessity, but fur is just one way to meet that necessity. There's a number of natural and synthetic substitutes that can accomplish the same goals (avoiding nudity when it would be considered immoral, staying warm in cold climates, etc)
What's the difference? Is fur just worse because it serves as a status symbol in addition to the practical purposes?
Maybe not relevant for mink vs cow farming, but in some situations I think killing animals for their fur is morally and environmentally superior to raising and killing animals for their meat. Louisiana nutria bounty program is a net positive for the native ecology, which I don't think could be said for most meat products.
Yeah, it’s easy to be against it and feel good about yourself without making a sacrifice in your life. Wear fur and eat meat folks, but stop with logical inconsistencies!
Then you extend that to humans, so now nothing matters.
This is not very helpful.