Germany, once a model, is swamped like everyone else by pandemic's second wave | Hacker News Reader

Germany, once a model, is swamped like everyone else by pandemic's second wave

nytimes.com

42 pointsAndrewBissell109 comments

I think there is a lot to learn from this. When you look at different US states and different countries it’s really not clear which measures worked better than others. Germany looked really good for a while but now they have caught up with the rest. Within the US it’s also not clear if the states who had stricter lockdowns did better than others who don’t lock down that much.

It seems everybody gets hit eventually, just at different times.

Let’s hope that there will be an objective evaluation and not just political infighting.

There are plans to stop it all in 5 weeks, but the way its treated at the moment might make it last for several years. I still have hope polititians will realise it we cannot take the risk of it mutating every few months.

The virus is going to mutate regardless of what any politicians do, unless the immunity provided by vaccines and natural infections is sufficient to fend off any new variants. The idea that this can be prevented somehow with lockdowns and controls is just a classic case of illusion of control.

"There are plans to stop it all in 5 weeks,"

What plans?

Atlantic Canada was able to wipe out the virus completely early in the pandemic. But travel keeps bringing it in, causing outbreaks here and there, but each time so far they have gotten The outbreaks under control. Cases per capita are about a tenth of the rest of Canada, which in turn is half of what it is in the us. And ironically, restrictions here are less than in many hard hit areas.

> And ironically, restrictions here are less than in many hard hit areas

What did Atlantic Canada do then?

Have a low population density.

The largest metro area in Atlantic Canada is Halifax, and it's 2/3rd the population of Madison, WI.

How densely populated is this area?

> When you look at different US states and different countries it’s really not clear which measures worked better than others

Only if you ignore the countries where measures actually worked, like New Zealand or Fiji.

I don't think that's fair. It's a little bit easier to control things if you have no land borders and can control entry tightly. That's not an option for countries in almost every other country.

Indeed. Canada was looking much better than the US until approximately September. The number of cases now is 40x in just 5 months.

There have already been dozens of objective evaluations that support your intuition. You aren't reading about them because of political infighting: a huge number of powerful people have committed themselves publicly to lockdowns as a solution, and are not interested in people learning the truth.

There's a long list of studies here, many of which are all-country statistical analyses:

https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-co...

A representative paper:

https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1.-LANC...

"Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people"

Another:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v...

"Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends"

etc.

The 2nd wave is about to end in germany, the numbers are going down each day. Because of that they scheduled the schools to open monday (today in germany). But the teachers and staff haven't been vaccinated yet.

The official numbers released over the weekend suggest a steep increase in cases, with the variants which spread 75% faster.

This has been predicted weeks ago by leading scientists and chancelor merkel warned about it too, but it looks like some key people chose to ignore those warnings sadly.

Edit: The numbers for the weekend are usally much lower because they test less, but its higher than all week long.

I don't see the "steep increase" in cases you're referring to on any of the public trackers. So far the additional contagion of the new variants, whatever it actually is (I'm doubtful of "75% more"), is not enough to overtake increasingly favorable seasonality.

The numbers for sunday are usally much lower than during the week because they are processing less tests, but today its higher than at the beginning of the week.

Looking at the raw data [0], cases reported on Saturday/Sunday are a little higher than last week, but the weekday cases rates match up week to week. Seems more plausible it's just noise in the data to me, but time will tell.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/

Hm, the Numbers differ from what is published from the state itself?

At least where I live, Tuesdays have the lowest numbers because that's when Sunday's results are reported.

I have a 3 year old. Daycares have been closed (except for parents working in critical infrastructure) for a while now (two months? I have honestly lost track).

Today we got an email from our daycare that we can send him back in at the 1th of March. We were politely asked to not send him if we don't need to and we will do exactly that. But I am nearly certain we will be the one of very few parents that actually do that.

I don't want to risk getting him or us sick and I am nearly certain that we will lock down again in a few weeks. What is the point of this "opening up"? I can already see the cases rising...the R value is now again over 1.

Oh well...I really no longer care. My immediate circle of friend and parents are all very careful. My wife and I have solid work from home jobs and our son seems happy enough staying at home as well. I will just wait it out and ignore the general media like I have been doing...the rest of the world can honestly do whatever the fuck they want.

Wishing you best of luck.

It seems like with the possible exception of Asian countries, the variation in pandemic outcomes is pretty close to random. No western country has implemented any policy consistently enough to learn from it. How many times have we some region held up as a success story only to be the epicenter 2 months later?

I feel like the various policies have been consistently applied here in NZ.

Island countries are a special case. Hawaii has similarly been able to keep cases down to a small handful, at the cost of tanking the tourist economy on which the state depends. To achieve the same level of screening in a country with large land borders like Germany would require truly draconian travel and trade restrictions.

A border is a border. You need permission to get across a border.

It's not more draconian to restrict cross-border movement in Germany than it is in New Zealand, Fiji, or Mali.

Hawaii and New Zealand have a fixed number of points of entry - airports for the most part, as well as a very few select ports (not that those are a major concern with recreational cruises shut down globally).

Land borders are continuous with far more access points (spreading any testing or resources thin) and much more traffic due to lower cost and easier access.

Surely you jest?

Does Germany not have an army? It's one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

They can definitely show down the borders any time they want. See this from a year ago: https://www.gov.si/en/news/2020-03-20-germany-limits-the-num...

> and much more traffic due to lower cost and easier access

The traffic only exists while there is a high chance that people can cross the border. Close the borders for everything but cargo, and there will be much less traffic.

People will make up all sorts of excuses, but in fact anything is possible if you take the risk seriously enough.

I mean if COVID killed everyone it infected instantly and turned them into zombies, how soon would you see every way into Germany guarded?

I generally think more can be done.

But your post is simplifying much. Every way into German is literally all of it, except small parts in the North which are sea. Germany is all land border, essentially. Too much to control with any army. Ask Americans how that wall with Mexico is going. Like that.

Also, when Europeans speak of border posts, they mean some scanners on otherwise open highways. However, this doesn't mean that there's some sort of restriction outside of these border posts. Shutting them down doesn't mean anything is closed or whatever. You can cross into Germany literally anywhere. There are no borders, not in the way that you think.

When I was on the wrong side of the Dutch border soon before a local lockdown during a shooting, but was in a hurry, I just went through a village road.

Heck, there's even towns that practically cross borders. How are you going to control every street?

Right now, borders to several countries ARE closed. Does it stop most people coming to Germany? Nope.

There are also political considerations that are too complex to discuss here. Livelihoods across borders depend on coming to Germany, as well as a lot of pan-EU traffic. An overreach is likely shut down by courts, in the worst case by an EU court, which opens a new can of worms.

It's not as easy as you think.

Thank you. I appreciate the correction.

The flight route between Melbourne and Sydney used to be the second busiest in the world (not sure what is like now with the pandemic). There are a lot of people moving between the states of NSW and Victoria.

But during outbreaks in both cities, there were border closures which included not just airports but also roads on the land border which is about 1000 km long. This protected one city from cases from the other.

If you live near a land border it’s not unlikely that some of your friends or family are on the other side of it. No such thing in Hawaii.

Australia got it under control, and when they had surges in some states but not others they limited interstate travel until the overrun states got it under control.

The US and Europe could have done this. England could have done this. They chose not to and exchanged a month of pain for a year of pain and 100s of thousands of deaths.

Germany is probably the least comparable country here. It's smack dab in the center of Europe, has a population density of an entirely different magnitude, and is - most importantly - surrounded by some countries that do not take Covid seriously for whatever reason, and it can not easily close the border, which also doesn't physically exists anymore, because it is a huge political thing on multiple levels from local to EU.

Germany is more locked-down internally (like Australia and NZ) than it is on its outside borders.

Is it a mess? Yes. Should it be done better? Yes.

But honestly, if Germany was an Island, it would be doing just as good as Australia and NZ. It locked down internal travel several times, had one of the best contact tracing when it was still possible, and generally just got outplayed by new strains swamping through land borders that neither NZ nor Australia even have.

> US could have done this

No, absent martial law being imposed by the feds, this was never an option. The US federal government is not legally able to do the same things that unitary nations like South Korea and Australia can do on a whim. States delegated certain limited powers to the feds at inception, and reserve many, while affirmatively proscribing the federal government from doing specific things. States in the US are not simply local administrative bodies, they are essentially mini-nations that have out-sourced certain shared services. I’m speaking generally of course but that’s a better way to understand civics in the US vs some other (most?) countries. As a consequence of this system, states bear a lot of responsibility for their own policies. What do you think the tolerance would have been (or still is) for Joe Biden, much less Trump, declaring martial law? About zero, I’d suspect.

The federal government didn't close the state borders in Australia, the state governments did. Australia is a federation just like the USA.

GTK, I didn’t appreciate the level of independence possessed by the Australian states. Unsure of how AUS states locked down - nonetheless, getting six states to agree on something is easier than 50. Point stands that the US could not lock down travel between the states, and it would be impossible to get the states to agree on mutual border closures.

The states didn't agree on anything - when a state had an outbreak other states independently chose to close the border to them and administered border passes until the outbreak subsided.

In the US, the States are explicitly prohibited from closing their borders as a matter of Constitutional law. For different reasons, neither the States nor the Federal government are allowed to prohibit free travel between the States. This has been to the Supreme Court many times, it is mostly settled law at this point.

The right to travel within the US, like free speech, is near absolute. The due process hurdles to temporarily remove that right from an individual are very high; you can't do it with an edict nor de facto travel restrictions by abusing regulatory power (which has also been tested in the US Supreme Court).

Australia has significantly weaker individual freedoms than the US. This is one of those cases where those differences become apparent. Everyone asserting that the US should restrict travel like everyone else is ignoring that it is expressly illegal for the government to mandate such at thing in the US. No one in the US government is interested in dealing with the backlash such an attempt would elicit.

> In the US, the States are explicitly prohibited from closing their borders as a matter of Constitutional law

This appears to be wrong: https://www.justsecurity.org/69770/can-governors-close-their...

No, that is selective quoting of case law in support of a narrative. There are significant due process hurdles and evidentiary standards of "threat to public safety" in this same case law that are ignored here because they are inconvenient to the argument but nonetheless part of that same judicial precedent.

A thorough reading of that case law makes it plain that the proposals with respect to COVID would never pass judicial muster. In fact, there is considerable case law where attempts at such prohibitions were rejected outright but little curiosity in the above link as to the conditions and circumstances that caused the courts to throw them out.

The government knows that the courts won't allow them to cherrypick and selectively quote case law. It isn't an accident that every State in the US, across the entire political spectrum, came to the same policy conclusion regarding freedom of travel.

I dunno dude, the guy is a law professor. Do you have something more compelling for me to read instead? No insult to you but right now I'm running in to the 'guy on the internet has opinions problem' I hope you'll understand.

This guy from Yale thinks the same as the first one I linked:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-18/in-a-p...

Even if we assume you are right, how do you think this would work out in practice? Many police in the US won't even enforce mask mandates, you think they'll enforce travel restrictions on literally thousands of state border crossings? Most of these border crossings barely even have a sign indicating them.

UK is an island as well. It's not a special case then?

UK didn’t immediately lock all borders tight.

UK has 10x the population and is a global hub.

Hawaii has been open to tourists for a while and it is working out well. Every new arrival has to have a negative coronavirus test and must enable contact tracing software for the duration of their stay. Restaurants and whale watching excursions are limited to a fraction of the original capacity, but they are open. People wear masks on the beach but not in the water. Mostly, it feels pretty safe. The daily case counts in Maui over the past few days could be counted on your fingers.

I think the point of being in Hawaii is to be outside, with predictable steady breeze and lots of UV. Parts of Germany (and many other places in world) are quite a different environment (predominantly indoor with recirculated air and little sunlight. Sigh. Why do we live this way, raymond?)

Also, Kauai did go on lockdown forcing every arrival to quarantine for 14 days regardless of testing status after they had a local COVID death. That policy was in early December, but I think they’re back on the general state plan now.

Kauai requires a negative Covid test to pass a phalanx of National Guardsmen when you enter, plus a 3 day stay in a bubble resort at the end of which you must test negative again to leave quarantine. During my recent stay at one bubble resort the rules were quite lax and it was easy to mingle with people who were not under quarantine. Contra the parent, it is definitely not the case that people are wearing masks on the beach (nor should they), although they are generally still required in all other indoor situations except restaurants. I think you are right that outdoor settings and ample sunlight are important factors in Hawaii.

Conditions are still dire for the tourist industry even after things have opened back up a little bit. Just today I saw a headline in a local Kauai paper about small business owners organizing a meeting to agitate for loosening some more restrictions to help keep them afloat.

Australia's state leaders have been steadfast in their handling of the pandemic despite the Federal Government initially fighting the states' swift and strict response.

Some things we can all learn from NZ:

* respond quickly

* remain consistent

* be an island with <6 million people

What can we learn from Vietnam?

But what’s the exit strategy for NZ? Unless borders remain closed indefinitely I can’t see zero COVID to be maintainable in the long term.

If you're using "western" to mean predominantly white, then what about New Zealand?

Not densely populated, and an island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world (A fascinating article.)

Fascinating indeed, but shows that I was right to ask. Apparently the west isn't all that well defined.

You can implement the best policy in the planet after thinking for months in pros and cons and still be boycotted in a weekend by manipulated people that assure that you fail and then got scot-free for that crime (or almost [1]). Is literally a 'cold' war.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-anti-lockdown-protest-leader-c...

And the same pattern is happening everywhere.

Well punned.

And yes - "firewalled" nations seem to have an increasing advantage these days... though I don't believe those ugly patches will hold in the long term.

>After winning widespread recognition for its handling of the coronavirus last year

WHAT? When exactly was Germany a model of Covid response? Maybe when they were bashing Poland for closing borders on March 14 just to do the same thing two days later? German state run TV station ZDF Claus Kleber lecturing Poles about historical importance of open borders between Poland and Germany (face palm) on March 14, and a day later praising Germany for doing the very same thing: https://twitter.com/thomaskycia/status/1239671652755091456

Results of their "widely recognized" policies, like not mandating masks in public spaces: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/#g...

compare to border neighbor with early heavy handed and actually enforced lockdown (which paradoxically got loosened in October :/): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/#gr...

I mean I'm sorry but since you posted the graphs:

For a country that is less than half the population, having essentially the same number of daily cases today is perhaps not such a good thing. According to worldometer, Poland has twice as many active cases in total - not per person. Deaths are also comparable.

That's now, but it's more than that:

Up until now, Germany has both lower total cases and deaths (per person) than Poland.

And this, despite having tested almost twice as many people (again, per million) than Poland.

Further, Germany is arguably much more central in terms of international traffic in either direction.

I fail to see how Poland is doing any better than Germany in its response. The data instead suggests that Germany, despite actually having a first wave in its books (thanks to early testing), is doing much better than Poland up until now.

Who knows how that will change?

But considering Germany's position vis-a-vis Poland in terms of travel, density of population and all that - given the data you provided - Germany is arguably more successful in combating covid by.. well honestly a lot.

>Poland has twice as many active cases in total - not per person

and 50% less critical ones, in a shitshow of a backward country with crumbling healthcare system. Dosnt exactly put Germany in a great light.

>Deaths are also comparable.

Today. Article is talking about outstanding early covid response. Look at March-May, Germany had 10x more deaths total, and still 5x more per person than Poland. So where did that "widespread recognition for its handling of the coronavirus" came from exactly?

Germany is doing much better than Poland if you look at excess mortality alone. It's largely due to the collapse of Polish healthcare system in October which a direct result of years of being underfunded (Germany has twice as many doctors per capita than Poland). However Germany did close too late in March and many deaths could've been avoided if this happened two weeks earlier. The initial response to pandemic was much better (i.e. faster) in Poland but unfortunately opening schools in September caused a huge spike in infections. Since then Poland is doing quite well and it's vaccinating people faster than Germany.

The lockdowns are no longer a credible strategy. The politicians are not willing to implement the draconian measures necessary to actually prevent transmission. So they are implementing half measures they know are ineffective to create a semblance of effective governance. Why else have so many politicians been caught flouting their own policies?

The model is Australia. Australia got it right. That's why they've been back in the pubs, restaurants, schools, gyms and sports venues for 90% of the last 6+ months.

It certainly helps when you're an island

I think you are right, it definately helps. That said, us brits are an island we've had one of the worst performances. I think you want to be on an island AND have some leadership in government. That's what we have missed, no leadership.

My loose impression is that the countries that did the best are islands: Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand. South Korea is effectively an island since its only land border is locked down. Could this be an important factor?

Finland and Norway are doing great.

Finland has 131 deaths per million, Norway 111, while Sweden has 1247.

And Sweden is right between Finland and Norway.

And lets not forget Finland shares a border with Russia, a country that has struggled to control COVID-19.

Finland is effectively an island too - esp with the border restrictions with Russia currently.

Finland is certainly not an island. Their government have even problems imposing mandatory tests on borders due to constitutional restrictions. There is practically uncontrolled traffic from Sweden and indeed a lot more controlled traffic from Russia. They have also regular ferry traffic from Estonia.

Sweden is right between Finland and Norway. Sweden has 1,247 deaths per million, Finland 131 and Norway 111.

And Russian deaths running at 1538 per million.

I don't know about Finland off the top of my head, but didn't Norway's king just blast the government over their slipshod handling of COVID? Norway [Sweden actually] thought they could have the best of both worlds and shoot for herd immunity, and they ended up with a load of premature deaths and an economic malaise because no one wanted to be the person to take the viral hit for the good of the economy.

Edit: Wrong country.

That was Sweden, not Norway.

Indeed, Sweden has 1247 deaths per million, Finland 131 and Norway 111.

Aah, I am mistaken. My apologies.

One critical factor in Australia was border control. This was not just limited to national borders - there were state border control involved as well. If you came through a border (and if you were allowed to come through at all) between a "red zone" and a "green zone" you HAD to undergo quarantine.

Now imagine telling citizens of Germany that they have to quarantine for two weeks, unable to go anywhere, etc, if they crossed over from the Netherlands. Or imagine telling a citizen of the US that their quick trip between NJ and NY means they are now stuck inside for 2 weeks.

The islands locked down and locked down hard. This might be because it is easier on an island, but it might also be the island mentality that everywhere is a long way from here and we don't want there's troubles coming here if we can stop it.

Edit: Another bullet in the "Islands do it geographically" theory also come from Australia.

Australia had 700+ new infections a day at one point. This occurred in only one state, with all other neighbouring states seeing near zero infections due to state border controls. By quarantining and mask compliance and curfews within that state, AND a social welfare system which picked up the economic fragments and put them back together, Australia was able to bring this down to zero daily infections.

We also should not forget that Australia takes any seaborne migrants trying to come into the country and puts them in refugee camps (and New Zealand largely does not have to deal with such migrant flows by virtue of being more distant and isolated than Australia).

Atlantic Canada took a similar approach, and has managed to keep the spread under relative control. While there are periodic outbreaks, numbers are low compared to the national numbers. An "island mentality" may be playing a role since the only land connections are with the U.S. and Quebec, both of which were hit particularly hard early in the pandemic.

UK is an island

An island and a bit. It has a land border with another nation.

You don't have to be an island. You just have to want to control covid. Restrict cross-border movement, lockdown early and properly when outbreaks occur, track and trace... basically, the things the experts said would work before COVID was a thing, worked.

England is also an island.

Iceland is an island.

Australia has multiple states with different infection levels, and limited interstate travel until so there wasn’t spread back to resolves states.

The only countries that actually implemented these policies also happen to be “islands” which is being used as an excuse for poor management in other countries.

> England is also an island.

The UK, which England is a part of, has a land border with another sovereign state.

Yeah. Lets attribute this to geography. Not good policy executed well. Taiwan and SK are some of the most dense countries on the planet and they were able to keep this in control.

I think it helps.

On the other hand, the UK has done atrociously. I think the core difference here is taking things seriously. Neither the UK nor the US has actually taken this seriously. Here in greater London, masks are still not really compulsory in shops or on transport. Meetings of large numbers of people continue etc.

The reason I like Aus as an example is that they are so similar to us (apologies if I'm incorrect assuming you're a brit, American or other anglo national): they're a democratic, Liberal, aging, right wing governed, capitalist, using English common law, mostly white, trading, federal, developed urbanised, nation.

What did they do that we didn't?

They took more action quicker. They actually enforced lockdown. They aimed to minimise covid numbers instead of maximising them.

> On the other hand, the UK has done atrociously. I think the core difference here is taking things seriously. Neither the UK nor the US has actually taken this seriously.

Is it your belief that Japan (which experienced some significant community spread this winter) is "not taking this seriously"? Do you think that's true of every European country that has had large outbreaks? What do you make of there being relatively little relationship among the different U.S. states between severity of lockdown policies and cases/deaths?

This is ultimately a kind of non-falsifiable hypothesis. If significant endemic spread occurs, it is simply because they "didn't take it seriously" (and there are always at least a few malingering rule breakers who can be blamed no matter where you're looking). The only data points which are examined are places where there was either strict lockdown and no spread, or "something less than" strict lockdown and some significant spread, even though globally there is a broad mix of outcomes which calls the whole relationship of lockdown severity to Covid case counts into question.

I agree that earlier action might have spared us a lot of grief (although I'm not sure how long the necessary border and travel restrictions realistically could have been maintained, or whether contact tracing would have had wide buy-in), but in the timeframe it could have been done (i.e. before there was significant community spread in the U.S.) most of the people we are now admonished to defer to as "experts" were saying to be worried about the flu, bungling the testing situation, etc.

Quite often I see people claiming that “islands do better”. I think it far more likely that policy, not geography, is the decisive factor. Aus / NZ had great public health policy and competent - arguably near-flawless - execution.

If we attribute success or failure to things - like geography - that are beyond our control, it excuses us from taking responsibility for what’s happened. For some governments, that’s a convenient fiction.

I agree completely. I think for all the faults of the Australian government, they took leadership and made hard decisions and it paid off. The UK and US did the opposite: do little, do it as late as possible, ignore issues until ignoring them becomes impossible.

Reminds me of a great quote by Albert Bartlett: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Hyperbolic, perhaps, but directionally correct imo.

That depends on your priorities. Australia got it right if your top priority is safety. It came at a cost. Residents were not permitted to move freely or assemble freely. This is not an option in the US. So I’ll ask a follow up: who did it right in a country/state that respects individual freedom above safety?

Australia is a federation of states, just like the USA. There are US states that restrict movement and gatherings for other reasons such as gang-related activity and organised crime; what was special in this case?

It’s a strange question to say individual freedom and safety are two different things. Aren’t they the same thing? What is desirable about being free but unsafe?

I mean we could have stopped Covid in it tracks in the US and been very safe if we just welded the doors shut to keep people in their homes but we aren’t going to do that.

Yeah. AUS, NZ, SK, Taiwan, Japan did not weld their doors shut. SK, Japan, Taiwan had more doors open than most of the US.

Japan has had an explosion of cases. Not a great example. The others are islands and they could easily restrict movement.

Any country can be a logical island if it restricts movement at its national borders. Was the US powerless at the federal level to do this, or is that a state issue?

Even grouping the US by landmarks (west of the Rockies, in between the Rockies and the Mississippi, east of the Mississippi) and having open interstate movement in those zones would have been a start.

The options for handling COVID was not a binary choice between absolutely libertarian and absolutely draconian policies. There was and is a middle ground!

International airport transits are still suspended. Travellers arriving in Taiwan need to provide a negative COVID-19 (PCR) test result issued within three business days before boarding your flight to Taiwan, regardless of nationality or visa status. Antigen or antibody test results will not be accepted. There's been a seventh automatic 30-day visa extension for foreigners who arrived on short-term visitor visas on or before 21 March 2020 and whose stay has exceeded 180 days.

Being a "federation" has nothing to do with it. US States are expressly prohibited from closing their borders. That right to travel is near absolute in the US, even the Federal government can't prohibit it outside of very narrow cases that don't apply here.

In the US, as a matter of Constitutional law, people have rights reserved to them that the government, State or Federal, cannot take away from them outside of narrow circumstances (like a felony conviction). Freedom of travel within the US happens to be one of those near absolute rights, like freedom of speech. Americans take this very seriously as a matter of culture; no court would allow it and there would be widespread civil disobedience if they tried.

Aus and NZ respect individual freedom as long as it does impinge on the safety of others. It is a continuum. You can't drink and drive in the US. So, there is an example of safety over individual liberty. So, it's not like the US values individual liberty over safety all the time. AUS and NZ (and Taiwan and Japan and SK) chose to be on a different end of the continuum (and looks like were validated based on the outcomes)

I think the answer to your question is: Australia.

I lived in NYC during the first wave. Now I live in Australia, and I have much more freedom than my American friends, by far.

Going hard and going early maximizes both safety and freedom (and has better economic outcomes). Dragging your feet has costs.

Respectfully, I don't think this is true. Many Americans still can't exercise the freedoms aussies enjoy (going to restaurants/bars, schools being open in person etc). Australia gave those up for a few months and then got 90% back to normal. America and the UK have given those up for the best part of a year now and still have terrible covid numbers, growing numbers of variants, restrictions on gathering and other issues.

We have lost a lot more freedom than they have.

http://archive.is/3iECt

And https://web.archive.org/web/20210220145345/https://www.nytim...

Germany is at the start of the third wave (B117).

Also: Germany is way behind in information infra, which is just painful to watch.

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