Hacker News Reader

Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan has temperature checks to get anywhere and very effective contact tracing to segregate all potentially infectious individuals in quarantine. Coughs and fever, even if unrelated to covid, result in the individual having to spend some time in a hospital room. Its borders are almost fully closed to outsiders. Not only that, a culture of mask wearing has been normalized throughout east Asia for ages.

Do you honestly, honestly believe that Americans or Europeans at any level would have been able to transition to and adhere to such strict restrictions?

View on HN

I've taken taxis, taken a group Uber, gone to restaurants and otherwise been living normally in Taiwan this week.

The only place I've been stopped for a temperature check was entering a large mall. Similarly, caughing when having a spicy soup hasn't resulted in getting carted off to a hospital.

A fever while going through immigration at the airport would probably trigger a medical check of some kind, though (along with the normal 14 day quarantine).

> Do you honestly, honestly believe that Americans or Europeans at any level would have been able to transition to and adhere to such strict restrictions?

Of course. Why would that not be possible?

This is another common response I see, this defeatist attitude that the west is not capable of implementing the same smart common sense policies that the east did. With this pessimistic attitude it's sure as hell not possible, and will be the west's downfall.

I admire your optimism.

I agree to the extent that our pessimistic attitudes are a cancer that will lead to our downfall. I do not believe we can overcome them as they permeate up and down the spectrum of influence and political power.

I realize the irony in taking a pessimistic stance and recognizing the harm in that pessimism, but I don’t really know what else to say or how to change it.

I agree that it's not easy in the U.S. to get things done, but I see optimism as a prerequisite to getting things done, so I choose to be optimistic. For example, first it starts with fixing our healthcare system. Many of the countries who fared to work had awful healthcare systems to begin with.

In any case since I no longer live in the U.S., I don't really have much skin in the game anymore, so this stuff doesn't stress me out like it used to. So even though I may sound optimistic, I actually gave up enough to compel me to emigrate from the country. But I do see positive change happening in the U.S., just slower than in other countries.

Why would that not be possible in America? When the leader of the country during the pandemic was explicitly antimask? You can’t rewrite history with “logic.”

The U.S. is a democracy, not a dictatorship. The president can only do so much. If there's a problem with the politicians, they need to be replaced. If there's a problem with the system, that needs to be fixed. Just saying "it's not possible in America" is not constructive or useful.

I would examine the texas blackout as an example of why such problem persists in the US. There's no incentive, during good times, to prepare a system to help during black swan events. When the black swan event occur, the costs are borne by those who suffer it. After the closure of the event, life goes back to "normal" - and the cycle would repeat.

Half of Americans can't even wear masks.

> Do you honestly, honestly believe that Americans or Europeans at any level would have been able to transition to and adhere to such strict restrictions?

Australia adhered to much stronger restrictions. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54654646

It's also much easier to close both country borders and interstate borders here. That's the main reason we've been successful along with people's general willingness to follow rules here.

whilst it's true that australia's state borders are much more easily monitored, if people truly wanted to cross, they don't have to go thru major roads.

I think the willingness to follow rules is a much more important trait than the ease with which roads could be closed.

The US has many roads between states and it is indeed impractical to close them. But it would not be impractical to ask every citizen to not travel. But how many would've heeded that call?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com