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Comment by the-dude | Hacker News Reader

About every country in the EU failed in the same way, and we don't have the CDC.

Containing a pandemic is a political matter and there was no winning move.

I compare it to the Year2000 effort : if somebody had taken proper precautionairy measures, we wouldn't have had a pandemic and this somebody would have been roasted over wasting everybody's money and sending the economy in a recession for nothing.

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> Containing a pandemic is a political matter and there was no winning move.

How Taiwan’s COVID response became the world’s envy https://fortune.com/2020/10/31/taiwan-best-covid-response/

Culture Shock: Why New Zealand's Response to COVID-19 Worked https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/working-stiff/89867

Politics is often a no-win situation, but if we do not do what needs to be done we can't progress.

I was travelling in western and central Europe for a few weeks prior to a bit before the middle of February. Everything was 100% normal. I'm sure there would have been as little appetite for widespread shutdowns in Europe as there would have been in the US.

I'm pretty much as little a fan of Trump and his administration as many people are but the idea that widespread restrictions in mid-February in western democracies was remotely an option on the table is delusional.

Yet we had the early outbreak in Italy. The Netherlands went into lockdown on March 7th IIRC.

Early-ish February is not early March. The event I was at in the first week in March I literally did a flight change to go home rather than attend a next week event. That's a lot different from assuming there would have been a widespread shutdown in Feb.

Oh, I don't disagree. But there was a world of difference in just about 3 weeks.

Personally, I finished preparing and stockpiling around Feb 25th, and I know this of others as well.

Absolutely. I admit I was in the "This seems a bit excessive crowd" when my next small-ish event was canceled in early March. And I vaguely thought of taking advantage of existing reservation to do some skiing and maybe run into some folks informally.

By the time I got home, grocery stores were packed but in pre-shortage times. (Honestly, I'm pretty well-stocked at home even in normal circumstances anyway.)

I already had everything at home from a work perspective as I'm normally remote. But a lot of people I know took months to repatriate their office stuff home.

Looking at Google Trends for n95 is interesting.

In the US the search term 'n95' was gaining interest in the week of January 19, 2020. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-01%202...

Worldwide it was January 5th. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-01%202...

We (the EU) have of course a CDC: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en

I am certain the GP comment means "The EU does not have the [politically corrupted] United States CDC."

...don't have the CDC. The post is highlighting the failures of the US Centers for Disease Control. GP is showing that other countries failed in similar ways, despite not having the same organization.

Which is not the CDC relevant here. (and ECDC is pretty much irrelevant in general, since each country has its own health authorities that matter way more)

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