What is astounding to a lot of us in South East Asia is the reluctance of the West in learning from our lessons. How many deaths and personal trauma experiences do people in general need to go through in order to learn from others?
People refusing to wear masks rarely question whether or not it works, and more to do with a low estimation of the disease's threat, as well as contempt for both the technocrats who chose to mislead the public about masks early on, and leaders who they believe are overstepping their authority by mandating them.
Our leadership has been doing everything possible to burn through its perceived legitimacy, and this is the result. Childish, spiteful, somewhat understandable behavior.
Yet another component is that trust in the press and other public institutions was at possibly an all-time low in America at the time the COVID pandemic became public knowledge, and shows no signs of pulling out of that nosedive.
> Great logic there. But hey, cutting your nose to spite your face is nice, no?
Stupid people are gonna stupid, but you can't lie to people and then expect them to then automatically trust you when you're telling the truth. Those people are objectively and factually wrong, but they are right to be distrustful. If the issue wasn't one of science that we could otherwise objectively evaluate, their position would be perfectly rational and reasonable.
Still, it created a lot of distrust when the message changed a few months ago, it wasn't a tribalist issue and I can completely understand how people ended up with this distrust. They are still wrong and I completely agree with this comment [1].
"Hey, some government people lied to us saying we don't need masks, hence why we won't use masks now"
Great logic there. But hey, cutting your nose to spite your face feels good, no?
Many of us did learn those lessons.
For me personally when this all began, checking out what the world is doing seemed the natural thing to do.
The US is also very insular, in that a smaller percentage of people travel abroad than is typical for many Western Nations. And a small percentage of people seek news produced outside the nation too.
Both of those stats are better elsewhere in the West, so make of that what you will.
This is the thing that makes me saddest. It just seems like people in the US are unwilling to endure even a minor inconvenience if it will help someone else but not do anything for themselves.
The idea of some effort, cost, minor sacrifice or inconvenience for a common, public good is not strong here.
Couple that being basically as insular on a personal level as we generally are nationally, and we find more of us than we may expect are empathy challenged too.
A lot of people in HN were arguing that the 0.7% fatality rate reported by Chinese authorities in Feb/20 was because Chinese medical care is bad.
Casual racism is kinda pernicious.
Agreed. We should have relocated Britain and NYC to the equator long time ago.