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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I wish this got more attention.

At the same time, it's not just about the private system having more capacity, it's also about the whole attitude that comes with thinking it's the government's job to take care of people and the idea that when they can't, the should restrict peoples freedoms as a result (and anyone who has dealt with Canada's health care system knows its mediocre at the best of times)

We need much stronger decoupling between the governments inability to deliver on programs and the restrictions it places on people. Somehow we manage to find enough police to enforce all the restrictions...

I'd be interested to see how this is different in other European countries with socialized healthcare, because canada is not the only one

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"Canada's health care system knows its mediocre at the best of times" sorry what? you seen south of the border? 50,000 people die a year because they don't have access to health care... they have 3rd world disease spreading...they have what looks like 3rd world humanitarian efforts where doctors/dentist etc go to parts of the USA to provide basic healthcare... its a joke for one of the richest countries in the world.

https://youtu.be/JHDkALRz5Rk?t=1454 people need to see this when they push for privatization

mean while Saskatchewan moved to privatize MRI because they said it "would increase capacity and be cheaper" and what happened when money got involved? now rich people skip the line and guess what? it got more expensive and the wait times doubled for the regular people... Canadian system is not perfect we don't have universal pharmacare yet but hopefully we will soon, but thinking we should go the route of America is crazy.

America's COVID death rate is 3x that of Canada's.

This is not true. The case fatality rates are very similar. https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/25/E666

Even if the rates were very different, the any difference claimed to be caused by specific measures would not necessarily be causal as implied by brimnes. For example, what are risk factors for COVID? Here are some data on obesity: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db56.htm#:~:tex.... What about weather differences? The list goes on.

And?

> And?

I can only speculate as to /u/brimnes' point, but there are many ways to measure the effectiveness of different countries' responses to covid. One might be to look at the countries' death rates. By that measure, the US response has been quite a bit worse than Canada's.

Perhaps it’s as simple as Americans liking McDonalds a lot more than Canadians like Tim Hortons.

Obesity is a key driver of comorbidity statistics. [0]

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/obesity-and-covid-19.html

That's pretty high

In one small EU country with socialist public healthcare that was already in disarray years before COVID, we see largely successful introduction of totalitarian government methods, similar to those used by the Nazi and Bolshevik regimes from 20th century.

On the premise of hospitals being full, hard freedom restricting rules are introduced for a selected group of people while government ignores the rules when it would mean loosening up the restrictions. Selective use of scientific facts in government narratives (vaccine benefits vs vaccine failures), TV stations and major web sites are one sided propaganda mouthpieces (government gave them money to ensure they will help out). Public figures criticizing government policies are being smeared, healthcare professional criticizing government policies are being smeared and threatened, some even investigated by committees for "spreading disinformation about pandemic".

The government has learned to use the word "science" and that is a major problem. It uses the word to shield itself from criticism and is foisting on the dangerous thesis that consensus of a small, invisible and government-chosen group of people to handle the pandemic is the definition of scientific truth.

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