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Comment by Pyramus | Hacker News Reader

> I actually have an alternative take on this: if society is not able to do something as simple as consistently use a mask, there's no hope to do something that requires concrete sacrifice as mitigating global warming.

Let me frame this positively: Covid as a whole did increase the chances that humanity will actually do something as against global warming, and actually survive the next 200 years or so.

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Honestly compared to the 1918 pandemic we have actually done an amazing job with covid. Not only have we gotten a new vaccine out for it in record time but mask wearing is also really high by per capita percentages in the vast majority of the world.

I really am baffled that people don't see things with more positivity.

Conditional on these advances in science, technology, and medicine it's quite obvious how badly many Western democratic societies have done (that's not to say there aren't also positive outcomes, and it varies a lot by nation).

Take the US as an example: Would you have guessed that the 'most pandemically prepared country' would lead Western democratic nations in terms of death count? How ready do you view US society to combat future threats like climate change, an even deadlier pandemic, or non-democratic state actors? What does that mean for the Western model of democracy?

The effects of climate change are mostly natural disasters that come and go as normal which the United States deals with regularly. That entire argument is tired and irrelevant. The United States for all it's faults is also likely keeping the most accurate statistics on the whole thing and gave the the mRNA vaccine to the world.

2 out of 3 of what you brought up has nothing to do with covid.

History doesn't stop just cause there's a pandemic.

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