I’m moving my posts from Reddit to Lemmy before delete them.
This post is from 2021-03-06.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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We got lucky with COVID being something we can make a vaccine for - it could have been a lot worse!
I brush off China lying because they definitely, unarguably had a lower infection rate. We know the surplus death rate because they can't hide that, and that's literally the worst the COVID death rate could possibly be. In all likelihood there are other factors that account for surplus deaths during the pandemic, so assuming literally every excess death was from COVID isn't even correct! The numbers are in fact probably better than my rough math, because I was just assuming the worst case scenario for the sake of argument.
China's COVID response was absolutely stellar and saved millions of lives and they should be praised for it. They probably lied (to maintain social cohesion and keep up public support for the extremely effective zero COVID policy) and I don't agree with that choice, but I recognize that they blew everyone else on the fucking planet out of the water even though they were literally ground zero! That's amazing!
Meanwhile, the West sacrificed us all for the money line and also lied. Objectively worse.
Even if you don't think China is good, it's pretty clear they are a lesser evil.
I'm pretty sure a total lockdown in the US would've failed because it's not authoritarian. Pandemics are an area where authoritarian nations have the opportunity to shine because it all comes from the top. Don't like what the government says? Too bad, you're going on lockdown. I have yet to be convinced, however, that this type of consolidated power is ideal in most conditions.
I know you're responding to a tankie, but just to be clear... the US is about as authoritarian as it gets - they don't call it the Prison-Industrial Complex for nothing.
That's due in part to lengthy prison sentences and the war on drugs. I expect those things will improve going forward and it's really not hard to avoid committing crimes. That aside, we get to openly mock our own leaders on public TV. We have local governments that can in many cases override the federal government. And like it or not, we have pretty unrestricted access to just about anything. Power is not centralized here and I like it that way. Much harder for dictatorships to take root. Unfortunately it's also the reason we don't move in lockstep when it matters.
Yeah... it doesn't get any more authoritarian than that.
Doesn't look like it from where I'm standing. I'd say the US is pretty much on a one-way street to more authoritarianism - not less. Or, to put it more accurately, US authoritarianism will start more and more affecting certain groups and classes that have thought themselves free from it up until now - it's like they say... fascism is just colonialism coming home to roost.
US authoritarianism works very differently than the model China is chasing... but that doesn't make it any less authoritarian. China simply doesn't have the ability to "drown out" narratives that pose a threat to the status quo in the way that the US media machine does. No other country except the US can do that - though China is making strides in that department. Once they do, it doesn't matter if a small minority of people knows the truth - a large (and vocal) part of the population has been immunized against it. That's the core characteristic of the US propaganda model.
I don't know where you live but as a US citizen the idea of it being authoritarian is just really funny to me. It's about as libertarian as it gets from what I've seen. If we all decided to decriminalize drugs we could. Weed has come a long way in the last decade and I can only imagine further progress will be made.
I guess we'll see if China's life expectancy stays above America's over the next few years.
2020 to 2021 to 2022, it's gone down every year. Will this year buck the trend? I really hope so! I doubt it.
That's certainly quantifiable if everyone tells the truth. I wish you luck moving there if you don't live there already, but I'll probably stay put for now.