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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

Silvaire wrote:

, quarantine of the healthy was brought into being without any valid legal or democratic process, by bureaucrats who decided to copy China on their own, quoting law that was not intended to apply to this situation.

That is a failure of the American legislature rather than anything else. Several European countries have longstanding anti-infection laws for epidemics/pandemics. In Germany we have the Infektionsschutzgesetz (“infection protection law”) which predates the current pandemic by nearly two decades, underwent the regular legislative processss and thus has full democratic backing. It has been updated, subject to a vote in the federal diet, several times, most recently during the pandemic.

It gives local health offices wide ranging powers to initiate measures against the spread of infectious diseases, including quarantine measures.

Thus, the “lockdown” has full legislative backing. Individual measures were subject to court challenges, and some have been struck down as a consequence. The division of powers works. There is nothing “undemocratic” going on.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Interesting reading this thread (or some percentage of the total) and seeing the chasm between socialism and freedom burst its head onto the scene again, as it does in so many other facets of life.

@Silvaire is accurate in describing the quintessential differences between typical Europeans and typical Americans with respect to freedom. I think an appropriate analogy is one of domesticated animals vs wild animals. Europeans are domesticated almost completely. While docile, better fed, and in many respects apparently living a better life, the experience is muted.
For the wild creature, the experience is far more dangerous, yet they have no fences, no borders, and no masters. Their will is their own.

Those seeking freedom departed the socialistic spheres of Europe and settled the US.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the descendants of those who love freedom more than comfort will have a different worldview than those who love comfort more than freedom.

Thus, haughty and arrogant remarks by domesticated creatures such as @Malibuflyer make perfect sense to me.
A culture which is based completely on logic fails to understand the basic value of passion, love and freedom.
You have to feel these things, they aren’t logical.

Finally, there should be something said about this:
It was the apparently abhorred president of the US who was quick to shut down borders at the outset of the threat in the US, despite cries of racism and so on.
The major outbreaks in the US came from…. EUROPE, where they jeered and called him a racist.
Thanks EUROPE, for the major outbreaks in the US.

The major outbreaks were due to early failures on the part of Europeans to contain things.

So let’s get the record straight, the US is suffering from a virus sent over primarily by Europeans, and now Europeans are mocking it?
If Europe was so perfect, why didn’t it shut down borders in the first place?
Why was the US the first to act – at the cost of much ridicule by those who sent the virus over in the first place?
If the US President had the knowledge that Europeans were the major cause of outbreak in the US, borders would have been closed along with those to China, and many of those arrogant individuals would have cried foul and racism and so-on, but the US would have been in great shape today.

Europe acted too slowly, responded too late, and now Americans are dying because of it.

As it stands, most of the US is still doing just fine anyway. The US states which are most similar to Europe, are the ones fairing the worst…
The freedom supporting states are barely experiencing anything. Florida being the worst, only 4,400 out of 21 million have died.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103688/coronavirus-covid19-deaths-us-by-state/

Compared to the world, it certainly isn’t the shining example of health, but also isn’t the laughinstock it’s being called by some in this forum:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

So, if we’re comparing freedom to socialism, it’s pretty clear that freedom is working much better than socialism when it comes to Covid19.
Looking only at an apples to apples, of US States with freedom vs socialism ideologies…

AF wrote:

A culture which is based completely on logic fails to understand the basic value of passion, love and freedom.
You have to feel these things, they aren’t logical.

Since I am apparently in a debating mood (bring it on ) I will counter that by saying that the rise of the US over the last 200 years has in addition to abundant natural resources been due to those factors, with entirely logical benefits. The approach to regulation of aviation is a good example: as the saying goes, FAA regulations are written in blood. That means they result from letting people operate freely and then acting where it proves absolutely necessary to protect the uninvolved public, based on real data. The result is a set of regulations that work better in the real world than theoretical nonsense intended to preempt risk taking.

Individual Risk = Long Term Tangible Benefit for Society

In making that comment and comparison I’ll add that my wife and I are both immigrants from Europe, both holding European citizenship in the eyes of the countries where we were born.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 13 Jul 17:02

AF wrote:

So, if we’re comparing freedom to socialism, it’s pretty clear that freedom is working much better than socialism when it comes to Covid19.
Looking only at an apples to apples, of US States with freedom vs socialism ideologies…

I would so wish you are true! But as it doesn’t make sense at all to compare Countries/states where at least the first wave has already been stopped for some weeks with such, where it is in full swing, let’s look at this in a couple of weeks from now.

But you are completely oversimplifying by claiming “everything is ideology”. There are really two discussions here: 1.) How can the outbreak be stopped and 2.) should any government order its people to comply with 1).

1.) is a very well understood scientific question. Only 2.) is a question of “ideology”.

AF wrote:

Florida being the worst, only 4,400 out of 21 million have died.

Infections only started to increase mid June in Florida – so there was almost no opportunity of dying from it yet.

AF wrote:

So let’s get the record straight, the US is suffering from a virus sent over primarily by Europeans, and now Europeans are mocking it?
If Europe was so perfect, why didn’t it shut down borders in the first place?

Cool! Despite the small “inaccuracy” that it hasn’t been Europeans but mainly US travelers that brought the virus to NY, all of a sudden the man who preaches “freedom” blames a government to not restricting people’s rights ;-)

Last Edited by Malibuflyer at 13 Jul 17:10
Germany

Silvaire wrote:

it is fact based

What you call facts are actually data which needs to be understood and interpreted. A common fallacy is believing that no interpretation is needed but that figures “speak for themselves”. They don’t.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Sure, facts lead to healthy discussion. But they are still facts, from which individuals can properly reach their own opinion.

As a PhD who works for me is fond of saying: “beware of expert opinion” We tend to push the state of the art in our work, and very often find expert opinion is wrong, invalid, out of context, whatever. I’m reminded of the Wright Brothers eventually finding out that Lillenthal’s aerodynamic data was invalid. They wasted a lot of time with it prior to that realization. Aviation content

Last Edited by Silvaire at 13 Jul 17:45

Peter wrote:

You can find all sorts of fun stuff here. At the top you can play with lower tier or upper tier regions.

This is a great site, I’ve been on it before, but it again doesn’t go as local as I’d like (perhaps the GDPR issue) . There was also a government site which went into much smaller local areas not sure if postcode area or not, but I can’t find that at the moment.

Malibuflyer wrote:

man who preaches “freedom” blames a government to not restricting people’s rights

Except he isn’t, It’s a peculiar thing I’ve noticed perhaps from British and European’s although may be more ideology based that seem to think their “human rights” from their own country should apply everywhere they travel to. The occasional news article of “I’ve got caught breaking the law in a country with pretty heavy punishment for such activities, it’s against my rights, save me government” springs to mind.

Were Americans ever banned from leaving the country by America? I thought it was just a ban on coming in, and even then american citizens were allowed to return.

Shutting down borders seemed to make sense to me early on so that countries can reduce transmission around. It seems to have worked for IoM (albeit a crown dependency)

Probably this one which I posted previously, asking if any other country has something similar (but nobody posted something).

It covers different regions, and somebody with a lot of time on their hands could work out subsets of regions from multiple sites to get even smaller chunks.

Because everybody here is afraid of “GDPR”, once numbers go into low single digits they get fiddled, by moving cases between adjacent regions.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The local perspective is indeed important to know, but so is the international aspect of things which may have a nasty influence on local situations before you know it.

Consider the situation in Mallorca. Of course it is of vital importance that tourism starts up again but at the same time a balance with public health is needed. The local gov’t and the hotels are doing their bloody best to achieve this balance. To the point that, starting today, everybody here needs to wear masks even outside and even if adequate distance can be assured. Some sensiible exceptions apply, like walking somewhere in the boondocks. Also temp checks and forms for all incoming airline pax.

Guess what. As if the word Ischgl is something completely unknown, there are quite some local young people organizing illegal house parties. And a lot of youngsters from Europe acting pretty irresponsible as well, and one can’t expect the local authorities to manage all this.

The virus has not hit the Balearics that much, so there was a lot of anxiety amongst many people as to what would happen after tourism would restart. But now the countries where the (younger) tourists come from are also scratching their head. A German minister now asking himself the question ‘so when these hordes come back, have they just infected each other, and all this outside our control?´

Although the POTUS said something like ‘this may just all magically disappear’ a few weeks ago, he may be a bit off the mark.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

It begs the question of whether people can reintroduce the virus to a heavily infected area later. New York State data below – it hasn’t happened so far, and the travel restrictions to enter the area are meaningless and unenforceable. Is there immunity? Lots of talking heads saying this is being scientifically managed, and they are correct if they mean managed on the basis on unproven scientific hypotheses. In reality lots of unanswered basic questions.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 13 Jul 20:22
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