But like, why is China relevant here? The US shouldn’t wanna be China, the US should want to be South Korea. My goodness, second place in covid 19 is not a good place to be.
If China wasn’t able to control the virus, then that’s not somehow good news for the US. It means the US is super fucked now. The news that a country with about the same number of cases as the US did get the virus under control shouldn’t be some kind of praise for communist dictatorships, the point is that the situation in the US and other countries still has some hope.
I would think that most would want to maintain their contracts, so they can use this app (一码通), an app which supposedly shows whether or not you have been potentially exposed to the coronavirus. (I’m dubious that the app is as effective as advertised, but not having it would make it difficult to ride the subway and get into many buildings. Reportedly.)
Pence’s action was to simply say that it is up to the state’s to do something. He never really had any power, although gawd knows he could make more sense than Trump. Not a difficult feat, however.
That’s a good point! Why am I still paying for cell service while I’m stuck at home where there’s no cellular coverage? The landline is far more reliable, sounds much better, costs much less, and isn’t constantly receiving a barrage of spam texts, telemarketing calls, and robocalls.
How fast covid spreads or is contained in a country appears strongly correlated with how aggressive a government is in restricting movement of people and how well those people conform to the rules. Testing, what kind of healthcare system, etc are a distant second. There are counter examples for all of those. But governments that imposed the tightest restrictions and had people actually follow those rules have seen the best results. And the earlier, the better.
China didn’t test their way out of a problem (and doesn’t have universal healthcare). They shut Wuhan down and imposed restrictions elsewhere that make current US action look tame.
Korea didn’t test their way out. They took decisive action to stop people from spreading it and people have been rigorous in following rules.
Universal healthcare and testing isn’t solving things for Italians. Staying at home is.
A virus doesn’t give a shit about a test or who pays for healthcare. It only cares who or what you touched last. Reduce contact and you reduce spread. Simple as that.
The US has big numbers because, well, we’re big. But also late to take action. And, even now, people are not isolating themselves as much as other countries. How many of you read the Boingboing post about the drone footage in SF and thought “Cool” vs “Why the heck is he outside?” But it’s just one guy right? What’s the harm?
The US is in for trouble because we were late to take this seriously and all too many people have relaxed attitude towards the situation.
This New Scientist interview (which sadly is behind a paywall) is really interesting. It’s an interview with Bruce Aylward in which he discusses the Chinese response. A major point he makes is that the lockdown was not the main effective thing the Chinese did, which instead was the mass enforced isolation of Covid19 patients and their contacts through effective contact tracing. The point is they did something everyone assumed was impossible at their point in the outbreak.
China Mobile alone has 900 million users so this is probably nothing. Maybe people cancel their second account for a number of reasons. Concern about income or because they aren’t allowed to roam around anymore.
