So the thing is, these countries did stomp out the illness,
I don't think you live in any of the countries most affected on this map: https://i.imgur.com/87VwQ7A.png
Look up information about them and you will find it was never gone.
Their plan was to flatten the curve so that each wave could be within hospital capacity, not to eradicate.
how much more technologically advanced Asian countries are compared to Europe
That is highly overstated. Asian countries mostly do not have as much opposition to privacy invasive apps.
Europe is rich, and "technologically advanced" under global capitalism is mostly a function of wealth.
And if you look at that map above it will be obvious that within Europe technological advancement has nothing to do with viral spread.
It makes no sense to talk about "Asian countries"; since China/Japan/Korea are totally different from Iran/India/Pakistan/Russia/Indonesia.
To control a pandemic of this type requires medical masks and compliance, that is literally all.
Keeping infected people from dying in hospital is irrelevant, all that matters is transmission.
Contact tracing can be done with interviews over telephone, this is not high technology.
It only requires better technology when the problem is allowed to get out of hand.
they just all stopped giving a fuck and when you do that it gets bad very fast.
Those living in China have "stopped giving a fuck", but it does not matter because it was effectively wiped out already.
That is not the determining factor at all. And saying they "stopped giving a fuck" assumes they ever "gave a fuck" which they did not.
Again you are not informed about the internal politics and policies of these European countries, they have been abysmal.
In some European countries they are still arguing if masks should be worn at the supermarket.
takes this shit far more seriously because of the original SARS.
No. Pandemics are simple. Every virologist or scientifically literate person all over the world knows that infectious diseases are serious.
Those countries have a more collectivist rather than individualist culture, and much of the population is more inclined to accept medical science and government authority.
This drives compliance, people are willing to put up with discomfort to protect the collective, and there is already a medical mask wearing culture.
If COVID-22 happened the response from the USA/EU would be almost as pathetic.
And if I just rename this second wave COVID-20 that fact becomes even more obvious.
SARS was very different, it was mostly contained, and had less than a thousand deaths in total.
It only proves those countries were prepared even before SARS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak
This effect probably has occurred with regard to Ebola in Africa.
Ebola did orders of magnitude more harm than SARS.
In the EU they wanted to say that China was overreacting and being too authoritarian.
they just allowed tourism to resume in a way that China hadn’t.
This is false, people can travel and do tourism within China.
Cross-provincial tourism has resumed since August: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-08/12/c_139285359.htm
You fail to understand the problem of neoliberalism here; in the EU each of these countries was out there for themselves.
Just as there is a non-compliant sub-population within many of these countries, between countries the same problem exists.
Even if Germany does everything right (and they have done admirably) then neighboring countries that fail to comply keep the infection alive.
If all of Europe worked together they could have wiped it out, but each country for itself was choosing between public health and their own economy.
It is a tragedy of the commons type situation, it takes only a few bad actors to ruin the entire situation.
The huge mistake of the USA/EU was made in early months of this year, when they should have halted tourism, put travelers in quarantine, required masks in all transit.
And ironically now their economies go to shit because they have to deal with similar measures for probably years instead of weeks.
By no means at all was I disagreeing with @Ram_The_Manparts comment, or I would have replied to it.
So the thing is, these countries did stomp out the illness,
I was under the impression that some of these countries went like a week without any deaths at some point or it was in the single digits of deaths. Whereas in the US we've had over 1000 deaths a day basically this entire time.
Maybe, I dunno those statistics too well, but no deaths means nothing.
It has to be zero known infections for at least the entire incubation period or lifting precautions would be premature.
Maintaining lock-down even while there are no cases (happens both at the start and between waves) is the most critical part.
With a collectivist attitude the obvious thing to do then is stay home, with an individualist attitude: "why bother? there is hardly any virus out there! I will not get it."
It is like trying to choke somebody, but giving them air every time they are so close to passing out.
I'm not sure what that analogy says about me, but hey it works...
I don't think you live in any of the countries most affected on this map: https://i.imgur.com/87VwQ7A.png
Look up information about them and you will find it was never gone.
Their plan was to flatten the curve so that each wave could be within hospital capacity, not to eradicate.
That is highly overstated. Asian countries mostly do not have as much opposition to privacy invasive apps.
Europe is rich, and "technologically advanced" under global capitalism is mostly a function of wealth.
And if you look at that map above it will be obvious that within Europe technological advancement has nothing to do with viral spread.
It makes no sense to talk about "Asian countries"; since China/Japan/Korea are totally different from Iran/India/Pakistan/Russia/Indonesia.
To control a pandemic of this type requires medical masks and compliance, that is literally all.
Keeping infected people from dying in hospital is irrelevant, all that matters is transmission.
Contact tracing can be done with interviews over telephone, this is not high technology.
It only requires better technology when the problem is allowed to get out of hand.
Those living in China have "stopped giving a fuck", but it does not matter because it was effectively wiped out already.
That is not the determining factor at all. And saying they "stopped giving a fuck" assumes they ever "gave a fuck" which they did not.
Again you are not informed about the internal politics and policies of these European countries, they have been abysmal.
In some European countries they are still arguing if masks should be worn at the supermarket.
No. Pandemics are simple. Every virologist or scientifically literate person all over the world knows that infectious diseases are serious.
Those countries have a more collectivist rather than individualist culture, and much of the population is more inclined to accept medical science and government authority.
This drives compliance, people are willing to put up with discomfort to protect the collective, and there is already a medical mask wearing culture.
If COVID-22 happened the response from the USA/EU would be almost as pathetic.
And if I just rename this second wave COVID-20 that fact becomes even more obvious.
SARS was very different, it was mostly contained, and had less than a thousand deaths in total.
It only proves those countries were prepared even before SARS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002–2004_SARS_outbreak
This effect probably has occurred with regard to Ebola in Africa.
Ebola did orders of magnitude more harm than SARS.
In the EU they wanted to say that China was overreacting and being too authoritarian.
This is false, people can travel and do tourism within China.
Cross-provincial tourism has resumed since August: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-08/12/c_139285359.htm
You fail to understand the problem of neoliberalism here; in the EU each of these countries was out there for themselves.
Just as there is a non-compliant sub-population within many of these countries, between countries the same problem exists.
Even if Germany does everything right (and they have done admirably) then neighboring countries that fail to comply keep the infection alive.
If all of Europe worked together they could have wiped it out, but each country for itself was choosing between public health and their own economy.
It is a tragedy of the commons type situation, it takes only a few bad actors to ruin the entire situation.
The huge mistake of the USA/EU was made in early months of this year, when they should have halted tourism, put travelers in quarantine, required masks in all transit.
And ironically now their economies go to shit because they have to deal with similar measures for probably years instead of weeks.
By no means at all was I disagreeing with @Ram_The_Manparts comment, or I would have replied to it.
:vuvuzela: go post this on /r/YUROP or something.
I was under the impression that some of these countries went like a week without any deaths at some point or it was in the single digits of deaths. Whereas in the US we've had over 1000 deaths a day basically this entire time.
Maybe, I dunno those statistics too well, but no deaths means nothing.
It has to be zero known infections for at least the entire incubation period or lifting precautions would be premature.
Maintaining lock-down even while there are no cases (happens both at the start and between waves) is the most critical part.
With a collectivist attitude the obvious thing to do then is stay home, with an individualist attitude: "why bother? there is hardly any virus out there! I will not get it."
It is like trying to choke somebody, but giving them air every time they are so close to passing out.
I'm not sure what that analogy says about me, but hey it works...