On Fri, 2020-05-15 at 15:55 +1000, Kate Lance wrote: > They're nice charts but I was startled at the bottom one - 'Autocrats > aren’t necessarily better at dealing with coronavirus.' Whoever said > they were!
I think it's a fair statement to make, because I can imagine many people might think that autocratic governments ARE better at it. At least if you assume the autocrats have their populations' best interests at heart (big assumption). They aren't delayed by any need to convince opposition parties, pass laws or cajole people, they can just lock doors, block roads and generally Get Things Done. On the other hand, they are no faster on the uptake than anyone else, and no more intelligent or sensible. And most non-autocratic governments have laws on the books that let them Get Things Done when they really need to. > This statement is also bizarre, and perhaps reflects the blame-China > propaganda now circulating: 'The autocratic nature of the Chinese > Government meant measures to detect a pandemic weren’t effective and > the virus was allowed to spread initially.' A Government that pretends there is no problem is not helping, and there seems to be a bit of evidence that they did pretend. And did things like abuse and sideline people who tried to sound the alarm. Maybe that is what the authors of that article are referring to. On the other hand, the supposedly democratic government of the USA did exactly the same thing. I find it hard to believe in those charts that the Chinese numbers have flattened out so perfectly. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170 Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
