Nah, Taiwanese people view the masks as protection against germs and pollution. I understand the context of suggesting they are obedient but I still disagree with that. Chalking it up to obedience in a way takes agency from them- they choose to wear masks because they know that they work and the government is enforcing their use as well. They don’t wear them because they are merely told to. It’s plain to everyone here that America is handling the virus poorly because most Americans are miseducated or retarded and refuse to take simple precautions because they are uncomfortable or inconvenient. Also there are severe leadership issues in America and no healthcare. It’s the perfect storm of fucking up. Taiwanese people have zero interest in modelling any policies in place in America. Most people here think the country is fundamentally broken.

> UK and US has also fostered a culture where everyone's voice is deemed equal, even the idiots

I've thought about this a lot as the pandemic and reaction unfolded. My feeling is that it's a little more nuanced.

From my perspective, it goes like this: (a) politics co-opts science, and (some) scientists become political (for career reasons), (b) political news media puts narrative-supporting "experts" on a pedestal (to reinforce their credibility), (c) people are told they lack the intelligence / knowledge / ability to ever be an expert, (d) people feel internal, unrealized shame at their ignorance, (e) people attempt to cover that shame by posing as experts for their peers, in fact just parroting whatever sound-bites they heard without critical thought, (f) rational debate drastically decreases, as critical thinking skills and underlying understanding have atrophied.

The net result: removal of critical thinking in the public, increased partisanship and anger, and a decreased ability of the public to dismiss crackpots posing as experts.

Recommended response: learn about the actual underlying issues, then (gently, remember (d)!) turn conversations to apolitical explorations of the underlying issues and truths.

My point is that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference whether any of these interventions work or not. That's the issue. It's of course improbable that none of these interventions work, but it's probable that some do not work.

At the same time, there are a lot of factors that are purely circumstantial, such as weather/climate, age/health of the population, elderly care system. These may have a lot of influence at the tail ends (deaths).

We must not fall into the trap of making post-hoc rationalizations that confirm what we want to believe. We're paying a heavy price with severe measures, if some data turned up that showed that it didn't make much of a difference, that would be a tough pill to swallow.

For start by telling then they should wear it at the beginning, cos you seem to forget WHO suggested not to.... Then you lose confidence and that's it...

Moderna has received many grants from the government even before their Covid play.

All-time high being around 1000 cases per day in a country of 50M, and they haven't given up yet -- they've successfully beaten back two previous waves.

Just compare their numbers to Europe or the US.

IIRC, North Korea has reported zero cases.

Some vaccines that are compulsory in Japan and China (and other Asian countries) but not in the rest of the world are also suspected to geographically shape some immunity differences.

For example the vaccine against Japanese Encephalitis is under investigation for a possible cross-effect on covid immunity.

It's less likely there's a genetic component to infection rates (though possible!) than a population-immunological one.

It's been experimentally verified that various pre-pandemic coronavirus antibodies are reactive against SARS-CoV-2.

It's a fact that different world populations have to deal with different endemic disease profiles.

Consequently, different populations have different pre-infection susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. [0]

[0] https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)32310-9/ful...

it's perfectly acceptable to talk scientifically about the difference in races (really, people with shared population history) by genetics and their responses to disease. THe people who are saying "race is social construct" are by and large not the actual scientists making discoveries in this area. REad the NYTimes science section for a few months and you'll see they commonly discuss the difference in medical treatment research and how we could improve health care by being more aware of it.

The key is age and obesity.

There's not a whole lot of evidence that illegal border crossings from Canada are a major driver of the spread in the US.

And of course, the same can be said for Mexico (because the main driver of the spread in the US is people not taking simple steps to prevent it).

Travel to Canada has been restricted for much of the year (I live in Michigan; there's a warning 4 hours from the border that travel is restricted). But that's because Canada isn't letting their fool neighbors in.

Those miles of jungle are crisscrossed by roads, trains and ferries, just like US and Europe. Vietnam is a country of nearly 100M people with strong trade and transport links to the world, and over in Thailand, Bangkok is the most popular tourist destination in the world.

You could handwave that when we were at way less cases. But at one point people would start noticing (for example) everyone in retirement homes dropping like flies.

Not to mention that after the first couple of months, Covid cases are now nicely distributed amongst younger populations as well. Fatalities are still concentrated in older people, but cases are still widespread across demographics.

The facts are staring everyone in the face: when countries started weakening their lockdown procedures, cases started going back up. And nobody's been willing to go back in full lockdown, for various reasons. And so cases are going up a bunch.

Meanwhile Vietnam had some cases in fall/winter, and _immediately_ locked stuff down, shut down universities, and quarantined people who had even a bit of contact with people in positive cases. The stuff was taken seriously, and numbers stayed low because of it.

Maybe the US and Europe "can't do it" because of a lack of political will etc. But it's not physically impossible.

It's Thailands winter, if there's ever a time it's going to spread there, it's probably now.

Sure, but all the points of entry to Britain have border controls. If the government ordered the channel tunnel to stop, it would stop. It's not like France, where there are innumerable border crossing points.

Of course a total closure would be a last resort, because that would cut off imports of things like fresh fruit, but it's been possible to get 20-minute pinprick blood tests since April (admittedly with lower accuracy than PCR tests) - the government simply decided measures like testing everyone at the border and enforcing mandatory self-isolation were not priorities.