The situation is serious but the reaction is not proportional. Just calculate the ratio of people quarantined by number of infections -- or the number of events shut down, or whatever measure you want to use. Point is that, given that there are still unknowns, maybe this disproportional (in relation to past events) reaction was in fact needed to halt the spread. Was it efficient? Hard to say exactly, probably better flow of information from the start would have greatly helped. We would only know after the dust have settled.
There is also zero doubt that people/governments/organizations left and right are weaponizing the pandemic. Virtually everyone is criticizing what others are doing just for the sake of criticizing. I don't buy the narrative that this was all to take them down Trump, but I do believe in the far more credible version that mostly all opposition forces in all countries simultaneously found a weapon to attack their governments -- hence the apparent coordination of it all.
So we have both things at the same time: a serious situation and hysteria. I do not think is so hard to acknowledge that.
Nowadays, we have the combination of instantaneous flow of information, extremely fast flow of people and goods -- nice combination to spread both a pandemic and hysteria -- and, on top of that (this is the most important part): extremely incompetent people in charge in a lot of places. Given that everything is politicized, most decisions are took by people who are "politicians" (even if not elected ones) instead of technicians/experts. It is quite similar to what was shown in the "Chernobyl" TV series, when a high ranking officer of the CP took all the early decisions based on political arguments (even if the political structure is completely different). Given that, we are basically flying blind, with all people in charge taking decisions based on how they guess those will be perceived in six months time.
Just to illustrate, I'll quickly describe what happened here in Brazil: We have maybe the worst government of all times (in a global scale), in terms of technical expertise and plain cognitive capacity. Up until one month ago the sitting president was saying that all this basically did not exist. He was trapped to that position since exactly his base voters and followers were the one saying that this was all a conspiracy . Hence there was no coordinated action from the government, almost no action at all, and most regional governments were also just watching.
But society and chaos found a way to run around an inept government: in the very hospital my wife works (largest in Latin America), a couple of weeks ago there was a meeting to discuss possible measures. After that meeting, an whatsapp audio message "leaked", basically saying that:
1) We must act to slow the infection rate given the number of hospital beds;
2) Reinforced what is now public knowledge regarding hygiene and "social distancing"
Real names were cited on the audio -- all of whom confirmed the message later. That audio heavily circulated on whatsapp, and because the name of the hospital and some institutes within the hopistal were cited (those names are synonims to quality health care here) -- that alone was FAR more effective than anything the government has done -- with relatively little panic going on. Football matches are taking place (with no public, just TV transmission, large gatherings such as masses suspended and classes partially suspended). So, some effect on everyday life, but it still goes on. To stress it again, all those actions happened around a week after that audio circulated -- and it was often cited.
That was by far the most "pedagogical" audio leak of all times. Those guys were brilliant. This is what the world has come down to: we depend on the brilliance of strangers.
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