this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2022
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Sorry, I'm not going to watch an almost hour-long thing to get maybe ten minutes' worth of actual information. If there's something to read, I'll read it. (I read like lightning.) I do not have an hour out of my day to watch what is very likely a bunch of bullshit (given that it's on Youtube).
Better education, more trust in expertise (because education is valued), and better government in the experience of an overwhelming majority of the population.
On that latter point, as incredible as it may sound, keep in mind that the single largest source of government interaction most people have is with their community officials … who are their literal neighbours. Keep in mind too that in my lifetime China went from a mostly-agrarian economy to the #2 economy in the world, having switched from (barely) rural majority to full-blown urban majority population not only in my lifetime but in the time I've been here. (It was 60% rural when I came. Now it's approaching 80% urban, if I remember the stats right.)
The government, to the shock and dismay of western pearl-clutchers, has a lot of credibility with the Chinese. As I've heard from quite a few people: if everything changed today and genuine free and open elections were held, the current government would win in a landslide. (This is especially true given the utter shit show that the western world has become in controlling a disease that was almost contemptuously handled by Chinese authorities, not to mention the clowns the "free" world put into power around the world … including India.)
There are a lot of factors that play into why China handled COVID-19 so well, and its authoritarian government is probably the least important of them (though it obviously had an impact: building two massive hospitals in under a month is something that could not happen in Canada, for example, because there would be people profiteering from the land sale, people launching lawsuits to block it on stupid grounds, etc. etc. etc.)
A year? You're an optimist. Look at the chart I posted. Two years into a pandemic that has already killed over 5.5 million people and infected over 300 million and ... Europe and North America both are having sudden rapid rises in infections. Two years in and they haven't learned even the basics that China learned in the first three months or so (from the December start date, not the date of the Great Lockdown).
This is not going away anytime soon. Five years from now there will still be outbreaks all over the "free" world and more and more people are going to stack up in body bags.
It was a pleasant surprise, yes, though less pleasant was they didn't seem to talk to any expats in Wuhan proper. That's a damned peculiar oversight.
The CBC managed to interview a self-serving Canuckistani who was flexing how "brave" he was for not abandoning his family in Wuhan when the Canadian government sent evacuation flights, but not for dependent Chinese nationals. If an outfit as incompetent as the CBC can manage to track down an expat to interview, why couldn't professional vloggers with boots-on-the-ground contact networks?