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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

My country's subreddit (france) was already difficult to bear with, but the pandemic really made things much worse.

It really got to me.

What I'm afraid of is people who spread panic and are negative. I'm really bothered by people who keep criticizing the government over anything they can. Government are not superhero daddies.

The news about the economy also seem unnecessary and irrelevant, in my view. I wish there was more focus on how third world countries are going to fight this, because I think it's going to be much uglier there.

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The government of any nation, of all groups, should be designed and optimised to take criticism. Especially in times like this. If they aren't equipped to efficiently deal with criticism, then they aren't an ineffective government. It's literally part of the job description.

Also, sometimes things are negative. The idea is to not panic, assess the situation, and enact the tasks that are most likely to be beneficial to the most people. This is the theory behind triage, and a whole lot of other, unpleasant realities.

I agree with focussing more on third world countries. We're all in this together, and many countries just don't have the capacity to deal with what the next few months are going to deal out.

Sure, criticism will be handled, but governments can't lose face either. There is a lot of childish criticism. I think people should act like adults here. Governments are made of humans, and scientists don't have all the answers either.

Third world countries are at risk of becoming a new, worse migrant crisis.

A migrant crisis is the least important issue when it comes to third world countries. Massive death toll is the immediate worry.

> I'm really bothered by people who keep criticizing the government over anything they can.

Disagree. I don't want to give a blank check to a government because there is a crisis.

> The news about the economy also seem unnecessary and irrelevant

It's totally relevant. We may suffer much greater loss (even human lives) from a collapsing economy rather than from the virus.

I never talked about a blank check.

> We may suffer much greater loss

I don't think the economy is that much of a risk, when you consider the heath risk. As long as there's food, water and electricity, I don't see how the economy is a problem. If restaurants are closed, it's not such a big issue. I don't think there are problems of food security in modern, developed countries. And if there are, it means it was already being fragile in the first place.

I'm already contemplating the point of life and the company scaling down our jobs is also not helping. The economy is a huge problem. And the lockdown is literally killing me mentally.

I'd rather take a 1% chance of dying from the virus than a 25% chance of killing myself if this lasts a few months more. And I'm only 1 month in now.

How is the economy a huge problem? As long as there is water, shelter and food, you probably will be fine? I think it is a good thing it gets scaled back, that globalism is taking a good hit, that people are focusing on their own communities again. The idea that economy always has to grow was a silly idea to begin with. I learned in this crisis, I don't need to buy shit I don't need and also never will again.

I am living in Northern Europe btw, so perhaps my perspective is a bit different.

A lot of issues come with recessions. Hospitals get underfunded. Poverty generates problems such as addiction, health issues, depression. Crime raises. And so on...

Those are caused by inequality

The economy or money are not always relevant

Indeed the more socialist systems (look at northern europe) are way more resilient to economic downturns.

However a country absolutely needs to stay afloat in foreign trade, or secure domestic production of essential goods.

It's amazing how - for example - almost every country's press is managing to treat a global shortage of every single thing needed to test for coronavirus caused by massively increased demand as a unique political failing of their country's government that is literally killing people.

Treating it as a 'unique political failing' might be silly, but highlighting the problems of our JIT economies, and criticizing our governments about that, is in itself a good thing.

From cursory reading it seems many experts have been beating the drum about these types of events (global 'catastrophes') and instead of 'wasting' a bit of money to keep stockpiles up, or implement other types of policies 'just in case', many of our governments have led us here in the name of optimization, efficiency, etc. I think it's fair enough for the media to bring that up.

One of the things that amazes me is that the US press has also managed to take their government's attempts to prepare for a scenario like this and twist them around to attack the government. For example, it turns out the US government had a really long-term, forward-thinking program to develop and stockpile cheap, mass-producable ventilators for exactly this scenario - and we're talking really long-term, with the design contract signed in 2014, FDA licensing last year, and delivery in the next presidential term. This is how ProPublica titled their article about this program: "A Company Promised Cheap Ventilators to the Government, Never Delivered and Is Now Charging Quadruple the Price for New Ones". [1] They literally took the existence of this long-term, forward thinking program and used it - together with a more normally-priced rush order of less cost optimised ventilators - to create a narrative of corporate and government malfeasance.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/a-company-promised-cheap-...

Well look how the countries with decent healthcare are fairing, like Germany. Not many deaths per infected people. And the nordic countries.

Look how Spain, Italy and France are fucking up after spending year after year cutting funding to healthcare ever since the 2007 recession.

So yes it is their failure too. Maybe not totally as nobody could have prepared for this, but governments have been seeing healthcare as an 'indivual's problem' rather than a 'community problem' for far too long.

I very much agree about the last part. That is where the real catastrophe will likely happen, if there is no cure or vaccine found soon.

But there is little that can realistically be done about it.

>"I'm really bothered by people who keep criticizing the government over anything they can. Government are not superhero daddies."

But that's how they act, and how a lot of people expect them to be, so they have to. As a libertarian, it bothers me to no end that that's the case, but I don't think we should abstain from criticizing government. Especially when they also do have the ability and funding to solve a lot of the issues, but end up half-assing it (as the people you refer to are pointing out).

I don't think I'm ready to listen to a libertarian during a pandemic.

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