Covid forces Davos forum to move to Singapore | Hacker News Reader

Covid forces Davos forum to move to Singapore

bbc.com

So the world's elite are getting together in close proximity to discuss how to recover from everyone getting together in close proximity.

I think that you will be able to tell who the "elite" that should actually be listened to by those who choose not to go this year.

The WEF is next May. If any "elite" has not received a vaccination by then, then they were not an elite. Any billionaire, cabinet minister or Fortune 100 CEO has enough clout to be near the front of the queue.

> The WEF is next May. If any "elite" has not received a vaccination by then, then they were not an elite. Any billionaire, cabinet minister or Fortune 100 CEO has enough clout to be near the front of the queue.

Then why bother moving it to singapore in the first place? If they are going to be vaccinated by May, why move it to the other side of the world? Just for show?

Maybe this time the "elite" wants prostitutes of Asian race

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dark-side-of-davos-den-of...

I condone this as long as they also forgo masks.

Switzerland's own fault they way the have managed to be one of the worst Corona places on the planet. Same people who want the WEF here are the ones that pushed so hard to prevent a lock down at every cost because business is more important than life.

In the end the economic damage will be much greater than if we had just Locked down and gotten control but people think so short sighted.

I don’t think that getting control is just about locking down. To really get control, you need to do more than locking down. You need a system by which anyone who should get tested can and does get tested, and the results need to be quick. You need to support people who need to isolate so that they can and do isolate. You need to get case counts low enough that contact tracing is useful and then trace contacts for real. You need to actively monitor to find new infections. Once your infection rate is lower than your neighbors, you need to control your borders to manage imported cases.

It’s plausible that some subset of this would work. But certainly just locking down will not work well enough. And doing random subsets of this like California seems to be doing right now is silly.

> You need to support people who need to isolate so that they can and do isolate.

I think this is why the US (any maybe other places) ultimately failed so badly at containing COVID. There's strong, partisan resistance to the idea of the government "supporting people." Lockdowns are in fact destructive without significant simultaneous individual-level welfare, but if that kind of welfare is offensive and unthinkable to you, then lockdowns will just seem like needless economic destruction that needs to be fraught tooth and nail. However, the debate ended up being lockdowns vs. opening up, not welfare vs. pandemic death and destruction.

Is it one of the worse Corona places on the planet?

652 deaths per million places it at 24 place, well below italy, spain, uk, argentina, usa, brasil, france and even sweden.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

IIRC the idea was to ensure that the hospital infrastructure must hold the pressure and from what I heard from family and friends, hospitals in switzerland did hold up just fine (unlike Italy) and the numbers seem to reflect that.

Now, I know that deaths is not the only metric as the side effects of corona in survivors might be a huge problems, but I'm not aware of any good indicator on how countries compare on that front. Possibly hospitalization efficiency can also affect likelihood of having non-fatal post-covid complications?

(Swiss living abroad in one of the actual worse Corona places in the planet)

Lockdowns are just a part of the greater picture and only useful to get things under control for the real measures: wide-spread testing, mask usage, contact tracing, border screening, mandatory quarantines.

I fully support anti lockdown. We didn’t do it at first, so regardless of your position, you can’t do a half ass response now. Double down on keeping businesses open.

Might be a very symbolic shift when it comes to the changing global political landscape, accelerated by covid, and immediately reminded me of something Zizek said, quoting Sloterdijk

"Could we in fact be seeing the conditions for the further radicalization of capitalism? German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk once told me that, if there is a person alive to whom they will build monuments 100 years from now, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who did more than anyone else to promote and implement the marriage of capitalism and authoritarianism -- an arrangement he euphemistically referred to as "Asian values." The virus of this authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe, nowhere more so than China."

Disneyland with the death penalty. - William Gibson, on Singapore[0]

On the ground, China feels much freer than Singapore, and I doubt that will change. The last time I left Singapore, they spammed everyone with happy Singapore elf stories on repeat video in the airport gates. Happy policewoman, happy military servicepeople, happy migrant workers, etc. Puke. Not a unique experience, apparently.[1]

[0] https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ [1] https://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-jeyaretnam-disneyland-...

The slogan is the great reset. I wonder if it helps the elite to chose an authoritarian country. Makes them very trustworthy to find a reset.

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