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Comment by newfeatureok | Hacker News Reader

People love to blame the President or their Governor or whatever, but the reality is that American culture made COVID much worse than it needed to be.

In general I see zero evidence that Americans at large would’ve followed a “proper lockdown”, by any definition. If you look at travel rates for each American airport this holiday season it’s pretty much confirmed. A company called StreetLight data put it at about 5% to 20% less.

If anyone has data suggesting otherwise please, by all means, reply and let’s see.

https://apnews.com/article/data-americans-thanksgiving-trave...

The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?

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While I don't entirely disagree with your premise...

You've cherry-picked specifically the numbers for "vehicle travel" which isn't even defined but is differentiated even by that article from air travel -- I'd read that as people driving in their own cars. Which is still concerning, but perhaps less so. Some places have even actively encouraged people w/ cars to get out on a drive as a safe way to get out of the house during lockdowns while minimizing social contacts.

Even your link calls out that the drop in air travel this year was far greater. A quick google turns up some estimates that air travel generally accounts for more than half of normal Thanksgiving travel[1], and that there was ~%50 reduction in air travel this year[2]. So that seems like closer to a 30-40% overall reduction -- still not great, but nothing like 5%.

[1] https://protrav.com/travel-411/thanksgiving-travel-statistic...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/11/30/how-20...

Looking at total air travel is meaningless because a huge amount is for business - I use holiday travel as an example because it is the most discretionary.

My point is that air travel (along with vehicular) was highest during this thanksgiving despite Covid being the worse during this thanksgiving and people having a good understanding of the risk. This is also shown in your link.

If people are traveling at such numbers (again thanksgiving was highest at any point between now and last March) given what we know now, there’s no way they would follow a lockdown when the effect is unknown like a hypothetical lockdown being done last February.

There’s just no evidence that Americans would’ve obeyed a lockdown at the levels necessary to stop spread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2020/11/27/flights-tsa...

Like I said, I'm not disagreeing with your premise... but you presented the numbers as something other than they actually were. And I agree that there was way more travel than was necessary.

But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link:

> The number of travelers flying Wednesday was half of what it was on the day before Thanksgiving in 2019, before the coronavirus was a threat in the United States

> But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link

My point in bringing up business travel is that it still happens during the holiday, almost exclusively by air, but the rate of increased travel from late number until thanksgiving is similar to last year.

Meaning if the rate of change is the same but the amount is offset, that could mean either it’s business travel during the holidays, or that there’s a group of people who were going to travel no matter what (which is my point regarding a lockdown not being followed)

Vehicular travel is also representative because it shows how the behavior people who are within driving distance was hardly affected.

In any case my point was about a lockdown not really being feasible to begin with, which we apparently agree on.

> The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?

The real question is should we make America more collectivist. Without a convincing answer you'll never get anywhere.

In the context of COVID it’s pretty clear collectivist countries had citizens more likely to follow a lockdown and therefore have a better response to Covid.

Just look at the countries that did best, it’s pretty clear.

That being said I wouldn’t say collectivism is superior in general, but for Covid it was helpful

We're already quite collectivist. It's just that some of us are collecting more than others. The "CARES act" gave billionaires more than it gave the 99%. [0][1][2] This was version 2 of the egregious "bailouts" concocted in 2008-9, which were already giant transfers of wealth to the already rich. Every complication in these 10,000-page monstrosities is another place for lobbyists to hide loot for their employers. This is collectivism for the rich.

A change to the sort of collectivism we're taught to fear would be a vast improvement. From the beginning of the pandemic, it was obvious that the just and effective way to "lockdown" would be to pay everyone to stay home. Give everyone who stays home money, for every week they stay home. That would have been more fair and less distorting to the economy. Unfortunately there are no lobbyists representing "everyone".

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-cares-act-sent-you-a-...

[1] https://time.com/5845116/coronavirus-bailout-rich-richer/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/14/coronavir...

Now here's an exercise to the reader:

Find a more collectivist country that has a positive brain drain (meaning it attracts talent) from the US.

> The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?

American exceptionalism is so ingrained in the culture that I feel it would take generations..

And, in my opinion, that won't start happening until America is no longer the "world leader" (for better or for worse) that it is today..

It would take humility, selflessness, self-awareness and self-reflection at a very large scale for this kind of transformation to happen.. and we (humans in general - not just Americans) aren't really good at that...

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