[Maple Leaf]

Unfortunately at present our society at large appears to believe that if they don't personally endorse a given policy, it is their unconditional right to simply ignore that policy. This problem crosses the entire political spectrum, left, right whatever. No society can function without rules. Our society attempts to have as few rules as possible, which I think most of us endorse. However, that isn't "no rules". Some things you have to do because that is the decision our chosen leaders have made. Period. Wearing masks is one of those rules.

There was a good piece in the Economist about differences in political economy between liberal market economies (lmes) such as America, Britain and Canada and co-ordinated market economies (cmes) such as Germany, the Nordic countries, Austria and the Netherlands.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-ec...rket-model

Basically...

CMEs such as Germany have generally had a more coherent strategy for containing the spread of the virus. Lockdowns may not seem like incremental change, but reducing working hours to limit social contact, apportioning the costs across society and gaining public consent for restrictive measures are all easier when there are already institutions in place which allow collective action. Success may be generated more by unity and consistency than by the strength of the intervention that is chosen.

(even Sweden, which didn't impose a lockdown at all, had high level support for its strategy and a fair bit of buy-in on voluntary social distancing; one could argue that while the policy was a failure compared to its Nordic neighbors, had that policy been pursued someplace like the US, it would have been a nationwide disaster)

In contrast LMEs, such as the US, are generally not very good at getting the population to follow a cohesive strategy, and so things look very disjointed and ineffective.  On the other hand, almost all of the most promising vaccines are coming from the US and the UK, not to mention effective treatments (remdisivir coming from the US, dexamethasone proven effective in the UK), and that is a factor of its more (classically) liberal political economy.

It would obviously be ideal if we could somehow harness the benefits of each system.

BC

I wonder if there could be a correlation between the level of education, specifically science education and the CMES countries.

[Maple Leaf]

Unfortunately at present our society at large appears to believe that if they don't personally endorse a given policy, it is their unconditional right to simply ignore that policy. This problem crosses the entire political spectrum, left, right whatever. No society can function without rules. Our society attempts to have as few rules as possible, which I think most of us endorse. However, that isn't "no rules". Some things you have to do because that is the decision our chosen leaders have made. Period. Wearing masks is one of those rules.

There was a good piece in the Economist about differences in political economy between liberal market economies (lmes) such as America, Britain and Canada and co-ordinated market economies (cmes) such as Germany, the Nordic countries, Austria and the Netherlands.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-ec...rket-model

Basically...

CMEs such as Germany have generally had a more coherent strategy for containing the spread of the virus. Lockdowns may not seem like incremental change, but reducing working hours to limit social contact, apportioning the costs across society and gaining public consent for restrictive measures are all easier when there are already institutions in place which allow collective action. Success may be generated more by unity and consistency than by the strength of the intervention that is chosen.

(even Sweden, which didn't impose a lockdown at all, had high level support for its strategy and a fair bit of buy-in on voluntary social distancing; one could argue that while the policy was a failure compared to its Nordic neighbors, had that policy been pursued someplace like the US, it would have been a nationwide disaster)

In contrast LMEs, such as the US, are generally not very good at getting the population to follow a cohesive strategy, and so things look very disjointed and ineffective.  On the other hand, almost all of the most promising vaccines are coming from the US and the UK, not to mention effective treatments (remdisivir coming from the US, dexamethasone proven effective in the UK), and that is a factor of its more (classically) liberal political economy.

It would obviously be ideal if we could somehow harness the benefits of each system.

BC

I wonder if there could be a correlation between the level of education, specifically science education and the CMES countries.