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The State of Global Politics Today


Shoblongoo
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On 4/27/2020 at 2:39 AM, Shoblongoo said:

America and Western Europe then did everything wrong to prepare and protect against it, once we were out on notice that a global pandemic was spreading. 

Hey now, don't put us on the same level as America. Things aren't perfect but aside from Italy which was one of the first region hit(and honestly a bit of a mess in general) and Hungary abusing Corona to overthrow its democracy most European countries are doing relatively fine. Not perfect but its certainly not the clownshow that the Trump administration turned America into. 

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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24 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Hey now, don't put us on the same level as America. Things aren't perfect but aside from Italy which was one of the first region hit(and honestly a bit of a mess in general) and Hungary abusing Corona to overthrow its democracy most European countries are doing relatively fine. Not perfect but its certainly not the clownshow that the Trump administration turned America into. 

Europe’s handled it better then the United States, but worse than the Asian Democracies.

Italy, USA, and China are like the top 3 examples of  “this is everything NOT to do—look at what we did, and do the opposite”

 

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3 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Europe’s handled it better then the United States, but worse than the Asian Democracies.

Italy, USA, and China are like the top 3 examples of  “this is everything NOT to do—look at what we did, and do the opposite”

 

It's where you're wrong, Japan is not that good at dealing with Covid19 like you think.

Edited by Tetragrammaton
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1 hour ago, Tetragrammaton said:

It's where you're wrong, Japan is not that good at dealing with Covid19 like you think.

Japan hasn’t been quite as on top of things as Taiwan and South Korea. But they doing a helluva lot better then America and Western Europe right now. (i.e. minimal loss of life and economic disruption; people generally able to go about their everyday lives, with sufficient access to testing and PPE to prevent large scale uncontrolled outbreaks)

Edited by Shoblongoo
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57 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

Japan hasn’t been quite as on top of things as Taiwan and South Korea. But they doing a helluva lot better then America and Western Europe right now. (i.e. minimal loss of life and economic disruption; people generally able to go about their everyday lives, with sufficient access to testing and PPE to prevent large scale uncontrolled outbreaks)

And honestly it's baffling that they're managing it. They're shutting down rural clinics to stop people even getting tested. It's like the Sweden of Asia.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

They're shutting down rural clinics

They’re diverting their resources to where they need to go. (Almost no one lives in the rural parts of Japan, and the isolated communities out there in the rural spaces are low-risk areas. Even if one person gets it, they’re not right on top of a million other people they can give it to)

Japans challenge is that it has a population of 117 million citydwellers in a very small geographical space of densely packed metropolitan areas. (i.e. optimal conditions for a plague to spread).

And they have confirmed virus presence in that population. 

And they have nevertheless managed to keep their caseload down to the low thousands + deaths down to the low hundreds, with no instances of their confirmed cases snowballing into wider spread. 

That’s a feat-and-a-half, whether u wanna credit the government for it or not. (Tokyo could have been NYC)

Edited by Shoblongoo
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3 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Japan hasn’t been quite as on top of things as Taiwan and South Korea. But they doing a helluva lot better then America and Western Europe right now.

And this is to say nothing about the WHO having a pro-China slant that's poorly disguised, or not disguised at all in some points

Count the Philippines in among those who are toeing the China line and buying Xi's crap hook, line, and sinker. One of the more humorous cases in point pertain to a music video that has been panned by every Pinoy and his mother that has even the least sense of patriotism. (People think this was sponsored by China's PR machine)

A more sobering case is a Filipino worker in Taiwan being subjected to form of bullying from her own government for speaking up against the lackluster way of handling the COVID-19 imbroglio: PH is asking Taiwan to deport said worker. The host country knows better, though, than to accede to the whim of the loser labor attache who made the suggestion.

Edited by Karimlan
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9 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

 (After 3 months America isn’t even close, and our federal leadership is serving as an impediment rather than as an asset to getting it done)

I can name one small place in America that could theoretically re-open, and probably be fine.

Except their mayor is smart enough not to do that, because the minute tourism picks up, cases will spike.

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8 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

They’re diverting their resources to where they need to go. (Almost no one lives in the rural parts of Japan, and the isolated communities out there in the rural spaces are low-risk areas. Even if one person gets it, they’re not right on top of a million other people they can give it to)

Japans challenge is that it has a population of 117 million citydwellers in a very small geographical space of densely packed metropolitan areas. (i.e. optimal conditions for a plague to spread).

And they have confirmed virus presence in that population. 

And they have nevertheless managed to keep their caseload down to the low thousands + deaths down to the low hundreds, with no instances of their confirmed cases snowballing into wider spread. 

That’s a feat-and-a-half, whether u wanna credit the government for it or not. (Tokyo could have been NYC)

They only shut down Tokyo two weeks ago. It should be way worse than it is. Honestly I reckon the masks are making a rather big difference.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

They only shut down Tokyo two weeks ago. It should be way worse than it is. Honestly I reckon the masks are making a rather big difference.

Thats the whole point--when you're response is quick and competent, you don't HAVE to do the extended shutdowns.

...if you've got the testing capacity, and you've got the PPE...

Everyone can go out in public. Go to work. Wear their face masks. And the cases that pop-up can be effectively identified, traced, and isolated.

Not shutting down is the goal.

Being able to protect the public health without having to take your economy offline, put millions of people out of work, and bankrupt entire service industries is the goal.

America couldn't do it because it reacted too slow with early detection and mitigation. (the shutdown is what you have to do when you miss the early window to detect and contain the spread)

_______

Taiwan had its first confirmed case on January 20th.

They didn't shutdown anything--what they did was:

1)  Immediately make sure they were producing + distributing enough PPE for everyone to have masks at all times.  
2)  Put in place nationwide orders that persons refusing to wear their mask in public could be fined up to $15,000.
3)  Get quicktests in every public building and transport hub.
4)  Immediately isolate anyone who tested positive, contact-trace their recent movements, and then test around their zone-of-contacts to detect + further isolate any early spread.

...they've since had 429 cases in the entire country, with only 6 deaths.

And their economy is chugging along like nothings happening.  

Thats how its done. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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26 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

Thats the whole point--when you're response is quick and competent, you don't HAVE to do the extended shutdowns.

...if you've got the testing capacity, and you've got the PPE...

Everyone can go out in public. Go to work. Wear their face masks. And the cases that pop-up can be effectively identified, traced, and isolated.

Not shutting down is the goal.

Being able to protect the public health without having to take your economy offline, put millions of people out of work, and bankrupt entire service industries is the goal.

America couldn't do it because it reacted too slow with early detection and mitigation. (the shutdown is what you have to do when you miss the early window to detect and contain the spread)

_______

Taiwan had its first confirmed case on January 20th.

They didn't shutdown anything--what they did was:

1)  Immediately make sure they were producing + distributing enough PPE for everyone to have masks at all times.  
2)  Put in place nationwide orders that persons refusing to wear their mask in public could be fined up to $15,000.
3)  Get quicktests in every public building and transport hub.
4)  Immediately isolate anyone who tested positive, contact-trace their recent movements, and then test around their zone-of-contacts to detect + further isolate any early spread.

...they've since had 429 cases in the entire country, with only 6 deaths.

And their economy is chugging along like nothings happening.  

Thats how its done. 

And generally speaking Japan is prioritizing keeping the economy running over limiting the spread. This isn't just coming from me. People here in Japan are criticizing the government for just that. In a nation where government critique is not normally wide spread. They're sinking more money into making themselves look like they're handling it than actually handling it.

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7 hours ago, Jotari said:

And generally speaking Japan is prioritizing keeping the economy running over limiting the spread. This isn't just coming from me. People here in Japan are criticizing the government for just that. In a nation where government critique is not normally wide spread. They're sinking more money into making themselves look like they're handling it than actually handling it.

Prioritizing keeping the economy running is a luxury that you have when you don’t completely blow the early response, and then have to try and play catch-up with the spread.

So—hey—good for them.

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So, amid a pandemic that's raging on in the Philippines, a lackluster testing rate, and a military-style lockdown  enhanced community quarantine in the capital, the country's telecommunications commission issues a cease-and-desist order against the largest network in the country, by virtue of its franchise contract expiring on 5/4/2020. 

NTC orders ABS-CBN to stop broadcasting

That there were roadblocks preventing the renewal of the franchise prior to COVID-19 and eventually leading to the network's demise sends a chilling note to press freedom and democracy in the country, it being tenuous as it already is right now.

Edited by Karimlan
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15 hours ago, Karimlan said:

So, amid a pandemic that's raging on in the Philippines, a lackluster testing rate, and a military-style lockdown  enhanced community quarantine in the capital, the country's telecommunications commission issues a cease-and-desist order against the largest network in the country, by virtue of its franchise contract expiring on 5/4/2020. 

NTC orders ABS-CBN to stop broadcasting

That there were roadblocks preventing the renewal of the franchise prior to COVID-19 and eventually leading to the network's demise sends a chilling note to press freedom and democracy in the country, it being tenuous as it already is right now.

. . .this is really worrying.  Like, those people that think America is a fascist state really need to pay attention to moves like this.

Good luck.

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Times of crisis really bring out the best in some people, don't they?

  • Good news: With the cease and desist order (CDO) on broadcasting firmly in place for the time being, ABS-CBN looked to other means of circumventing the arbitrary order. Given that the  CDO only covers free TV and radio frequencies (it's based on laws that are admittedly that antiquated), cable and streaming internet broadcasts are exempt. The network then took to these two consolidated platforms (composed of a cable news channel, several phone apps and YouTube/Facebook streaming) to make their presence felt once again.
  • Better (?) News: Lawyers and members of the academe weigh in on the legality of the CDO and determine inaction on the part of Congress as the culprit.

So here's the skinny: The National Telecommunications Commission, upon pressure from the Solicitor General (both entities are appointed, ergo answerable only to the President; the latter being the nation's top law enforcement officer, similar in scope of power to the Attorney General in the US), issued the CDO unilaterally (without the go-ahead of both houses of Congress), and now Congress (the Lower House to be exact) is setting a hearing on Monday and will be summoning the NTC to explain its actions. The network took to the Supreme court too, in protest.

Aside from the President, who has been vocal about his profound dislike of the network through the years, the onus lies on a longtime crony of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose children are still in public office (one is a Senator). That crony just happens to be the Solicitor General Jose Calida.

Edited by Karimlan
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