Great post. Two things caught my attention, besides your very interesting comparisons among COVID effects in different countries and factors that help explain them. One: I don't get why it would be "heavy lifting" for a lefty to encounter an argument that some COVID restrictions, in retrospect, went too far. That suggests that lefties are generally intransigent, which I hope isn't true. I have a lot of lefty friends (I am an academic), and there's a lot of reflective discussion about the unintended consequences of measures that were too drastic (such as extended school closings), as well as measures that proved completely wrongheaded in retrospect (such as closing beaches, or prohibitions on being outdoors).
The second is the statement about how Republicans want to make it "as difficult to vote as possible". Perhaps there are Republicans who want this, but I don't know any. I also have a lot of friends who vote Republican (they're not academic colleagues, ha), and they are concerned about ballot integrity after an election during which election-integrity rules were suspended in many places because of COVID. They are also concerned about practices such as "ballot harvesting", legal in some states, which includes allowing activist foot-soldiers (paid by partisan organizations, sometimes paid by the ballot) to collect ballots and deliver them (to post offices or drop boxes), which breaks the "chain of custody" for the ballot. It is a system that can be abused, and certainly it is abused to some extent.
When you imply that the US should be like Switzerland in terms of voting practices, I think you must take into account something else that you mentioned about cultural distinctions: the Swiss as rule-followers. I think Switzerland is a very high-trust society (I've been there, traveling from low-trust Italy, and the cultural difference between those two is immediately obvious, as reflected in things like incidence of petty theft, sexual harrassment on crowded buses, or tolerance for littering.) That same rule-following instinct that you believe limited COVID transmission also sustains trust in election integrity.
And I'm curious about Swiss voting practices. I assume the Swiss postal system is run with great professionalism, that there is no ballot-harvesting, and no drop-boxes.
In any case, there are principled arguments being made in the US (weirdly enough, only ever by Republicans!) in support of election integrity. From my perspective, these are common-sense arguments, made by people who are not out to inhibit voting, but who would simply like to feel the same level of trust in election processes that the Swiss enjoy.
Oct 6, 2022·edited Oct 9, 2022Liked by Mari, the Happy Wanderer
I live in northern Italy, within an hour of the Swiss border, and I cannot properly express the insanity (the public transit mask requirement was dropped just last week... which included our open-air car ferries -- even if you were IN YOUR CAR). Just thinking about it makes me tense up. The weirdest part for me was the widespread compliance. I could not for the life of me figure out why the average not-overly-rule-following Italian was not simply refusing to go along with the bizarre restrictions. But people just seemed to accept whatever wackadoo new thing the government came up with, which made me feel like I was losing my mind.
One big contributor to the higher Italian death rate that I feel is often overlooked is how terrible our emergency medical care is. Preventative and routine healthcare is pretty good, at least where we are, to some extent because it's propped up by people who can afford to going privately for a lot of things. But God help you if you need an ER, where there is no private option. The average wait time at the closest major hospital to us, in the richest region in the country, for anything below "active heart attack" is regularly something like 12-24 hours. And despite the horrifying travesty in Bergamo, thousands of people dying alone without an advocate, and two years of curfews, closures and hygiene theater, absolutely nothing has changed on that front.
So how much German do my husband and I need to learn to move to Ticino?? ;p
Thank you for this. I think we often undercount the global consequences of all the harsh restrictions too - things like delayed (non-covid) vaccination schedules, diversion of resources from other medical projects like malaria prevention, the longterm population health impact of an uptick in alcoholism and anxiety, etc.
Early on, I think lefties really, really latched onto the idea that anyone who opposed harsh restrictions was a "Karen" who "would rather kill grandma than miss getting a haircut." I remember it being a fuel for my sense of alienation in 2020, when my peers would post sneering memes about how Americans just wanted the right to die of Covid in an Applebee's while I was dealing with the collateral impact of those restrictions because I worked with unhoused people who had no means of getting resources when the social services all shut down. There was massive cognitive dissonance to get off a phone call with a weeping elderly person who hadn't eaten in two days because the food banks were empty, then to be around my friends on social media posting snide put-downs about how those protesting fools in Florida would rather get Covid than not go to Dave and Busters*.
The impact of collateral consequences are very real, and there's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy among lefties that we've shut down this much, if we admit we were being a little extra then the Republicans win. You can't criticize lockdowns, because if you do, you're siding with the enemy. It's rough to be around that attitude when sometimes, the enemy might have a point or two.
*Yes, these are all class-coded, no, my peers didn't seem to think about that.
Great post. Two things caught my attention, besides your very interesting comparisons among COVID effects in different countries and factors that help explain them. One: I don't get why it would be "heavy lifting" for a lefty to encounter an argument that some COVID restrictions, in retrospect, went too far. That suggests that lefties are generally intransigent, which I hope isn't true. I have a lot of lefty friends (I am an academic), and there's a lot of reflective discussion about the unintended consequences of measures that were too drastic (such as extended school closings), as well as measures that proved completely wrongheaded in retrospect (such as closing beaches, or prohibitions on being outdoors).
The second is the statement about how Republicans want to make it "as difficult to vote as possible". Perhaps there are Republicans who want this, but I don't know any. I also have a lot of friends who vote Republican (they're not academic colleagues, ha), and they are concerned about ballot integrity after an election during which election-integrity rules were suspended in many places because of COVID. They are also concerned about practices such as "ballot harvesting", legal in some states, which includes allowing activist foot-soldiers (paid by partisan organizations, sometimes paid by the ballot) to collect ballots and deliver them (to post offices or drop boxes), which breaks the "chain of custody" for the ballot. It is a system that can be abused, and certainly it is abused to some extent.
When you imply that the US should be like Switzerland in terms of voting practices, I think you must take into account something else that you mentioned about cultural distinctions: the Swiss as rule-followers. I think Switzerland is a very high-trust society (I've been there, traveling from low-trust Italy, and the cultural difference between those two is immediately obvious, as reflected in things like incidence of petty theft, sexual harrassment on crowded buses, or tolerance for littering.) That same rule-following instinct that you believe limited COVID transmission also sustains trust in election integrity.
And I'm curious about Swiss voting practices. I assume the Swiss postal system is run with great professionalism, that there is no ballot-harvesting, and no drop-boxes.
In any case, there are principled arguments being made in the US (weirdly enough, only ever by Republicans!) in support of election integrity. From my perspective, these are common-sense arguments, made by people who are not out to inhibit voting, but who would simply like to feel the same level of trust in election processes that the Swiss enjoy.
I loved those cows at the end !
I live in northern Italy, within an hour of the Swiss border, and I cannot properly express the insanity (the public transit mask requirement was dropped just last week... which included our open-air car ferries -- even if you were IN YOUR CAR). Just thinking about it makes me tense up. The weirdest part for me was the widespread compliance. I could not for the life of me figure out why the average not-overly-rule-following Italian was not simply refusing to go along with the bizarre restrictions. But people just seemed to accept whatever wackadoo new thing the government came up with, which made me feel like I was losing my mind.
One big contributor to the higher Italian death rate that I feel is often overlooked is how terrible our emergency medical care is. Preventative and routine healthcare is pretty good, at least where we are, to some extent because it's propped up by people who can afford to going privately for a lot of things. But God help you if you need an ER, where there is no private option. The average wait time at the closest major hospital to us, in the richest region in the country, for anything below "active heart attack" is regularly something like 12-24 hours. And despite the horrifying travesty in Bergamo, thousands of people dying alone without an advocate, and two years of curfews, closures and hygiene theater, absolutely nothing has changed on that front.
So how much German do my husband and I need to learn to move to Ticino?? ;p
Thank you for this. I think we often undercount the global consequences of all the harsh restrictions too - things like delayed (non-covid) vaccination schedules, diversion of resources from other medical projects like malaria prevention, the longterm population health impact of an uptick in alcoholism and anxiety, etc.
Early on, I think lefties really, really latched onto the idea that anyone who opposed harsh restrictions was a "Karen" who "would rather kill grandma than miss getting a haircut." I remember it being a fuel for my sense of alienation in 2020, when my peers would post sneering memes about how Americans just wanted the right to die of Covid in an Applebee's while I was dealing with the collateral impact of those restrictions because I worked with unhoused people who had no means of getting resources when the social services all shut down. There was massive cognitive dissonance to get off a phone call with a weeping elderly person who hadn't eaten in two days because the food banks were empty, then to be around my friends on social media posting snide put-downs about how those protesting fools in Florida would rather get Covid than not go to Dave and Busters*.
The impact of collateral consequences are very real, and there's a bit of a sunk cost fallacy among lefties that we've shut down this much, if we admit we were being a little extra then the Republicans win. You can't criticize lockdowns, because if you do, you're siding with the enemy. It's rough to be around that attitude when sometimes, the enemy might have a point or two.
*Yes, these are all class-coded, no, my peers didn't seem to think about that.