We've come out of COVID and are staring down the barrel of WWIII. There is a land war in Europe with US guns shooting Russian soldiers. A senior fellow in the US Air Force just predicted war with China in the next 2 years [0]. If that sort of war breaks out, all of this focus on COVID will look like small biscuits compared to what the world might be facing. We should certainly do something differently next time.
And we really should have a full cost-benefit analysis of the wins from the lockdowns vs doing nothing. I'm still on board with 2 weeks to flatten the curve, but I don't think anyone has done the work to prove that the 18 month lockdown regime that Australia did was worth it. I think the Australian government assessed around 30k lives saved which, sorry to say, isn't enough to justify throwing away 18 months of everyone's social lives. The rate of change of our death rate 2020-2021 is around 10,000 deaths. These numbers are not impressive enough to justify doing that again.
Because they invaded Ukraine and are comiting the genocide there. Ukraine keeps asking for help and US did actually provided them guns. US are the good guys here.
I wonder if we can say that collapse is self-inflicted. Would it have happened if Russia went to be a more open and democratic society instead? Would it be more like the east European countries where a lot of labour is nearsourced?
No, they did not. Russia is aggressor here and they did attacked here.
USA made mistake when they pressured Ukraine to give up atomic bombs and when it prioritized Russian interest over interest of other Eastern European nations. But that is history now.
Just to be clear, the coup was triggered when the leader of Ukraine reneged on prior commitments and overwhelming public and parliamentary support to align with the EU.
The current leader of Ukraine was elected in a landslide victory that the Russian-aligned opposition himself called completely fair.
“Attacks on DPR and LPR” are hard to disaggregate from the various Russian military forces that “volunteered” to go occupy neighboring territory on the basis of their shared language (like Mexico sending cartels to the US southwest to protect Spanish-speakers and those of Hispanic descent).
No, you are just lying about what happened in Ukraine. Russia is quiet unambiguously the worst here.
Maidan was valid thing to do and made Ukraine better. Ukrainians have right to reject being Russian puppet state. Russia broke Minsk agreements and entered into bad faith agreements, that part if rifht.
DPR and LPR were under Russian government despite pretending to be separatists. And even if this was not the case, it does not excuses genocide and attempt to annex Ukraine.
And we really should have a full cost-benefit analysis of the wins from the lockdowns vs doing nothing. I'm still on board with 2 weeks to flatten the curve, but I don't think anyone has done the work to prove that the 18 month lockdown regime that Australia did was worth it. I think the Australian government assessed around 30k lives saved which, sorry to say, isn't enough to justify throwing away 18 months of everyone's social lives. The rate of change of our death rate 2020-2021 is around 10,000 deaths. These numbers are not impressive enough to justify doing that again.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-air-fo...