Q: why is the west not implementing any preventive measures?

[mellowtigger]

I can't even come up with a good conspiracy theory for why the western world seems intent on infecting everyone with SARS-CoV-2.  What reason for it do you think is plausible?

Any theory needs to simultaneously satisfy (or at least not contradict) 2 critieria:

1. Why has the western world abandoned any effort to prevent people from getting infected with SARS-CoV-2?
2. Why is China still insistent on its "Zero COVID" policy?

I have 3 plausible (just not "good") reasons.  I'll add them after a week, so I don't influence the suggestions offered.

edit: 2022 July 25:
I forgot to add my answers after 1 week.  As I said, they're not "good" reasons, just plausible, and they all 3 distill to the essence of neoliberalism that has infected too much of our social environment.  For people/countries to which these ideas don't apply, consider how tied they are (politically, militarily, and financially) to people/countries that are like this.

1) Capitalism (short view).  There are too many large costs associated with the immediate measures necessary to change our course.  Economic costs, political costs.  Redesign offices and cities for clean air?  Require masking in groups?  PHFFFT!

2) Capitalism (long view).  There's just no profit in curing people.  Infecting all of humanity with a lifelong slowly-destroying disability, though... KA-CHING!  Just imagine the profits in medical care!

3) Christian death cult.  Too many people are beholden to Biblical "End Times" theology, so anything that seems to hasten the predicted apocalypse is a good thing in their eyes.  Setting loose the First Horseman of Pestilence is just helping God's work on Earth.

And if you want a tinfoil hat theory with no basis in reality whatsoever:

4) Our alien overlords demanded that we reduce our global population, or they would do it for us.  (This theory doesn't explain why China is exempt from the mandate.)  On the plus side, this plague will soon help us overcome our global climate change problem.

Comments

[mtbc]

I guess, if one limits the personal behavior of Westerners too much for too long, they tend to vote one out of office. China probably has rather less pressure to tell people what they want to hear.

[mllesatine]

I can only speak for Germany here and our understanding of lawfulness. The lock-down has been seen as a necessary intrusion of personal freedom as long as people were at risk of dying/hospitalisation. Since the illness is a lot milder now nobody (and I mean courts of law) can justify those intrusions. Of course China has no trouble taking extreme measures. The people there can't hope to win a case against their own government.

[lilysea]

Government would rather see people get sick/die

than see restaurants, cafes, sports stadiums, tourism, and retail lose money due to lock downs. :(

[zipperbear]

There are also trade-offs with quality of life (especially social life). Without guaranteed basic income, most people have to work. Modern 2-working-parent families have developed with public schools as child care. Remote learning doesn't work well for many kids, and even worse for their parents. The early lockdowns only slowed the spread, hence the selective pressure for infectiousness against masks and vaccinations. Consider the way that poor compliance with dosing can contribute to antibiotic resistance, by weeding out only the most susceptible strains of bacteria.

Many people are very social, and for them the shutdowns had immediate and known downsides (loneliness, social isolation, lack of intimacy and physical contact) compared to the vague potential of illness. Masks have problems for some people: they make my ears hurt after an hour or two, and they fog up my reading glasses, but also for those who subconsciously depend on lip-reading. If masks are required at a social event, I'm probably not interested (I can wait until conditions improve).

Compliance was always only so-so, and hence was never very effective. Vaccines were rolled out slowly, and with simplistic priorities; for example, old retired people can just stay home, but young retail workers don't have that option. Vaccinating the staff in nursing homes, rather than the patients, would have also slowed the spread in the larger community (although vaccines weren't available until it was too late).

Anti-intellectualism is the disaster that keeps on dissing your ass.

[mellowtigger]

I told myself I wasn't going to reply to anyone until the week expired, but I just spent an hour tracking down this one tweet I wanted to reference in response to anti-intellectualism (and how China might be different from the USA).

"I like to imagine I'm fairly bright but my grades weren't good enough. And while academics aren't everything and there are some notable exceptions, it's pretty tough to get into a position of running things if you're a complete idiot here. You can be evil as fuck- but not stupid."
- tweet, Naomi Wu, speaking about Chinese government

I finally found it... and only because I remembered this (very memorable) tweet. The Twitter algorithm will now identify me with repeated searches on "tits". *SIGH* I don't look forward to the spam heading my way soon.

[andrewducker]

There was an understanding very early on, in the West, that the spread could not be stopped, only slowed, and that the aim would be to stop the health systems being overwhelmed, but nothing else. Particularly after vaccines were available.

[bitterlawngnome]

Disinformation via social media is def one of the issues to factor in, along with what everyone else mentioned above.