Malibuflyer wrote:
In my opinion there is a huge difference between a country where the majority actually wants contact restrictions and the government is required to protect the many against the few who do not want to comply and a situation where actually the majority is opposing restrictions.
Let’s not forget the economy and each and every company and firm here. There has never been a “work at home restriction” here in Norway. This has been left up to each company to decide. My wife has been sitting at home for almost a year now. For me, there has been no such restriction. It’s been up to me. Working in the travelling business, hotel etc is another matter, not much to do there, but for everybody else, everyday life is first and for all decided by work when it comes to practical restrictions.
These days we hear a lot about social media having too much “non-democratic” power. I don’t know, I find it hard to believe that social media has any kind of power at all. It can be used by “dark forces” to sway opinions in a dystopic manner perhaps 
just like “dark forces” used newspapers, leaflets and rallies before. But I mean, people who previously (before social media) wasn’t interested in politics, didn’t live in a total vacuum. It’s more that the people interested in politics, now for the first time in history, also are able to see and hear those who aren’t. It’s not without reason that the China government controls every aspect of social media in China.
What is scaring right now, is that the PC western democracies also see the need to control social media in some form, only their excuse is to prevent “undemocratic forces”, “radicalization” and “echo chambers”. I think history has shown that the right “elite” has been able to radicalize and brainwash entire populations long before social media came into play. It has always been, and always will be, the PC “political elite” that is the real danger, not the masses.
LeSving wrote:
Let’s not forget the economy and each and every company and firm here.
It’s more getting a general political discussion rather than covid related – so perhaps Peter might move it to the other thread. But to the point: In our current concept of democracy, “economy” and “companies” don’t have a say. It’s all about natural people.
LeSving wrote:
These days we hear a lot about social media having too much “non-democratic” power. I don’t know, I find it hard to believe that social media has any kind of power at all.
“Power” is perhaps the wrong word and “non democratic” could actually more be too democratic.
The challenge I think we observe with social media is that it decomposes opinions and creates uniform opinion groups that tend to radicalize. In the good old days where the primary spot for political debate of ordinary people was the regulars table at your local pub we had to a large extend “forced diversity”: You’ve been part of the debate because it happened in your local pub (and apart from larger cities you did not really have a choice). Therefore you debated with the people there and while you share to a certain degree the socialization the opinions could have been quite diverse. In social media it is much easier to find people that have the same opinion as you -a and it’s much more tempting to only follow those people.
That’s btw. the reason why I think the political debates on euroga are by orders of magnitudes better than in any political forum: We are a group selected by our interest in aviation but from general political POVs extremely diverse.
LeSving wrote:
What is scaring right now, is that the PC western democracies also see the need to control social media in some form, … It has always been, and always will be, the PC “political elite” that is the real danger, not the masses.
Agree to some degree but with one addition: In my opinion it gets extremely dangerous (and government needs to step in) when the platforms decide which parts of the “political elite” can get a voice and which part is shut down.
Those platforms have the power to support or prevent certain messages to reach their audience. It should not be up to those individual companies to exercise it. As long as what you want to say is legal (and it is up for judges and not for companies to decide that) they should not be allowed to block you from saying it.
It’s a little bit like you local (snail-)mail provider should not have the right to decide that they “delete your account” and you can no longer receive or send mails/parcels.
I think we should stay with the discussion regarding Covid in this thread.
This article quotes the German press as saying the EU placed its AZ orders 3 months after the UK, hence the disparity in deliveries.
Unbelievable!
Well, unsurprising, given that probably every country in Europe has the money (sub-€1BN) to buy all of Europe’s vaccine supply. And for most of them it would cost of the order of 1% of the economic damage due to CV19.
Yet, most did not do this. Only the UK chucked money at it.
Peter might move it to the other thread.
These are often tricky decisions. I am happy with some off topic diversions – a discussion would be boring otherwise – but I move stuff to the OT thread if it
)Yes, realtively widely reported in the press today as some of us suspected the devil is in the detail of these contracts, and it would seem they pharmas are only complying with the terms agreed.
The politicians will need to give careful thought as to how they play this one.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Ain’t that the essence of democracy?
If you look at the actual majorities of what people really want, it is more than obvious that the huge majority of people wanted a much stricter response and still do now. There was a decline in that factor over the summer, but it is back up now. That is quite consistent with polls which have been all over the place, in papers and other media of all colours.
Society does not want to kill themselves, a minority thinks it is all a lie or have economic reasons to fear more than sickness or even death . That minority however is large enough to undermine the measures and produce the situation we have now. They are much more vocal though, so it is not a democratic vote but basically politics yielding to those who shout the loudest.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The art of politics – these days more than ever – is not to tell the majority what they have to want but to figure out what they really want.
There are limits to democratic decisions if they go against ethics. Particularly in Germany you should be aware of this. It is well possible to incense a population into genocide or “senior citizen- icide” or other stuff which is simply unacceptable.
As for the power of social media, you must have missed the last 4 years in the US.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
If you look at the actual majorities of what people really want, it is more than obvious that the huge majority of people wanted a much stricter response and still do now.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Society does not want to kill themselves,
Sorry, but looking at what I have personally seen on Zurich and Basel streets in fall as well as in pictures from skiing resorts I see on Facebook, etc. I can’t believe what you say.
It has been (in Switzerland much more as in Germany) a major share of the population that still was visiting restaurants/cafes, meeting in public, etc. Far more than a small minority. Let’s be very open: To a large extend it does not require laws to do a shutdown if a vast majority of society actually wants it. Beyond schools and work everyone can do a lockdown by himself!
Pretending a large majority of population wants a lockdown while they do not even do the parts they can do by their own is just not credible.
This is not only a Swiss problem! It’s also in Germany that people are less concerned with what they could do by themselves to better protect society but rather how they can bend the existing rules to the largest extend to do stupid things without being fined.
BBC today:
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi announces it will mass produce a Covid vaccine developed by its rivals Pfizer and BioNtech
Mooney_Driver wrote:
If you look at the actual majorities of what people really want, it is more than obvious that the huge majority of people wanted a much stricter response and still do now. There was a decline in that factor over the summer, but it is back up now. That is quite consistent with polls which have been all over the place, in papers and other media of all colours.
Hmmm….Yes and No….
I think you will find that what people actually want is for other people to be restricted, but not themselves… because they are sensible, have a job, have a good reason to be out and about doing whatever it is that they are doing etc… but everyone else is a “covidiot”….
Regards, SD..
