re: Thoughts? Not trying to defend Australia but seems like they are doing something right

quote:

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You can not protect man from himself via government force and claim to believe in a free society and individual liberty.

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Well, the scenario I laid out is a life or death one. And that might be the only situation I would be amenable to China's 'zero-pathogen' approach. Given the inability to evoke compliance from patients generally, I'm utterly skeptical that an approach that doesn't have some enforcement mechanism will work. But again, though the scenario I'm laying out is unlikely ever to occur, it represents a societal wide life or death option, and I just don't believe that we could gain compliance from appeals to self-preservation alone. There has been a consistent pattern of disbelief about the reality of 'germ theory' since it was developed, which I think is a function of a more base empiricist urge, in that people are less likely to believe things which they don't experience themselves.

In general, the communication aspect of medical ideas maybe shouldn't be the purview of medical professionals, because we are remarkably bad at it. And that is the ultimate source of my skepticism in this specific scenario, as I don't think humans have the communicative capability to believe mass appeals even when those appeals are in their self-interest, if that makes sense.