Many people want the gov to make quarantine real but it's not happening yet.
The old people (they are mostly Orbán voters) are on the streets. When I look out to the window I rarely see a mask. 10-15% of the people. Elderly people and many others still claim C19 is fake. Orbán already has the whole control of the country, now with that we're going to stay here for a dozens of years. Good bye EU, good bye civilization. I'll leave to a better place as soon C19 will go away in the world - if there will be a chance for that, not sure.
Hungarian health is shit. Lombardy has something like 9.3/10 in terms of peoples health, Hungary has 2.2 (higher is better). My estimation is 500k deaths (10 million population) in my country in 3-6 months - based on data from Italy and South Korea plus health data.
The worse thing is our sociaty. We don't have. There are mostly poor, stupid people with no ability to even read, understand, etc. I am not kidding. I know it sounds harsh. That's fckin hungarian culture based on our sad history.
Goodbye civilization? Most people can't read? It's done?
No my friend, isolation seems to be getting to your head. "When I look out the window, only 10-15% are wearing masks". That's far more than many other places.
That top level comment is such a typical somewhat smart central European youngster (now maybe in their 30s, like me) that was heavily brainwashed the whole childhood how UE is soooo much superior and civilized, and the their own culture and people are so inferior because of backwards religion and backwards conservatism. For them, the unelected officials ruling UE is a pinacle of democracy, while lawfully elected politicians at home are dictators, and so on.
I was raised in the same environment in Poland, was a subject of the same UE-love brainwashing most of my youth, and have/had plenty of friends with the same view.
Well, for someone who left country between yours and OPs (Slovakia), which is in much better shape than Hungary now, and probably +-same as Poland (no hard numbers now), its kind of true. Mind you, EU is no saint but our countries benefit from it massively, and the drawbacks are comparably tiny.
There are nice, good and working things back home. But they are hugely overshadowed by amount of things that don't work as they should - social system, healthcare, high criminality, utter pervasive corruption on all levels. We also have huge issues with big roma population that all politicians gave up on long time ago. Nobody cares about them anymore, I'd say they are a ticking bomb.
On top of all that, many folks are xenophobic, if not outright racist. You can have wonderful deep kind relationship or encounters with strangers, but people can be proper selfish assholes on a level I haven't seen in the west. Politicians, always the worst scum of the given population, are a bad, corrupt joke through whole spectrum.
I could go on for hours. Why... I moved, just like millions others and didn't look back (not EU). Its nice to visit, but that's about it. I can see on most folks back home how not-really-happy they are, kinda OK is the norm.
I am Spanish and I see exactly the same thing here. How it's okay for Germany to rule over us because locals are so convinced our own country and its citizens are inferior. It's so sad, especially since it ends as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
These sorts of claims are standard fare for divisive far right parties. Apparently they work quite well given their political rise and the prevalence of that sort of rhetoric even in forums like this.
Funny how the left-wing Yanis Varoufakis probably agrees with that statement. But yeah, why don't you far right anyone who disagrees with the mainstream.
Why is it ok for people in North Dakota to have a say over me in Washington? Or for that matter why is it ok for people in Shoreline 5 km away to have a say over me in Seattle?
Because that's how we've agreed to organize. Economies of scale. The difference between Spaniards and Germans is smaller than you might expect.
Death rates are around 0.6%. Depends on the population pyramid, etc. Forget the detected cases. Focus only on deaths, multiply by the 0.6% rate and you've got the number of infected up to ~17 days ago. From then, exponential growth: doubles every 2 to 4 days, except if contained.
The health care system doesn't matter: the growth is exponential; it takes not long for it to crumble, however good it might be. That's happening in Italy (incl. Lombardia) and Spain. What matters how much profilactic material there is (masks, etc) and ventilators; and to prevent the exponential spreading with containment.
In Germany (where I leave) I'm yet to see a single mask. At least people are taking containment more seriously than the government. We'll see what happens when we hit 1000 deaths next Sunday.
What makes you believe that 5% of your population will be unable to withstand the coronavirus? Seems a little high to me (I am not a doctor, just basing this on what UK government has published around recovery rates).
I live in the UK, and I wouldn't trust much the UK government is putting out about this. They aren't listening to scientists until they are absolutely forced to, and they're still underestimating the severity of this.
Come on, literally the very first press conference about it saw the PM flanked by his two most senior scientific advisors who were delegated to for any science-related questions. The government just published all the scientific advice documents that are being used to inform policy. "Not listening to scientists until they're forced to" is a ludicrous assertion.
Actually it's much worse - if you read the scientific advice, some of it is about how politicians can't and shouldn't actually follow the scientific advice, because if the government isn't seen to be panicking and doing pointless unnecessary things that other countries are then people might riot. The British government isn't the problem here.
Well, I have no reason to doubt the government just yet. I think they're being fairly clear in their daily briefings.
I think people aren't really listening. Tubes are still being used in London and people are treating self quarantine as an opportunity to have a day off, and go to a park. That's a bit scary.
The PM's elderly father went on TV to send out mixed messages, by declaring that he will go to the pub and nobody can stop him, just last week. You have to wonder, and question the 'good' intentions of the government, after running point with flattening the sombrero and building herd immunity strategy, prior to the current situation? The Coronavirus Bill is being debated right now, across both houses, which will give the government sweeping powers; if there was ever a case for Hanlon and the behaviour of plebs ─ this is it.
Is it? Nothing in the first part suggests that the older people will die at a higher rate in Hungary compared to elsewhere, should they all contract the virus.
5% is the number usually passed around in case of a healthcare system over capacity and having to triage people, and that doesn't count people dying because of untreated things other than COVID-19.
I believe it's 5% of those tested; a group which will almost certainly be composed of those more vulnerable. Thus, I don't think it's representative of the entire population.
You need to look at countries that have had COVID-19 for a longer time to see the real death rate. Countries like the UK, US, Australia, Canada, etc. are only just spiking on infections, and it takes a while before deaths spike as a result (around a week or two). See this graph to understand it [0]
You aren't talking about the same thing though. the 9.25% death rate is a death rate of all tested people. Op is talking about X% of the population. The death rate is presumably lower because people aren't getting tested to the right degree (not saying it is frightening high either way).
5% of the population is still realistic in a scenario where there are no or ineffective controls and the virus infects most people relatively quickly. This would be due to hospitals being overwhelmed and victims dying who would have survived with adequate treatment.
It's about 3 times the predicted infection mortality rate of around 1.4%.
That being said, even countries like the US and Canada are saying they expect 60-70% of the population to get it.. so you could say the death rate will be 9% of 60%...
The assumption is that the testing population is currently biased towards more serious cases (e.g. if you are in the hospital you get tested. but if you are in the hospital, you have severe symptoms => higher % will die). On the other hand you could have an entire family of 6 people under the same roof not being tested but all positive. Italy thought something similar and tested an entire village. Loads showed no symptoms and tested positive.
Hence you will have X% of 60%. Question now is what the X is. But 9% seems to be the super pessimistic upper bound.
Not a chance. In Canada, know a bunch of sick people. Our health authorities aren't testing all sick people; until a few days ago only sick people who travelled. Even now only those who are seriously ill.
Guarantee the amount of people with the virus is 10x or more the amount who've tested positive, which would push the death rate way down, but is also concerning in it's own way.
How are you deriving that 1% number when tests are highly skewed toward severe positive cases, and the virus primarily manifests with mild/no symptoms?
It's not me deriving the 1% number. These are the official numbers for the IFR. The CFR is entirely unreliable.
The only good estimates are from the Diamond Princess, as all persons there have been tested. Most countries only test people with symptoms, with about a factor 5 missing. Chinese data is completely unreliable, South Korean best, behind the Diamond Princess.
Hungary has a "very high" HDI (higher is better), a very low GINI (lower is better), and a surprisingly high GDP PPP per capita. At least that's what Wikipedia tells me.
Romanian here. We are also totally fucked.
[rant]
Most of our youth is fucking gone in Diaspora, all we have is old people.
Stuff that is happening here is worst since we got rid of communism in '89 everyone is panic buying everyone is in for themselves. Honestly a dictatorship wouldn't be so bad because we need good leaders in these darkest times, crowds are so irrational nowadays.
[/rant]
On the upside, the “Emperor has no Clothes” governments will be shown for the propagandists they are when COVID rips through the country. It will be remarkably little comfort at the time.
Thankfully Trump changed his message after Wall Street and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson called out his political spin.
In the end, I fear the virus will community spread everywhere unless the _entire world_ takes it seriously _at the same time_, but I don’t foresee that happening.
> Trump changed his message after Wall Street and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson called out his political spin.
And he changed it again yesterday, when some other Fox commentators said that more people would die to a bad economy than would to the virus if people stay at home more than a couple of weeks if we keep up the measures being put in place to limit its spread. So now the message is that in 15 days they will consider greatly easing those measures.
No, it doesn't matter because the moment Trump 'changed his tune' all of his followers erased in their minds the history of him denying reality. To them, he was always acting with foresight.
You cannot discredit someone who robbed a bank and literally denies it the next day, along with millions of followers who also deny it even having seen the robbery first hand.
Your assumption of 'credit' implies some kind of rationality, there isn't. It's just a big personality fight.
Whatever Trump does or says is right, by virtue of the fact he said it.
FYI - the same could apply to popular characters of other kinds, this not just Trump, he's just a good example.
Edit: I should add, I feel this way specifically because I enjoy reading comments from various news sources as a measure of certain kinds of populism, and about 2/3 of the commenters currently on FoxNews are very pro Trump, often hailing is 'early action' etc. on the issue, completely disregarding the fact that only days ago, he was dismissing the issue as a hoax, literally indicating 'we only have a few cases, it will be zero soon' - all the while Wuhan and other places blow out of control. This should be enough to destroy any leaders' credibility. And of course, this is not a left/right/up/down thing, there are leaders of all political stripes who either do such ridiculous things or, who are credible - but still have followers who'll believe their statements over any kind of reality. I think this is more common than not: we believe personalities more than we believe facts.
> Thankfully Trump changed his message after Wall Street and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson called out his political spin.
Are we watching the same thing? I've watched almost every single press conference and Trump has not "changed his tune" rather he is than continuing to lie, write history, and downplay the virus.
Just watch, when his eyes are down he is reading off prepared notes, then he looks up and starts riffing (lying and downplaying). He may be taking it semi-seriously but he is dog-whistling to his base constantly about how it's not his fault and it's not a big deal.
Also Hungarian here. The article summed up the law under debate correctly. Its a slippery slope that we've seen happening in other countries (Russia, which is a kind of a blueprint for this government in many respects, comes to mind). Carte blanche to do anything they please in the name of Protecting The People, suspending constitutional rights and silencing all dissenting voices, this time with jail sentences. Whenever the Covid situation gets better it's easy to make up a new national emergency with a different threat - immigrants, again, attack from EU, again, or something else. The 60% plus rural voters whose main news source is the captured state media (Russian style, again) won't really mind. Then we can stay in this "emergency doctrine" forever. No wonder why wannabe/actual dictators love crisis...
Author makes a good point at the end - it can go another way as well. Let's imagine, what if the country starts to crumble? As pezo1919 pointed out, health/healthcare is in deep trouble. What if tens of thousands die and everyone turns against Orbán? These changes will come very handy as well, won't they?
I'm trying to finish this comment real fast before they pass this law and a black car takes me away for spreading f
I spent about six weeks traveling in Hungary in the summer of 2000, enjoying the great food and wine and practicing my rudimentary Hungarian skills. At the time the country seemed to be a place with crappy past and a bright future.
I even was in Budapest during the celebrations of the 1000 year anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary (which was really just the anniversary of the Christianization of the country and the Pope tossing a crown to King Istvan). The fireworks were great and the I stood in the square in front of the Parliament building and watched a then much younger Viktor Orban giving a speech.
At the time, I was under the impression that Orban was viewed as a vibrant leader committed to democracy and modernization. Oh, how times have changed.
He's now a wannabee dictator, stomping on democracy and free speech, and taking the country on a reverse course back to the darker years of Hungary's past.
What the hell happened to you, Viktor? Did you grow to like power too much? You were so promising, but turned out to be so disappointing. Another Mugabe.
Now I feel sad when I think of Hungary and the nice people I met there. I also marvel at the inability of the people to learn from their past. Hungarians always seemed very well-informed and knowledgeable of their history.
Demagogues usually advocate immediate, forceful action to address a crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Once elected to high executive office, demagogues typically unravel constitutional limits on executive power and attempt to convert their democracy to dictatorship.
Also quoted on this page: "Even ordinary politicians use some of these techniques from time to time"
There's really nothing on here that demonstrates that you can identify or rule out a demagogue by the presence or absence of these methods in use by them. I'm sure many will try though, and many more will nod their heads in approval.
My parents fled Hungary in '56 and landed in the US, on the west coast. I spent a lot of the last decade in Europe, and a lot of my free time in Hungary. Loved it, enjoyed it, thought a future me could retire there.
The parallels between US right now, and Hungary right now, are alarming. It's overtly called out in the press... so it's part of the conversation, but we're full circle on what my parents (and grandparents) went through and how a redemptive arc is, or is not, available.
"If there’s anything the current debacles in Europe and the U.S. has taught us, it’s that selfish and/or irrational jerks abound, and asking nicely doesn’t work at all."
This is a little bit more truthworthy. But still there is no sources, Just opinions. By sources i mean documents. Legislative documents. They can be interpreted in various ways based on who reads them
People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship".
The problem with dictatorships is either your dictator isn't benevolent, or you have a great dictator but then he dies and his son takes over and he's terrible. There's lots of examples in history of excellent dictators/authoritarians: Marcus Aurelius of Rome, and Elizabeth I of England, for example. Of course, with Marcus Aurelius, there was a movie made about what happened there (Gladiator, 2000) when he crappy son took over.
> People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship".
I would quibble quite strongly with the characterization that dictatorships are "absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people." They theoretically can be, but their fatal weakness is they have no effective mechanism to ensure the leader actually looks out for the people or that there's a smooth succession. Having effective mechanisms to do that are very, very important to have a "good form of government."
A dictator has the reverse mechanism. He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people. If he did not then he would not be the one to rise to or stay dictator.
A democratic leader must please the public which could mean lying to them or being a moron __but__ will also mean working to help them (the more educated the public, the less the lies work) So your chances are always better with democracy.
>He must spend all his effort and distribute resources to stay in power which means not benefiting the people.
Do you have any proof for your claim? I can point to multiple dictators in history under whose reign their people had (by the standards of the time) very good lives and government. Elizabeth I's rule was considered a golden age for England.
Finally, how is this different from democratic governments? Congresspeople here in the US spend all their effort getting "campaign donations" so they can be re-elected, and the distribute resources to stay in power (called "pork barrel politics"). The latter ends up benefiting small groups of people at the expense of the nation.
Beyond campaign financing, the US also has gerrymandering, voter suppression and disproportionate voting like the electoral college. And fixing those things will make the nation better serve it's people by making it more democratic.
Comparing these dictatorships to each other is not meaningful, we would need to compare dictatorship to democracy. Tudor England was better off than medieval England: not a very high bar. For one thing religious executions still happened and there are certainly no written troves of commoners praising the new age.
Elizabethan England was certainly inferior to the Italian renaissance republics of the period. And its people worse of than the latter democratic UK. It is less of a leap forward than 5th century Athens or even 19th century UK. The nearest semi-democracy in time and space would be recently independent Holland which had more freedom and growth: it is even where the American Pilgrims initially fled to. Even among dictatorships, Elizabeth I is not that great: equally despotic Spain had more power, technology and culture, Arab and Asian nations had longer life spans, more sanitation and higher literacy.
To compare democracy vs dictatorship you'd need to countries similar in culture and era. Like North and South Korea.
Democracy can be called dictatorship of the majority. Problem is even communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario. You can't guarantee you get the benevolent dictator more than you can guarantee the fulfillment of the majority's wishes. They both rely on "hoping" that the person in power actually does the right thing regardless of how they got there and what powers they have. And more importantly, you can hope that you are on the right side of that "right thing".
One thing democracy gets better than dictatorship is that it guarantees that it has to keep at least a consistent slice of the population happy, not just one dictator and their apparatus. What dictatorship gets better is that a single person's will and vision is easier to plan and achieve, instead of the many voices and wills of the "majority".
I can point to a bunch that worked out fine, historically.
In modern times? Which ones are you thinking of? I can't think of any except maybe China, which is a curious definition of fine given how badly beaten they've been by their nearby neighbours e.g. compare the trajectories of South Korea/Taiwan vs China.
South Korea had massive economic boosts under Park Chung-hee
, he industrialized the country, destroyed corruption, and laid the complete foundation of what South Korea's economy is now today. Pre-Park Chung-hee was a democracy that the US implemented and it was terrible. There was massive widespread corruption, the economy was worse than the Congo, and it was awful. Compare pre and post dictatorial South Korea and there is a stark contrast.
Didn't his rule turn into an actual dictatorship only when growth was slowing down, his popularity was waning, and he had a close call in the democratic elections?
A couple of examples of successes that can only very debatably be attributed to dictatorship in itself don't make it inherently successful. Not more than China's successes prove that communism is successful and sustainable. Why are you ignoring the overwhelming majority of cases where dictatorship failed? Democracy had far more consistent and successful examples.
Using dictatorial-like power to escape a dire situation is not the same as successfully ruling a country. Dictatorship is like a slap. It's useful if you're chocking and need to get out of that pinch but treating all emergencies with a slap is a misguided approach.
The points you make are basically rehashing what I said (or missing the mark) and making it look like we have a debate. We aren't and you didn't bring any new ideas.
The fact that some dictators had passable results doesn't mean dictatorship is a good system. It just had more "attempts" at success because dictatorship (absolute monarchs) are more in line with human nature. Democracy has achieved better which would suggest it's overall a better system.
> Can you point to any real-life communist governments that actually worked out great?
If only I would have written that:
>> communism looked good on paper assuming perfect people and conditions. Nothing you'd find in any real scenario.
> You can't guarantee anything
Yes, which is why I said you can't guarantee anything.
> A dictatorship also has to keep a consistent slice of the population happy.
For a carefully chosen definition of "consistent". At a minimum a dictator has to keep a small slice happy, themselves and their apparatus. This is very far from being "consistent" relative to the population and a far cry from what a democratically elected leader is expected to keep happy. On the other hand a democracy may see a candidate lose even when having the support of the majority of the population (see the electoral college system in the US).
Both dictatorship and democracy have advantages and disadvantages, some theoretical, some practical. But in real life the chances of a dictatorship going wrong are so high it makes the system a no-go. It's fishing with nitroglycerin.
There is this idea about dictatorships being more efficient, but it's been shown that is mostly a carryover from their propaganda. A good example was the saying about "the trains running on time" the truth was they didn't, but the propaganda really painted that picture.
otoh when dictator sends mass portions of your population to the gulags, and a 100 million die, just to fight the corona, the cure might be worse than the disease
No, your first premise is false - even a 'benevolent dictatorship' is not 'the best thing' for the people in most situations. In certain times of crises, maybe, but otherwise, no.
GP gave some good points about benevolent dictatorship.
Can you elaborate on why it wouldn't be "the best thing" in general?
And ideally weight that against all the other scenarios where it is.
One other thing that makes dictatorships inferior and democracy preferable over all other systems of governance is transition of power. In democracies, it's encoded in the system in such a way that everyone seeking power wants to play ball. In dictatorship, if someone wants the power, they usually take it by force, leaving a lot of bodies behind - and the very threat of that is already a force making dictators increasingly paranoid.
That said, I think every western country could use a temporary (say, 6 months) switch to dictatorship, because I worry we won't deal with this effectively otherwise. I have no idea how to ensure such a dictatorship would be temporary, though.
What we "need" isn't important. Coordinated, responsible leadership sounds great, but that's up to the voters to decide. If the voters don't want that, then why should it be forced on them? Who are you to tell the voters otherwise?
The people elected Trump, so why not give him a dictatorship for 6 months? After all, it's within the President's power to declare martial law for times of emergency. It's the job of the voters to make sure they don't elect someone who can't be trusted with the awesome power available to that position. The same goes for any democratic country.
The powers of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary exist to balance one another out especially in times of crises when some dictator could come along and declare himself ruler.
The people didn't vote for a Dictator, they voted for a President with very limited constitutional powers.
The premise of 'benevolent dictatorship' is absurd to begin with because it's a living contradiction.
Politics, power, and hubris are inseparable.
Powers exist to benefit and protect themselves, even agencies with the 'best intent' fall into traps of self-delusion and aggrandizement.
We saw 100 revolutions in the last century, most of them 'in the name of the people' - and almost all of them failed and did mostly the opposite of that even if there were a 'few wins' here and there. Literacy and some kinds of healthcare increased dramatically in Cuba ... and yet ... we still have Castro Inc.'s totalitarian fist 50 years later.
The very authoritarianism of any regime which gives it the power to do something possibly good in the short term is exactly the thing that prevents it from adapting in the long term.
Also, authoritarianism tends to limit the scope of influence and authority to a smaller groups, which is not good for many things that require a lot of voices. Creative fields, research, even market economies have lots of actors.
If Hungary were willing to give 'temporary powers' to some person who was not Orban, for say 6 months, well then maybe they'd have something, but otherwise, this looks like a power grab Putin style.
My take away is this: In an ideal world, a benevolent dictatorship would be (overall) better than a democracy.
In that ideal world, the dictator would be the perfect leader: Smart/wise, selfless, open minded...
Of course, we don't live in an ideal world.
Funny example: Heaven (the Christian version) will be an ideal dictatorship (for Christians) :)
Dictatorship isn't efficient at all. Dictatorships all experience gross levels of corruption and resource misallocation, often to levels that result in their entire economy collapsing. Meanwhile capitalist free market democracies surge ahead with huge GDP gains and cutting edge technology.
Many people want the gov to make quarantine real but it's not happening yet.
The old people (they are mostly Orbán voters) are on the streets. When I look out to the window I rarely see a mask. 10-15% of the people. Elderly people and many others still claim C19 is fake. Orbán already has the whole control of the country, now with that we're going to stay here for a dozens of years. Good bye EU, good bye civilization. I'll leave to a better place as soon C19 will go away in the world - if there will be a chance for that, not sure.
Hungarian health is shit. Lombardy has something like 9.3/10 in terms of peoples health, Hungary has 2.2 (higher is better). My estimation is 500k deaths (10 million population) in my country in 3-6 months - based on data from Italy and South Korea plus health data.
The worse thing is our sociaty. We don't have. There are mostly poor, stupid people with no ability to even read, understand, etc. I am not kidding. I know it sounds harsh. That's fckin hungarian culture based on our sad history.
It's done.