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Why not?
There are times when a totalitarian government running a command economy (albeit with pseudo-capitalist areas) can do certain things much more quickly than a democracy. The democracy needs to declare a full-blown emergency before it can even think of just repurposing buildings arbitrarily. The totalitarians can just order medical staff to relocate, can order citizens to observe disciplined self-isolation under pain of pain etc. Also, China, being huge, has ready resources to reallocate in the short term.
Of course, the comparison is worse when the democracy
- has cut its health system to the bone and runs it continually under severe stress
- is notionally lead by a blustering lightweight who prefers to pretend problems don't exist or are trivially solved by this "great nation"
- is actually lead by neo-Darwinist sociopathic disaster capitalists
- is in the middle of an ideologically-driven crusade to remove itself from systems that could help, supported by a population who have made it clear that their emotional devotion to a mythical image of the nation is more important than practical issues. Hence Boris stopping his Health Secretary from working with existing EU agencies designed to cope with pandemics.
- has cut its health system to the bone and runs it continually under severe stress
itsbruce
Thank you for the link - I hadn't seen that article. This quote struck me:
Why not? Also struck by the fact the US has 10 times more ICU beds per capita than the UK.
I guess given the lead times (trained staff, specialised equipment etc) it is not possible to solve the problem by chucking money at it?