A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
I understand what you're getting at, but a.) they're still trying to sabotage the entire effort (even if they can't figure out what that means for 48 hours straight) and b.) it means we're all hostage to whims of 30% of the population and the media they consume. Which is, if we're being honest, basically true. Has been ever since Rush went into national syndication in the early '90s. So while I get your point, you're arguing about the same failure, because Donald Trump is a living manifestation of AM radio. A disciple of Michael Savage (who you may be familiar with). I've never said what they do doesn't work. It works as well as it did at any other time in history. The conservative media grift (and that's all it is) managed to get itself into the White House. This is the result. It's the governmental equivalent of the people who hawk silver pills at 1am on 1080 The Flag. In between commercials for reverse mortgages and dick pills. Great for putting on a show for the cameras, paralyzed to actually solve a problem, must less a once in a century crisis.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
Trump keeps asking on multiple occassions why the government can’t just let COVID ‘wash over’ The Country.
This question apparently stunned Dr. Fauci.
“Mr. President, many people would die,” the doctor reportedly told Trump. He keeps asking this though apparently.
Trump heard about the United Kingdom’s now-abandoned “mitigation” strategy that would let COVID-19 spread throughout the country with in the hopes of building a “herd immunity” against the virus.
However, a study by medical advisers to the British government found in mid-March that the strategy would “likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths,” prompting the U.K. to drop the plan.
The same study also predicted that 1.1 to 1.2 million Americans would die if the strategy were adopted in the U.S.
We'll bail out the cruise ship industry, but not the Postal Service. Want to stop vote by mail?? Hell, just stop the mail entirely. Yet I don't think they've quite thought through just how much the loss of postal service would absolutely decimate rural America:
Like the bitching about teachers, the other one that really gets me riled up is people who complain about the Post Office. I've personally NEVER lost anything in the mail, and what they do on a daily basis in a country this big is a minor miracle. You could be forgiven at this point for believing they are purposefully trying to destroy the country.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
You think that was partisan? Hell I will go one further:
Ted Cruz wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Cruz wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Cruz would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of his own political consequences. Cruz wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to his crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? One of the main media lines used on Clinton was that she was "too prepared", an unlikable harpy akin to Tracy Flick from the movie "Election". Whose reams of detailed policy proposals made her totally unrelatable to the common person. She wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests. She was a former Secretary of State. She would have been on this the moment the reports started coming out of Wuhan. Do you know that some hospitals STILL have excess stocks of Tamiflu from H1N1?? Because the previous Administration knew the only thing to do in these situations is to OVER prepare. Because Democrats aren't a political party that have built themselves on a half-century of anti-intellectualism, where experts are "elitist know-it-alls" and science is really just a plot to over-regulate our lives.
I posted less than two weeks ago a copy of Clinton's deep worry about this type of situation in her policy positions. The pandemic team Trump disbanded would still be in place. It likely would have been beefed up. There is an undeniable record of this Administration shitting the bed for two months and then flat-out lying about the severity for another one before finally being forced to admit the reality by virtue of the existence of mobile morgues being hard to spin. Trump didn't give a fuck beyond managing it through the lens of his reelection, which meant waging a day to day messaging war in the media rather than taking steps to combat the virus. I realize it must be really difficult for people who initially supported this guy to come to terms with the fact that he has brought the country to the brink of destruction, but I'd suggest trying, because that's what happened. Denying it is like denying the sun rises in the East.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
It's true though. There would never be a time Hillary, for all her faults, overruled scientists and acted on her gut like Trump does all the time.
The Democratic is not anti-science and would not have decimated the pandemic response team and the CDC. A Democratic response to the pandemic would be based on facts and logic, Republicans have acted on misinformation, emotion, and corruption.
This ignorant response, the worst among countries on planet Earth, is going to cost us a lot more money in the long term and a lot more lives than if we had an administration that took things seriously and relied on experts and not one mans, Donald Trump, and his feelings.
Let's also stipulate another absolute certainty: if Hillary Clinton was in charge, and had asked for the same stimulus package Trump did, she would have gotten maybe 5 Republican votes in the Senate and 25 in the House. How do we know?? Because of the reaction to Obama's stimulus in January of 2009. And we'd still be waiting for two Supreme Court seats to be filled.
But beyond that, yes, ANY other Republican from the 2016 field would be handling this better. Chris Christie would undeniably have handled it the best (and I can't stand him). Trump is ill-equipped to handle ANY of this simply from a psychological perspective. He is without question a malignant narcissist. It's a serious personality disorder. He not only didn't handle it well, he is INCAPABLE of handling it well, because he is not able to functionally see ANYTHING outside the spectrum of how it benefits him in the immediate moment.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
I'm gonna be as diplomatic as possible here, but this whole "come on, now is not the time to point fingers, we all need to come together" is something I absolutely can't stand. It's the same BS that allowed Bush to sell himself as the "security President" even though 9/11 could have ABSOLUTELY been prevented. Everyone makes mistakes. Governors have made mistakes. DeBlasio, the mayor of NY, did an absolute shit job as well. But the sheer depth of the knowledge the Administration had for FOUR MONTHS before taking action is not something I am willing or will ever be willing to erase or ignore for the sake of some false sense of national unity. And the late-February to mid-March downplaying was even more vile still. We are being asked.......no, we are essentially being ORDERED to pretend this never took place, and it's straight out of an Orwell novel.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
Your take is a bad one. Journalists writ large arent putting Clinton on some elevated platform. They're expecting basic competency from her. The kind that Trump hasnt shown much of. The article you cited yourself doesnt put her on an elevated platform at all. It assumes she wouldnt mess up the initial response to COVID 19. Consider that last bit for a second. You think putting someone on an elevated platform is the same thing as assuming they wouldnt botch a national emergency. Maybe some introspection on who is actually being partisan here would be of some use to you.
As a side note - it's completely reasonable and totally normal to try to infer what the country would be doing if the loser of the last election were in power during a crisis. In fact, it's an electoral issue. The idea that we cannot engage in thought experiments like that or it is "a way for us all to lose" - is rather absurd.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
It’s also fantasy to assume Trump is the better candidate at this point because Clinton wouldn’t have the backing for marshal law like Trump has which I was first responding to.
And it isn’t resistant to evidence. I compared the US to Canada, where there own provincial conservative governments have been taking this seriously from the beginning and have seen a flattening of the cases.
You can also look at other nations who have seen a sharp decline on the graph I posted such as New Zealand, Norway and Austria and compare what they have done to get their numbers like that to what US (or any country for that matter) has done.
The US and a lesser extent of Iran, are the only countries still on an upward trajectory. Maybe instead of calling everything partisan, you can question why that is.
Or you can just finally listen to Cruz: “I think in terms of a commander in chief, we ought to have someone who isn't springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls. I think the American people is looking for a commander in chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe."
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
It’s also fantasy to assume Trump is the better candidate at this point because Clinton wouldn’t have the backing for marshal law like Trump has which I was first responding to.
And it isn’t resistant to evidence. I compared the US to Canada, where there own provincial conservative governments have been taking this seriously from the beginning and have seen a flattening of the cases.
You can also look at other nations who have seen a sharp decline on the graph I posted such as New Zealand, Norway and Austria and compare what they have done to get their numbers like that to what US (or any country for that matter) has done.
The US and a lesser extent of Iran, are the only countries still on an upward trajectory. Maybe instead of calling everything partisan, you can question why that is.
Or you can just finally listen to Cruz: “I think in terms of a commander in chief, we ought to have someone who isn't springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls. I think the American people is looking for a commander in chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe."
I'm not going to quote any definitions of the term, because I find that sort of thing obnoxious and it tends to lead to circular arguments. If you say it's non partisan, I take you at your word.
Does the existence of other countries who have done better have anything to do with Hilary Clinton as a competent figure? No, it doesn't, and she isn't. You seem to think Trump is uniquely incompetent and that the government, without Trump, would operate like a well oiled machine. I regret to inform you that the U.S government itself is also uniquely incompetent, with figures like Clinton herself embodying this. I think blaming money in politics, and ownership of media by large moneyed interests, is a good starter for a diagnosis of that.
The US and a lesser extent of Iran, are the only countries still on an upward trajectory. Maybe instead of calling everything partisan, you can question why that is.
Without looking up statistics I am already aware of Sweden as an example of another failure, it's not just the U.S and Iran. They have been very lax in security measures during this entire process, no mandatory social distancing or shut downs of businesses, as well as a lack of testing, and because of it the infected and death rates there are much higher than their neighbors Norway and Denmark. Frankly, for a country so small that has access to plenty of resources, facing none of the logistical problems a large nation like the U.S would face, I would say implementing almost zero security measure classifies as possibly the worst example to date. But it's a small country, so it's often forgotten.
Without looking up statistics I am already aware of Sweden as an example of another failure, it's not just the U.S and Iran. They have been very lax in security measures during this entire process, no mandatory social distancing or shut downs of businesses, as well as a lack of testing, and because of it the infected and death rates there are much higher than their neighbors Norway and Denmark. Frankly, for a country so small that has access to plenty of resources, facing none of the logistical problems a large nation like the U.S would face, I would say implementing almost zero security measure classifies as possibly the worst example to date. But it's a small country, so it's often forgotten.
Sweden is approaching the crisis differently. They're aiming for herd immunity by not overwhelmingly locking down the country. The theory is that they'll have a really bad first wave, but the second and third wave will be much much weaker. This is compared to the US, where the second and third wave may be more significant.
It's too early to know which way is correct, although I certainly think I prefer the US's approach to Sweden's. Mind you - apparently Trump has on numerous occasions asked why he couldnt just let the disease "wash over" the US. So it's not like he wasnt seriously considering that approach as well.
(That said - it's entirely possible from this position that the USA will have the worst outcome. If we lift the lockdown approach too early, then we've combined the worst part of both approaches. A bad first wave with significant aftershocks, so to speak. A lot of what Trump talks about sounds like doing exactly that - recall, he initially started sending up trial balloons about ending the lockdown after tonight).
Also, some of the statistics for the USA are skewed somewhat. Considering the general lack of strong federal control of the crisis and the spread out nature of the USA, it's not really fair to compare the USA to France or Germany. More likely, it would make sense to compare regions or even states to countries in Europe. So when people use statistics like "Deaths per 1 million citizens", they're ignoring the fact that the outbreak is still on an upward trajectory in a lot of states, just they are a week or more behind New York.
Hillary wrote about the seriousness of a global pandemic and what would be needed to combat it in her book in 2016. Joe Biden wrote an op-ed on January 27 in USA Today about where this was heading. Then Trump spent the next 40 days pretending everything was hunky dory. All of this happened. So yes, actually, Trump is uniquely incompetent. The only argument left now is to "both sides" the issue and pretend Obama or Hillary would have handled it just as badly. You can have all the issues you want with both of them, and Biden. To suggest they would have down-played and ignored this situation like Donald Trump did is absurd. Again, there is a box full of receipts. It's more like 10 filing cabinets at this point. There is a concerted effort being made to erase January-March. And it comes in many forms. Saying it's "the government" rather than "Trump's government" is one of them.
Without looking up statistics I am already aware of Sweden as an example of another failure, it's not just the U.S and Iran. They have been very lax in security measures during this entire process, no mandatory social distancing or shut downs of businesses, as well as a lack of testing, and because of it the infected and death rates there are much higher than their neighbors Norway and Denmark. Frankly, for a country so small that has access to plenty of resources, facing none of the logistical problems a large nation like the U.S would face, I would say implementing almost zero security measure classifies as possibly the worst example to date. But it's a small country, so it's often forgotten.
Sweden is approaching the crisis differently. They're aiming for herd immunity by not overwhelmingly locking down the country. The theory is that they'll have a really bad first wave, but the second and third wave will be much much weaker. This is compared to the US, where the second and third wave may be more significant.
It's too early to know which way is correct, although I certainly think I prefer the US's approach to Sweden's. Mind you - apparently Trump has on numerous occasions asked why he couldnt just let the disease "wash over" the US. So it's not like he wasnt seriously considering that approach as well.
(That said - it's entirely possible from this position that the USA will have the worst outcome. If we lift the lockdown approach too early, then we've combined the worst part of both approaches. A bad first wave with significant aftershocks, so to speak. A lot of what Trump talks about sounds like doing exactly that - recall, he initially started sending up trial balloons about ending the lockdown after tonight).
Also, some of the statistics for the USA are skewed somewhat. Considering the general lack of strong federal control of the crisis and the spread out nature of the USA, it's not really fair to compare the USA to France or Germany. More likely, it would make sense to compare regions or even states to countries in Europe. So when people use statistics like "Deaths per 1 million citizens", they're ignoring the fact that the outbreak is still on an upward trajectory in a lot of states, just they are a week or more behind New York.
The UK was going for this herd immunity thing too but gave up almost immediately when people started dropping dead and then the Prime Minister ended up in intensive care. He's ok now, but the strategy failed.
Without looking up statistics I am already aware of Sweden as an example of another failure, it's not just the U.S and Iran. They have been very lax in security measures during this entire process, no mandatory social distancing or shut downs of businesses, as well as a lack of testing, and because of it the infected and death rates there are much higher than their neighbors Norway and Denmark. Frankly, for a country so small that has access to plenty of resources, facing none of the logistical problems a large nation like the U.S would face, I would say implementing almost zero security measure classifies as possibly the worst example to date. But it's a small country, so it's often forgotten.
Sweden is approaching the crisis differently. They're aiming for herd immunity by not overwhelmingly locking down the country. The theory is that they'll have a really bad first wave, but the second and third wave will be much much weaker. This is compared to the US, where the second and third wave may be more significant.
It's too early to know which way is correct, although I certainly think I prefer the US's approach to Sweden's. Mind you - apparently Trump has on numerous occasions asked why he couldnt just let the disease "wash over" the US. So it's not like he wasnt seriously considering that approach as well.
(That said - it's entirely possible from this position that the USA will have the worst outcome. If we lift the lockdown approach too early, then we've combined the worst part of both approaches. A bad first wave with significant aftershocks, so to speak. A lot of what Trump talks about sounds like doing exactly that - recall, he initially started sending up trial balloons about ending the lockdown after tonight).
Also, some of the statistics for the USA are skewed somewhat. Considering the general lack of strong federal control of the crisis and the spread out nature of the USA, it's not really fair to compare the USA to France or Germany. More likely, it would make sense to compare regions or even states to countries in Europe. So when people use statistics like "Deaths per 1 million citizens", they're ignoring the fact that the outbreak is still on an upward trajectory in a lot of states, just they are a week or more behind New York.
The UK was going for this herd immunity thing too but gave up almost immediately when people started dropping dead and then the Prime Minister ended up in intensive care. He's ok now, but the strategy failed.
Well I mean - doesnt that remain to be seen? If we accept the premise that herd immunity will "front load" cases, then it's not until a second or third wave comes around that we'll know if it was effective. The idea that someone can catch it twice does seem to be a pretty big issue with this approach, but we dont really know how likely it is for someone to catch it twice yet. It can happen, but I havent seen data that suggests it's going to happen a lot.
I agree, the UK did seem to be going along with a herd immunity approach at first, and did change course rather abruptly once they realized just how bad it was going to get. They're stuck in no man's land - they're one of the hardest hit in Europe, and we dont know if it will be beneficial in the fall.
Either way, I'm not defending the Herd Immunity approach. I'm glad the USA isnt doing it - but I dont think it's reasonable to consider it a total failure yet. We need to see how things play out. We'll know more by the end of the year.
"Herd immunity" with little in the way of testing or safety measures is an objectively terrible idea because we don't even know that getting infected in the first place breeds immunity to the virus. It's not a guarantee. What is a guarantee is that it unnecessarily costs lives. Until we know more, the only good option is to try to take active measures to limit the spread.
People still don't seem to get that this is now our life until a reasonably effective treatment or vaccine is found. The only other options are testing and social surveillance on an unprecedented scale or a whole fuck-ton of body bags. Those are the three options. There is no fourth. The NBA season is not going to restart. Disney World is not going to open in June. If the NFL plays this year, it will be in empty stadiums. There aren't going to be any concerts, festivals, or downtown markets. The 2nd wave of the Spanish Flu was worse than the first. We don't even know when Wave 1 is gonna be over. This is a globe-altering event only on par in recent history with the First and Second World Wars.
People still don't seem to get that this is now our life until a reasonably effective treatment or vaccine is found. The only other options are testing and social surveillance on an unprecedented scale or a whole fuck-ton of body bags. Those are the three options. There is no fourth. The NBA season is not going to restart. Disney World is not going to open in June. If the NFL plays this year, it will be in empty stadiums. There aren't going to be any concerts, festivals, or downtown markets. The 2nd wave of the Spanish Flu was worse than the first. We don't even know when Wave 1 is gonna be over. This is a globe-altering event only on par in recent history with the First and Second World Wars.
As for testing we'd have to test and track who has the virus and isolate them until they aren't shedding the virus and contagious anymore. And even then we'd have to be able to screen every single person (and tiger apparently) who enters the country. In other words, it's impossible.
And testing for the antibodies does not mean anything. You can get it again. People who had the virus are getting reinfected so it would seem that test antibody test is not going to be the answer.
Here I go, only chiming in when my native Sweden is mentioned. A lot of countries seem baffled by the Swedish approach (and there's a lot of debate about it here too). But I find it annoying to see headlines like "Life goes on as normal in Sweden" when nothing is normal and I haven't seen any family or friends in close to two months now.
First off, the Public Health Agency here in Sweden have been pretty clear that their strategy is not to go for herd immunity, since no one knows just when that immunity (if we do get it) will have a significant impact. Their perspective seems to be that the virus will be here for a long time, regardless of any lockdowns and that it's better to focus on making sure the healthcare system can handle it long-term.
That's why the country is not in total lockdown, but not really open either. WHO recently stated that there is a risk that countries will lift their lockdowns too early. The Swedish approach seems to be more to convince people that this is the new normal. We have restrictions in place, but mostly, we as citizens are expected to behave responsibly to prevent the spread.
Which might sound laughable, and the state epidemiologist have said that this approach only really works in countries where people are more prone to follow recommendations from governmental agencies. So far, it's working kiiind of well, and there's a weird mix here in Stockholm. Every kind of event has been cancelled, the subway is empty, very few people in the streets, closed restaurants, no planes in the sky etc. And then suddenly you come across an open restaurant where a whole bunch of people are sitting in the sun with their beers. And I wrote in another thread about how annoyed I was with elderly people totally ignoring social distancing recommendations.
It's because of things like this that the government have warned that they might put tougher restrictions in place soon. Until just a few days ago, they didn't really have the power to do that anyway. Now they have emergency powers to lock down places with short notice. What I do like with the Swedish government's approach is how much they're listening to the Public Health Agency and the National Board of Health and Welfare. They're also willing to change their approach as the situation develops or new data becomes available, which feels encouraging.
As for death rates: they are much higher than our neighbors, and there's a lot of discussions as to why. One theory is that, like in Italy, the virus has started spreading more in the elder care. Norway has a better elder care system in general, that is more tied in with the healthcare system. Meaning that elders who do get sick in Norway might have better and faster access to healthcare than here in Sweden. And it isn't even spreading in the elder care system in Norway yet (as far as I know).
Another theory is that focus on the healthcare system I mentioned. Only people who are actually in hospital get tested here now. They've recently started more wide-spread tests to get an understanding of how many people are sick without knowing it. But before we get those results, our statistics basically only show the situation in hospitals. This have been widely criticized of course, but the argument is that they're not testing less, just that they are focusing all their resources there. This is of course also one of the reasons Germany and South Korea have so low death rates: because they are testing that much more. Which in turn shows that this virus is even more widespread than the statistics indicate.
All that being said, it varies from day to day what I think of my country's approach to this crisis. Somehow, this approach manages to feel naive and sober at the same time. As the state epidemiologist said, all approaches right now are experimental and it will take years before we can tell which one to go for in future pandemics.
As an aside, Sweden is small in population (10 million) but quite large in landmass, about 1600 km long north to south. So logistics can still be quite the problem.
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? .
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
You're citing an op-ed, by a man who is not a journalist (read his brief bio in the article, please). I wish people would learn how to read an actual newspaper before using anecdotes to like these to pillory a whole profession -- journalists. An op-ed article, written by a university professor is not evidence of what "journalists" think about anything.
Please take the time to be more careful before spreading misinformation.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
This is a complete aside from your main points here, with which I agree, but man that chart is all kinds of problematic to me. It looks very pretty, but it's incredibly misleading. It's comparing countries of radically different population sizes, so at a glance it gives the illusion that the US has done worse than Italy for example. I know that's not a point you have made, just citing an example here. It really should have trusted the reader more and been cases per population.
Secondly, the y-axis is all kinds of screwed up, which gives the illusion of a much greater flattening of the US cases than is actually happening. I mean that space where the US cases numbers seems to be leveling off is actually larger than the entire space on the chart below it. (20k-50k)
Comments
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html
A team of reporters obtained HUNDREDS of emails from pandemic experts trying to sound the alarm for months. It makes the warning the Bush Administration got about Bin Laden seem like a single ring of the doorbell. This was a five-alarm fire, everyone was trying to get the man at the top to take it seriously. He was singularly concerned with messaging. We already knew this. This is a historical record. Of a historical failure.
The odd thing about this is that without some kind of martial law, we might be better off that Trump was there. I know it sounds incredible but hear me out. Can you imagine the reaction if Hillary Clinton was in charge and she tried to implement social-distancing from the Oval Office? The same people would have taken it seriously as did with Trump's hemming and hawing, but the far right would have made it their mission to sabotage the entire effort. If you think they're being obtuse now, just imagine that scenario. Think about that before you dismiss it...
I understand what you're getting at, but a.) they're still trying to sabotage the entire effort (even if they can't figure out what that means for 48 hours straight) and b.) it means we're all hostage to whims of 30% of the population and the media they consume. Which is, if we're being honest, basically true. Has been ever since Rush went into national syndication in the early '90s. So while I get your point, you're arguing about the same failure, because Donald Trump is a living manifestation of AM radio. A disciple of Michael Savage (who you may be familiar with). I've never said what they do doesn't work. It works as well as it did at any other time in history. The conservative media grift (and that's all it is) managed to get itself into the White House. This is the result. It's the governmental equivalent of the people who hawk silver pills at 1am on 1080 The Flag. In between commercials for reverse mortgages and dick pills. Great for putting on a show for the cameras, paralyzed to actually solve a problem, must less a once in a century crisis.
then they all get sick. Darwin's law IMO.
But if you want to play what if Hillary Clinton. Clinton wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Clinton wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Clinton would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of her own political consequences. Clinton wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to her crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
IMO, if Clinton was president, the U.S. would be at the same level where Canada is now. It's starting to flatten out, IMO, or you can see here:
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
So if all that happened, she wouldn't have to declare marshal law on the states. The US would have known where the majority of the original cases were with the advanced WHO testing, lock down cases in NY and Cali earlier. National social distancing would be still be a thing, and there would be people disobeying it out of spite, but those same people would be the ones getting sick and dying from it.
This question apparently stunned Dr. Fauci.
“Mr. President, many people would die,” the doctor reportedly told Trump. He keeps asking this though apparently.
Trump heard about the United Kingdom’s now-abandoned “mitigation” strategy that would let COVID-19 spread throughout the country with in the hopes of building a “herd immunity” against the virus.
However, a study by medical advisers to the British government found in mid-March that the strategy would “likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths,” prompting the U.K. to drop the plan.
The same study also predicted that 1.1 to 1.2 million Americans would die if the strategy were adopted in the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-task-forces-coronavirus-pandemic/2020/04/11/5cc5a30c-7a77-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html
The US response is the worst in the world AS IT IS and he wants more people to get infected because it's inconvenient to the stock market.
Like the bitching about teachers, the other one that really gets me riled up is people who complain about the Post Office. I've personally NEVER lost anything in the mail, and what they do on a daily basis in a country this big is a minor miracle. You could be forgiven at this point for believing they are purposefully trying to destroy the country.
I aspire to this level of partisan self delusion. If you can create reality by sheer force of will, I imagine it takes this kind of power.
You think that was partisan? Hell I will go one further:
Ted Cruz wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests back in January. Cruz wouldn't have been playing golf during the first month that this started to break. Cruz would have taken this seriously from the start, put States like Florida in its place regardless of his own political consequences. Cruz wouldn't be hoarding medical supplies and selling them to his crony friends to sell back to the individual states causing a bigger shit show than necessary.
Hell go back and read this https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-cruz-feud-history-worst-attacks-2016-9 and see how often Cruz was on point with many of the things he said during the primary.
I am no fan of Cruz, but even he would have handled this a trillion times better than Trump. It isn’t partisan to think that.
What did he say that was inaccurate?? One of the main media lines used on Clinton was that she was "too prepared", an unlikable harpy akin to Tracy Flick from the movie "Election". Whose reams of detailed policy proposals made her totally unrelatable to the common person. She wouldn't have turned down the WHO tests. She was a former Secretary of State. She would have been on this the moment the reports started coming out of Wuhan. Do you know that some hospitals STILL have excess stocks of Tamiflu from H1N1?? Because the previous Administration knew the only thing to do in these situations is to OVER prepare. Because Democrats aren't a political party that have built themselves on a half-century of anti-intellectualism, where experts are "elitist know-it-alls" and science is really just a plot to over-regulate our lives.
I posted less than two weeks ago a copy of Clinton's deep worry about this type of situation in her policy positions. The pandemic team Trump disbanded would still be in place. It likely would have been beefed up. There is an undeniable record of this Administration shitting the bed for two months and then flat-out lying about the severity for another one before finally being forced to admit the reality by virtue of the existence of mobile morgues being hard to spin. Trump didn't give a fuck beyond managing it through the lens of his reelection, which meant waging a day to day messaging war in the media rather than taking steps to combat the virus. I realize it must be really difficult for people who initially supported this guy to come to terms with the fact that he has brought the country to the brink of destruction, but I'd suggest trying, because that's what happened. Denying it is like denying the sun rises in the East.
It's true though. There would never be a time Hillary, for all her faults, overruled scientists and acted on her gut like Trump does all the time.
The Democratic is not anti-science and would not have decimated the pandemic response team and the CDC. A Democratic response to the pandemic would be based on facts and logic, Republicans have acted on misinformation, emotion, and corruption.
This ignorant response, the worst among countries on planet Earth, is going to cost us a lot more money in the long term and a lot more lives than if we had an administration that took things seriously and relied on experts and not one mans, Donald Trump, and his feelings.
But beyond that, yes, ANY other Republican from the 2016 field would be handling this better. Chris Christie would undeniably have handled it the best (and I can't stand him). Trump is ill-equipped to handle ANY of this simply from a psychological perspective. He is without question a malignant narcissist. It's a serious personality disorder. He not only didn't handle it well, he is INCAPABLE of handling it well, because he is not able to functionally see ANYTHING outside the spectrum of how it benefits him in the immediate moment.
That's a meaningless question, it's fantasy. Debating the merits of an extraordinarily optimistic imaginary scenario sounds like a way for us all to lose. It is inherently resistant to evidence of any sort.
But hey, the journalists are doing it too. I don't get why people got so defensive anytime a right wing person brought her up, considering the elevated status she still enjoys among the party and how they prop her up, despite how she is the embodiment of so much that they claim to hate, even now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/09/how-is-pandemic-going-earth-2-under-president-hillary-clinton/
I'm gonna be as diplomatic as possible here, but this whole "come on, now is not the time to point fingers, we all need to come together" is something I absolutely can't stand. It's the same BS that allowed Bush to sell himself as the "security President" even though 9/11 could have ABSOLUTELY been prevented. Everyone makes mistakes. Governors have made mistakes. DeBlasio, the mayor of NY, did an absolute shit job as well. But the sheer depth of the knowledge the Administration had for FOUR MONTHS before taking action is not something I am willing or will ever be willing to erase or ignore for the sake of some false sense of national unity. And the late-February to mid-March downplaying was even more vile still. We are being asked.......no, we are essentially being ORDERED to pretend this never took place, and it's straight out of an Orwell novel.
Your take is a bad one. Journalists writ large arent putting Clinton on some elevated platform. They're expecting basic competency from her. The kind that Trump hasnt shown much of. The article you cited yourself doesnt put her on an elevated platform at all. It assumes she wouldnt mess up the initial response to COVID 19. Consider that last bit for a second. You think putting someone on an elevated platform is the same thing as assuming they wouldnt botch a national emergency. Maybe some introspection on who is actually being partisan here would be of some use to you.
As a side note - it's completely reasonable and totally normal to try to infer what the country would be doing if the loser of the last election were in power during a crisis. In fact, it's an electoral issue. The idea that we cannot engage in thought experiments like that or it is "a way for us all to lose" - is rather absurd.
It’s also fantasy to assume Trump is the better candidate at this point because Clinton wouldn’t have the backing for marshal law like Trump has which I was first responding to.
And it isn’t resistant to evidence. I compared the US to Canada, where there own provincial conservative governments have been taking this seriously from the beginning and have seen a flattening of the cases.
You can also look at other nations who have seen a sharp decline on the graph I posted such as New Zealand, Norway and Austria and compare what they have done to get their numbers like that to what US (or any country for that matter) has done.
The US and a lesser extent of Iran, are the only countries still on an upward trajectory. Maybe instead of calling everything partisan, you can question why that is.
Or you can just finally listen to Cruz:
“I think in terms of a commander in chief, we ought to have someone who isn't springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls. I think the American people is looking for a commander in chief who is stable and steady and a calm hand to keep this country safe."
Instead of this theoretical person we get Joe Biden (maybe, he still hasn't won yet). Yay...
I'm not going to quote any definitions of the term, because I find that sort of thing obnoxious and it tends to lead to circular arguments. If you say it's non partisan, I take you at your word.
Does the existence of other countries who have done better have anything to do with Hilary Clinton as a competent figure? No, it doesn't, and she isn't. You seem to think Trump is uniquely incompetent and that the government, without Trump, would operate like a well oiled machine. I regret to inform you that the U.S government itself is also uniquely incompetent, with figures like Clinton herself embodying this. I think blaming money in politics, and ownership of media by large moneyed interests, is a good starter for a diagnosis of that.
Without looking up statistics I am already aware of Sweden as an example of another failure, it's not just the U.S and Iran. They have been very lax in security measures during this entire process, no mandatory social distancing or shut downs of businesses, as well as a lack of testing, and because of it the infected and death rates there are much higher than their neighbors Norway and Denmark. Frankly, for a country so small that has access to plenty of resources, facing none of the logistical problems a large nation like the U.S would face, I would say implementing almost zero security measure classifies as possibly the worst example to date. But it's a small country, so it's often forgotten.
Sweden is approaching the crisis differently. They're aiming for herd immunity by not overwhelmingly locking down the country. The theory is that they'll have a really bad first wave, but the second and third wave will be much much weaker. This is compared to the US, where the second and third wave may be more significant.
It's too early to know which way is correct, although I certainly think I prefer the US's approach to Sweden's. Mind you - apparently Trump has on numerous occasions asked why he couldnt just let the disease "wash over" the US. So it's not like he wasnt seriously considering that approach as well.
(That said - it's entirely possible from this position that the USA will have the worst outcome. If we lift the lockdown approach too early, then we've combined the worst part of both approaches. A bad first wave with significant aftershocks, so to speak. A lot of what Trump talks about sounds like doing exactly that - recall, he initially started sending up trial balloons about ending the lockdown after tonight).
Also, some of the statistics for the USA are skewed somewhat. Considering the general lack of strong federal control of the crisis and the spread out nature of the USA, it's not really fair to compare the USA to France or Germany. More likely, it would make sense to compare regions or even states to countries in Europe. So when people use statistics like "Deaths per 1 million citizens", they're ignoring the fact that the outbreak is still on an upward trajectory in a lot of states, just they are a week or more behind New York.
The UK was going for this herd immunity thing too but gave up almost immediately when people started dropping dead and then the Prime Minister ended up in intensive care. He's ok now, but the strategy failed.
Well I mean - doesnt that remain to be seen? If we accept the premise that herd immunity will "front load" cases, then it's not until a second or third wave comes around that we'll know if it was effective. The idea that someone can catch it twice does seem to be a pretty big issue with this approach, but we dont really know how likely it is for someone to catch it twice yet. It can happen, but I havent seen data that suggests it's going to happen a lot.
I agree, the UK did seem to be going along with a herd immunity approach at first, and did change course rather abruptly once they realized just how bad it was going to get. They're stuck in no man's land - they're one of the hardest hit in Europe, and we dont know if it will be beneficial in the fall.
Either way, I'm not defending the Herd Immunity approach. I'm glad the USA isnt doing it - but I dont think it's reasonable to consider it a total failure yet. We need to see how things play out. We'll know more by the end of the year.
I loathe Ted Cruz but I agree he would have handled this 1000% better than Trump could even aspire to.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/questions-remain-covid-19-recovery-guarantee-immunity-reinfection/story?id=70085581
As for testing we'd have to test and track who has the virus and isolate them until they aren't shedding the virus and contagious anymore. And even then we'd have to be able to screen every single person (and tiger apparently) who enters the country. In other words, it's impossible.
And testing for the antibodies does not mean anything. You can get it again. People who had the virus are getting reinfected so it would seem that test antibody test is not going to be the answer.
https://en.as.com/en/2020/04/11/other_sports/1586605325_283292.html
First off, the Public Health Agency here in Sweden have been pretty clear that their strategy is not to go for herd immunity, since no one knows just when that immunity (if we do get it) will have a significant impact. Their perspective seems to be that the virus will be here for a long time, regardless of any lockdowns and that it's better to focus on making sure the healthcare system can handle it long-term.
That's why the country is not in total lockdown, but not really open either. WHO recently stated that there is a risk that countries will lift their lockdowns too early. The Swedish approach seems to be more to convince people that this is the new normal. We have restrictions in place, but mostly, we as citizens are expected to behave responsibly to prevent the spread.
Which might sound laughable, and the state epidemiologist have said that this approach only really works in countries where people are more prone to follow recommendations from governmental agencies. So far, it's working kiiind of well, and there's a weird mix here in Stockholm. Every kind of event has been cancelled, the subway is empty, very few people in the streets, closed restaurants, no planes in the sky etc. And then suddenly you come across an open restaurant where a whole bunch of people are sitting in the sun with their beers. And I wrote in another thread about how annoyed I was with elderly people totally ignoring social distancing recommendations.
It's because of things like this that the government have warned that they might put tougher restrictions in place soon. Until just a few days ago, they didn't really have the power to do that anyway. Now they have emergency powers to lock down places with short notice. What I do like with the Swedish government's approach is how much they're listening to the Public Health Agency and the National Board of Health and Welfare. They're also willing to change their approach as the situation develops or new data becomes available, which feels encouraging.
As for death rates: they are much higher than our neighbors, and there's a lot of discussions as to why. One theory is that, like in Italy, the virus has started spreading more in the elder care. Norway has a better elder care system in general, that is more tied in with the healthcare system. Meaning that elders who do get sick in Norway might have better and faster access to healthcare than here in Sweden. And it isn't even spreading in the elder care system in Norway yet (as far as I know).
Another theory is that focus on the healthcare system I mentioned. Only people who are actually in hospital get tested here now. They've recently started more wide-spread tests to get an understanding of how many people are sick without knowing it. But before we get those results, our statistics basically only show the situation in hospitals. This have been widely criticized of course, but the argument is that they're not testing less, just that they are focusing all their resources there. This is of course also one of the reasons Germany and South Korea have so low death rates: because they are testing that much more. Which in turn shows that this virus is even more widespread than the statistics indicate.
All that being said, it varies from day to day what I think of my country's approach to this crisis. Somehow, this approach manages to feel naive and sober at the same time. As the state epidemiologist said, all approaches right now are experimental and it will take years before we can tell which one to go for in future pandemics.
As an aside, Sweden is small in population (10 million) but quite large in landmass, about 1600 km long north to south. So logistics can still be quite the problem.
You're citing an op-ed, by a man who is not a journalist (read his brief bio in the article, please). I wish people would learn how to read an actual newspaper before using anecdotes to like these to pillory a whole profession -- journalists. An op-ed article, written by a university professor is not evidence of what "journalists" think about anything.
Please take the time to be more careful before spreading misinformation.
This is a complete aside from your main points here, with which I agree, but man that chart is all kinds of problematic to me. It looks very pretty, but it's incredibly misleading. It's comparing countries of radically different population sizes, so at a glance it gives the illusion that the US has done worse than Italy for example. I know that's not a point you have made, just citing an example here. It really should have trusted the reader more and been cases per population.
Secondly, the y-axis is all kinds of screwed up, which gives the illusion of a much greater flattening of the US cases than is actually happening. I mean that space where the US cases numbers seems to be leveling off is actually larger than the entire space on the chart below it. (20k-50k)