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ooh, cripes. The coronavirus is, not surprisingly, also hitting the US military, which seems to have been caught flat-footed.
Probably useful context for the recent high-profile dismissal of Capt. Brett Crozier.
Then I found out that Mr. Trump himself won't wear one, for whatever reason.
Well, better than nothing I guess?
From here. I'm not seeing anything !!! worthy.
I mean, I understand things have changed, but there are still serious issues around scarcity and The Cabal of Expert Doctors still don't seem to understand why masks are effective (or do and were running interference for... themselves I guess?).
Plus, the administration is still doing all it can to secure more masks. So it's not like he's actively doing anything, just expressing a personal preference (which may or may not be unsafe).
Of course the messaging is weird but I'm not going another round at "Donald Trump is bad at messaging". I'd argue that everybody who was actively discouraging masks until literally days ago screwed up (since all 45 did was follow these same people's guidance).
I would have at least worn a mask for the photo-op on this latest occasion, to help get the new point across without looking very silly. And playing consistently into the whole theme of negligence this entire time on his part. Like, I'd do it simply for political and market-reassurance reasons.
The ruling coalition is made of three parties (if there are any more factions I can't be bothered to even think of them). One is a splitter faction of the formerly ruling party, trying to style themselves as intellectual, pro-free-market conservatives, while showing the occasional hint of something more sinister going on behind the scenes. Second is an old splitter faction of the third one now back in the fold, a bunch of angry young wolves without much for themselves except being the younger generation. The third, the dominant party around which the coalition is formed, is somewhere between a right-wing populist-nationalist party and a creepy political cult.
Dramatis personae:
* the Prezzie. The dude I've described in the Polish memes thread, the others barely even pretend he matters, but he's still there in high position. At times, he acts like deep inside he actually didn't want to be a bad guy, elsewhen he tries to toughen up his image and for a change present himself as a tough leader. Star Wars reference: Eps. 7/first half of 8 Kylo Ren.
* the Iznogoud. The leader of the first party, dude presents himself an intellectual type, but seems to be motivated by ambition foremostly. Seems to play the long game, to put himself in position to be the leader of the right wing after the current coalition collapses. Star Wars reference: arguably Eps. 1/2 Palpatine.
* the Psycho For Hire. The leader of the second party, who returned to politics after aligning back with the party he himself left. Clearly more ambition and/or spite than sense, already once collapsed the ruling coalition by going too far (2005-2007). Star Wars reference: Eps. 7/8 Hux.
* the First Citizen. Of the third party, the leader IIRC, but wouldn't even have to be. At once laughable, sheltered ivory-tower type and decrepit devil-in-plain-sight evil visionary. Officially only a random MP, who nonetheless is visited by foreign leaders and has all the other folks defer to him. Hard to say what he really wants, but being a backseat dictator of the country seems to be a part of the deal he wishes for. Star Wars reference: Ep. 7 Snoke, Eps. 3-6 Palpatine.
* the Primey. The prime minister is an odd duck, as being former advisor to the previously ruling party's prime minister should make him about as liked as a close confidante to Trotsky would have been under Stalin, but somehow nobody cares. (Nobody cares because the only law is the Party, and the First Citizen grooms him into a successor.) Star Wars reference: not sure, but somewhere between Eps. 3-5 Vader, Ep. 7 Hux, and EU Thrawn.
So, there's a bit of a menagerie among the righties. These are the chief players; I wondered if I should include the backseat chief of the state television, which over the last five years turned into a blatant propaganda machine, but he has no direct bearing on politics. (He's backseat because the prezzie pushed through his removal from the official chief position. They made him into an "advisor", which was widely understood as a fuck-you gesture to the prezzie.)
Like I said, after the tactical victory-slash-draw favourable towards the opposition in the parliamentary elections, there is a bit of that feeling before the storm. Seams slowly come apart. No longer the only right-wing game in town, after an even fringier party won some seats in the elections. And now, the presidential elections are coming, and about every other opposition candidate had a good opening, with two even having been acclaimed as very good. Meanwhile, the current prezzie had had rather lackluster reception, in spite of the investment in terms of cash and shilling time that was thrown behind him.
The ruling coalition has already made a bunch of more or less blatantly unconstitutional and/or transparently power-grabby decisions. This is of no matter now, as their voters don't really care about it and nothing will be done as long as they are in power, but if they are out of power... you guess.
Here comes the epidemic. With all these quarantines, shit looks like there can't be elections on May 10th. Like there should be declared the state of emergency. But, the state of emergency would mean the elections are postponed till autumn, which gives the opposition a few months more to gather sympathy, and more importantly, a few months more for the ruling coalition to lose sympathy. So they keep pushing for May elections against all logic and reason, while using more and more unconstitutional means to keep up the quarantines. Among the more curious outcomes of this stance is that high school students won't have their exams postponed, because postponing them would imply the elections also should be.
Here comes the personal part: at a time when nothing was yet set in stone, the First Citizen showed up without any kind of warning and gave a public statement that there is no reason not to organise the elections in May. The Prezzie and Primey were previously against; the PFH hastened to publicly support the First Citizen, as if to prop himself up with him in backroom politics against the Primey. This statement baffled pretty much everyone, and now people wonder if it's some sort of complicated ploy, or early sign of senility finally kicking in, or perhaps the result of him living in an echo chamber (a common problem for dictatorial types). The easy interpretation is that they blatantly want to use the epidemic to their favour, counting on the supporters of the other candidates to play safe and stay home (there's some statistical data showing their own wouldn't care about their health as much).
To solve the conundrum, then they came up with the idea of voting by mail. Which has been done last time by like 42000 people out of the whole nation, with the rate of faulty votes six times than in the normal way. Folks are starting to fear that they are panicking and just plain intend to play dirty, what with their new chief of the Post Office, freshly appointed from the Party back row after the previous one was fired for calling the idea stupid.
And the most recent stuff I feel worthy of adding in here is that a well-respected opposition veteran publicly stated the Iznogoud should be made prime minister. He's the only first-line rightie whom both sides may regard as passable, and possibly the only who might be willing, so there is a point to that. But he may have also aimed to play the rightie leaders against each other by a) fanning his ambition, b) fanning the others' mistrust of him.
So, that much for now. Shit certainly looks interesting, whether I'm right or not.
^ I didn't know how much these discussions are improved by Star Wars recerences.
Don't we have a general politics thread? Perhaps you could post there so we don't swamp this one.
Anyhows, stay safe and healthy!
We do, but we all tend to just use this one.
Pete Buttigieg but a rightie?
A lot of politics nerds seem to really be enamored with Star Wars. I'll continue to try really hard (ie by like, just not watching some movies out of all the other movies on the planet) to not be that entirely so I can come off as more hipster.
I love this. To be fair, your opposition leader wasn't kidnapped or anything.
How completely not suspicious at all.
Huh. Forgot about that one completely. I'm leaving the decision to those who can move posts.
Florida Man Intentionally Implements Inefficient Software For Government Agency, Is Rewarded With Second Term As Governor And Then Election To U.S. Senate
https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2020/04/04/florida-saw-a-pandemic-coming-and-prepared-then-state-leaders-started-to-cut/
And yes, there has been a hepatitis A outbreak in Florida over the past year, and still ongoing. It's just been basically eclipsed by COVID-19. (The tuberculosis outbreak has beengoing on
(Emphasis mine.)
This.
Matt Hudson is a Republican member of the House of Representatives; his seat covers parts of Collier and Hendry counties, in southwest/south-central Florida. Rick Scott, of course, is the former governor and now U.S. Senator, and also a Republican.
Let's not forget that Scott, before being elected governor in 2010, had been chairman and CEO at Columbia/HCA when it perpetrated what was then the biggest documented case of healthcare fraud in the entire country (based on settlement size), and he was pressured to resign and later pleaded the Fifth with regards to these things.
Of course, Scott just had to later go on to found Conservatives for Patients' Rights, to push "free-market" healthcare policies. (This was also before he got elected governor.)
----
Things are still running right now, so I should probably wait a while before posting an update, but the news of the day is that the Iznogoud announced he resigns from the post of the vice-First Minister. Although apparently it's a protest, it does not seem to lead to any notable changes, and cynics already claim he did it only as a show for the public. The idea is that this does not change anything, he's still supporting the current administration, and if his recommendation is heeded, he will be replaced by one of his close collaborators anyway. The ruling coalition surprisingly lost a vote today, but I haven't been following it GMH-level closely to have a good grasp on how much does it change.
> reducing bureaucracy
While it's a good principle to reduce red tape and the analness of official paperwork, the "government is not the solution; government is the problem" meme basically turns this principle into a crusade against a strawman, and forgets why the bureaucracy was conceived of in the first place. (And no, it was not created just to make work for paper pushers, even if there may be some such people in there.)
I think we all think this but we're pretty good at it.
Basically.
Anyways, I'm gonna be that guy and say there are a couple of claims in that article that make me want for the other side of the story. I mean, I'm guessing his whole policy positions had to be published in large working papers rather than him just standing on a podium and going "I'm saving money!" or "those darned bureaucrats!"
I will try and eke out some time eventually to go through what Rick Scott's claims were. He has a website but it doesn't even have a search function so this'll be fun.
I notice that a lot of the time when Americans talk about "free-market" healthcare policies, they mean something where insurers are heavily embedded between the patients and their caregivers, which is so extremely clearly the problem to start with.
I mean, I understand people are terrified to think of paying "out of pocket" for healthcare, but I'm assuming there would be a decent market price depression (to be clear I mean this in a good way) if a lot of the lower-end health issues weren't covered by ironclad health insurance.
And the government won't help either, cause every insurer and financier who attended even a single class in risk management can easily tell you that "government financing is risk free!", ie you can scalp the government for anything cause they always figure out how to pay (like right now with all the vaguely bombastic borrowing the US government is doing to fund it's stimulus packages) or face heavy penance (see: early 2010's Greece and it's EU overlords).
The government could help by questioning insurer's policies and how they jig and rejig prices on all procedures, but I feel like every time i hear American politicians talk about pricing it's either "Iunno" or "It's cause they're greedy!" (which is sort of true but helps nobody figure anything out).
CPR appears to be dead, unfortunately. I wanted to check out their claims and stuff, but I guess it collapsed after the ACA passed?
Rick Scott was a hospital executive who created CPR (2009) before he became Governor of Florida (2011), and I'm assuming the organization probably floundered before he became Governor (or he let it die so he could focus on the run).
Anyways, I will give you that's it's pretty clear why a hospital executive would have been concerned with the whole ACA thing for personal financial reasons, but that doesn't mean he definitely went into the political arena with that in mind. But then:
I mean, this guy should have been all for ACA to an extent. I mean, just cause they were charged once, doesn't mean they stopped.
To be fair, I guess this reveals another motive for his career; he knew how easily a government system could be gamed.
Then again, he was one of the major founders/co-owners of Ajitor (along with... his daughter!), which is one of those price comparison sites whose revenue comes straight out of figuring out what insurance you should get. However, he sold this company (2008) before starting CPR, but that may have been for appearances purposes.
He had a surprisingly impressive career, which I guess makes a lot of sense of these Late Politicker types.
Anyways, it seems when he became Senator, he had his whole site re-vamped which wiped out his governor work (a genuine oversight, rather than any sinister attempt at hiding things).
Vaguely relatedly:
No. Do not name your laws in this super dumb way. It's dumb and nobody really cares.
Anyways, it seems from what I've seen so far that Scott is interested in smaller government, which means less bureaucracy. Similarly, he's less interested in direct help and more in helping those who help themselves*, whilst nerfing those who may require direct help by making it harder to acquire it.
*
Of course, not exactly the ideals held tight you'd like during a pandemic, but it doesn't make him abjectly selfish or bad. You could say he has really thick My Way or The Highway Moral Glasses on.
For goodness sakes trying to find anything this guy wrote before Nov. 2018 is a nightmare.
EDIT: For darned-the-danged-darnedness sakes NR why do you need ten entire articles about how Rick Scott betrayed everybody by getting on the Medicaid expansion boat? It's making this search like... ten times harder!
Meanwhile I keep forgetting (as in, for at least a week or two now) to mention how Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault by a woman called Tara Reade. The claims made are more damaging than the whole fiasco about a certain Supreme Court nominee. As a far off participant, I find this whole thing thoroughly confusing (as it always is) but I certainly can say the #MeToos and #TimesUppers aren't playing their usual game right now.
I mean, it is a bad time overall to try and get to the top of the news cycle right now outside of the obvious but it's quite weird (I won't say telling, I'll mention I wanted to say it though). I mean, it has generated some drama, but that's between two Charmed co-stars rather than the involved parties (I still say Rose McGowan is kind of insane but even a broken clock is right twice a day, especially amongst Hollywood types).
Well apparently some people do, but I agree that Fun With Acronyms is really silly (and not in a good way).
> Similarly, he's less interested in direct help and more in helping those who help themselves*, whilst nerfing those who may require direct help by making it harder to acquire it.
Thing is, the idea of using this means to promote "helping those who help themselves" while discouraging direct-help applicants is really not the right idea.
Filing for unemployment benefits is (1) really not a lucrative thing to do (and definitely not more lucrative than actually having a job, in at least many cases), (1') really not a fun thing to do (and definitely not more fun than actually having a job), (2) rife with requirements and red tape already, (3) basically a safety net of last resort, to give a person a bit of extra cash to help them make ends meet while they're looking for a new job, because the job search and hiring process can take a while, while layoffs can happen instantaneously. (And of course, good luck getting a new job if there's a major economic downturn, which is precisely when a ton more people than usual will apply for unemployment benefits.)
Not to mention that implementing a shitty computer system in order to realize this motive would be, at the very least, a dishonorable way to do it. Besides, if you really want people to look for work ASAP, you shouldn't be wasting their time making them weave through an error-prone website for unemployment benefits; you'd just be finding ways to deny them quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, error-prone site infrastructure means more calls from regular folks to the government's call center, and more calls from the government agency to tech support. This isn't efficient government; this isn't small government either. It's just entirely unnecessary bullshit.
> For goodness sakes trying to find anything this guy wrote before Nov. 2018 is a nightmare.
My guess is that he probably wants it this way.
wow
TL;DR FL governor Ron DeSantis refuses to release names of elder-care facilities that have had a positive test for coronavirus, despite open-records law; local paper sues on the basis of the open-records law; DeSantis's lawyer calls local paper's law firm and gets them to tell one of their lawyers (the one who would be the plaintiff's lead counsel) to stand down.
1. the lawsuit is still proceeding; the local paper hired a different law firm.
2. the lawsuit seeks only names of institutions; it does not seek names of employees or residents/patients.
3. [direct quote from article] "Under Florida’s public records law, records are considered public unless the custodian can provide a legal basis for withholding them." However, "The state has yet to provide a legal justification for its refusal to provide records."
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/11/why-ron-desantis-popularity-has-taken-a-hit-since-the-pandemic-started/
A few interesting observations, in addition to the general summary of his missteps:
1. This might explain why he seemed more reasonable at first regarding what policies he was willing to sign/support/implement.
2. DeSantis's various missteps somewhat mirror the Trump administrations's missteps regarding this crisis -- acting too late, mixed messages on policy, and promoting questionable cures -- is consistent with the idea that he might be "returning to form" as a heavily-conservative backbencher (i.e. someone not known for accomplishing much), which was his reputation when he was in Congress. This would also be consistent with his pushing out some wiser advisors who are probably more capable of thinking beyond politicking.
3. Finally, some insight as to why Scott was able to fall upward despite all his problems.
Meanwhile, though, he still was the one who paid $77M of our money for computers shitting out errors.
https://ktar.com/story/3074025/navajo-nation-president-describes-water-internet-issues-amid-covid-19/
https://www.wuft.org/nation-world/2020/04/04/as-coronavirus-cases-rise-navajo-nation-tries-to-get-ahead-of-pandemic/
the backdrop of drought: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2853/seeking-drought-relief-the-navajo-turn-to-nasa/
Sadly, this is what a lot of us are stuck with doing.
And no, it definitely is not meant to be a panacea. It's more of a panic button. And it comes as no surprise that some people depend heavily on some services and economic activities that are hit hard by this -- from low-income retail workers to Native Americans living in arid areas. That is, incidentally, part of why some services get deemed essential.
Meanwhile, though, mask-wearing is gradually becoming normalized. And a variety of states have started talking with each other about how to reopen (I remember reading that the continential west coast states are discussing this as are the New England states).
I didn't say they were.
We've already discussed this before.
It's a one-size-fits-all solution to curbing the spread that has been utilized almost everywhere across the Northern hemisphere the last time I checked.
Most of all, I was making an off-the-cuff comment that clearly had no policy behind it. As I mentioned before, I can't see the future but I do I have my preferred means of dealing with this (which are not what's going on).
I guess, to be serious now:
It didn't have to be this way. Most governments chose to do this pre-thinking about it (or post-postponing thinking about it). Hence the stimulus they keep having to pass post-implementation. I guess in this sense, they did treat it as a panic button, but I don't expect elected officials to be like "Hey, we panicked, chill out." when asked about their decision making processes.
I mean suddenly, post-Easter, everybody and their grandfather* is like "Hey, maybe we should re-open the economy so we don't accidentally make everything worse."
I can't tell if you mean obviously essential services (which is why they were deemed essential to start with) or some thing I don't know about where politicians classified jobs that weren't essential as essential to help the workers out.
Considering how hard "Don't wear masks!" was pushed I'm surprised this stuck.
Though I've seen a lot of reusable cloth masks around and I question how effective those are considering the guidance I've heard suggests not even wearing the same disposable mask more than once. I guess washing helps?
There's still a lot of people whose would prefer to be more cautious and to keep doing stay-at-home even on their own, and many of them still support a continuation of stay-at-home orders for the time being.
Note that people are talking about timeframes on the order of one or two months. Not suddenly saying "oh it's over, go back to pre-coronavirus activities immediately". (Not like that's even practically possible in some cases.)
(Also, it's somewhat of a misnomer to characterize the entire economy as "closed", as there's still a lot of stuff going on, despite the severe economic disruptions. It's just very much a non-equilibrium state.)
> Most governments chose to do this pre-thinking about it (or post-postponing thinking about it). Hence the stimulus they keep having to pass post-implementation. I guess in this sense, they did treat it as a panic button, but I don't expect elected officials to be like "Hey, we panicked, chill out." when asked about their decision making processes.
No, they didn't do this "pre-thinking about it"; they thought this through carefully. It's a risk-benefit analysis with a high degree of uncertainty but it's still something that can be analyzed with a level head.
And by "panic button" I don't mean "omg i have no idea what to do *hits button*". I mean it's the last line of security, one that's painful but can lock things down temporarily while things get sorted out. Kinda like how the online game retailer Steam offers a panic button in the form of an account lock that temporarily disables all purchases/transactions/community features, which can be used if one thinks that one's account is being hijacked (I've used it before so I know how it works). The choice to use such a "panic button" can't be assumed to be irrational, as it is very often a rational decision, just one designed for speed.
Also, it's not that everyone is "suddenly" saying that we should try to return to normalcy. People -- including the very people who decided on these stay-at-home orders -- have wanted this since day 1, and have not been shy about voicing this opinion at all, even talking about how much they wish they can get back to something as simple as hugging family members. The understanding has always been that such measures are temporary; it's just that we don't know how temporary they will be.
And all these municipal leaders are fully aware of the economic disruption. That's why you have mayors (like mine) putting out list of restaurants that are offering takeout/delivery, for example, not to mention the bunch of resources regarding small business loans.
TL;DR I disagree with what appears to be your assessment that stay-at-home orders were decided upon in haste and without thinking things through
> I can't tell if you mean obviously essential services (which is why they were deemed essential to start with) or some thing I don't know about where politicians classified jobs that weren't essential as essential to help the workers out.
I actually had both in mind.
> I guess washing helps?
Soap and alcohol are known to be very effective against coronaviruses' lipid envelopes, so that probably works well.
See, I'm pretty cool with the first half of this statement. No doubt a lot of the uncertainty being built into economic models right now has to do with people's apprehension to leaving their homes which will affect any potential comebacks post-lockdowns (whenever that is).
However, the second part is trying to argue a consensus, which there isn't as yo admit in the first half. I'd prefer if they lifted the house arrest, issue strong guidelines (rather than overly-intense edicts), keep... [this is hard for me to say, but I guess here I'd go with "most" to err on the side of prudence, rather than say "some" like I want to] non-essential businesses closed, and see where it goes.
Who would realistically argue for this? And, as I mentioned before, the people who you're mentioned would not be up for this and would act extremely cautiously and maybe continue to err on the side of stricter guidelines.
I mean, in all seriousness, Italy and Spain are letting some non-essential infrastructure workers go back to work and are considering letting schools of all things re-open (along with the book stores that support the whole knowledge ecosystem).
I disagree with you. I mean, a lot of people waited until the WHO declared it a pandemic, which frankly was waaaay too late. Most people didn't even change their minds on the trajectory of this thing until the WHO declared it a pandemic.
I mean Ursula von Der Leyen was still playing her "We need to unite as the EU~" (ie not close borders) harp until... well... until she kind of just disappeared from the public eye for a bit (only to re-emerge to use the deaths of actual human beings as a rhetorical bludgeoning weapon against Italy and Spain).
At the start of this, there was a lot of posturing via prescribed lines. Nobody was taking it as seriously as they should have, and now I'd argue they're all taking it way too seriously.
That's what I assumed you meant, and it's still basically "Well, we panicked, chill out and don't ask questions about any other possible options we could have employed."
Obviously, China lied/is lying it's but off about the numbers and for some reason the WHO bought it, but the leaders of each country should have been extremely skeptical of this data and started acting accordingly almost as soon as Wuhan was locked down. Instead, we had them waiting till the WHO couldn't keep the cat in the bag any longer.
I'm not sure what this line of argument is. Do you honestly think I'm saying the people who are erring on the side of hypercaution somehow want things to be this way? All I'm saying is that I think they're wrong to act like his.
Everybody wants to hug their family members if it scores them political points.
That is to say, frankly, this matters very little in the grand scheme of things (I mean we all have people we want to hug that we can't, doesn't make anybody special).
Did you think I thought otherwise?
Actually though, no way this is lasting 18 months. Government or not, humanity wasn't built to be micromanaged. We no longer live under theocracy*, so nobody is even afraid of a mighty smiting or eternal damnation anymore.
Therefore, Government is meant to serve us, the people. Government can only keep you safe to the degree that you agree with (hence people dying of like, drinking themselves to death, and alcoholism in general). Quite obviously, Government cannot protect you from contracting the coronavirus, it can only put in place measures that prevent you from contracting it.
This is a serious conflict between the rights of the individual and the rights of society, and time is not it's friend.
*I initially misspelled this as theocrazy, which... yeah.
TL;DR Stay-at-home orders were only issued after it became clear that people's prescribed narratives wouldn't keep this thing at bay, after the WHO took China's word for it. Despite China being a known liar about everything that makes it look bad.
Also, they can only last as long as the people's will allows.
Anyways, I also wanted to comment on the Trump administration halting all WHO funding from like right now, pending review. Personally, I agree with this move, but like... maybe wait until after they deal with the novel coronavirus?
Of course, the US is going to funnel all of the aid it meant to put in already through USAID instead, but that could (most likely will) have an undesirable lead-time.
The one thing that can be argued that people weren't sufficiently proactive on was the recommendation on mask usage.
Honestly I really feel that you're seeing this very much filtered through a bunch of secondhand (and often opinionated) commentary, as opposed to a "what people on the ground are actually doing" look.
I don't see the "don't ask questions" part.
And regardless of whether China was lying about its numbers, the fact remains that the U.S. unwisely pulled scientific/technical staff out of China before this hit the world stage.
Meanwhile, a damn lot of places -- including the city where I live -- saw shit coming down the pipe a while before it was declared a pandemic. Don't blame the WHO for the Trump administration's failings.
The pandemic or the stay-at-home orders?
a) Do you honestly think I sit around waiting for Ben Shapiro or somebody to tell me what to think?
b)
[...]
I didn't just make this up.
And here I was thinking this was a good display of U.S. federalism at work.
Anyways, what exactly did Floridian lawmakers do before March 1st. I'd just... genuinely like to know.
It's a soft approach to it. I mean, if people are becoming infected with a new disease and dying, then we should give our governments a free pass because they did one thing when they might have had options beyond that.
The Trump administration prevented:
a) The WHO from knowing this could be transmitted from human to human in January, even though Taiwan specifically told them about it?
b) The WHO from tweeting about how travel bans weren't all that effective?
c) The WHO (and CDC) from insisting civilians shouldn't wear masks?
d) The WHO from issuing disclaimers about Chinese information?
I'm not disputing that, but for goodness sakes how the heck were they supposed to know this was going to happen before it did? Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China are bad right now.
However, the WHO went into China after this started happening, and then bought the lies which it then sold to basically the rest of the world. Wonderful, isn't it?
Again, could you please provide any backing information on this?
I mean, for example, we all know officials had no idea this was coming this hard, and so as I said they stuck to prescribed narratives.
Trying to Google news from literally last month has become impossible.
Related-But-Not-Really
Also related to an argument we had a while back, the EU has blanket rules on airlines maintaining their slots at airports which it has relaxed due to all the lack of travel. However, the EU has blanket cross-EU rules on airlines maintaining their slots at airports. How is this a thing? It's really dumb as a thing. There are surely other ways to check financial stability or overall capacity or whatever.
FYI the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
The first e-mail from our mayor about COVID-19 was on March 4.
People around here were already quite wary of this by the time I attended an (unrelated) event on March 7.
As for the WHO, the metaphorical cat was not only out of the bag but already screaming at the entire neighborhood, by January 30: "For all of these reasons, I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern over the global outbreak of novel coronavirus."
Are you alleging some sort of ideological agenda? Note that these municipalities are directly disincentivized from shutting down the very businesses that form their tax base.
And remember that the "panic button" is a lot faster than ideas like "make specific recommendations on how to go about life and conduct business in a time of a respiratory disease pandemic". The strategy has been to make a speedy response that buys time to produce a slower, more fine-tuned response.
And the Trump administration did not have to make things worse in the years before COVID-19 hit.
(see other commentary in post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/07/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-response-is-increasingly-damning/
Also this article is a lot of anger/bluster towards one guy when basically everybody shares the blame. Like this Azar thing. Everybody has their efforts to push in the White House, and it's up to Donald Trump (and some of those under him) to try and figure out which things are relevant. Was Donald Trump supposed to be prescient and magically know this was the one thing that would end up relevant?
All I'm saying here is that the main experts these leaders were meant to be listening to really, really bombed this (but the WHO would definitely win Prism Queen of bombing this thing), resulting in everybody just going on as normal about things.
No, I'm just saying in general officials easily escape questioning and scrutiny when stakes are this high. All officials of all political and ideological stripes (except the bad orange man, obviously).
Nobody said people aren't genuinely concerned or scared.
An event that went ahead!
As I said:
I mean, you can be prudent and expect something to happen, but that's rarely the side anybody errs on. It's not the side I would err on.
The WHO has declared a lot of things more important than they are. You noted yourself that people in your area only started taking it seriously when the word "pandemic" was floated around, possibly/probably when the chatter started within the political class.
In fact, you can tell yourself that the language in this statement was couched really hard to prevent people taking it as seriously as they should have been.
Anyways, it's starting to feel like we're going in like... not a circle, but like... imagine a fruit roll up that's like... rolled up, and somebody is somehow surgically cutting pieces out of certain places and then replacing them with fuzzy static. I think we should wind this down.
Especially since I'm not sure how this started. Weren't we talking about Native Americans or something?