COVID-19

[Pop Trash]

Previous administrations, from both ends, were smarter than shutting down the early warning and advanced preparedness teams that were already in place. In 2005 nobody debated whether to let the professionals and scientists do their thing, they just gave them the resources and hoped for the best. The US right now is a mockery in that respect even compared to Bush years.

Maybe. I remain unconvinced more bureaucracy is needed. Anyone who has worked at large scale fed or state organizations (myself included) knows there's lots of byzantine red tape towards getting anything done if left to their own devices. Ultimately, a bull in a China shop (no pun intended) type like Trump is actually better for lighting a fire under the ass of bureaucrats. I also think other large scale orgs like the WHO not only didn't help much, they may have cost lives. They were part of the group initially criticizing Trump's China travel ban and putting out CCP propaganda like a Jan 14th statement that there was no peer-to-peer transmission of COVID-19.

[[ETM]]

But that's the thing - you can't apply the same principle to EVERYTHING and expect the same results. It's the major issue with unregulated capitalism itself. And that's what Trump thinks is the way to run the most powerful country in the world. Also - why do you think it's "bureaucracy"? These things can be run very simply and smoothly, IF you have enough sense to let, for example, science and experts influence how things are run instead of "the market".

[MadMan]

Morris I think you can offer opinions on the US government. Considering we are supposed to be this big super power the US' actions affect plenty.

[Ezee E]

I like how people try to say we should do what Icemark/Denmark/New Zealand are doing like it's a comparable option.

Germany, on the other hand... What the heck are they doing?

[transmogrifier]

Trump is an incompetent moron. If no-one else was likely to have done better, then your country is fucked.

[Irish]

The United States and South Korea had their first confirmed cases on the same day (January 20).

New cases per day in South Korea:



New cases per day in the United States:



See the difference?

(Before anyone squawks about demographics, keep in mind that South Korea is a country of ~50 million people crammed into an area roughly the size of Southern California.)

Trump went golfing 4 or 5 times from mid-January to mid-March. He held a half dozen campaign rallies during that period, where he called the virus a "Democrat hoax." Nobody at the federal level took the virus seriously. Trump actively downplayed it. They had a solid 2 months to prepare and they did nothing. Instead, they made the situation worse.

A capable administrator and a functioning government wouldn't have left individual state governors to twist in the wind. They wouldn't have created a 3-way bidding war for supplies between the states and the federal government. They wouldn't have sent FEMA all over the country to seize PPE supplies and send them God knows where. We wouldn't have seen governors on TV screaming for help, or TV footage of NYC nurses wearing garbage bags to protect themselves. (This in the "greatest country in the world," mind you.)

Covid isn't a political issue in the sense of Democrat versus Republican, because there's a very obvious power vacuum at the top. Any administration would have been better than none.

I can't believe some of you are making excuses for Trump. Are you serious? Trolling? Or just that dumb?

I think there's no shame in admitting that counter-measures were perhaps not entirely what they should have been. These are unusual times and although we expect our Government to literally do everything right in the name of our safety, the reality is probably different and there's always gonna be opposing camps in such matters.

23,000 Americans are dead, Morris.

But I don't live in America, so I have no right to say anything on the matter.

23,000.

[transmogrifier]

I can speak for the Sth Korean experience, at least; the government here was originally criticized for being slow in some respects - it has never banned all flights from China, for example, when doing so may have prevented that surge in early March, which was linked to Wuhan church members - but once the surge happened, it has been happy to follow the advice of top medical officials and has been testing rigorously and isolated the infected (It did postpone schools from starting up before the surge, and they are still closed). Also, right from the start, no one in the government ever downplayed the problem - it has held daily briefings with members of the department in charge of these things, and they have clearly outlined the statistics and what they are doing currently to stem the tide. It helps that the population have been pretty good about wearing masks on public transport and in socially isolating because of past experience with SARS, MERS etc.

It's just been calm, competent leadership so far that has been happy to let medical professionals take the lead, combined with an excellent medical infrastructure and pandemic preparations. It's not over yet though; who knows what will happen when schools reopen.

I've been happy with how NZ has handled it as well.

[Irish]

^ Meanwhile, the governor of New York.

Trump is so stupid he might force a Constitutional crisis between the feds and the states. Oops?

[Dukefrukem]

Cuomo 2020-2024

[transmogrifier]

Has anyone in the US on here gotten their stimulus in direct deposit yet? Supposedly started on Saturday. Nothing in mine. I'm pretty sure I did direct deposit for fed tax refunds those years, but I'm not 100% positive.

Might be a hold up...

[Pop Trash]

Trump is an incompetent moron. If no-one else was likely to have done better, then your country is fucked.

Not nearly as fucked as Italy, Spain, UK, France, Netherlands, Sweden, etc. Lower amount of COVID-19 per 1M population per capita, lower death rate per 1M population per capita, higher testing rate per 1M population per capita. Aren't these the "socialists" we are supposed to be emulating?

Ps. FUCK the W.H.O.

[Pop Trash]

Might be a hold up...

haha B A S E D

[transmogrifier]

Not nearly as fucked as Italy, Spain, UK, France, Netherlands, Sweden, etc. Lower amount of COVID-19 per 1M population per capita, lower death rate per 1M population per capita, higher testing rate per 1M population per capita. Aren't these the "socialists" we are supposed to be emulating?

Ps. FUCK the W.H.O.

What does socialism have to do with it? Aren't we talking about competent responses to a pandemic? New Zealand and Korea shit all over your results, and we have socialized healthcare, but it wouldn't have made a difference if our leaders had been morons.

[Pop Trash]

What does socialism have to do with it? Aren't we talking about competent responses to a pandemic? New Zealand and Korea shit all over your results, and we have socialized healthcare, but it wouldn't have made a difference if our leaders had been morons.

So the entirety of Western Europe (save Germany maybe) is utterly incompetent? Go USA?!

[transmogrifier]

So the entirety of Western Europe (save Germany maybe) is utterly incompetent? Go USA?!

Population density (people per square km) + % of population over 65:

Korea - 517 + 13.9%
Netherlands - 420 + 18.8%
UK - 274 + 18.5%
Italy - 200 + 23.0%
France - 123 + 19.7%
Spain - 93 + 19.4%
US - 34 + 15.4%
NZ - 18 + 15.3%

I know many Americans love to reduce everything down to a left vs. right shitfest, but sometimes, there is a little more nuance, you know?

[Morris Schæffer]

23,000 Americans are dead, Morris.



23,000.

To be sure, all over the world, a terrible tragedy. There are no perfect counter-measures, casualties were always going to result, I'm sorry to say. 23,000 is huge, but so is the US population in comparison to most European countries. That said, I'm not saying people can't be critical, they should be, and hopefully lessons will be learned. Not only in the US.

[Pop Trash]

Population density (people per square km) + % of population over 65:

Korea - 517 + 13.9%
Netherlands - 420 + 18.8%
UK - 274 + 18.5%
Italy - 200 + 23.0%
France - 123 + 19.7%
Spain - 93 + 19.4%
US - 34 + 15.4%
NZ - 18 + 15.3%

I know many Americans love to reduce everything down to a left vs. right shitfest, but sometimes, there is a little more nuance, you know?

So is Cuomo to blame that half of all USA deaths & cases are in New York?

[transmogrifier]

So is Cuomo to blame that half of all USA deaths & cases are in New York?

You are terrible at this. Stop for a second, look at the figures, think for a while, and then type. I mean, are you even paying attention to anything except "Someone disagrees with me"?

YOU said Trump has done as well as anyone could have.
I disagree (because he is a moron and has acted as such)
YOU are the one who bought up the deaths and cases stats and snarkily evoke "socialism"
I reply by saying the figures are a mix of a number of factors, and that leadership will obvious have an impact on these.
YOU just bring up deaths and cases again, only now for a Democrat, rather than socialist countries.

I don't know if Cuomo is to blame. Is he? He may be or he may not be, because leadership ability and not being a moron is not a fucking partisan issue, is it? But you keep racing back to making it a left vs. right thing, because apparently it is the only frame of reference you have.

[Peng]

It's just bizarre to see the whataboutist "but the same all over the world", "but the media", "but the [insert group one personally doesn't like here]" homilies normalizing him, with how much Trump is an aberration of a human to have this much power regardless of political side, and when he has never shown anything worth given that level of benefit of doubt. Even living under one of the most incompetent dictatorships ever, I still count it a small mercy that there's no one remotely like Trump within our government here. One shudders to think how bad any country will get if a Trump is given that kind of power structure.

[Peng]

Literally after I typed the above someone retweeted this into my tl, lol:

[kuehnepips]

Germany, on the other hand... What the heck are they doing?

Better, Germany is ruled by a grown up woman.

I miss Cinema, and pubs though ...

[Ezee E]

I miss Cinema, and pubs though ...

Absolutely this.

[Ezee E]

I'd also say Australia and India seem to have done an admirable job too.

[Morris Schæffer]

Literally after I typed the above someone retweeted this into my tl, lol:

Not sure what to make of that first Trump tweet. It reads like he has no clue what he's doing. Some politicians in Belgium also failed to anticipate the true force of the Virus and they too were castigated afterwards. Does that mean they're unworthy of the position? I think constructive criticism is a good thing, but with a calamity on this scale, who's really got all the answers right away? Perhaps politicians who've experienced such a thing before, they might have something to fall back to, but if not?

Is it not ok to come out with one statement, and then dramatically revise it afterwards if it turns out that things were underestimated? Can that not happen in the life of a politician? Or in an administration? To you and me? Sure, people are dead and still dying, but could that have been avoided altogether? No right? People still die of the flu each year.

What I think I understand is that he wouldn't blame himself for anything, and some humility might serve him well, makes him more human. Then again, politicians want to get re-elected don't they?

[Lazlo]

Not sure what to make of that first Trump tweet. It reads like he has no clue what he's doing. Some politicians in Belgium also failed to anticipate the true force of the Virus and they too were castigated afterwards. Does that mean they're unworthy of the position? I think constructive criticism is a good thing, but with a calamity on this scale, who's really got all the answers right away? Perhaps politicians who've experienced such a thing before, they might have something to fall back to, but if not?

Is it not ok to come out with one statement, and then dramatically revise it afterwards if it turns out that things were underestimated? Can that not happen in the life of a politician? Or in an administration? To you and me? Sure, people are dead and still dying, but could that have been avoided altogether? No right? People still die of the flu each year.

What I think I understand is that he wouldn't blame himself for anything, and some humility might serve him well, makes him more human. Then again, politicians want to get re-elected don't they?

That's because he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. He's just scrambling to get through each day's news cycle.

Trump didn't underestimate things by mistake or based on developing information. He did it because he thought the truth would make him look bad and hurt the markets, which is one of his only personal measurements of success. And now he's claiming he acted perfectly, as he always claims, while holding destructive vendettas against people who disagree with him and relying on C-grade advisors to develop his plan for moving forward. He doesn't deserve all the blame, but he also doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt or any grace for having made an honest mistake.