I hear you. I see other aspects to what you're saying. Different vantage point, maybe.

Plus I admit to not totally grasping the Brexit stuff.

And why do you call Trump a cunt for having actually more foresight that his political rivals, who downplayed the Corona threat well into February? — Nobeernolife

Hmm. Care to name any of those political rivals?

:up:

Yet it's the Chinese and the Dems' fault he couldn't figure out that COVID was a threat — Baden

The Chinese government is to blame for the pandemic. https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devastating-lies/

Sounds like the Republican governor of Georgia, who just discovered a few days ago that COVID is infectious before symptoms show and finally issued a stay at home order on that basis. Feckless, intellectually lazy, self-serving parasites. — Baden

It's all bullshit from top to bottom. The CDC announces today you should wear a cloth over your face when you go to the grocery store because they just realized (1) any sort of mask helps and (2) they didn't realize how the disease could spread among the asymptomatic until now. Total bullshit. They just wanted to save masks for doctors and their secret is out, so they about face in this.

And this isn't just an American thing. No European country wears masks and WHO said they did no good.

At the end of this this, we'll realize that a box of masks and a pair of goggles was all we ever needed. You can't get it any way except through your eyes, mouth, and nose. Incompetence from the CDC to WHO from the US to all of Europe.

My takeaway isn't greater reliance on government, but outright distrust either due to their arrogance, incompetence, or malice, but whatever their motive, total distrust. I actually trust Trump's hunches and wild accusations more than the calm deliberative bullshit I hear from the "experts."

If the Chinese are not a race, how can it be racist to criticize the Chinese response to this pandemic? — NOS4A2

Don't be an idiot. "Racism" is a term used to denote cultural chauvinism. The biological notion of 'race' is totally irrelevant in that context.

At the end of this this, we'll realize that a box of masks and a pair of goggles was all we ever needed. — Hanover

Uh huh, and you keep those on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until there's no more infected people in the world?

The vast majority do survive COVID-19, so that was never the issue. — frank

Correct. The actual issue is that when faced with a risk where the downside is large (or should I say yuuuge - in this case, millions of lives lost), we should not take that risk. We also should not try to tread a narrow path on the edge of the precipice, as many countries are doing. We should instead err on the side of extreme caution.

And this makes absolutely no sense to me. We're in the middle of a pandemic and we're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. How on earth could politicians have been ahead of the game without time machines? — frank

We know what works as China, South Korea and other countries have demonstrated in their different ways. Eliminate the paths of transmission to prevent the virus from spreading.

The president has one job. To make that message crystal clear to Americans. Then it is up to the American people to collectively act on that message until the virus has been brought under control.

You're kind of talking to yourself here, which is normal. We're all inhabiting and animating myths in the face of the unknown. It's how we deal with the stress of that when sickness and death have been raised up.

In the old days, people would have sacrificed animals or walked through the streets beating themselves with barbed whips trying to control it all. But the trick of mythology is that people don't recognize it as fiction. They think its science, and it is in a way.

And so I talk to myself also, living out my own myth. — frank

By our myths, philosophy is revealed to be not just a game, but a matter of life and death.

There is much that is unknown. But there is also such a thing as reality, the growth of knowledge and the ability for people to act locally and make a difference. In this case, extreme social distancing. Our local choices have global consequences.

The Chinese government is to blame for the pandemic. — Hanover

Questionable. The article you quoted doesn't support that unqualified assertion if you mean the extent of the pandemic: E.g:

"Clearly, the U.S. government’s response to this threat was not nearly robust enough, and not enacted anywhere near quickly enough."

But maybe there didn't need to be a pandemic at all. We'll find out more as things progress. It does certainly support the assertion that the CCP are culpable as they did what Trump did, i.e., tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Only it seems in a much more sophisticated and coordinated way, which is typical of them. In any case, my assertion was that China was not to blame for Trump downplaying things. And as the CCP cat was out of the bag by Jan 23rd when Wuhan was quarantined, but Trump continued to assert everything was just fine right through into February, that's obvious.

I won't argue with you that the CCP is a pernicious, dangerous, dishonest, and murderous actor nor will I argue with you that the CDC and WHO fucked things up and very possibly deliberately lied over masks, but it would be just silly to disregard expert opinions and data altogether because of this. Just apply critical thinking. Trump's position changes with the direction of his farts. You can't rely on that for anything.

Uh huh, and you keep those on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week until there's no more infected people in the world? — Metaphysician Undercover

Just while in public.

Some good data here.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

And governments should be preparing this strategy now or, yes, we could find ourselves still stuck in limbo in a few months and with no good options going forward. — Baden

Well, governments should do that, but likely they are just coping with keeping up the health care system now on a day-to-day and fearing how bad it will be until the curve flattens, if they aren't Taiwan, Singapore or South Korea. Thinking about months ahead might be difficult.

But Americans can feel assured everything is going to be just fine because Jared Kushner is involved and is giving advice to Trump. Trump's go-to-man get things done like the Middle East peace process, remember? Jared handled so that so well. Now to organize a response to a pandemic:

Some officials said Mr. Kushner had mainly added another layer of confusion to that response, while taking credit for changes already in progress and failing to deliver on promised improvements. He promoted a nationwide screening website and a widespread network of drive-through testing sites. Neither materialized. He claimed to have helped narrow the rift between his father-in-law and General Motors in a presidential blowup over ventilator production, one administration official said, but the White House is still struggling to procure enough ventilators and other medical equipment.

Perhaps most critical, neither Mr. Kushner nor anyone else can control a president who offers the public radically different messages depending on the day or even the hour, complicating the White House’s effort to get ahead of the crisis.

How's Sweden's strategy working out?

Yes, Jared solved the Middle East with one wave of his over-inflated ego, so this should be a piece of cake for him. :lol:

I've explained before that that is for the benefit of other readers. This is you: "I don't know what racism means" and after it is explained "that's pc bulcrap". I can't help you with your denial of reality.

Look it up on worldometers.info

If the Chinese are not a race, how can it be racist to criticize the Chinese response to this pandemic? — NOS4A2

The Italians have had more deaths so let's call it the Italian Virus. When us Americans have more dead, we can call it the American Virus.

If we're going to name events by the countries that provided the most deleterious responses we're, at minimum, going to have to call both the Vietnam War and the Iraq War the American War.

I think most modern wars can be called the American war if that's the standard.

Plus I admit to not totally grasping the Brexit stuff.

Not many people do, well except the people who still want it to happen, but they've got their heads firmly stuck down some rabbit hole somewhere.

The Italians have had more deaths so let's call it the Italian Virus. When us Americans have more dead, we can call it the American Virus.

Traditionally viruses have been named after where they come from—west Nile virus, MERS, Zika virus, Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, Asian flu, Russian flu, Ebola virus. But I won’t be using that nomenclature to describe this virus because it appears some people have difficulty differentiating between the origin of the virus and the people living there.

The US apparently have a problem with childishly defiant adults:

Florida Pastor Arrested After Defying Virus Orders
Patricia Mazzei; The New York Times; Mar 2020

Dumbasses (pardon my French).

Meanwhile, India has run into problems related to resources, logistics and such:

Hungry, desperate: India virus controls trap its migrant workers
Tish Sanghera; Al Jazeera; Apr 2020

Organizing stoppage of the virus isn't easy.

Hopefully COVID-19 can work as an exercise to learn from.

First of, what we've done in the past isn't reason to continue doing it but I can imagine you're in favour of reintroducing slavery as well on that basis.

Second, the Mexican flu is also racist, it's called the swine flu.

Third, Zika, West Nile, Hong Kong, Middle-East don't refer to ethnicities.

The Spanish flu didn't originate in Spain.

Russian flu is from before the term racism originated.

So that leaves Asian flu in a time when we had apartheid in South Africa and Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus.

Based on the majority of those names the Wuhan virus would've been in keeping with naming usage.

But then, this flu already had a name (as did the swine flu) and this attempt at rebranding is indeed racist and politically motivated to divert attention and shift blame.

I don't think that the reason had anything to do with Brexit. Besides, I think Johnson hasn't been a similar early denier like Trump was on this issue. If you've followed the discussion here we've talked about the similar policy that Sweden is still following on herd immunity option. They aren't leaving the EU.

On the surface Johnson sounded rational at the beginning, although there is no denying his response was quite low key, for a long time flights were not restricted, passengers weren't checked, the only message was if you have arrived from an infected area, or you have flu like symptoms, make your way home (while interacting freely with the population) and stay there for a week. Followed by a week of saying wash your hands, wash your hands, oh and masks are ineffective.

All quite benign stuff, a balanced moderate approach. But look beneath the surface, the new government which was elected with an 80 seat majority in December literally was the Vote Leave campaign team. The group who hoodwinked the public into voting to leave by claiming there would be hoards of Eastern Europeans and Turks flooding into the country, as Turkey was supposedly about to join. That the migrants already here were the cause of the crisis in our struggling public services, forcing house prices up due to a housing shortage and pushing wages down. The team which masterminded a blizzard of biased and false social media posts, adverts and targeted messages during the last few days before the vote in 2016.

These were the people who had just got their feet around the table in Downing Street as the virus emerged. They were poised to have an almighty row with the EU during the negotiations and make an all out assault on the British constitution to remake it in the image of some Machiavellian fantasy of Dominic Cummings. Cummings had spent 30 years as a radical anti EU campaigner to get to this position. It was the crowning glory of his carrier and just as he reached his goal rumours started spreading about some new virus on the other side of the planet.

It kept getting in the way and the government tried to ignore it to begin with like the spectre at the feast, it warned of global pandemics and social an economic collapse. They had to stay focussed on their modus operandi, to talk the economy(which was struggling) into a good place, to spread the optimism of "make Britain Great again", to negotiate tirelessly and win a great new trade deal with the EU in just a few months. To pull us through a teetering crisis, which the Brexit debacle had become. A Herculean feat.

This was what was going on under the surface when the government adopted its moderate response to the pending outbreak of the virus. Their first concern was to keep the economy on track, so everyone would carry on as normal while we would prepare for heard immunity, which would naturally minimise the impact of the virus in the country. Then the theatened pandemic chaos would go away and they could keep to their Brexit course. If they took hard measures to keep out the virus from the beginning, they risked crashing their whole modus operandi and the economy at the first hurdle. The government would collapse, Brexit would be lost and socialists would get their hands on No10. A total political disaster right at the beginning of Johnson's term in office. He would become a national laughing stock and the privelidged classes would face the wrath of a socialist government.

It was certainly a small price to pay, to lose a few hundred thousand of the countries most vulnerable and old people to preserve all this. Indeed, if all the old people die it would help the Brexit utopia by eliminating the pending social care funding crisis.

Why would'nt Johnson follow the kind of draconian lockdown adopted by countries like China and South Korea?

“If you follow a herd immunity strategy, why would you not build treatment and testing capacity? That’s what puzzles me,” asked Devi Sridhar, professor of global health at Edinburgh University.

https://www.ft.com/content/c4155982-3b8b-4a26-887d-169db6fe4244?shareType=nongift&fbclid=IwAR1EOiZDX_SK-tXIbcfgcbnrH6kTUJ_xw4tYVzexg888Itdhk5bBxJxMx9o

Because you are aiming at a genocide of the elderly and disabled, obviously.

You won't be using that nomenclature because it is not the name of the virus and a politically motivated xenophobic rebranding is not allowed here. Full stop. Future whining about this will be deleted.

Centrists and the right several days ago: This crisis was unpredictable, the information that our governments were informed of was irrelevant, and we could not have been prepared or done anything to prepare for an event on this scale.

Centrists and the right now: China deceived us and caused us to die!

These are a much nicer set of flip flops:

Hopefully COVID-19 can work as an exercise to learn from. — jorndoe

Yeah, consider this the trial run (only a few million lives at stake, a small percentage), the drill, getting us prepared for when germ warfare really kicks in. Genetic manipulation is a scary thing. And, there are people who think that to kill everyone, and have the world to oneself (king of the world, ruler of no one), would be a great thing.

What I listened to on the way to work today

Why would'nt Johnson follow the kind of draconian lockdown adopted by countries like China and South Korea? — Punshhh

Here I think there is a very good answer to this, as is for why Italy, Spain, France and yes, the UK also, didn't go the way of South Korea, Taiwan or Singapore:

The Asian countries were hit by SARS in 2003, South Korea was the second worst hit country after Saudi-Arabia by the 2015 MERS outbreak. The UK had no deaths from these epidemics. Hence European countries thought they had it under control. The Far East Asian countries had felt the impact of epidemics and had learned their lesson. Just look at the statistics.

SARS (2002-2003) deaths by country:

Taiwan: 84 (671 cases)
South Korea:0 (4 cases)
Singapore: 32 (206)
Italy: 0 (with 4 cases)
Spain: 0 (with 1 case)
UK: 0 (with 4 cases)

The Swine flu was a bit different, but notice it didn't ring so much the alarm bells.
2009 Swine flu (H1N1/09) pandemic:

Taiwan: 35
South Korea: 170
Singapore:19
Italy: 178
Spain: 232
Uk: 457

(In the US the SARS epidemic killed nobody and 2009 H1N1 epidemic 12 469 people.)

The UK thought it could handle these situations well. There was a lot of this attitude that we in Europe and the US are well prepared. A Daily Mail article from October 25th 2019, few weeks before this pandemic started in Wuhan, wrote the following about the UK and pandemics:

No country is fully equipped to deal with the next global pandemic, a major report has claimed.

Scientists say an outbreak of a flu-like illness could sweep across the planet in 36 hours and kill tens of millions due to our constantly-travelling population. But a review of health care systems already in place across the world found just 13 countries had the resources to put up a fight against an 'inevitable' pandemic. Among the countries ranked in the top tier were Britain, the US, Australia, Canada, France and Holland.

See article, worth reading now: A deadly pandemic could sweep the world in hours and kill millions because NO country is fully prepared, report claims

Has the UK known that a pandemic is a threat? Of course! Just to give an example (from likely a multitude of various papers and recommendations), in 2008 a parliamentary committee released
this report which estimated that 75,000 Britons will in die in an inevitable flu pandemic that could kill as many as 50 million people worldwide,. From that report:

A number of other issues have come to our attention where we consider that
action is needed. One of them concerns the close linkage between human and
animal diseases. We have been told that three out of four new emerging infections
in humans have come from animals. Yet there is little coordination between the
intergovernmental systems for conducting surveillance of human and animal
diseases, to the point where, as has been shown in the case of avian influenza, we
are all too often failing to pick up animal infections until they have jumped the
species barrier to humans. There is a need for better coordination here at the
intergovernmental level.

And furthermore:

We feel it appropriate to conclude on a sobering note. We have been told that an
influenza pandemic is overdue and that, when (rather than if) it comes, the effects
could be devastating, particularly if the strain of the virus should be of the H5N1
variety that has been seen in South East Asia in recent years. While much progress
has been made in the last ten years in improving global surveillance and response
systems, much remains to be done if we are to detect new strains of the virus and
counter them before they have had the chance to spread. That requires more
intergovernmental investment in potential source countries in surveillance
programs. This is unlikely to hit the headlines and its impact may not be
immediately apparent, but it is vital to us all.

That was 12 years ago. During the Brown administration. The information has been there and here one shouldn't look at an specific administration or an individual Prime Minister, but the establishment of your country as a whole. There was no wake up call as had been with Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan with SARS. To have a slow response can have more things to do with a slow response from the government medical sector than the political leadership. So if you argue that Boris Johnson was slow to react because of Brexit or for ideological reasons, then there clearly should be an obvious mismatch between the medical professionals who's job this is and the political leadership. This is totally obvious in the Trump case, but I'm not so sure with Johnson. And of course, the conservative party has been ruling the UK for ages, hence this wasn't like they were incompetent because they were new to running a government.

Yep. Plus, recall that you and I talked about the fact that the data coming out of China sounded exactly like the coronaviruses we already have. The piece we were missing was this CVs high transmissibility.

I remember talking to pulmonologists who were genuinely confused by China's reaction to this virus. It wasnt until Italy that we all started taking it seriously. I do think a lack of familiarity with a significant pandemic was part of that early confusion.

Thanks for being a sane voice. :up: