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Banning public gatherings is really something that should be done on the municipal level, maybe the state level. The federal government should not have the powe

Banning public gatherings is really something that should be done on the municipal level, maybe the state level. The federal government should not have the power to disrupt every day life from thousands of miles away.

chrisco255 7y ago
Exactly. And blanket policies are almost always terrible. Local communities have different constraints and different environments. There's no reason to believe that Fargo, North Dakota should have to respond to this in the same way that New York City does.
- graeme 7y ago
  A virus spreads just as easily in a crowded room in Fargo as it does in NYC. China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong King all slowed the curve, and have rules governing their whole country.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Singapore and Taiwan are basically cities, very dense. China is a Communist country with all kinds of totalitarian policies. South Korean cases are still climbing at more than 100 a day. You can't tell precisely what the growth curve has been because there's going to be a higher bias when they ramp up testing in many countries. At any rate, no, a town that has 50 people per square mile should not be forced to respond in the same way as some city with 50,000 people per square mile. In the meantime, the people of Fargo have all the relevant information and their local officials can make calls as needed to suit their demands.
    - magicroot75 7y ago
      The rule "no gatherings over 250 people" isn't a blanket rule. It will impact cities more than rural places. The flexibility is already built into the schema.
rsj_hn 7y ago
I sympathize with this view, but it does make it harder to respond quickly with nationwide lockdowns, which is the flip side of living in such a connected world. Long term, I think some mechanism to mandate more social isolation is going to be needed. For example when travelling from California to Arizona, there is currently no quarantine area or checkpoint, and that's fine if you want free movement, but then it's harder to say that states should run their own pandemic policy as long as there is free movement between states. And this is a general trade off. More interconnected world => localism is less viable as a means of countering global threats.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  Practically, yes, the states these days won't do anything until the federal government tells them to. It'll work out in a nationwide lockdown, but such obedience hurt us in february when the CDC had a monopoly on test kits and nowhere near enough capacity to supply the whole country. We seem to be making all the wrong decisions in this emergency.
  - rsj_hn 7y ago
    Those are valid points. As to the test kits, I keep hearing conflicting info -- e.g. that there was a shortage of ingredients, too much FDA red tape, etc. There will plenty of root cause analysis in the future, but I think we have to reshore critical infrastructure and there is lots of red tape to cut in both CDC and FDA.
    - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
      My personal theory is that someone in the executive branch wanted to secure an exclusive contract for a personal friend. Something similar happened in the first few months of the Kuwait oil fires, with certain american fire fighting firms being given exclusive contracts to fight the fires, despite lacking the technology and expertise to extinguish them. But I'm just a cynical man. It could very well be something else and I'll be very interested to read about this emergency once it's all behind us.
Angostura 7y ago
Because the virus respects county boundaries?

chrisco255 7y ago

Exactly. And blanket policies are almost always terrible. Local communities have different constraints and different environments. There's no reason to believe that Fargo, North Dakota should have to respond to this in the same way that New York City does.

graeme 7y ago
A virus spreads just as easily in a crowded room in Fargo as it does in NYC. China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong King all slowed the curve, and have rules governing their whole country.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Singapore and Taiwan are basically cities, very dense. China is a Communist country with all kinds of totalitarian policies. South Korean cases are still climbing at more than 100 a day. You can't tell precisely what the growth curve has been because there's going to be a higher bias when they ramp up testing in many countries. At any rate, no, a town that has 50 people per square mile should not be forced to respond in the same way as some city with 50,000 people per square mile. In the meantime, the people of Fargo have all the relevant information and their local officials can make calls as needed to suit their demands.
  - magicroot75 7y ago
    The rule "no gatherings over 250 people" isn't a blanket rule. It will impact cities more than rural places. The flexibility is already built into the schema.

rsj_hn 7y ago

I sympathize with this view, but it does make it harder to respond quickly with nationwide lockdowns, which is the flip side of living in such a connected world. Long term, I think some mechanism to mandate more social isolation is going to be needed. For example when travelling from California to Arizona, there is currently no quarantine area or checkpoint, and that's fine if you want free movement, but then it's harder to say that states should run their own pandemic policy as long as there is free movement between states. And this is a general trade off. More interconnected world => localism is less viable as a means of countering global threats.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
Practically, yes, the states these days won't do anything until the federal government tells them to. It'll work out in a nationwide lockdown, but such obedience hurt us in february when the CDC had a monopoly on test kits and nowhere near enough capacity to supply the whole country. We seem to be making all the wrong decisions in this emergency.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  Those are valid points. As to the test kits, I keep hearing conflicting info -- e.g. that there was a shortage of ingredients, too much FDA red tape, etc. There will plenty of root cause analysis in the future, but I think we have to reshore critical infrastructure and there is lots of red tape to cut in both CDC and FDA.
  - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
    My personal theory is that someone in the executive branch wanted to secure an exclusive contract for a personal friend. Something similar happened in the first few months of the Kuwait oil fires, with certain american fire fighting firms being given exclusive contracts to fight the fires, despite lacking the technology and expertise to extinguish them. But I'm just a cynical man. It could very well be something else and I'll be very interested to read about this emergency once it's all behind us.

Angostura 7y ago

Because the virus respects county boundaries?