5 ms·

I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too. The nation-wide lockdown plus direct cash stimulus are exactly the measures I h

I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too. The nation-wide lockdown plus direct cash stimulus are exactly the measures I had hoped to see. Pandemics may be one of the rare situations where having authoritarian leadership can actually benefit the populace. Though I guess we have a while before it plays out completely. I have doubts about whether any non-populist president would have taken these steps any sooner.

spookthesunset 7y ago
Meh. An actual leader would clearly articulate what is going on—he hasn’t done that. An actual leader would tell people not to panic—hasn’t done that. An actual leader would take strong, very visible action against people hoarding supplies or worse reselling them for profit—toilet paper memes are funny until you run out. And quite frankly a real smart leader would have started testing the fuck out every person with a pulse. More understanding of how many people have it is important.
- lostapathy 7y ago
  I'm not really a trump fan - but at the same time, these people have to have time to do the work, they can't spend it all in press conferences. At a practical level on the hoarding - what can the president do, declare martial law? There aren't enough police/solidiers to enforce it anyway. Far better to get to work on the source of the panic, especially if you believe it can be contained if you prioritize that. It's clear we're behind on testing - and definitely the FDA is owed some blame. But at the same time, if the tests don't exist in quantity, they don't exist. That takes time - and be all accounts, they seem to be working hard on getting there.
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    They can make clear, well publicized examples of people hoarding goods for resale. They make well publicized examples of people getting arrested in stores who are loading their carts up with every hand sanitizer bottle on the shelf. It doesn’t take more than a few very visible examples to clamp down on that kind of behavior.
    - lostapathy 7y ago
      That absolutely should be happening - but that needs to be done at the state or local level, or in consumer protection agencies. That's not a job for the president at times like this.
      - spookthesunset 7y ago
        > That's not a job for the president at times like this It is absolutely the job of a president, at least a good one anyway, to ask the populace to chill the fuck out and stop hoarding toilet paper and medial supplies.
- nthj 7y ago
  It’s up to the states to manage hoarding and reselling, and they are.
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    Sure but the president’s job is to tell people to chill the fuck out. So far, he is not.
dwohnitmok 7y ago
The U.S. is not under lockdown. Far from it. Any lockdowns have been entirely done at the state and local level and even those are very spotty and a far cry from the lockdowns in Italy at the moment and in China. Direct cash stimulus is one thing I'm definitely looking forward to. The other big one is the various cash infusions into key pillars of business (e.g. airlines). I don't think it's been an abject failure, but I think the U.S. response to the pandemic has been at best middling and full of whiplash in both rhetoric and policy pointing to a reactionary plan rather than any sort of proactive attempt to get out ahead of the curve. We didn't learn a lot of the lessons we could've from South Korea and Singapore (and at the very least why couldn't we have imported their testing).
jhayward 7y ago
> I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too No one who knows how national pandemic response works agrees with you. They know that trying to suppress testing, and criminal lack of executive management of the testing capacity was a known and must-be-fixed quantity 6 weeks ago. They know that hundreds of millions of PPE supplies should have been ordered under federal pandemic authorities 8 weeks ago. They know that emergency powers for production of ventilators should have been invoked 6-8 weeks ago, and still haven't been. It's bungled beyond belief and the only thing that will prevent something near a worst-case run of this pandemic will be some luck.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  Thanks for chiming in with those examples. I suppose "well" is much too strong of a word then. I guess I just have very little faith that others would do a decent job either. Since you seem knowledgeable, I guess my question is: While large scale testing seems a reasonable thing to do on it's face - since we already know this thing spreads like wildfire - isn't the best play to just have everyone self-quarantine regardless of health status? Why spend resources on mass testing and preparing for mass-scale treatment when it seems that a total lock-down could nip the transmission in the bud? If you're a non-severe case they tell you that you're supposed to stay away from people if you test positive. So if you're doing that already - what's the difference? Especially considering the logistics of performing large scale testing to identify non-critical cases could expose the people performing the tests if they mess up on their safety protocols. And then there's the issue of false-positives and false-negatives. I guess I just don't see the benefit of mass testing everybody when we have the option of just shutting down everything now.
  - jhayward 7y ago
    > Why spend resources on mass testing and preparing for mass-scale treatment This is a good question, I hear it a lot. So here's an inarticulate stab at an answer. [TLDR: After quarantine the population is still at risk and the virus will start its exponential growth again, just a few weeks down the line] No matter how effective your mass quarantine may be, we will never "nip transmission in the bud". This thing is endemic and may well be chronic. The purpose today of mass quarantine is just to slow down the exponential growth of the epidemic. It's only worth doing if you have something to stop the growth from starting again at the end since shutting down the economy isn't sustainable and is enormously damaging even in the short term. What's that something? Wide-spread, universal testing. Rapid follow-up on positive tests to trace contacts and isolate them. This way you cut down the number of people each person can infect so that the growth rate is less than 1. You have to keep this regime going until a sufficiently large proportion (in this case, 60%-70%) is immune either because they have recovered from infection or they have been vaccinated. So, barring getting really lucky with some kind of seasonal disappearance of the virus, we will have to maintain this surveillance-tracing-isolation three legged stool until a vaccine is available. If we had done this from the beginning we would not now have to be shutting down and destroying the economy to prevent a worst-case disaster, which is estimated that it would peak at about 40,000+ deaths per day in the US, sometime in late May, if left unchecked. If we had done wide-scale test-trace-isolate from the beginning we could just be going about our business, albiet with this new factor in our lives. Since the criminals bungled, and are still bungling the response, we instead will have many many deaths and serious illnesses w/lifetime consequences and unprecedented economic damage.
mattchew 7y ago
This seems like a fairly common view to people who have come late to the topic. If you have been paying attention for a while, the way the USA has handled this is horrifying. Compare the outcomes in Italy to those in South Korea to see what good handling of this crisis looks like. Even though we had the example of Italy weeks ago, we waited and waited and waited until now. Our outcomes will be similar to Italy's in a great deal of the USA. The worst thing was the terrible, terrible failures in testing. We will never know exactly how many lives could have been saved if we ramped up testing the way South Korea did. We will be able to make some rough guesses after we get the final body count. Trump also did enormous damage by continuously, repeatedly dismissing the new Coronavirus as no worse than the flu. Foot dragging and denial are natural anyway; having the president constantly dismiss the worst epidemic since 1918 as alarmism from whiners delayed action at the state and local levels, never mind all the action that wasn't being taken at the national level. There are still many people--maybe a majority in my area--who think this is all overblown panicking over nothing. Here's the best I can say. The travel ban was a good idea and would have saved lives if we had not chosen to throw away the extra lead time it gave us. And most of Europe handled this just as poorly as we did, if that seems justifying to you (it does to some people).

spookthesunset 7y ago

Meh. An actual leader would clearly articulate what is going on—he hasn’t done that. An actual leader would tell people not to panic—hasn’t done that. An actual leader would take strong, very visible action against people hoarding supplies or worse reselling them for profit—toilet paper memes are funny until you run out. And quite frankly a real smart leader would have started testing the fuck out every person with a pulse. More understanding of how many people have it is important.

lostapathy 7y ago
I'm not really a trump fan - but at the same time, these people have to have time to do the work, they can't spend it all in press conferences. At a practical level on the hoarding - what can the president do, declare martial law? There aren't enough police/solidiers to enforce it anyway. Far better to get to work on the source of the panic, especially if you believe it can be contained if you prioritize that. It's clear we're behind on testing - and definitely the FDA is owed some blame. But at the same time, if the tests don't exist in quantity, they don't exist. That takes time - and be all accounts, they seem to be working hard on getting there.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  They can make clear, well publicized examples of people hoarding goods for resale. They make well publicized examples of people getting arrested in stores who are loading their carts up with every hand sanitizer bottle on the shelf. It doesn’t take more than a few very visible examples to clamp down on that kind of behavior.
  - lostapathy 7y ago
    That absolutely should be happening - but that needs to be done at the state or local level, or in consumer protection agencies. That's not a job for the president at times like this.
    - spookthesunset 7y ago
      > That's not a job for the president at times like this It is absolutely the job of a president, at least a good one anyway, to ask the populace to chill the fuck out and stop hoarding toilet paper and medial supplies.
nthj 7y ago
It’s up to the states to manage hoarding and reselling, and they are.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  Sure but the president’s job is to tell people to chill the fuck out. So far, he is not.

dwohnitmok 7y ago

The U.S. is not under lockdown. Far from it. Any lockdowns have been entirely done at the state and local level and even those are very spotty and a far cry from the lockdowns in Italy at the moment and in China. Direct cash stimulus is one thing I'm definitely looking forward to. The other big one is the various cash infusions into key pillars of business (e.g. airlines). I don't think it's been an abject failure, but I think the U.S. response to the pandemic has been at best middling and full of whiplash in both rhetoric and policy pointing to a reactionary plan rather than any sort of proactive attempt to get out ahead of the curve. We didn't learn a lot of the lessons we could've from South Korea and Singapore (and at the very least why couldn't we have imported their testing).

jhayward 7y ago

> I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too No one who knows how national pandemic response works agrees with you. They know that trying to suppress testing, and criminal lack of executive management of the testing capacity was a known and must-be-fixed quantity 6 weeks ago. They know that hundreds of millions of PPE supplies should have been ordered under federal pandemic authorities 8 weeks ago. They know that emergency powers for production of ventilators should have been invoked 6-8 weeks ago, and still haven't been. It's bungled beyond belief and the only thing that will prevent something near a worst-case run of this pandemic will be some luck.

sudosteph 7y ago
Thanks for chiming in with those examples. I suppose "well" is much too strong of a word then. I guess I just have very little faith that others would do a decent job either. Since you seem knowledgeable, I guess my question is: While large scale testing seems a reasonable thing to do on it's face - since we already know this thing spreads like wildfire - isn't the best play to just have everyone self-quarantine regardless of health status? Why spend resources on mass testing and preparing for mass-scale treatment when it seems that a total lock-down could nip the transmission in the bud? If you're a non-severe case they tell you that you're supposed to stay away from people if you test positive. So if you're doing that already - what's the difference? Especially considering the logistics of performing large scale testing to identify non-critical cases could expose the people performing the tests if they mess up on their safety protocols. And then there's the issue of false-positives and false-negatives. I guess I just don't see the benefit of mass testing everybody when we have the option of just shutting down everything now.
- jhayward 7y ago
  > Why spend resources on mass testing and preparing for mass-scale treatment This is a good question, I hear it a lot. So here's an inarticulate stab at an answer. [TLDR: After quarantine the population is still at risk and the virus will start its exponential growth again, just a few weeks down the line] No matter how effective your mass quarantine may be, we will never "nip transmission in the bud". This thing is endemic and may well be chronic. The purpose today of mass quarantine is just to slow down the exponential growth of the epidemic. It's only worth doing if you have something to stop the growth from starting again at the end since shutting down the economy isn't sustainable and is enormously damaging even in the short term. What's that something? Wide-spread, universal testing. Rapid follow-up on positive tests to trace contacts and isolate them. This way you cut down the number of people each person can infect so that the growth rate is less than 1. You have to keep this regime going until a sufficiently large proportion (in this case, 60%-70%) is immune either because they have recovered from infection or they have been vaccinated. So, barring getting really lucky with some kind of seasonal disappearance of the virus, we will have to maintain this surveillance-tracing-isolation three legged stool until a vaccine is available. If we had done this from the beginning we would not now have to be shutting down and destroying the economy to prevent a worst-case disaster, which is estimated that it would peak at about 40,000+ deaths per day in the US, sometime in late May, if left unchecked. If we had done wide-scale test-trace-isolate from the beginning we could just be going about our business, albiet with this new factor in our lives. Since the criminals bungled, and are still bungling the response, we instead will have many many deaths and serious illnesses w/lifetime consequences and unprecedented economic damage.

mattchew 7y ago

This seems like a fairly common view to people who have come late to the topic. If you have been paying attention for a while, the way the USA has handled this is horrifying. Compare the outcomes in Italy to those in South Korea to see what good handling of this crisis looks like. Even though we had the example of Italy weeks ago, we waited and waited and waited until now. Our outcomes will be similar to Italy's in a great deal of the USA. The worst thing was the terrible, terrible failures in testing. We will never know exactly how many lives could have been saved if we ramped up testing the way South Korea did. We will be able to make some rough guesses after we get the final body count. Trump also did enormous damage by continuously, repeatedly dismissing the new Coronavirus as no worse than the flu. Foot dragging and denial are natural anyway; having the president constantly dismiss the worst epidemic since 1918 as alarmism from whiners delayed action at the state and local levels, never mind all the action that wasn't being taken at the national level. There are still many people--maybe a majority in my area--who think this is all overblown panicking over nothing. Here's the best I can say. The travel ban was a good idea and would have saved lives if we had not chosen to throw away the extra lead time it gave us. And most of Europe handled this just as poorly as we did, if that seems justifying to you (it does to some people).