9 ms·

> There are going to be a lot of comments about how we messed up, wasted time, etc., but they miss the point. That, ironically, misses the point of the existin

> There are going to be a lot of comments about how we messed up, wasted time, etc., but they miss the point. That, ironically, misses the point of the existing comments about how we wasted time. By wasting time, lots of people are going to die that didn't need to die. None of that has to do with mobilization itself or the issues that we run into during mobilization, it has to do with when we decided to mobilize.

hodgesrm 7y ago
At the risk of being argumentative I would point out that many Americans died unnecessarily at the beginning of WWII as well. This is a common pattern in wars.
- untog 7y ago
  I think you can take this analogy too far. If I were to do so, I'd say that the OP is suggesting that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the President said it was no big deal, just one Japanese plane, and the country collectively twiddled their thumbs while the enemy advanced.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    True. Not sure why everything is always compared to a war in any case? We have a war on this, a war on that. You can compare anything to a war, but that doesn't mean you're going to get useful insights out of the exercise. I mean, yeah, I suppose it's Pearl Harbor is attacked and we twiddled our thumbs, but what insights useful right now in dealing with this virus does that comparison uncover? It's kind of just noise at this point. Save it for the post-mortem and the history books. It's not terribly useful right now. And it's certainly not useful to tell Americans at this point that it's necessary and common that many of them will need to die unnecessarily because, "that's always the way".
    - untog 7y ago
      > It's kind of just noise at this point. Save it for the post-mortem and the history books. It's not terribly useful right now. If we were serving in the White House right now I'd agree with you. But we're just people shooting the shit online, I don't really see what harm it does to discuss the things that are on our minds. Nothing we’re talking about here is really all that useful in terms of tackling the issue in front of us all.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - huonpine 7y ago
    Pearl harbor is a bad example as harm prevention was carried out prior to the attack (2 missing aircraft carriers).
  - thejohnconway 7y ago
    Well, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the US did twiddle its thumbs for at least two years after the outbreak of WW2. Earlier intervention may have virtually stopped it (in Europe at least).
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      Sure, though I believe that during those 2 years the US was also trying to decide which part they should enter the war on. There were influential Nazi supporters in the US, and Russian 'communism' was probably seen as a bigger ideological problem than antisemitism to many.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        While there was a certain amount of bi-directional influence (Hitler taking inspiration from the KKK, the German-American Bund being the local Nazi party) there was never any question of entering the war on the Nazi side, and indeed Lend-Lease started in early 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, including supplying arms to the Soviet Union. The private sector was still supplying Nazi Germany while the US was officially neutral, though.
- dogecoinbase 7y ago
  We are not at war. We are +T two months since the first confirmed case in the USA and had warning nearly a month prior to that, and the Federal government has done almost nothing of substance other than reject tests and advice from nations who have been fighting this far better than we have, because they have functional health services.
  - TrumpMyGuns 7y ago
    keep crying, libturd. adults aren't paying attention.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Weren't they the first to limit then ban travel from Wuhan / China. To say they have done nothing sounds political. Good and poor decisions were made.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      In addition to enacting the CDC effort to distribute tests. That some of those tests were contaminated, or that the FDA may have made a hard call in proceeding with redistribution or calling an audible to multi-sourced testing, is a strategic problem. But let's not say nothing was done. I'm sure there were plenty of sleepless nights at the CDC, before we even had confirmed US cases. (Happened to drive by it today. And it's easy to forget that there are people, just like us, who are trying to do their best there. We all make mistakes. And sometimes we don't, but our bosses do, and we get blamed for it anyway.)
      - dillonmckay 7y ago
        The US refused the WHO tests and wanted to create their own.
        ethbro 7y ago
        https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-coronavirus-test/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-coronavirus-test/ That's kind of like saying "I've got a motherboard, am missing an Intel CPU, but AMD has CPUs, so I'll just put one of those in there." Rolling out testing on the scale that was obviously needed even then is a non-trivial thing, requiring coordination of multiple parties, all in a climate of dubious information. So, yeah, I think it's understandable (a) to stick to a prearranged plan (to avoid the risk of debilitating testing chaos), (b) to desire a domestic supply of tests, & (c) to avoid drawing on a global resource when there was expected to be no need. As Dr. Fauci says, hindsight is 20/20.
- def8cefe 7y ago
  American casualties at the beginning of WW2 were actually quite low as the US didn't enter the war until 1942 (WW2 began in 1939).
justicezyx 7y ago
No, wasting time is retrospective. In technical terms, wasted time is a conclusion of the signals derived from waiting for those time.
whiddershins 7y ago
Oh, wait. Hold on. There was a time where people weren’t perfect? And by perfect, I of course mean perfect judged by hindsight. That’s just ... I mean .. people should be perfect! And prescient! Good point.
- jwilber 7y ago
  Dismissing the point with sarcasm doesn’t help anyone. At the end of the day, our (US) nation’s leader called the virus a partisan hoax, on national tv, over a month after it wrecked havoc in China. I find it hard to to imagine a scenario more antithetical to “perfect”.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN. You've done that repeatedly lately (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22586334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22586334) and we ban accounts that do this. If you wouldn't mind, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit of the site—especially now, when stress is running high and likely to get higher.
  - whiddershins 7y ago
    I hear you. I will take a break from commenting. Honestly I find your comment sobering. It reminds me I’ve been diligently and carefully contributing to a site for 8 years, and my efforts could be erased by a moderator in an eye blink because of a couple of frustrated comments. I think it has not been a great use of my time.
    - dang 7y ago
      In theory, sure; in practice we're not so capricious. We don't ban, or are happy to unban, anyone who sincerely wants to use HN site as intended, except perhaps in rare cases of misunderstanding. And we wouldn't ban an established user because of a couple comments, except perhaps in truly extreme cases.
salemh 7y ago
There were conflicting issues that seem to be coming out now. https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/03/18/who-claimed-in-january-wuhan-virus-couldnt-be-transmitted-to-humans-because-china-said-it-wasnt-contagious-destroyed-evidence/ https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/03/18/who-claimed-i... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destroyed-proof-of-virus-in-december-rz055qjnj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destro...
leereeves 7y ago
The world's response was late because the Chinese government lied about the virus. Just two months ago the WHO, relying on China's statements, said: > Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China[1] Two months ago the WHO said they didn't have clear evidence coronavirus was contagious. Now we're on a "war footing". That's not wasting time. 1: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=t...
- mlb_hn 7y ago
  Leadership in the US Government wasted a lot of time trying to play down the pandemic [1] as did large (conservative) news organizations [2]. Both are now trying to blame China, arguably to shift blame from themselves. It didn't need to be that way; South Korea's government action back in January helped them while the US Government's action hindered response [3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-coronavirus... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-suddenly-a-very-different-tune-about-the-coronavirus/2020/03/16/7a7637cc-678f-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-s... [3]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Everyone should be blaming China. They jailed the doctor who tried to warn us. They lied to the world. They "issued an order to hospitals, clinics and other healthcare units strictly prohibiting the release of any information about treatment of this new disease."[1] That's not about shifting blame from the US government. That's placing the blame where it belongs. As the famously conservative editorial board of the Washington Post said:[1] > China tried to keep a lid on the coronavirus. It put everyone at risk. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-tried-to-keep-a-lid-on-the-coronavirus-it-put-everyone-at-risk/2020/01/29/0f7850ea-42c8-11ea-b503-2b077c436617_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chin...
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623990.
- thereare5lights 7y ago
  I've seen this a lot but never understood what that exactly means. What happens when you detach a subthread?
  - dang 7y ago
    It becomes a top level comment instead of a child of its original parent. Does that make sense?
    - thereare5lights 7y ago
      yep

hodgesrm 7y ago

At the risk of being argumentative I would point out that many Americans died unnecessarily at the beginning of WWII as well. This is a common pattern in wars.

untog 7y ago
I think you can take this analogy too far. If I were to do so, I'd say that the OP is suggesting that Pearl Harbor was attacked, the President said it was no big deal, just one Japanese plane, and the country collectively twiddled their thumbs while the enemy advanced.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  True. Not sure why everything is always compared to a war in any case? We have a war on this, a war on that. You can compare anything to a war, but that doesn't mean you're going to get useful insights out of the exercise. I mean, yeah, I suppose it's Pearl Harbor is attacked and we twiddled our thumbs, but what insights useful right now in dealing with this virus does that comparison uncover? It's kind of just noise at this point. Save it for the post-mortem and the history books. It's not terribly useful right now. And it's certainly not useful to tell Americans at this point that it's necessary and common that many of them will need to die unnecessarily because, "that's always the way".
  - untog 7y ago
    > It's kind of just noise at this point. Save it for the post-mortem and the history books. It's not terribly useful right now. If we were serving in the White House right now I'd agree with you. But we're just people shooting the shit online, I don't really see what harm it does to discuss the things that are on our minds. Nothing we’re talking about here is really all that useful in terms of tackling the issue in front of us all.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- huonpine 7y ago
  Pearl harbor is a bad example as harm prevention was carried out prior to the attack (2 missing aircraft carriers).
- thejohnconway 7y ago
  Well, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the US did twiddle its thumbs for at least two years after the outbreak of WW2. Earlier intervention may have virtually stopped it (in Europe at least).
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    Sure, though I believe that during those 2 years the US was also trying to decide which part they should enter the war on. There were influential Nazi supporters in the US, and Russian 'communism' was probably seen as a bigger ideological problem than antisemitism to many.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      While there was a certain amount of bi-directional influence (Hitler taking inspiration from the KKK, the German-American Bund being the local Nazi party) there was never any question of entering the war on the Nazi side, and indeed Lend-Lease started in early 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, including supplying arms to the Soviet Union. The private sector was still supplying Nazi Germany while the US was officially neutral, though.
dogecoinbase 7y ago
We are not at war. We are +T two months since the first confirmed case in the USA and had warning nearly a month prior to that, and the Federal government has done almost nothing of substance other than reject tests and advice from nations who have been fighting this far better than we have, because they have functional health services.
- TrumpMyGuns 7y ago
  keep crying, libturd. adults aren't paying attention.
- wolco 7y ago
  Weren't they the first to limit then ban travel from Wuhan / China. To say they have done nothing sounds political. Good and poor decisions were made.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    In addition to enacting the CDC effort to distribute tests. That some of those tests were contaminated, or that the FDA may have made a hard call in proceeding with redistribution or calling an audible to multi-sourced testing, is a strategic problem. But let's not say nothing was done. I'm sure there were plenty of sleepless nights at the CDC, before we even had confirmed US cases. (Happened to drive by it today. And it's easy to forget that there are people, just like us, who are trying to do their best there. We all make mistakes. And sometimes we don't, but our bosses do, and we get blamed for it anyway.)
    - dillonmckay 7y ago
      The US refused the WHO tests and wanted to create their own.
      - ethbro 7y ago
        https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-coronavirus-test/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-coronavirus-test/ That's kind of like saying "I've got a motherboard, am missing an Intel CPU, but AMD has CPUs, so I'll just put one of those in there." Rolling out testing on the scale that was obviously needed even then is a non-trivial thing, requiring coordination of multiple parties, all in a climate of dubious information. So, yeah, I think it's understandable (a) to stick to a prearranged plan (to avoid the risk of debilitating testing chaos), (b) to desire a domestic supply of tests, & (c) to avoid drawing on a global resource when there was expected to be no need. As Dr. Fauci says, hindsight is 20/20.
def8cefe 7y ago
American casualties at the beginning of WW2 were actually quite low as the US didn't enter the war until 1942 (WW2 began in 1939).

justicezyx 7y ago

No, wasting time is retrospective. In technical terms, wasted time is a conclusion of the signals derived from waiting for those time.

whiddershins 7y ago

Oh, wait. Hold on. There was a time where people weren’t perfect? And by perfect, I of course mean perfect judged by hindsight. That’s just ... I mean .. people should be perfect! And prescient! Good point.

jwilber 7y ago
Dismissing the point with sarcasm doesn’t help anyone. At the end of the day, our (US) nation’s leader called the virus a partisan hoax, on national tv, over a month after it wrecked havoc in China. I find it hard to to imagine a scenario more antithetical to “perfect”.
dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN. You've done that repeatedly lately (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22586334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22586334) and we ban accounts that do this. If you wouldn't mind, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post only in the intended spirit of the site—especially now, when stress is running high and likely to get higher.
- whiddershins 7y ago
  I hear you. I will take a break from commenting. Honestly I find your comment sobering. It reminds me I’ve been diligently and carefully contributing to a site for 8 years, and my efforts could be erased by a moderator in an eye blink because of a couple of frustrated comments. I think it has not been a great use of my time.
  - dang 7y ago
    In theory, sure; in practice we're not so capricious. We don't ban, or are happy to unban, anyone who sincerely wants to use HN site as intended, except perhaps in rare cases of misunderstanding. And we wouldn't ban an established user because of a couple comments, except perhaps in truly extreme cases.

salemh 7y ago

There were conflicting issues that seem to be coming out now. https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/03/18/who-claimed-in-january-wuhan-virus-couldnt-be-transmitted-to-humans-because-china-said-it-wasnt-contagious-destroyed-evidence/ https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/03/18/who-claimed-i... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destroyed-proof-of-virus-in-december-rz055qjnj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-scientists-destro...

leereeves 7y ago

The world's response was late because the Chinese government lied about the virus. Just two months ago the WHO, relying on China's statements, said: > Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China[1] Two months ago the WHO said they didn't have clear evidence coronavirus was contagious. Now we're on a "war footing". That's not wasting time. 1: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=t...

mlb_hn 7y ago
Leadership in the US Government wasted a lot of time trying to play down the pandemic [1] as did large (conservative) news organizations [2]. Both are now trying to blame China, arguably to shift blame from themselves. It didn't need to be that way; South Korea's government action back in January helped them while the US Government's action hindered response [3]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/opinion/trump-coronavirus... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-suddenly-a-very-different-tune-about-the-coronavirus/2020/03/16/7a7637cc-678f-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-s... [3]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testin...
- leereeves 7y ago
  Everyone should be blaming China. They jailed the doctor who tried to warn us. They lied to the world. They "issued an order to hospitals, clinics and other healthcare units strictly prohibiting the release of any information about treatment of this new disease."[1] That's not about shifting blame from the US government. That's placing the blame where it belongs. As the famously conservative editorial board of the Washington Post said:[1] > China tried to keep a lid on the coronavirus. It put everyone at risk. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-tried-to-keep-a-lid-on-the-coronavirus-it-put-everyone-at-risk/2020/01/29/0f7850ea-42c8-11ea-b503-2b077c436617_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chin...

dang 7y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623990.

thereare5lights 7y ago
I've seen this a lot but never understood what that exactly means. What happens when you detach a subthread?
- dang 7y ago
  It becomes a top level comment instead of a child of its original parent. Does that make sense?
  - thereare5lights 7y ago
    yep