7 ms·

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found

by crusso 7y ago

Do people appreciate that denial of the severity of this virus came from all political quarters? Here's one showing the mistakes of left-leaning media I found in 2 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wVDPVBZF2Xg It's just as easy to find supercuts of Pelosi, DeBlasio, and other prominent Democrats telling people that they didn't need to start social distancing or that the virus wasn't airborne contagious. Bad judgement is a human failing that cuts across party lines. To think that this is a long-term credibility problem for only some people shows a lack of a healthy diversity of news sources. At the end of this, everyone will go back to their teams' dugouts and prepare for the next political battle. Nothing will have been learned about credibility.

jacquesm 7y ago
Being wrong and being in charge are different than just being wrong. Responsibility should come at a price.
- crusso 7y ago
  I'd be all for holding politicians in charge accountable, but that's where everyone gets squishy depending upon who they support? One guy's being wrong becomes another guy's "not that big of a deal". By what metric will you measure "being wrong" for this COVID-19 pandemic? A super cut of video clips showing a reluctance to believe uncertain information coming out of China? Death rate compared to other OECD countries? Whether or not the great Hydroxychloroquine efficacy debate goes one way or another? Whether or not the ban of flights to/from China were effective?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    When you are not in charge you can say whatever you want, it won't kill people. So that's why it matters. It's not about who you support. "The Buck Stops Here".
    - crusso 7y ago
      People will die of this in every country on earth. Are all in charge responsible for every death in the country over which they preside?
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Depends on what they did to avert it. In many cases the answer is 'too little'.
      - squiggleblaz 7y ago
        "With great power comes great responsibility" it's an ideal, not a metaphysical necessity. But we need to enforce the ideal because otherwise the powerful use their power to their interest and against their detractors. It is absolutely essential to hold them responsible for their decision making process if we value life in a liberal democracy or a classical republic. They cannot get every decision right, but they must at least get them wrong for a fair reason. Otherwise it's just "personal responsibility for the many, riches and fiefdoms for the few"
javagram 7y ago
It did come from all political quarters, however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer. Notice how many of the clips from your video are from January or early February. The POTUS was still publicly pushing the coronavirus = flu comparison in early March even after we saw what happened in Iran and Italy. Remember, he said on February 28 that being worried about the coronavirus was “their new hoax” from the media and his political opponents, so he himself recognized his political opponents were pointing out the severity by late February. Edit: i don’t want to get too deep in the politics with this, I do agree with your ultimate point that most won’t learn from this and will simply return to their team’s side regardless of who got this one more right.
- crusso 7y ago
  however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer Now you're splitting hairs. You know who the first politician in the USA who was banging the drums in alarm about Wuhan and the coronavirus? Tom Cotton. Republican Senator. Do you support him now? Does his early conviction of the severity of this event put you behind him and everyone who echoed his concerns? Are you likewise now opposed to the people who were ridiculing him as a conspiracy theorist and fear-monger?
  - javagram 7y ago
    Tom Cotton was one of the people who were on this and warning of it early. So was Steve Bannon. There are others. Just because someone has an R by their name doesn’t mean they’re a homogeneous blob. I think that’s great, I don’t agree with all their politics but they didn’t let themselves be blinded by optimism and looked at what was actually going on here. And the theory that the virus may have accidentally escaped from the lab where they were studying bat coronaviruses always seemed credible to me (Reminder, the 1977 flu likely escaped from a Russian or Chinese lab but this was never admitted either). The political quarter that was in denial was mainly the POTUS and those who simply follow whatever the POTUS is doing without independent thought (Hannity, etc.) Edit: again, he was calling it “their new hoax” so you really can’t deny that he was behind on this one :-)
burke_holland 7y ago
I had this same thought. Here's Pelosi encouraging people to come to Chinatown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCzoXhNM6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCzoXhNM6c Also, we should be careful about how much we eviscerate people on both sides politically during this time. If our leaders are too afraid of repercussions to make difficult decisions, they may make bad decisions instead. I'm calling for moratorium on partisan finger-pointing. I think we're all in this together, and that's the only way we're getting out of it.
- Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  Your link is a bit different, she was in Chinatown to show people that not all Chinese people have the virus. Seems there businesses were stagnating due to xenophobia. She was wrong to encourage people to go out and shop in general but she was not wrong to try to stop the rumors surrounding Chinese Americans.
- anoraca 7y ago
  That was on February 24th, a full week before there was a single case in NYC. Promoting local commerce before the virus reached that area seems pretty far from denying the level of risk presented by COVID-19 on a global scale.
- SZJX 7y ago
  Not sure what that has to do with denial of the severity of the virus. Not to mention NYT just published a report confirming that the virus strain in the US mostly came from European sources, instead of Asian ones. Are you equating "avoiding Chinatown" with "preventing the spread of the virus"? That sounds extremely worrisome, to be polite.
godelski 7y ago
It probably depends who you are taking your information from. For example, here is an expert saying that it is just like the flu[0] (Linkedin [1]). The other part, is that we shouldn't expect consensus in something like this. Why? Because data is evolving and changing. This is in contrast to something like Climate Change where we have a large amount of post hoc data/analysis. Here the analysis is being done in situ and that is much more difficult. It should be unsurprising that opinions change as information changes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/knutmwittkowski https://www.linkedin.com/in/knutmwittkowski
throwaway32120 7y ago
That's one of the issues with hyperpartisanship. Everyone thinks that people need to be held accountable - as long as it's people they already decided were terrible. The truth is the response to this pandemic has been poor across the board. Go back and read what people were saying in February to see how unprepared everyone was. Bill Gates, for example, is held up as someone who saw this coming. However, if you read what he wrote at the end of February about what needs to be done to stop the Coronavirus, you'll he didn't raise any issues about the way it was being handled within the United States, and viewed the main problem being the difficulties that poor countries would have handling it. Even a few days ago there were almost no leaders calling for mass use of face coverings. And there still seem to be very few (if any) calling for an implementation of measures like those that are successfully combating the virus in South Korea.
- kyuudou 7y ago
  It's also one of the issues with a bipartisan system designed to stay that way - one side eternally blames the other for being evil incarnate and how their side's excrement has no olfactory emission. It's conducive to this hyperpartisanship and I really agree with some of the founding fathers of the US that political parties should be forbidden because of the types of dramatic intrigue that result, which hurt people the most during times such as now. I just call them both the War Party now because that's what they are.
bduerst 7y ago
The video snippet you linked is from January. You can tell because it talks about the upcoming Iowa caucus. This is approximately the time that the first patient tested positive in the U.S. The video that OP references goes into February and March, so I don't think these are equivalent.
jmckib 7y ago
You can cherry-pick different opinions from all over the spectrum. For example, Tucker Carlson took the virus pretty seriously early on, but he was one of the only voices on Fox News to do so. Views on the left have been more mixed. At least that's been my observation, but I don't watch TV news; I just read about what's on it. I've been getting my news from WaPo and WSJ, both of which took the virus seriously from the beginning.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Not enough is said about people who saw it before it came. Relying on someone to do the right thing in the middle of chaos is unreliable. You really don't need to cherry pick to find examples on both sides. George W Bush laid out a major pandemic strategy, for instance: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi... Too bad it fell apart in subsequent administrations.
- nl 7y ago
  Yes - it seems like Tucker Carlson was the person who convinced Trump to change his mind[1] and he deserves credit for it. I wonder what it was that convinced him when many of the people he deals with day-to-day were of the complete opposite view? [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlsons-monologue-prompted-trump-to-take-coronavirus-seriously-wapo-reports https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlsons-monologue-prom...
  - jmckib 7y ago
    As much as I disagree with almost everything Carlson says, I have to give him credit for going against the grain on this and a few other issues in the past. Lindsey Graham also deserves some credit for calling up Trump and trying to convince him to take this situation more seriously. There's something to be said for the strategy of kowtowing to Trump most of the time so that he will still listen to you when it really counts. That strategy shouldn't be necessary with a competent leader, but here we are.
Uhhrrr 7y ago
Fortunately good judgement is an occasional human virtue which also cuts across party lines.
neop1x 7y ago
Here is a video of horrendous New York situation with "overrun" Queens hospital https://video.fprg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t42.9040-2/92262469_658622128248002_6790764214655909888_n.mp4?_nc_cat=110&_nc_sid=985c63&efg=eyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6ImxlZ2FjeV9zZCJ9&_nc_ohc=jorWQL_RNgAAX9Tke1j&_nc_ht=video.fprg2-1.fna&oh=f4aafe7174fdfab67ae91f1acc43faef&oe=5E8DBDA8 https://video.fprg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t42.9040-2/92262469_... Here a similar one from Begamo, Italy https://youtu.be/lcK2mzuO6MU https://youtu.be/lcK2mzuO6MU And now, where is the truth? I would like not to be infected. I try to avoid being infected by flu as well. But maybe we really are overreacting. We don't have immune system trained for this - that is problematic. Elderly people and people with health conditions should be isolated. But that's probably it. Once the population has enough people with trained immune system, it will be "like a flu" or won't it? Who to trust?
- SZJX 7y ago
  I don't think the point is about an apocalyptic image of people cogging up and dying in the corridors or whatnot. It's the lack of equipments like ventilators. Also it's confirmed from many sources that the medical workers are all stretched to their limits and some of them even died from overexertion. That's probably much more convincing than some random videos.
stevetursi 7y ago
It's true, both were wrong. It's also true that both sides presume the worst intentions when they say the other side was wrong. I can't get over the fact, however, that only one side was (and still is) in a position to do something about it. Moreover that one side had access to better intelligence about the severity of the situation, and that one side sowed the seeds of their awful response over the past three years with the various cuts they made.

by crusso 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago

Being wrong and being in charge are different than just being wrong. Responsibility should come at a price.

crusso 7y ago
I'd be all for holding politicians in charge accountable, but that's where everyone gets squishy depending upon who they support? One guy's being wrong becomes another guy's "not that big of a deal". By what metric will you measure "being wrong" for this COVID-19 pandemic? A super cut of video clips showing a reluctance to believe uncertain information coming out of China? Death rate compared to other OECD countries? Whether or not the great Hydroxychloroquine efficacy debate goes one way or another? Whether or not the ban of flights to/from China were effective?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  When you are not in charge you can say whatever you want, it won't kill people. So that's why it matters. It's not about who you support. "The Buck Stops Here".
  - crusso 7y ago
    People will die of this in every country on earth. Are all in charge responsible for every death in the country over which they preside?
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Depends on what they did to avert it. In many cases the answer is 'too little'.
    - squiggleblaz 7y ago
      "With great power comes great responsibility" it's an ideal, not a metaphysical necessity. But we need to enforce the ideal because otherwise the powerful use their power to their interest and against their detractors. It is absolutely essential to hold them responsible for their decision making process if we value life in a liberal democracy or a classical republic. They cannot get every decision right, but they must at least get them wrong for a fair reason. Otherwise it's just "personal responsibility for the many, riches and fiefdoms for the few"

javagram 7y ago

It did come from all political quarters, however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer. Notice how many of the clips from your video are from January or early February. The POTUS was still publicly pushing the coronavirus = flu comparison in early March even after we saw what happened in Iran and Italy. Remember, he said on February 28 that being worried about the coronavirus was “their new hoax” from the media and his political opponents, so he himself recognized his political opponents were pointing out the severity by late February. Edit: i don’t want to get too deep in the politics with this, I do agree with your ultimate point that most won’t learn from this and will simply return to their team’s side regardless of who got this one more right.

crusso 7y ago
however one political quarter stayed in denial much longer Now you're splitting hairs. You know who the first politician in the USA who was banging the drums in alarm about Wuhan and the coronavirus? Tom Cotton. Republican Senator. Do you support him now? Does his early conviction of the severity of this event put you behind him and everyone who echoed his concerns? Are you likewise now opposed to the people who were ridiculing him as a conspiracy theorist and fear-monger?
- javagram 7y ago
  Tom Cotton was one of the people who were on this and warning of it early. So was Steve Bannon. There are others. Just because someone has an R by their name doesn’t mean they’re a homogeneous blob. I think that’s great, I don’t agree with all their politics but they didn’t let themselves be blinded by optimism and looked at what was actually going on here. And the theory that the virus may have accidentally escaped from the lab where they were studying bat coronaviruses always seemed credible to me (Reminder, the 1977 flu likely escaped from a Russian or Chinese lab but this was never admitted either). The political quarter that was in denial was mainly the POTUS and those who simply follow whatever the POTUS is doing without independent thought (Hannity, etc.) Edit: again, he was calling it “their new hoax” so you really can’t deny that he was behind on this one :-)

burke_holland 7y ago

I had this same thought. Here's Pelosi encouraging people to come to Chinatown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCzoXhNM6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFCzoXhNM6c Also, we should be careful about how much we eviscerate people on both sides politically during this time. If our leaders are too afraid of repercussions to make difficult decisions, they may make bad decisions instead. I'm calling for moratorium on partisan finger-pointing. I think we're all in this together, and that's the only way we're getting out of it.

Zenbit_UX 7y ago
Your link is a bit different, she was in Chinatown to show people that not all Chinese people have the virus. Seems there businesses were stagnating due to xenophobia. She was wrong to encourage people to go out and shop in general but she was not wrong to try to stop the rumors surrounding Chinese Americans.
anoraca 7y ago
That was on February 24th, a full week before there was a single case in NYC. Promoting local commerce before the virus reached that area seems pretty far from denying the level of risk presented by COVID-19 on a global scale.
SZJX 7y ago
Not sure what that has to do with denial of the severity of the virus. Not to mention NYT just published a report confirming that the virus strain in the US mostly came from European sources, instead of Asian ones. Are you equating "avoiding Chinatown" with "preventing the spread of the virus"? That sounds extremely worrisome, to be polite.

godelski 7y ago

It probably depends who you are taking your information from. For example, here is an expert saying that it is just like the flu[0] (Linkedin [1]). The other part, is that we shouldn't expect consensus in something like this. Why? Because data is evolving and changing. This is in contrast to something like Climate Change where we have a large amount of post hoc data/analysis. Here the analysis is being done in situ and that is much more difficult. It should be unsurprising that opinions change as information changes. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg [1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/knutmwittkowski https://www.linkedin.com/in/knutmwittkowski

throwaway32120 7y ago

That's one of the issues with hyperpartisanship. Everyone thinks that people need to be held accountable - as long as it's people they already decided were terrible. The truth is the response to this pandemic has been poor across the board. Go back and read what people were saying in February to see how unprepared everyone was. Bill Gates, for example, is held up as someone who saw this coming. However, if you read what he wrote at the end of February about what needs to be done to stop the Coronavirus, you'll he didn't raise any issues about the way it was being handled within the United States, and viewed the main problem being the difficulties that poor countries would have handling it. Even a few days ago there were almost no leaders calling for mass use of face coverings. And there still seem to be very few (if any) calling for an implementation of measures like those that are successfully combating the virus in South Korea.

kyuudou 7y ago
It's also one of the issues with a bipartisan system designed to stay that way - one side eternally blames the other for being evil incarnate and how their side's excrement has no olfactory emission. It's conducive to this hyperpartisanship and I really agree with some of the founding fathers of the US that political parties should be forbidden because of the types of dramatic intrigue that result, which hurt people the most during times such as now. I just call them both the War Party now because that's what they are.

bduerst 7y ago

The video snippet you linked is from January. You can tell because it talks about the upcoming Iowa caucus. This is approximately the time that the first patient tested positive in the U.S. The video that OP references goes into February and March, so I don't think these are equivalent.

jmckib 7y ago

You can cherry-pick different opinions from all over the spectrum. For example, Tucker Carlson took the virus pretty seriously early on, but he was one of the only voices on Fox News to do so. Views on the left have been more mixed. At least that's been my observation, but I don't watch TV news; I just read about what's on it. I've been getting my news from WaPo and WSJ, both of which took the virus seriously from the beginning.

jeffdavis 7y ago
Not enough is said about people who saw it before it came. Relying on someone to do the right thing in the middle of chaos is unreliable. You really don't need to cherry pick to find examples on both sides. George W Bush laid out a major pandemic strategy, for instance: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemi... Too bad it fell apart in subsequent administrations.
nl 7y ago
Yes - it seems like Tucker Carlson was the person who convinced Trump to change his mind[1] and he deserves credit for it. I wonder what it was that convinced him when many of the people he deals with day-to-day were of the complete opposite view? [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlsons-monologue-prompted-trump-to-take-coronavirus-seriously-wapo-reports https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlsons-monologue-prom...
- jmckib 7y ago
  As much as I disagree with almost everything Carlson says, I have to give him credit for going against the grain on this and a few other issues in the past. Lindsey Graham also deserves some credit for calling up Trump and trying to convince him to take this situation more seriously. There's something to be said for the strategy of kowtowing to Trump most of the time so that he will still listen to you when it really counts. That strategy shouldn't be necessary with a competent leader, but here we are.

Uhhrrr 7y ago

Fortunately good judgement is an occasional human virtue which also cuts across party lines.

neop1x 7y ago

Here is a video of horrendous New York situation with "overrun" Queens hospital https://video.fprg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t42.9040-2/92262469_658622128248002_6790764214655909888_n.mp4?_nc_cat=110&_nc_sid=985c63&efg=eyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6ImxlZ2FjeV9zZCJ9&_nc_ohc=jorWQL_RNgAAX9Tke1j&_nc_ht=video.fprg2-1.fna&oh=f4aafe7174fdfab67ae91f1acc43faef&oe=5E8DBDA8 https://video.fprg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/l/t42.9040-2/92262469_... Here a similar one from Begamo, Italy https://youtu.be/lcK2mzuO6MU https://youtu.be/lcK2mzuO6MU And now, where is the truth? I would like not to be infected. I try to avoid being infected by flu as well. But maybe we really are overreacting. We don't have immune system trained for this - that is problematic. Elderly people and people with health conditions should be isolated. But that's probably it. Once the population has enough people with trained immune system, it will be "like a flu" or won't it? Who to trust?

SZJX 7y ago
I don't think the point is about an apocalyptic image of people cogging up and dying in the corridors or whatnot. It's the lack of equipments like ventilators. Also it's confirmed from many sources that the medical workers are all stretched to their limits and some of them even died from overexertion. That's probably much more convincing than some random videos.

stevetursi 7y ago

It's true, both were wrong. It's also true that both sides presume the worst intentions when they say the other side was wrong. I can't get over the fact, however, that only one side was (and still is) in a position to do something about it. Moreover that one side had access to better intelligence about the severity of the situation, and that one side sowed the seeds of their awful response over the past three years with the various cuts they made.