4 ms·

Just tired of this all... the whole handling of this has been insanely incompetent, especially at the federal level

earthtourist 7y ago
No question it's been suboptimal but "insanely incompetent" seems a stretch. The most logical comparison would be to other similar countries. The U.S. handling seems to have been much better than UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Iran. Similar to Denmark, Austria, Germany, etc. South Korea and China seem to be doing well but if they don't achieve herd immunity, and other states do, they might end up prolonging their pain significantly. Although they'll probably be better off because they'll have time to prepare and benefit from medical advances. It's hard to judge while we're in the middle of this. The demographics and cultural habits probably play a big role. The reports generated after this is all over will tell us who did what well. I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally.
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally. Why are you comparing globally? It's the wealthiest nation, always brags about itself being #1, and is the global hegemon, yet we're supposed to compare it to it's satellite states.
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  I have a lot of friends across the planet and everyone seems to think they are handling it better than others, when provided with proof otherwise they have a toolkit of responses to murky the waters. The US response has been utterly terrible. For a government that spends far more per person on healthcare it's absolutely shocking. This isn't including private/insurance payments. Completely dropped the ball and the whole world is watching you do it. Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en
  - foobarbazetc 7y ago
    Once you come to understand that the federal US response has nothing to do with health or saving lives and everything to do with various people lining their pockets it makes more sense. At least California (and more specifically, the Bay Area) seem to be on top of it.
  - swilliamsio 7y ago
    >Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en I found this map breaks down the case numbers with a higher level of detail https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?utm_name=iossmf#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    I'm basing my comments on data: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ In what way did the U.S. "completely drop the ball"? As far as I can tell there are two things that could have been done better: 1. Much more funding for the National Stockpile of PPE and ventilators. 2. An early attempt to do a lock down. Testing could have been done faster, but given that no attempt was made at containment, this likely would not have made any difference. It may have made things worse in some cases. How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Hospital ships sent to hot spots? Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? The U.S. has done a reasonably competent job as far as I can tell. The U.S. has a very good expert leading the federal response, in Dr. Fauci. How many countries have such an expert in charge of their response?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Testing could have been done faster Testing could have been done at all, period. Until ~two weeks ago, US hasn't been doing any meaningful testing; courtesy of a) FDA/CDC bureaucracy boondoggle, and b) both state and federal governments still thinking "it's just a flu". > no attempt was made at containment And why is that? > would not have made any difference Monitoring hotspots as they develop would vastly improve the ability to control the spread. Perhaps social distancing measures would've started earlier. > How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? You mean the one that's being made by seizing PPEs earmarked for hospitals? > How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Everyone who has a cargo plane or can charter one. > Hospital ships sent to hot spots? It's just a moving hospital. > Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? Everyone has their version of a field hospital. > An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? CDC was even more impotent in this case than WHO. > The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? Strangely not used when it mattered. -- The rest of the world has been watching US response for almost two months now. It's hard to see it as anything but the worst in the entire Western world.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  What make you think that US's handling has been better than most European countries? The situation looks worse to me.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    > The situation looks worse to me. What matters is numbers, not how things "look".
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      And US numbers look really, really bad compared to Europe.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - loopz 7y ago
        To be fair, compare US to 1/2 of Europe. So we won't know until first wave breaks.
      - SnowProblem 7y ago
        Do they? Take the 5 major countries in western Europe - UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Together they have ~325M people, which is about the size of the US. Both total cases and total deaths are higher than US. Total deaths is 4x worse. What numbers are you looking at?
        NickNameNick 7y ago
        All the numbers will double every 3.5 days if not properly controlled. Give it a week and see how close the US is to overtaking Europe.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      Yes, and if I look at the numbers it does look worse to me. New York has a population of 20 million and it currently has a number of dead comparable to the UK with a population of 67 million, for example. New Jersey seems to fare worse than Switzerland with a comparable population, for another example.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  The handling in the UK was bungled as well. But most of the countries we are doing better than had community spread much earlier than us and we had the giant advantage of seeing what happened in Italy and preparing. I think if community spread had started as early as in the U.S. as those countries I think we'd be in a much worse spot than many of them.
  - earthtourist 7y ago
    Everyone knew what was happening in China. The starting line was the same for all countries. I became 100% sure we were in for a hospital-overrunning pandemic by mid-January. I can tell because that's when I started emailing friends/family telling them to stock up for a quarantine.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      If you assume everyone had the same starting line then that makes the u.s. look even worse because we still haven't locked down as hard as necessary to slow down the virus.
prox 7y ago
This is the perfect example why protest voting (voting for someone because you are against something - the other party, the establishment) is so dangerous. You should only vote if are truly and in favour of and see the good reasoning of someone’s ideas and who has shown a good track record. Voting out of emotion to stick it to the other team is like stabbing yourself with a dagger. > Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  I'm not sure what the solution is and I'm certainly no fan of Trump but I think his rise is strongly related to things being so bad they provoke protest votes. There has been American ruling for a long time, certainly the period we might now call the good times. IE, once they did an adequate job. If there's a cynical nihilism among the voters, the willingness of the broad political class to provoke this feeling has to get a lot of blame.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    It's complicated, but two pretty straightforward solutions come to mind. * Implement PR-STV voting * Abolish the electoral college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote Imagine voting in order of preference and having it count. PR-STV is damn near magical. It means you can vote for the person you _really want_ (so your super lefty communist or your right-wing neonazi, if that's your jam) but ALSO say "well if they don't win I want someone who's at least basically competent" - and your vote is allocated in the most effective manner. In some cases even if your #1 _does_ win the surplus can go to the next candidate, useful in elections where there's more than one winner (county councils, etc.) Imgine if the GOP primary had been one person saying "Well I like Kasich, Rubio, Jeb" and the other had been "Well I like Jeb, Rubio, Kasich" in that order - Rubio wins. Instead we get the ones who pay any attention splitting as above and the masses who do stuff besides follow politics voting for Trump. But it gets better! This affects behaviour. Right now, the republicans know there isn't a chance in hell of getting my vote so they don't even try. If they knew they _might_ get a 3rd or 4th preference out of me, they might at least go for it. I can imagine, say, voting Sanders->Biden->Hypothetical Lincoln Chafee or John McCain or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of either of my lower preferences, but they seem(ed) like decent people with whom my differences are a matter of policy, and would be VASTLY preferable to what we have now.
jfnixon 7y ago
Yeah, if only we were more like the EU, where the top scientist working on this problem (checks notes) just resigned due to all the political infighting. Why can't we be more like... oh, wait.
- alextheparrot 7y ago
  Super fair comment — though I’ve been trying to refrain from the comparative approach (Two incompetent responses does not make the one I directly experience “better”). There’s an underlying hope that the US is a great nation, or could display the characteristics of one at least. The lack of unity displayed between the states and federal government leaves me less convinced of this. My entire life I’ve been told America was great, but all I’ve seen is sand turned to glassy mirrors inside explosive crucibles. It is easy to hate our reflection, and even harder to realise we don’t seem willing to change it.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    If you want unity, you need to vote for candidates that only pursue policies that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with. Right now however Americans are mostly voting for candidates that pursue policies that half of Americans will agree strongly with and half will disagree strongly with. Moving the locus of policy making away from Washington DC and towards state legislatures would be a good thing since the policies would largely impact populations where the overwhelming majority agrees with the policies.
    - alextheparrot 7y ago
      Fifty ways of doing something isn’t an American union, just as the Treaty of Verdun didn’t form Germany. To add to the initial commentary, when the state governments and federal government are fighting each other, it shows a lack of unity. I’m not asking for a hegemonic unity where we all think the similar things for it to be enacted nationally, but instead for us to just have higher guiding principles that can align a nation in common action, politics irrespective.

No question it's been suboptimal but "insanely incompetent" seems a stretch. The most logical comparison would be to other similar countries. The U.S. handling seems to have been much better than UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Iran. Similar to Denmark, Austria, Germany, etc. South Korea and China seem to be doing well but if they don't achieve herd immunity, and other states do, they might end up prolonging their pain significantly. Although they'll probably be better off because they'll have time to prepare and benefit from medical advances. It's hard to judge while we're in the middle of this. The demographics and cultural habits probably play a big role. The reports generated after this is all over will tell us who did what well. I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally.

ianleeclark 7y ago
> I predict the U.S. response will be shown to have been much too slow, lacking in sufficent preparation, but not insanely incompetent when compared globally. Why are you comparing globally? It's the wealthiest nation, always brags about itself being #1, and is the global hegemon, yet we're supposed to compare it to it's satellite states.
ShorsHammer 7y ago
I have a lot of friends across the planet and everyone seems to think they are handling it better than others, when provided with proof otherwise they have a toolkit of responses to murky the waters. The US response has been utterly terrible. For a government that spends far more per person on healthcare it's absolutely shocking. This isn't including private/insurance payments. Completely dropped the ball and the whole world is watching you do it. Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en
- foobarbazetc 7y ago
  Once you come to understand that the federal US response has nothing to do with health or saving lives and everything to do with various people lining their pockets it makes more sense. At least California (and more specifically, the Bay Area) seem to be on top of it.
- swilliamsio 7y ago
  >Here's a nice quick map to view how it's playing out across the planet: https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en https://google.com/covid19-map/?hl=en I found this map breaks down the case numbers with a higher level of detail https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html?utm_name=iossmf#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
- earthtourist 7y ago
  I'm basing my comments on data: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ In what way did the U.S. "completely drop the ball"? As far as I can tell there are two things that could have been done better: 1. Much more funding for the National Stockpile of PPE and ventilators. 2. An early attempt to do a lock down. Testing could have been done faster, but given that no attempt was made at containment, this likely would not have made any difference. It may have made things worse in some cases. How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Hospital ships sent to hot spots? Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? The U.S. has done a reasonably competent job as far as I can tell. The U.S. has a very good expert leading the federal response, in Dr. Fauci. How many countries have such an expert in charge of their response?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Testing could have been done faster Testing could have been done at all, period. Until ~two weeks ago, US hasn't been doing any meaningful testing; courtesy of a) FDA/CDC bureaucracy boondoggle, and b) both state and federal governments still thinking "it's just a flu". > no attempt was made at containment And why is that? > would not have made any difference Monitoring hotspots as they develop would vastly improve the ability to control the spread. Perhaps social distancing measures would've started earlier. > How many other countries even have a National Stock pile with PPE and ventilators? You mean the one that's being made by seizing PPEs earmarked for hospitals? > How many have cargo planes flying supplies? Everyone who has a cargo plane or can charter one. > Hospital ships sent to hot spots? It's just a moving hospital. > Field hospitals like the ones designed by U.S. Army Corp of Engineers? Everyone has their version of a field hospital. > An organization with the capabilities of the CDC? CDC was even more impotent in this case than WHO. > The rapid-testing from Abbot Labs? Strangely not used when it mattered. -- The rest of the world has been watching US response for almost two months now. It's hard to see it as anything but the worst in the entire Western world.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
What make you think that US's handling has been better than most European countries? The situation looks worse to me.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > The situation looks worse to me. What matters is numbers, not how things "look".
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And US numbers look really, really bad compared to Europe.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - loopz 7y ago
      To be fair, compare US to 1/2 of Europe. So we won't know until first wave breaks.
    - SnowProblem 7y ago
      Do they? Take the 5 major countries in western Europe - UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Together they have ~325M people, which is about the size of the US. Both total cases and total deaths are higher than US. Total deaths is 4x worse. What numbers are you looking at?
      - NickNameNick 7y ago
        All the numbers will double every 3.5 days if not properly controlled. Give it a week and see how close the US is to overtaking Europe.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Yes, and if I look at the numbers it does look worse to me. New York has a population of 20 million and it currently has a number of dead comparable to the UK with a population of 67 million, for example. New Jersey seems to fare worse than Switzerland with a comparable population, for another example.
JamesBarney 7y ago
The handling in the UK was bungled as well. But most of the countries we are doing better than had community spread much earlier than us and we had the giant advantage of seeing what happened in Italy and preparing. I think if community spread had started as early as in the U.S. as those countries I think we'd be in a much worse spot than many of them.
- earthtourist 7y ago
  Everyone knew what was happening in China. The starting line was the same for all countries. I became 100% sure we were in for a hospital-overrunning pandemic by mid-January. I can tell because that's when I started emailing friends/family telling them to stock up for a quarantine.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    If you assume everyone had the same starting line then that makes the u.s. look even worse because we still haven't locked down as hard as necessary to slow down the virus.

prox 7y ago

This is the perfect example why protest voting (voting for someone because you are against something - the other party, the establishment) is so dangerous. You should only vote if are truly and in favour of and see the good reasoning of someone’s ideas and who has shown a good track record. Voting out of emotion to stick it to the other team is like stabbing yourself with a dagger. > Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

joe_the_user 7y ago
I'm not sure what the solution is and I'm certainly no fan of Trump but I think his rise is strongly related to things being so bad they provoke protest votes. There has been American ruling for a long time, certainly the period we might now call the good times. IE, once they did an adequate job. If there's a cynical nihilism among the voters, the willingness of the broad political class to provoke this feeling has to get a lot of blame.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  It's complicated, but two pretty straightforward solutions come to mind. * Implement PR-STV voting * Abolish the electoral college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote Imagine voting in order of preference and having it count. PR-STV is damn near magical. It means you can vote for the person you _really want_ (so your super lefty communist or your right-wing neonazi, if that's your jam) but ALSO say "well if they don't win I want someone who's at least basically competent" - and your vote is allocated in the most effective manner. In some cases even if your #1 _does_ win the surplus can go to the next candidate, useful in elections where there's more than one winner (county councils, etc.) Imgine if the GOP primary had been one person saying "Well I like Kasich, Rubio, Jeb" and the other had been "Well I like Jeb, Rubio, Kasich" in that order - Rubio wins. Instead we get the ones who pay any attention splitting as above and the masses who do stuff besides follow politics voting for Trump. But it gets better! This affects behaviour. Right now, the republicans know there isn't a chance in hell of getting my vote so they don't even try. If they knew they _might_ get a 3rd or 4th preference out of me, they might at least go for it. I can imagine, say, voting Sanders->Biden->Hypothetical Lincoln Chafee or John McCain or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of either of my lower preferences, but they seem(ed) like decent people with whom my differences are a matter of policy, and would be VASTLY preferable to what we have now.

jfnixon 7y ago

Yeah, if only we were more like the EU, where the top scientist working on this problem (checks notes) just resigned due to all the political infighting. Why can't we be more like... oh, wait.

alextheparrot 7y ago
Super fair comment — though I’ve been trying to refrain from the comparative approach (Two incompetent responses does not make the one I directly experience “better”). There’s an underlying hope that the US is a great nation, or could display the characteristics of one at least. The lack of unity displayed between the states and federal government leaves me less convinced of this. My entire life I’ve been told America was great, but all I’ve seen is sand turned to glassy mirrors inside explosive crucibles. It is easy to hate our reflection, and even harder to realise we don’t seem willing to change it.
- malandrew 7y ago
  If you want unity, you need to vote for candidates that only pursue policies that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with. Right now however Americans are mostly voting for candidates that pursue policies that half of Americans will agree strongly with and half will disagree strongly with. Moving the locus of policy making away from Washington DC and towards state legislatures would be a good thing since the policies would largely impact populations where the overwhelming majority agrees with the policies.
  - alextheparrot 7y ago
    Fifty ways of doing something isn’t an American union, just as the Treaty of Verdun didn’t form Germany. To add to the initial commentary, when the state governments and federal government are fighting each other, it shows a lack of unity. I’m not asking for a hegemonic unity where we all think the similar things for it to be enacted nationally, but instead for us to just have higher guiding principles that can align a nation in common action, politics irrespective.