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Guys, this is a natural disaster. The blame game about causality is fucking stupid. Mitigation and response is all that matters because it’s all that’s actually

Guys, this is a natural disaster. The blame game about causality is fucking stupid. Mitigation and response is all that matters because it’s all that’s actually under our (humanity’s) control.

save_ferris 6y ago
> this is a natural disaster True, but it’s been frustratingly exacerbated and perpetuated by corrupt private interests and fundamentally unqualified leadership. I agree that our focus should be on mitigation and response, but the genesis of this debacle is fair game, particularly in an election year. The Official US death toll just surpassed the Vietnam War count, and that figure is widely speculated to be underreported. Not to mention that health experts are warning of a second wave in the winter, when Americans travel the most. People have every right to know exactly how the US got its butt kicked by the worst public health crisis in a century.
- philwelch 6y ago
  Even to the degree that's the case, "failing to accurately guess the taxonomic category of the next virus to cause a pandemic" is a really dumb criticism. Based on the evidence prior to 2019--hell, even prior to about February of this year--coronaviruses didn't really seem like that much more of a potential threat than influenza or maybe Ebola. If you want to criticize the US government, criticize them for depleting the Strategic National Stockpile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile), maintaining pointless and counterproductive regulatory barriers against meaningful testing until it was too late, not listening to early warning signs from China and Taiwan, not effectively coordinating between local, state, and federal agencies, allowing the CDC to lose focus by wasting resources on merely metaphorical "epidemics" like obesity and gun violence, or having a political culture more focused on partisan bickering and gainsaying than on competent governance. But please, don't criticize them for not being clairvoyant enough to proactively cure coronaviruses.
- ezoe 6y ago
  >Vietnam War count What count? The number of American death? It's the least of concerns if think about the total civilian death.
wrycoder 6y ago
There is next time, you know. Something has to change, and that means admitting that you might have to change.
redis_mlc 6y ago
Oh, the contrived "bat narrative" again ... Wuhan is a world center for corona virus research. It has two labs, with at least one funded by the US government. The likelihood this pandemic wasn't a release from one of those labs is less than 50%.
- fchu 6y ago
  How did you come up with that probability? Seems gratuitous
balladeer 6y ago
Indeed. But should we not even discuss, instead, about something like this? One of the treating physicians, Dr. Li Wenliang, warned some colleagues about the new illness on December 31. Instead of spreading the word about the new pathogen and dispatching the country’s top infectious disease detectives to Wuhan, the police arrested Dr. Li and accused him of “spreading rumors.” He died on February 7 from the coronavirus that he contracted while treating patients. It took China’s president Xi Jinping until January 7 to order his top medical officials to investigate the outbreak. They publicly denied it was communicable person-to-person. That allowed Chinese lunar New Year celebrations and holiday breaks to go ahead as planned, sending infected people from Wuhan around the country and across the planet. https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning-for-a-viral-pandemic/ https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning-for...
- throw334532 6y ago
  China notified the WHO on the same day, December 31. The WHO did not deny person-to-person transmission. They said there was no direct evidence yet. After China locked down on January 23, some countries took months before acting.
- morsch 6y ago
  At least they had the excuse of being the first who this happened to. Germany has had (mostly contained) Covid cases since Jan 27, and there's been community spread in Europe since February. Where China (supossedly) had lunar New Year celebrations, we had carnival celebrations with hundreds of thousands. And Germans along with half of Europe went skiing in the Alps, right next to what was at the time the epicenter of the disease.
throwaway1997 6y ago
An earthquake or volcanic eruption is a natural disaster - there is nothing that can be done to stop them from happening and they are largely unpredictable. The Covid virus started naturally but that it was allowed to turn into a pandemic was caused by negligence and corruption. Those are the things that we must address. Calling it a pure act of force majeure will result in lessons not being learned and this problem happening again unnecessarily. We, in Asia learned a lot during the SARS and many countries on this side of the world are already well on their way to eradicating the virus within our communities. Unfortunately China covered up and suppressed their knowledge of this virus which delayed other country's responses. Additionally, the WHO dragging their feet and doing engage in pointless politics, such as refusing to acknowledge Taiwan's existence, resulted in wasted knowledge.

Guys, this is a natural disaster. The blame game about causality is fucking stupid. Mitigation and response is all that matters because it’s all that’s actually under our (humanity’s) control.

save_ferris 6y ago

> this is a natural disaster True, but it’s been frustratingly exacerbated and perpetuated by corrupt private interests and fundamentally unqualified leadership. I agree that our focus should be on mitigation and response, but the genesis of this debacle is fair game, particularly in an election year. The Official US death toll just surpassed the Vietnam War count, and that figure is widely speculated to be underreported. Not to mention that health experts are warning of a second wave in the winter, when Americans travel the most. People have every right to know exactly how the US got its butt kicked by the worst public health crisis in a century.

philwelch 6y ago
Even to the degree that's the case, "failing to accurately guess the taxonomic category of the next virus to cause a pandemic" is a really dumb criticism. Based on the evidence prior to 2019--hell, even prior to about February of this year--coronaviruses didn't really seem like that much more of a potential threat than influenza or maybe Ebola. If you want to criticize the US government, criticize them for depleting the Strategic National Stockpile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_National_Stockpile), maintaining pointless and counterproductive regulatory barriers against meaningful testing until it was too late, not listening to early warning signs from China and Taiwan, not effectively coordinating between local, state, and federal agencies, allowing the CDC to lose focus by wasting resources on merely metaphorical "epidemics" like obesity and gun violence, or having a political culture more focused on partisan bickering and gainsaying than on competent governance. But please, don't criticize them for not being clairvoyant enough to proactively cure coronaviruses.
ezoe 6y ago
>Vietnam War count What count? The number of American death? It's the least of concerns if think about the total civilian death.

wrycoder 6y ago

There is next time, you know. Something has to change, and that means admitting that you might have to change.

redis_mlc 6y ago

Oh, the contrived "bat narrative" again ... Wuhan is a world center for corona virus research. It has two labs, with at least one funded by the US government. The likelihood this pandemic wasn't a release from one of those labs is less than 50%.

fchu 6y ago
How did you come up with that probability? Seems gratuitous

balladeer 6y ago

Indeed. But should we not even discuss, instead, about something like this? One of the treating physicians, Dr. Li Wenliang, warned some colleagues about the new illness on December 31. Instead of spreading the word about the new pathogen and dispatching the country’s top infectious disease detectives to Wuhan, the police arrested Dr. Li and accused him of “spreading rumors.” He died on February 7 from the coronavirus that he contracted while treating patients. It took China’s president Xi Jinping until January 7 to order his top medical officials to investigate the outbreak. They publicly denied it was communicable person-to-person. That allowed Chinese lunar New Year celebrations and holiday breaks to go ahead as planned, sending infected people from Wuhan around the country and across the planet. https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning-for-a-viral-pandemic/ https://lithub.com/on-the-near-impossibility-of-planning-for...

throw334532 6y ago
China notified the WHO on the same day, December 31. The WHO did not deny person-to-person transmission. They said there was no direct evidence yet. After China locked down on January 23, some countries took months before acting.
morsch 6y ago
At least they had the excuse of being the first who this happened to. Germany has had (mostly contained) Covid cases since Jan 27, and there's been community spread in Europe since February. Where China (supossedly) had lunar New Year celebrations, we had carnival celebrations with hundreds of thousands. And Germans along with half of Europe went skiing in the Alps, right next to what was at the time the epicenter of the disease.

throwaway1997 6y ago

An earthquake or volcanic eruption is a natural disaster - there is nothing that can be done to stop them from happening and they are largely unpredictable. The Covid virus started naturally but that it was allowed to turn into a pandemic was caused by negligence and corruption. Those are the things that we must address. Calling it a pure act of force majeure will result in lessons not being learned and this problem happening again unnecessarily. We, in Asia learned a lot during the SARS and many countries on this side of the world are already well on their way to eradicating the virus within our communities. Unfortunately China covered up and suppressed their knowledge of this virus which delayed other country's responses. Additionally, the WHO dragging their feet and doing engage in pointless politics, such as refusing to acknowledge Taiwan's existence, resulted in wasted knowledge.