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> this is a natural disaster True, but it’s been frustratingly exacerbated and perpetuated by corrupt private interests and fundamentally unqualified leadershi

> 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.

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.