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We were not "all unprepared for this". That's a bullshit line by incompetent politicians who deliberately dismantled the very systems that were put in place to

We were not "all unprepared for this". That's a bullshit line by incompetent politicians who deliberately dismantled the very systems that were put in place to deal with this. As for warnings: By end of December, the epi community knew something was up. By mid January, there was a pretty loud clamor that we need to address this.By end of January, Covid was a regular occurrence in the intelligence briefing for the president, and the warnings weren't exactly ambiguous. By mid February, anybody who was paying actual attention was preparing one way or another. As for warning the general public: Bill Gates did a whole song and dance on a TED stage. We had SARS, and Mers, and swine flu. So, no, we are not "all unprepared". Many closed their eyes and pretended wishing extra-hard makes science go away. And yes, there's a good chance we'll see another one in our lifetime. As we encroach more and more on animal habitats, it's pretty inevitable. (That, too, is a thing people have been warning about for decades)

Sideloader 7y ago
Well put. A lot of people miss this fact. Also, the US/UK trying to pin the blame for their own incompetence on China suggests that reality attachment in these places, at the government level at any rate, is seriously sub-optimal. In the US, the Trump administration’s bungling incompetence handling of the outbreak is truly staggering. Wildly contradictory statements from moment to the next, no coordinated pandemic plan, “hijacking” PPE shipments enroute from China and Malaysia to the countries that had bought, and paid for, them...this is rogue/failed state level stuff. Other western countries also messed up big time. In Canada, France, the UK and Spain people in longterm care homes were abandoned and left wallowing in their own filth as COVID-19 burned through these facilities like wildfire, killing scores of elderly inpatients, many of whom were left to suffer and die alone. It’s striking how some of the most “advanced” countries utterly failed to prepare for and manage a very foreseeable pandemic. Then again, is it really that surprising that this happened in places where health care systems have been chronically underfunded for decades as permanent homeless camps have become normalized and the middle-class economy replaced by low-wage precarity and easy credit? It’s like after four decades of “there is no such thing as society” governance the health and well-being of people, of the public, in these places has become an afterthought. The scramble to blame other countries or pretend that “there is nothing we could have done to prepare for this” is theatre designed to deflect attention from the fact that dictatorships, like China, and places with authoritarian governments, like Singapore and South Korea, care more for the health of their citizens than many of the western liberal democracies, where austerity and massive neglect of public services and infrastructure have become the norm. Like the market crash of 2008, the coronavirus outbreak of 2020 is showing that the social and economic system underpinning the west is seriously broken and can’t handle even the slightest amount of stress. It needs to be replaced with an arrangement that reins in the ability of the avaricious banker and CEO class to dictate how the economy should be run. The health and well-being of all people in society needs to come first or these places will degrade even further.
- groby_b 7y ago
  Almost 100% agree, except for the part tying this to form of governance. Democracies can handle this well (see NZ), and authoritarian places definitely fail (see Singapore now, and I'd argue Brazil and US are more authoritarian than democratic, too) It does highlight that highly individualistic societies struggle more than places that put a higher value on collective wellbeing.

Sideloader 7y ago

Well put. A lot of people miss this fact. Also, the US/UK trying to pin the blame for their own incompetence on China suggests that reality attachment in these places, at the government level at any rate, is seriously sub-optimal. In the US, the Trump administration’s bungling incompetence handling of the outbreak is truly staggering. Wildly contradictory statements from moment to the next, no coordinated pandemic plan, “hijacking” PPE shipments enroute from China and Malaysia to the countries that had bought, and paid for, them...this is rogue/failed state level stuff. Other western countries also messed up big time. In Canada, France, the UK and Spain people in longterm care homes were abandoned and left wallowing in their own filth as COVID-19 burned through these facilities like wildfire, killing scores of elderly inpatients, many of whom were left to suffer and die alone. It’s striking how some of the most “advanced” countries utterly failed to prepare for and manage a very foreseeable pandemic. Then again, is it really that surprising that this happened in places where health care systems have been chronically underfunded for decades as permanent homeless camps have become normalized and the middle-class economy replaced by low-wage precarity and easy credit? It’s like after four decades of “there is no such thing as society” governance the health and well-being of people, of the public, in these places has become an afterthought. The scramble to blame other countries or pretend that “there is nothing we could have done to prepare for this” is theatre designed to deflect attention from the fact that dictatorships, like China, and places with authoritarian governments, like Singapore and South Korea, care more for the health of their citizens than many of the western liberal democracies, where austerity and massive neglect of public services and infrastructure have become the norm. Like the market crash of 2008, the coronavirus outbreak of 2020 is showing that the social and economic system underpinning the west is seriously broken and can’t handle even the slightest amount of stress. It needs to be replaced with an arrangement that reins in the ability of the avaricious banker and CEO class to dictate how the economy should be run. The health and well-being of all people in society needs to come first or these places will degrade even further.

groby_b 7y ago
Almost 100% agree, except for the part tying this to form of governance. Democracies can handle this well (see NZ), and authoritarian places definitely fail (see Singapore now, and I'd argue Brazil and US are more authoritarian than democratic, too) It does highlight that highly individualistic societies struggle more than places that put a higher value on collective wellbeing.