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As an American I completely agree with you. The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live

by JPKab 6y ago

As an American I completely agree with you. The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live in Colorado and therefore get to enjoy marijuana whenever I want despite the fact that it's not legal at the federal level. I like it that way. Yet when we talk about this virus that is making everybody so miserable via lockdowns and for some killing them, suddenly everyone talks about it at a federal national level. As if the United States is a small homogeneous country. The virus hit New York City hard and nowhere else in the country. if you remove New York City from the equation the United States is at the top as far as low numbers of deaths per 100,000. if you include New York City the United States is still doing better than the United kingdom Spain, Italy, and Belgium etc. However the news media in this country is in the mode of if it bleeds it leads. they like to scare people to get them to keep their eyeballs glued to their screens and their prescription drug advertisements. The most recent thing that they've been doing is focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative numbers with the deaths. Same for positive tests. The number of tests being administered has gone up radically and therefore more positive cases are turning up. The media in this country has conveniently left out the fact that the positive test rate is the number that matters and that has gone down all over the country. I really really dislike Donald Trump like most of the people on this website. However I'm old enough to remember when a previous Republican president started a needless war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives as well as trillions of dollars and I'm not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that were killed. The current president is incompetent and just says dumb s* all the time. That's honestly the extent of it and I have to constantly hear the whining and complaining as if the world is coming to an end. It's frankly very irritating and the media doesn't help.

JSavageOne 6y ago
The whole reason the U.S. had to go into lockdown was because of the failure at the federal level to contain this crisis.
- JPKab 6y ago
  You say that as if it COULD have been contained. What is unique about the USA compared to every other country that locked down? Whose fault was it that Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany had to lock down? This election year absurdity has warped the reality of this virus. The virus is insanely transmissible with a long incubation period and high percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It couldn't have been contained in a free country. The "had to go into lockdown" is debatable for most of USA. NYC needed a lockdown. Rest of US probably not. Remember when Sweden was going to be a disaster a few weeks ago? Georgia and Florida? Yeah, they ended lockdowns, moron journalists pretending to be epidemiologists predicted doom. All wrong. Sweden is fine. Georgia is fine. Florida is fine. Why? Because they aren't the same as NYC and shouldn't be treated the same.
  - JSavageOne 6y ago
    I'm not condoning the lockdown and agree that the danger of coronavirus has been vastly overstated, my point is that the U.S. government was not prepared. There were not enough tests, masks, and ventilators, and so NYC had to go into lockdown. Anecdotally my friends in NYC who suffered from all the symptoms of coronavirus were not able to obtain tests. Meanwhile South Korea never had to resort to any lockdown. Both the U.S. and South Korea reported their first case on the same day (Jan. 20th), and Korea had tests available in a week while the U.S. took 5 weeks.
    - JPKab 6y ago
      Agreed 100%. 1 detail that I think is relevant to the US learning lessons from this: As incompetent as Trump is (and boy is he incompetent), having worked in the Federal gov't for 8 years, including 6 years under the Obama administration (I left after the Snowden revelations on moral grounds), there is nothing in my experience that tells me the Federal gov't in the US is competent in any way to deal with things like this virus. Obama tried, but the dude inherited a steaming pile of old bureaucracies that make IBM look like a hot, nimble start-up. It is beyond horrible. If you think that Trump made this worse, I agree. However, if you think it was anything more than a drop of water added to an ocean of mediocre apathy, then you haven't seen the Federal government agencies and the talent they retain (if you want to call it "talent"). Americans (whether left or right) need to stop arguing over the size of government and start focusing on it's spending efficiency and efficacy. It really is a travesty. Every now and then, I encounter a random coworker who is highly ineffective, and typically on the edge of being fired. I think back to my time working in the Federal sector, and realize that said person would be above average in any of the agencies I dealt with. We deserve better. And it's going to take a LOT more than a new president to get it. Trust me, I watched Obama's executive orders (for example, an open data executive order) get ignored or partially obeyed in optics only by the various bureaucracies. The Deep State is real, but it's not some nefarious, coordinated conspiracy. It's just a calcified collection of old, dispirited, soulless agencies filled with people riding their desks and avoiding risk at all costs. They avoid risk in the easiest way possible: defer action in favor of deliberation and meetings to ensure that blame is diffused if any action results in something bad happening. The government isn't like "House of Cards." It's like "Veep."

by JPKab 6y ago

JSavageOne 6y ago

The whole reason the U.S. had to go into lockdown was because of the failure at the federal level to contain this crisis.

JPKab 6y ago
You say that as if it COULD have been contained. What is unique about the USA compared to every other country that locked down? Whose fault was it that Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany had to lock down? This election year absurdity has warped the reality of this virus. The virus is insanely transmissible with a long incubation period and high percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It couldn't have been contained in a free country. The "had to go into lockdown" is debatable for most of USA. NYC needed a lockdown. Rest of US probably not. Remember when Sweden was going to be a disaster a few weeks ago? Georgia and Florida? Yeah, they ended lockdowns, moron journalists pretending to be epidemiologists predicted doom. All wrong. Sweden is fine. Georgia is fine. Florida is fine. Why? Because they aren't the same as NYC and shouldn't be treated the same.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  I'm not condoning the lockdown and agree that the danger of coronavirus has been vastly overstated, my point is that the U.S. government was not prepared. There were not enough tests, masks, and ventilators, and so NYC had to go into lockdown. Anecdotally my friends in NYC who suffered from all the symptoms of coronavirus were not able to obtain tests. Meanwhile South Korea never had to resort to any lockdown. Both the U.S. and South Korea reported their first case on the same day (Jan. 20th), and Korea had tests available in a week while the U.S. took 5 weeks.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    Agreed 100%. 1 detail that I think is relevant to the US learning lessons from this: As incompetent as Trump is (and boy is he incompetent), having worked in the Federal gov't for 8 years, including 6 years under the Obama administration (I left after the Snowden revelations on moral grounds), there is nothing in my experience that tells me the Federal gov't in the US is competent in any way to deal with things like this virus. Obama tried, but the dude inherited a steaming pile of old bureaucracies that make IBM look like a hot, nimble start-up. It is beyond horrible. If you think that Trump made this worse, I agree. However, if you think it was anything more than a drop of water added to an ocean of mediocre apathy, then you haven't seen the Federal government agencies and the talent they retain (if you want to call it "talent"). Americans (whether left or right) need to stop arguing over the size of government and start focusing on it's spending efficiency and efficacy. It really is a travesty. Every now and then, I encounter a random coworker who is highly ineffective, and typically on the edge of being fired. I think back to my time working in the Federal sector, and realize that said person would be above average in any of the agencies I dealt with. We deserve better. And it's going to take a LOT more than a new president to get it. Trust me, I watched Obama's executive orders (for example, an open data executive order) get ignored or partially obeyed in optics only by the various bureaucracies. The Deep State is real, but it's not some nefarious, coordinated conspiracy. It's just a calcified collection of old, dispirited, soulless agencies filled with people riding their desks and avoiding risk at all costs. They avoid risk in the easiest way possible: defer action in favor of deliberation and meetings to ensure that blame is diffused if any action results in something bad happening. The government isn't like "House of Cards." It's like "Veep."