3 ms·

Coronavirus Brings American Decline Out in the Open

10 points by harambae 6y ago

giardini 6y ago
Typical horseshit FTFA: >"This utter failure to suppress a disease that most other countries managed to contain..."< Almost no country has done acceptably. Only Taiwan contained it and only b/c they were recently burned by flu and had set up contingency plans complete with government buy-in, corporate help, production facilities and storage stockpiles. As for "decline": organized science has to take the blame for this monstrous f/u. We now know that Science the Emperor has no clothes. What's more, our pandemic response hasn't improved since the Middle Ages. As for technology: Masks - No valid scientific studies exist, "Simple distancing" - No valid scientific studies exist, "Social distancing"- No valid scientific studies exist, Vaccine development - Nothing, Nada, Zip, Treatment - Nothing except HCQ+Zinc early, but half the population won't admit it b/c politics intervened, Antivirals - Nothing (remdesivir doesn't work), ICU Treatment - Turn-of-century state of art (oxygen), Epidemiology - Ouija Board math. (Where _are_ the good math modelers?) This isn't an American decline, it's a failure of all of Western Civilization from the top all the way down to the 3rd world: we thought we knew what we were doing, we certainly were paying for a lot more than we got, but we got very little from science and technology. We put men on the moon but forgot to do scientific studies on the efficacy of face masks! We should slaughter the experts' jobs, shit-can entire organizations and start again building new versions of the CDC, WHO, and FDA. And that's just for starters. [at least we have a spell-checker on HN than allows me to correct "shitcan" to "shit-can" - that's the kind of hefty progress we can count on in this century.] ...returns to his cellar where he grinds chinchona bark and stockpiles zinc tablets in preparation for the worst.
- boublepop 6y ago
  You seems to want to set the bar so high that you can claim every country is failing as bad as the US. But it seems fair to say that a very long list of countries did significantly better. https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries
  - sieabahlpark 6y ago
    Didn't Cuomo's nursing home fiasco cause a lot of that? As well as the other states that also put the sick elderly with healthy elderly people?
  - aaron695 6y ago
    > But it seems fair to say that a very long list of countries did significantly better. The fact you think this kinda proves giardini's point. We won't know anything for years on 'who' did better. The virus will circle around for 3 years in a damaging way (given current/6 month old info which is ~same) and then more years to repair economic damage.
  - harambae 6y ago
    Some of those countries are massively lower population density than urban United States (Mongolia), some are naturally isolated from other nations (New Zealand), at least a few are probably lying (Cuba) and other situations. Of course there's also a level of irresponsibility in the United States and strong independent/anti-authoritarian views that make it hard in a pandemic.

10 points by harambae 6y ago

Typical horseshit FTFA: >"This utter failure to suppress a disease that most other countries managed to contain..."< Almost no country has done acceptably. Only Taiwan contained it and only b/c they were recently burned by flu and had set up contingency plans complete with government buy-in, corporate help, production facilities and storage stockpiles. As for "decline": organized science has to take the blame for this monstrous f/u. We now know that Science the Emperor has no clothes. What's more, our pandemic response hasn't improved since the Middle Ages. As for technology: Masks - No valid scientific studies exist, "Simple distancing" - No valid scientific studies exist, "Social distancing"- No valid scientific studies exist, Vaccine development - Nothing, Nada, Zip, Treatment - Nothing except HCQ+Zinc early, but half the population won't admit it b/c politics intervened, Antivirals - Nothing (remdesivir doesn't work), ICU Treatment - Turn-of-century state of art (oxygen), Epidemiology - Ouija Board math. (Where _are_ the good math modelers?) This isn't an American decline, it's a failure of all of Western Civilization from the top all the way down to the 3rd world: we thought we knew what we were doing, we certainly were paying for a lot more than we got, but we got very little from science and technology. We put men on the moon but forgot to do scientific studies on the efficacy of face masks! We should slaughter the experts' jobs, shit-can entire organizations and start again building new versions of the CDC, WHO, and FDA. And that's just for starters. [at least we have a spell-checker on HN than allows me to correct "shitcan" to "shit-can" - that's the kind of hefty progress we can count on in this century.] ...returns to his cellar where he grinds chinchona bark and stockpiles zinc tablets in preparation for the worst.

boublepop 6y ago
You seems to want to set the bar so high that you can claim every country is failing as bad as the US. But it seems fair to say that a very long list of countries did significantly better. https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  Didn't Cuomo's nursing home fiasco cause a lot of that? As well as the other states that also put the sick elderly with healthy elderly people?
- aaron695 6y ago
  > But it seems fair to say that a very long list of countries did significantly better. The fact you think this kinda proves giardini's point. We won't know anything for years on 'who' did better. The virus will circle around for 3 years in a damaging way (given current/6 month old info which is ~same) and then more years to repair economic damage.
- harambae 6y ago
  Some of those countries are massively lower population density than urban United States (Mongolia), some are naturally isolated from other nations (New Zealand), at least a few are probably lying (Cuba) and other situations. Of course there's also a level of irresponsibility in the United States and strong independent/anti-authoritarian views that make it hard in a pandemic.