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This is a great essay, but it doesn’t give me much hope for the US. Our behavior during this pandemic has been for one part of the country to finger wag and dis

This is a great essay, but it doesn’t give me much hope for the US. Our behavior during this pandemic has been for one part of the country to finger wag and disbelieve while the other part suffers, while doing very little to actually fight the disease. It feels like we are so incapable of responding to this crisis that we are simply retreating into fantasy and pretending it’s not a big deal. This is all with a fast moving crisis that is in each of our own neighborhoods, and has already directly impacted about one in every hundred Americans. When it comes to responding to climate change, I expect we will do basically nothing to prepare, and that we will abandon flooded coastal cities only after they’ve already been permanently flooded.

musicale 6y ago
> while doing very little to actually fight the disease Are you saying that there isn't much in the way of medical research going on to try to come up with treatments, preventive measures, and potential vaccines or cures for the disease? What do you think could be done to start that kind of research in the US?
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  350 million people. How many are pursuing medical research in any of its myriad forms? How many are posting 5g conspiracies, refusing to wear a mask or claiming that people dying years early on average isn’t a big deal? The second cohort is a multiple in size of the first.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > The second cohort is a multiple in size of the first. That's a weird way of looking at it. The people who do $job provide food, energy, building materials etc and taxes so some people can specialize on medical research. It would be terribly inefficient if we just switched over the majority of the population to medical research. I doubt they'd make much progress, and at the same time pulling them from their normal jobs would create a lot of problems that would make some 10 million excess deaths projection pale in comparison.

musicale 6y ago

> while doing very little to actually fight the disease Are you saying that there isn't much in the way of medical research going on to try to come up with treatments, preventive measures, and potential vaccines or cures for the disease? What do you think could be done to start that kind of research in the US?

CraigJPerry 6y ago
350 million people. How many are pursuing medical research in any of its myriad forms? How many are posting 5g conspiracies, refusing to wear a mask or claiming that people dying years early on average isn’t a big deal? The second cohort is a multiple in size of the first.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > The second cohort is a multiple in size of the first. That's a weird way of looking at it. The people who do $job provide food, energy, building materials etc and taxes so some people can specialize on medical research. It would be terribly inefficient if we just switched over the majority of the population to medical research. I doubt they'd make much progress, and at the same time pulling them from their normal jobs would create a lot of problems that would make some 10 million excess deaths projection pale in comparison.