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> Now a global pandemic had hit. He couldn’t foresee that. No one did. Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible conseq

> Now a global pandemic had hit. He couldn’t foresee that. No one did. Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible consequences but it would be better to say that not everyone has the capacity to account for all possible tail risks.

papito 6y ago
"When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why." -Stephen Schwartz, on Twitter, May 2018 People knew. Also, Americans don't really have the habit of factoring in major events outside of their control into their long term strategy. It will be ok. The danger is "over there". The oceans will protect us.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Alternatively, this was Trump's 9/11 -- the threat the President+Cabinet knew was coming and intentionally unprotected the nation from, in order to manufacture an excuse to retaliate against a tangentially connected enemy.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    As conspiracy theories go, that one perhaps hits hardest because of the "banality of evil" aspect to it.
    - Der_Einzige 6y ago
      I don't see what is arendtian about this...
  - 3131s 6y ago
    To those downvoting... Why is Bandar bin Sultan still free? Why was information suppressed by congress concerning Bandar sending $130,000 to the two 9/11 hijackers? Why has the Bush family never been questioned about their close friendship with Bandar?
chrisseaton 6y ago
Do you believe that Taiwan somehow knew ahead of time that there was going to be a pandemic this year? How do you believe they knew that?
- the8472 6y ago
  They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic and prepared for one happening eventually. Just like we know there's a low risk of an entire server room going up in flames/water damage/lightning/getting hit by a truck driving into a building and that's why we have offsite backups even though we won't know when something is going to happen.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic But I think so did every country. Wasn't global pandemic at the top of almost every country's national security risk register? They knew it was likely, and they knew it was high-risk. I know for a fact it was at the top of the UK's public national security risk register. You're perpetuating a silly myth that major western countries didn't know this was coming and didn't know it was a big risk.
    - the8472 6y ago
      They (or someone within the government at least) may have known, but they did not act on it. On the contrary, for example California defunded its emergency stockpile.
    - user_501238901 6y ago
      There basically wasn't a proper "modern day" pandemic before this. The previous one was the spanish flu in 1918 which was very quickly forgotten due to a much larger pointless massacre (world wars) Air travel increase is a big factor why it got so bad so quickly, even in the past two decades basically everything has changed. We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day.
smoe 6y ago
I think plenty of people said that a global pandemic is just a matter of time. Countries had made preparations with varying degrees of success. E.g. Switzerland back in like 2014 did a nationwide preparedness test, identified numerous problems (e.g. insufficient stock of PPE) and created a pandemic strategy. We still ended up in 2020 with doctors having to go to home depot to buy protective glasses because the states, responsible for implementing parts of the strategy did absolutely nothing. Few like to prepare for something that might happen, but nobody can tell you when. But as a private citizen or small to medium business, what you can do to prepare for an event of this scale and duration is also fairly limited. It has to happen at broader societal level.
- swang 6y ago
  The US was also prepared for a global pandemic, or at least had a plan.. just a certain person in power decided it was unnecessary.
  - radegast 6y ago
    Imagine being the Democratic party and the best candidates you have are: - a warhawk psycho who has seizures and faints often. "Women were always primary victims of war because their husbands and sons died" my ass. - a guy whose most remarkable achievement is falling asleep on the TV when reading sentences from paper - an angry woman with the visage of a school teacher - a billionaire mogul who tried to pay his way into becoming president - an ultra-borderline communist leftist I am sorry, but Trump is gonna win again.
  - swang 6y ago
    lol. to the dead comment, i agree! except i don't really see bernie being an ultra-borderline commie. but i guess that's how you would view someone when the entire "right" calls joe biden a socialist. man if only those labels were actually true of those people. the entire us system is broken because there are basically only two parties, and the democrats have decided to keep pushing further right because they assume actual leftists will have to vote for them. so i don't really give a shit that you bag on them. they suck. trump probably would have had the election in the bag if he didn't muck up the pandemic so badly. and that's not my opinion. the polls show it happening. now will trump get a big enough bounce coming back the other way come november? i don't see it, and neither does trump and the gop considering the ways they're trying to basically suppress the general vote. the democrats suck, but the gop are straight up using fascist tactics. he already tried to "suspend" the election so can't wait to see what happens when he loses and he decides that, no, he actually didn't lose. (again assuming polling is right, i guess we'll find out in 2.5 months)
ceejayoz 6y ago
Same for South Korea, and folks like Gates and Fauci have been warning about the next pandemic for many years.
- tomp 6y ago
  Even a broken clock is right twice every day. People have also been warning about the next market crash for many years. Finally, one happened because of pandemic, and it's over in a blink of an eye. I'm still expecting an even bigger crash, but I've learned my lesson against timing the future.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    That's unfair. "We don't know when the next pandemic will come, but it will come, and we should be prepared for it" is a perfectly reasonable statement. Any pandemic is likely going to require PPE, PCR testing reagents, BSL labs, etc. Same thing for recessions; predicting the specific timing of one is difficult. Advocating preparations for one - economic, fiscal, social policies etc. to mitigate, for example - is not a bad idea even if we don't know the timing.
    - wolco 6y ago
      Think of all of the things we are not preparing for. Isn't California due for the big one. Should we be spending now to get everyone out before it hits.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        Get everyone out? No. Prepare? Absolutely. I can't speak to the state of California's earthquake preparedness, but there should absolutely be supplies and equipment stationed throughout the state in preparation for it. It is my understanding that San Francisco, for example, has water cisterns throughout the city for fighting fires in such a scenario. It is dumb not to prepare for disasters we know will happen.
      - p1necone 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xg15 6y ago
I agree that the pandemic was not a "black swan" - there were enough warnings that it's occurrence was more a "when" than an "if" question. I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life. I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany): Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy. Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days. The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.

papito 6y ago

"When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why." -Stephen Schwartz, on Twitter, May 2018 People knew. Also, Americans don't really have the habit of factoring in major events outside of their control into their long term strategy. It will be ok. The danger is "over there". The oceans will protect us.

sukilot 6y ago
Alternatively, this was Trump's 9/11 -- the threat the President+Cabinet knew was coming and intentionally unprotected the nation from, in order to manufacture an excuse to retaliate against a tangentially connected enemy.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  As conspiracy theories go, that one perhaps hits hardest because of the "banality of evil" aspect to it.
  - Der_Einzige 6y ago
    I don't see what is arendtian about this...
- 3131s 6y ago
  To those downvoting... Why is Bandar bin Sultan still free? Why was information suppressed by congress concerning Bandar sending $130,000 to the two 9/11 hijackers? Why has the Bush family never been questioned about their close friendship with Bandar?

chrisseaton 6y ago

Do you believe that Taiwan somehow knew ahead of time that there was going to be a pandemic this year? How do you believe they knew that?

the8472 6y ago
They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic and prepared for one happening eventually. Just like we know there's a low risk of an entire server room going up in flames/water damage/lightning/getting hit by a truck driving into a building and that's why we have offsite backups even though we won't know when something is going to happen.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic But I think so did every country. Wasn't global pandemic at the top of almost every country's national security risk register? They knew it was likely, and they knew it was high-risk. I know for a fact it was at the top of the UK's public national security risk register. You're perpetuating a silly myth that major western countries didn't know this was coming and didn't know it was a big risk.
  - the8472 6y ago
    They (or someone within the government at least) may have known, but they did not act on it. On the contrary, for example California defunded its emergency stockpile.
  - user_501238901 6y ago
    There basically wasn't a proper "modern day" pandemic before this. The previous one was the spanish flu in 1918 which was very quickly forgotten due to a much larger pointless massacre (world wars) Air travel increase is a big factor why it got so bad so quickly, even in the past two decades basically everything has changed. We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day.

smoe 6y ago

I think plenty of people said that a global pandemic is just a matter of time. Countries had made preparations with varying degrees of success. E.g. Switzerland back in like 2014 did a nationwide preparedness test, identified numerous problems (e.g. insufficient stock of PPE) and created a pandemic strategy. We still ended up in 2020 with doctors having to go to home depot to buy protective glasses because the states, responsible for implementing parts of the strategy did absolutely nothing. Few like to prepare for something that might happen, but nobody can tell you when. But as a private citizen or small to medium business, what you can do to prepare for an event of this scale and duration is also fairly limited. It has to happen at broader societal level.

swang 6y ago
The US was also prepared for a global pandemic, or at least had a plan.. just a certain person in power decided it was unnecessary.
- radegast 6y ago
  Imagine being the Democratic party and the best candidates you have are: - a warhawk psycho who has seizures and faints often. "Women were always primary victims of war because their husbands and sons died" my ass. - a guy whose most remarkable achievement is falling asleep on the TV when reading sentences from paper - an angry woman with the visage of a school teacher - a billionaire mogul who tried to pay his way into becoming president - an ultra-borderline communist leftist I am sorry, but Trump is gonna win again.
- swang 6y ago
  lol. to the dead comment, i agree! except i don't really see bernie being an ultra-borderline commie. but i guess that's how you would view someone when the entire "right" calls joe biden a socialist. man if only those labels were actually true of those people. the entire us system is broken because there are basically only two parties, and the democrats have decided to keep pushing further right because they assume actual leftists will have to vote for them. so i don't really give a shit that you bag on them. they suck. trump probably would have had the election in the bag if he didn't muck up the pandemic so badly. and that's not my opinion. the polls show it happening. now will trump get a big enough bounce coming back the other way come november? i don't see it, and neither does trump and the gop considering the ways they're trying to basically suppress the general vote. the democrats suck, but the gop are straight up using fascist tactics. he already tried to "suspend" the election so can't wait to see what happens when he loses and he decides that, no, he actually didn't lose. (again assuming polling is right, i guess we'll find out in 2.5 months)

ceejayoz 6y ago

Same for South Korea, and folks like Gates and Fauci have been warning about the next pandemic for many years.

tomp 6y ago
Even a broken clock is right twice every day. People have also been warning about the next market crash for many years. Finally, one happened because of pandemic, and it's over in a blink of an eye. I'm still expecting an even bigger crash, but I've learned my lesson against timing the future.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  That's unfair. "We don't know when the next pandemic will come, but it will come, and we should be prepared for it" is a perfectly reasonable statement. Any pandemic is likely going to require PPE, PCR testing reagents, BSL labs, etc. Same thing for recessions; predicting the specific timing of one is difficult. Advocating preparations for one - economic, fiscal, social policies etc. to mitigate, for example - is not a bad idea even if we don't know the timing.
  - wolco 6y ago
    Think of all of the things we are not preparing for. Isn't California due for the big one. Should we be spending now to get everyone out before it hits.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Get everyone out? No. Prepare? Absolutely. I can't speak to the state of California's earthquake preparedness, but there should absolutely be supplies and equipment stationed throughout the state in preparation for it. It is my understanding that San Francisco, for example, has water cisterns throughout the city for fighting fires in such a scenario. It is dumb not to prepare for disasters we know will happen.
    - p1necone 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xg15 6y ago

I agree that the pandemic was not a "black swan" - there were enough warnings that it's occurrence was more a "when" than an "if" question. I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life. I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany): Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy. Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days. The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.