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That wasn't my point. Obviously there is now way to know for certain, but there's a possibility that if Trump's administration hadn't cut the pandemic team, thi

That wasn't my point. Obviously there is now way to know for certain, but there's a possibility that if Trump's administration hadn't cut the pandemic team, this whole thing may not even have happened in the first place. It may be a bold statement, but don't forget that said team's job was exactly to have people on the ground in China and other places, looking for new viruses and ringing the alarm early. Spending billions to come up with a vaccine is orders of magnitude more expensive than millions preventing the pandemic in the first place. Similarly, one could argue that if Trump's administration hadn't gutted the cybersecurity team, we may or may not have caught the SolarWind hack much sooner. Again, there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work, all I know is that while those teams were in place, the hacks and the impact of viruses were much smaller.

zepto 6y ago
> there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work This is true. It’s not a valid counterfactual to compare against an imagined ideal. It’s just as possible to consider that the pandemic response team had degenerated into ineffectiveness, and by disbanding them Trump made things better. This is why imagined counterfactuals aren’t helpful compared vs comparing with an actual benchmark.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  When you get both the worst pandemic and worst hack in a century right 1-2 year after killing the very teams whose job it is to prevent said catastrophes, at what point do you stop blaming things on bad luck?
  - zepto 6y ago
    Where has anyone blamed anything on bad luck? I think our institutions are terrible, and definitely a factor in things like the pandemic and the hack. I just think it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans or even a specific act of the Trump administration, based on pure imagination of an alternative outcome. If ‘American republicanism’ is to blame for how bad the pandemic is, how do you explain Europe’s performance?
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      > it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans When they were the ones who cut off funding to the very agencies whose job it was to prevent, then it absolutely makes sense. If I cut off your house's alarm system, and the very next week there's a burglary, you would absolutely blame me for it. > how do you explain Europe’s performance Again, I'm not talking about the response to the pandemic, but specifically about prevention. And yes, China, Europe and other countries should've had their own agencies in charge of tracking and preventing worldwide outbreak, but this is whataboutism. What I care about is that the US cutoff it's alarm system and ended up getting attacks the next year.
- loopz 6y ago
  This is just as true then: People die in hospitals. Demolishing them will make things better.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Do you claim no hospital should ever be demolished, regardless of whether it was built with toxic materials, or has been neglected to the point of being unsafe?

zepto 6y ago

> there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work This is true. It’s not a valid counterfactual to compare against an imagined ideal. It’s just as possible to consider that the pandemic response team had degenerated into ineffectiveness, and by disbanding them Trump made things better. This is why imagined counterfactuals aren’t helpful compared vs comparing with an actual benchmark.

ehsankia 6y ago
When you get both the worst pandemic and worst hack in a century right 1-2 year after killing the very teams whose job it is to prevent said catastrophes, at what point do you stop blaming things on bad luck?
- zepto 6y ago
  Where has anyone blamed anything on bad luck? I think our institutions are terrible, and definitely a factor in things like the pandemic and the hack. I just think it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans or even a specific act of the Trump administration, based on pure imagination of an alternative outcome. If ‘American republicanism’ is to blame for how bad the pandemic is, how do you explain Europe’s performance?
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    > it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans When they were the ones who cut off funding to the very agencies whose job it was to prevent, then it absolutely makes sense. If I cut off your house's alarm system, and the very next week there's a burglary, you would absolutely blame me for it. > how do you explain Europe’s performance Again, I'm not talking about the response to the pandemic, but specifically about prevention. And yes, China, Europe and other countries should've had their own agencies in charge of tracking and preventing worldwide outbreak, but this is whataboutism. What I care about is that the US cutoff it's alarm system and ended up getting attacks the next year.
loopz 6y ago
This is just as true then: People die in hospitals. Demolishing them will make things better.
- zepto 6y ago
  Do you claim no hospital should ever be demolished, regardless of whether it was built with toxic materials, or has been neglected to the point of being unsafe?