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You have to remember that before COVID19, we had SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu. All of these were huge news panics, lots of people got scared and started prep

You have to remember that before COVID19, we had SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu. All of these were huge news panics, lots of people got scared and started prepping for the end of the world, but for people in the west it largely ended up a nothing-burger. In the early days it's hard to know how bad something really is. Especially with the early info out of China being so unreliable (e.g. all those videos of people randomly falling down in public) But once it hit Italy bad, there were no more excuses.

robomartin 6y ago
Of course. Yet, when the President of the US gets on TV and announces that the administration enacted a travel ban from all of China...well, politicians, regardless of their ideological alignment, should stop talking and consider why this "full tilt" move was necessary. At the time this was going on they were trying to impeach Trump. This means that the entire Democratic party and nearly the entire media could not bring themselves into alignment with him at all. They were trying to kill the guy. How could they turn around and say: "Yes, sir. What do you need us to do?". And so the nation paid the price. This virus showed the US and the world just how dysfunctional our system of government has become. It has also demonstrated how dangerously partisan and politically-driven our mass media turns out to be. All to the detriment of the nation and the world. Imagine what we could have accomplished if they actually worked together.
- objectivetruth 6y ago
  You keep bringing up the China travel ban, over and over. That makes sense; the Trump administration kept bringing it up over and over as well since it was the ONLY concrete thing they did in the first few months of the crisis that COULD have possibly helped. Of course, it didn't help. COVID was already in the western US from China, the ban was only partial anyway, and the US's NY outbreak was seeded from Europe, not China. What other Trump administration actions last year were the Dem establishment and media ignoring to the detriment of the country? Because Kushner and his little prep school buddies tried to privatize and profit off of the crisis supply chains and are absolutely responsible for tens of thousands of deaths from the first months of the crisis, and that's the only other one that comes to mind for me. I similarly hear that we should thank Trump for the vaccine. (The ineffective China travel ban and the development of the vaccine are literally the only things that even the most die-hard Trump fans can think of to credit him with.) No, pretty much every US president would have ordered full-steam-ahead vaccine development, just like Trump did. It's not like he was personally mixing reagents, or even publicly respecting and admiring the scientists and doctors. What every other American president would NOT have done: * put their inexperienced son-in-law in charge of the national logistical response * sit back after enacting a partial travel ban against one country, assuming the problem was solved * publicly denigrate the important "wear a mask to prevent transmission" for MONTHS, repeatedly, after the public health establishment united around that mantra. * publicly mock and denigrate his own public health officials on TV, daily * interrupted their own COVID treatment at Walter Reed to take a little joyride, possibly infecting countless Secret Service agents * host a confirmed super-spreader event in the White House Rose Garden during a global pandemic I'll ignore the bleach and light comments here because all of his ardent supporters like to pretend that was one of his famous "jokes." Finally, I'd like to disagree with your idea that even the most terrible president should be unquestionably supported during a crisis. Most of the country believed he should have been removed and it's solely the vagaries of our gerrymandered Senate that he wasn't thrown out on his sociopathic tuchus.
mbg721 6y ago
Of course, next time there's a disease that turns out to be a nothing-burger, the early incentive for politicians is going to be to overreact rather than underreact. If emergency-fatigue seems bad now, I don't think we've seen anything yet.
- robomartin 6y ago
  I think, I hope, what we'll do is pay attention to people like Dr. Fauci and ignore politicians insisting that "it's just like the flu, we are ready for this, go about your lives as normal". That is, quite literally, the level of dysfunction we experienced; the federal government yelling "Danger Will Robinson" and the entirety of the media and one political party saying "Ignore them, they are just being racist". And here we are.

robomartin 6y ago

Of course. Yet, when the President of the US gets on TV and announces that the administration enacted a travel ban from all of China...well, politicians, regardless of their ideological alignment, should stop talking and consider why this "full tilt" move was necessary. At the time this was going on they were trying to impeach Trump. This means that the entire Democratic party and nearly the entire media could not bring themselves into alignment with him at all. They were trying to kill the guy. How could they turn around and say: "Yes, sir. What do you need us to do?". And so the nation paid the price. This virus showed the US and the world just how dysfunctional our system of government has become. It has also demonstrated how dangerously partisan and politically-driven our mass media turns out to be. All to the detriment of the nation and the world. Imagine what we could have accomplished if they actually worked together.

objectivetruth 6y ago
You keep bringing up the China travel ban, over and over. That makes sense; the Trump administration kept bringing it up over and over as well since it was the ONLY concrete thing they did in the first few months of the crisis that COULD have possibly helped. Of course, it didn't help. COVID was already in the western US from China, the ban was only partial anyway, and the US's NY outbreak was seeded from Europe, not China. What other Trump administration actions last year were the Dem establishment and media ignoring to the detriment of the country? Because Kushner and his little prep school buddies tried to privatize and profit off of the crisis supply chains and are absolutely responsible for tens of thousands of deaths from the first months of the crisis, and that's the only other one that comes to mind for me. I similarly hear that we should thank Trump for the vaccine. (The ineffective China travel ban and the development of the vaccine are literally the only things that even the most die-hard Trump fans can think of to credit him with.) No, pretty much every US president would have ordered full-steam-ahead vaccine development, just like Trump did. It's not like he was personally mixing reagents, or even publicly respecting and admiring the scientists and doctors. What every other American president would NOT have done: * put their inexperienced son-in-law in charge of the national logistical response * sit back after enacting a partial travel ban against one country, assuming the problem was solved * publicly denigrate the important "wear a mask to prevent transmission" for MONTHS, repeatedly, after the public health establishment united around that mantra. * publicly mock and denigrate his own public health officials on TV, daily * interrupted their own COVID treatment at Walter Reed to take a little joyride, possibly infecting countless Secret Service agents * host a confirmed super-spreader event in the White House Rose Garden during a global pandemic I'll ignore the bleach and light comments here because all of his ardent supporters like to pretend that was one of his famous "jokes." Finally, I'd like to disagree with your idea that even the most terrible president should be unquestionably supported during a crisis. Most of the country believed he should have been removed and it's solely the vagaries of our gerrymandered Senate that he wasn't thrown out on his sociopathic tuchus.

mbg721 6y ago

Of course, next time there's a disease that turns out to be a nothing-burger, the early incentive for politicians is going to be to overreact rather than underreact. If emergency-fatigue seems bad now, I don't think we've seen anything yet.

robomartin 6y ago
I think, I hope, what we'll do is pay attention to people like Dr. Fauci and ignore politicians insisting that "it's just like the flu, we are ready for this, go about your lives as normal". That is, quite literally, the level of dysfunction we experienced; the federal government yelling "Danger Will Robinson" and the entirety of the media and one political party saying "Ignore them, they are just being racist". And here we are.