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Did the government fail? I don't know. We got a vaccine remarkably quickly and the governments (federal and state) distributed it efficiently. I don't blame th

by slibhb 6y ago

Did the government fail? I don't know. We got a vaccine remarkably quickly and the governments (federal and state) distributed it efficiently. I don't blame the government for not taking the virus seriously to start with. SARS and MERS didn't pan out and people, on the left and right (including me), figured COVID would be the same. Some people predicted COVID would be bad but it wasn't crazy to think COVID wouldn't turn into a pandemic. The countries that did well with COVID are mostly islands and East Asian countries. I doubt the "Chinese and Japanese are really obedient"-type expanations. I wonder if some East Asian countries had antibodies from similar viruses that flew under the radar and granted partial immunity. That's pure speculuation...but even if those countries suceeded due to law and order, that's a double-edged sword. Do we really want to build our society to survive viruses with the fewest causalities or are there perhaps higher ideals (freedom, self determiniation) that we should aspire to? And of course there's no freedom without the freedom to be wrong. > And where the world needs to head is to establish new means of producing credibility and good reputation that are robust to current technologies. What we’re now calling “populism” might turn out to be the least of our problems. In terms of populism stuff, I think there's some truth to the idea here that the internet has led to the unmasking of leaders/government as incompetent. To some degree, modern populism consists of people recoiling in horror after realizing just how dumb you can be while holding power. But it's easy to notice other people being wrong and quite hard to do any better yourself. Mostly, these populist movements seem bereft of ideas and are just expressing incoherent outrage. It will be interesting to see if the internet makes it possible to have better, more accountable governments. I don't discount the possibility. The thing that worries me is that, in my opinion, more transparency is in some sense the problem. We learn about governmental incompetence via the internet but the internet also turns politicians into influencers, and that's a signiciant part of the problem too.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I think the Internet (in particular, the social media a lot of people are consuming their news from) is really good at providing anecdata, but really bad at giving perspective to determine context and how to fit the anecdotes into a bigger picture. Because of, for example, correlation algorithms determining what someone reads in their Facebook feed and trying to maximize the topic for engagement, a person chasing a few threads of stories of incompetence can quickly end up with a wall that is nothing but such stories. And even if one doesn't use Facebook, other spaces are vulnerable to the same effects... Chasing Reddit karma involves posting stories that the majority will upvote, posting controversial-but-true content in many topic-specific fora will result in some form of moderation or loss of karma-equivalent, and so on. The unmasking of incompetence is real, but much less clear is the degree to which it occurs and whether it's the exception or the norm. But it's very easy to assume it's the norm from what one sees on a Facebook wall (and on a different Facebook wall, or in a different group, it's very easy to assume it never happens or all reports of it are overblown).
giantg2 6y ago
"To some degree, modern populism consists of people recoiling in horror after realizing just how dumb you can be while holding power. But it's easy to notice other people being wrong and quite hard to do any better yourself." italics for emphasis I think this is true in some cases, but not necessarily in all the issues we today. We're all just human and we all make mistakes. I think the part where it is ok to think we can do better is in how we handle those mistakes. It seems that most leaders tend to be hypocritical, blame the 'other side' for failures, and even ignore failings. Of course, it seems that's the way people get to be in power in the first place in the current political environment, so the people who act differently rarely stand a chance at the federal level.
yosito 6y ago
> Do we really want to build our society to survive viruses with the fewest causalities or are there perhaps higher ideals (freedom, self determiniation) that we should aspire to? I don't see why these have to be mutually exclusive goals. Arguably, there are better ways to get an entire society to cooperate toward a goal without resorting to authoritarianism. This sort of societal engineering is demonstrated in religions, cults, and political tribes all the time. If we can harness it at the scale of an entire country, or even a majority of the world, we could accomplish quite a lot. It's been done before, and today's technology could theoretically enable it at a level that's never been seen in human history. Though we currently seem to be experiencing more of the dark side of the whole phenomenon.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I don't understand the whole "freedom" argument against basic public health and safety guidance. Almost everyone wears their seatbelt in a car and doesn't complain about how their freedoms are being taken away in the name of safety. So why is this not the same with masks and distancing? Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart, fighting for freedom against oppression? Sensible precautions against an airborne deadly pandemic are not attacks on self determination.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    It's just because masks are new. People had the same negative reaction to seatbelts when they were first introduced, citing inane things like "it might wrinkle my shirt" as a reason not to wear them. https://www.businessinsider.com/seatbelt-car-habit-obligation-law-car-pandemic-lockdown-protection-cover-personality-comfort https://www.businessinsider.com/seatbelt-car-habit-obligatio...
  - shuntress 6y ago
    >Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart Because that was the message in the echo chamber they didn't know they were in.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
mcculley 6y ago
Yes, the U.S. government failed. We should have implemented testing at scale immediately, found the infected, and paid them to stay home. While this would have cost a lot of money, it would have been less than the PPP and stimulus efforts.
- slibhb 6y ago
  I think this implies a historicist perspective. In other words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future and act accordingly. Well obviously the government can't do that. I think "failure" should be a question of incompetent administration. That is, once a policy is decided, how well or poorly was it carried out? It may be that the government failed at carrying out mass testing.
  - mcculley 6y ago
    I do not demand that the government successfully predict the future. In March 2020, it was obvious what was happening in other countries. We were informed by the past and the present to determine how to respond.
    - slibhb 6y ago
      > While this would have cost a lot of money, it would have been less than the PPP and stimulus efforts. This quote is demanding that the government has access to future numbers, isn't it? I don't agree that it was obvious what was happening in March. It's only obvious in retrospect.
      - mcculley 6y ago
        It was obvious to me and many others. I posted on March 11, 2020 that we should get our shit together and test at scale, as South Korea and other countries with effective government were doing. I was not demanding supernatural prognostication, just competence. Now we pay the price.
      - 8note 6y ago
luxuryballs 6y ago
Also didn’t they change the definition of a pandemic in 2009 such that it wouldn’t have even been a pandemic prior? I read that somewhere standby... https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf

by slibhb 6y ago

shadowgovt 6y ago

I think the Internet (in particular, the social media a lot of people are consuming their news from) is really good at providing anecdata, but really bad at giving perspective to determine context and how to fit the anecdotes into a bigger picture. Because of, for example, correlation algorithms determining what someone reads in their Facebook feed and trying to maximize the topic for engagement, a person chasing a few threads of stories of incompetence can quickly end up with a wall that is nothing but such stories. And even if one doesn't use Facebook, other spaces are vulnerable to the same effects... Chasing Reddit karma involves posting stories that the majority will upvote, posting controversial-but-true content in many topic-specific fora will result in some form of moderation or loss of karma-equivalent, and so on. The unmasking of incompetence is real, but much less clear is the degree to which it occurs and whether it's the exception or the norm. But it's very easy to assume it's the norm from what one sees on a Facebook wall (and on a different Facebook wall, or in a different group, it's very easy to assume it never happens or all reports of it are overblown).

giantg2 6y ago

"To some degree, modern populism consists of people recoiling in horror after realizing just how dumb you can be while holding power. But it's easy to notice other people being wrong and quite hard to do any better yourself." italics for emphasis I think this is true in some cases, but not necessarily in all the issues we today. We're all just human and we all make mistakes. I think the part where it is ok to think we can do better is in how we handle those mistakes. It seems that most leaders tend to be hypocritical, blame the 'other side' for failures, and even ignore failings. Of course, it seems that's the way people get to be in power in the first place in the current political environment, so the people who act differently rarely stand a chance at the federal level.

yosito 6y ago

> Do we really want to build our society to survive viruses with the fewest causalities or are there perhaps higher ideals (freedom, self determiniation) that we should aspire to? I don't see why these have to be mutually exclusive goals. Arguably, there are better ways to get an entire society to cooperate toward a goal without resorting to authoritarianism. This sort of societal engineering is demonstrated in religions, cults, and political tribes all the time. If we can harness it at the scale of an entire country, or even a majority of the world, we could accomplish quite a lot. It's been done before, and today's technology could theoretically enable it at a level that's never been seen in human history. Though we currently seem to be experiencing more of the dark side of the whole phenomenon.

ryandrake 6y ago
I don't understand the whole "freedom" argument against basic public health and safety guidance. Almost everyone wears their seatbelt in a car and doesn't complain about how their freedoms are being taken away in the name of safety. So why is this not the same with masks and distancing? Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart, fighting for freedom against oppression? Sensible precautions against an airborne deadly pandemic are not attacks on self determination.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  It's just because masks are new. People had the same negative reaction to seatbelts when they were first introduced, citing inane things like "it might wrinkle my shirt" as a reason not to wear them. https://www.businessinsider.com/seatbelt-car-habit-obligation-law-car-pandemic-lockdown-protection-cover-personality-comfort https://www.businessinsider.com/seatbelt-car-habit-obligatio...
- shuntress 6y ago
  >Why is it that people think refusing to wear a mask transforms them into Braveheart Because that was the message in the echo chamber they didn't know they were in.
- throwawayboise 6y ago

mcculley 6y ago

Yes, the U.S. government failed. We should have implemented testing at scale immediately, found the infected, and paid them to stay home. While this would have cost a lot of money, it would have been less than the PPP and stimulus efforts.

slibhb 6y ago
I think this implies a historicist perspective. In other words, you tacitly demand that the government tell the future and act accordingly. Well obviously the government can't do that. I think "failure" should be a question of incompetent administration. That is, once a policy is decided, how well or poorly was it carried out? It may be that the government failed at carrying out mass testing.
- mcculley 6y ago
  I do not demand that the government successfully predict the future. In March 2020, it was obvious what was happening in other countries. We were informed by the past and the present to determine how to respond.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    > While this would have cost a lot of money, it would have been less than the PPP and stimulus efforts. This quote is demanding that the government has access to future numbers, isn't it? I don't agree that it was obvious what was happening in March. It's only obvious in retrospect.
    - mcculley 6y ago
      It was obvious to me and many others. I posted on March 11, 2020 that we should get our shit together and test at scale, as South Korea and other countries with effective government were doing. I was not demanding supernatural prognostication, just competence. Now we pay the price.
    - 8note 6y ago

luxuryballs 6y ago

Also didn’t they change the definition of a pandemic in 2009 such that it wouldn’t have even been a pandemic prior? I read that somewhere standby... https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-086173.pdf