4 ms·

I'm pretty sure if Covid had happened during a Hillary Clinton administration, she wouldn't have been stealing PPE and test supplies from state governors and st

I'm pretty sure if Covid had happened during a Hillary Clinton administration, she wouldn't have been stealing PPE and test supplies from state governors and stuff like that. Pretty sure 100's of thousands of people wouldn't have died. Pretty sure she would have sanctioned Russia a lot harder, to try to, oh, dissuade them from invading Ukraine.

rootusrootus 5y ago
You're getting downvoted, clearly, but I think you're more right than wrong. I still think the feds would have screwed up the response and just as many people would have died. But the spats with governors likely would not have happened. And she's certainly far more of a hawk than Trump, so I expect you're right that she'd have been more aggressive towards Russia. Not sure if it would have dissuaded them from invading Ukraine, though, Putin is pretty crazy.
kbelder 5y ago
Don't think that a Clinton presidency would have nudged needle one way or the other in regards to Covid. The only thing we did that had a real impact was get the vaccines, and that would not have been any quicker with Clinton.
- ghaff 5y ago
  There would presumably been less chaos and drama. Maybe; the Trump supporters would still have been out there. But there isn't a lot to suggest outcomes would have been a lot different.
- scythe 5y ago
  There were two things that had a major impact. One was the vaccine. The other one was the massive improvement in care and containment practices between March and May 2020. The case fatality rate dropped substantially; infections of care personnel became much less common. (Masks had a controversial-relevance impact, but seeing as the international community at large didn't get to masking any faster than the US, it's unlikely Clinton would have changed anything here.) On that second point, Clinton absolutely would have made a difference, because we know that the administration was aware of the pandemic well before the cases started spiking in New York, and we know [1] that Trump autonomously decided not to publicly release that information or tell the CDC to prepare for a major epidemic. That was a major, avoidable mistake. I doubt it would have prevented 100k deaths; rather somewhere in the range of 10k-50k. Also, Trump really energized vaccine denialists; he was already catering to them in 2016 [2], and a loss in 2016 would likely have significantly reduced his audience on this point. It's not clear how many more people would have gotten vaccinated in a world where Clinton won in 2016, but it might be significant. Densely urbanized blue states led in deaths per capita before the vaccine came out, but now only New York and New Jersey are in the top 10, and my state of Rhode Island dropped from 4th-most DPC to 18th [3] -- I don't recall there being a strong correlation between Republicans and vaccine denialism before Trump, and in fact, the correlation may have reversed since 2011 [4]. 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob... 2: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/trump-and-vaccines https://www.historyofvaccines.org/trump-and-vaccines 3: https://worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us https://worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us 4: https://reason.com/2011/10/04/more-anti-science-democrats-or/ https://reason.com/2011/10/04/more-anti-science-democrats-or...
  - taxicabjesus 5y ago
    > massive improvement in care and containment practices between March and May 2020. This was 100% attributable to Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell's rebellion video to youtube, where he called out the academic doctors for giving doctors like him the terrible advice to ventilate SARS-CoV-2 patients as the best treatment. Dr. Kyle-Sidell's journal letter discussed his observation of hypocapnic hypoxia. This would've been easy to treat, if Medicine hadn't forgotten about #OxygenToxicity.
- mbg721 5y ago
  The only thing that would have changed meaningfully would be the attitude of the press.

rootusrootus 5y ago

You're getting downvoted, clearly, but I think you're more right than wrong. I still think the feds would have screwed up the response and just as many people would have died. But the spats with governors likely would not have happened. And she's certainly far more of a hawk than Trump, so I expect you're right that she'd have been more aggressive towards Russia. Not sure if it would have dissuaded them from invading Ukraine, though, Putin is pretty crazy.

kbelder 5y ago

Don't think that a Clinton presidency would have nudged needle one way or the other in regards to Covid. The only thing we did that had a real impact was get the vaccines, and that would not have been any quicker with Clinton.

ghaff 5y ago
There would presumably been less chaos and drama. Maybe; the Trump supporters would still have been out there. But there isn't a lot to suggest outcomes would have been a lot different.
scythe 5y ago
There were two things that had a major impact. One was the vaccine. The other one was the massive improvement in care and containment practices between March and May 2020. The case fatality rate dropped substantially; infections of care personnel became much less common. (Masks had a controversial-relevance impact, but seeing as the international community at large didn't get to masking any faster than the US, it's unlikely Clinton would have changed anything here.) On that second point, Clinton absolutely would have made a difference, because we know that the administration was aware of the pandemic well before the cases started spiking in New York, and we know [1] that Trump autonomously decided not to publicly release that information or tell the CDC to prepare for a major epidemic. That was a major, avoidable mistake. I doubt it would have prevented 100k deaths; rather somewhere in the range of 10k-50k. Also, Trump really energized vaccine denialists; he was already catering to them in 2016 [2], and a loss in 2016 would likely have significantly reduced his audience on this point. It's not clear how many more people would have gotten vaccinated in a world where Clinton won in 2016, but it might be significant. Densely urbanized blue states led in deaths per capita before the vaccine came out, but now only New York and New Jersey are in the top 10, and my state of Rhode Island dropped from 4th-most DPC to 18th [3] -- I don't recall there being a strong correlation between Republicans and vaccine denialism before Trump, and in fact, the correlation may have reversed since 2011 [4]. 1: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob... 2: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/trump-and-vaccines https://www.historyofvaccines.org/trump-and-vaccines 3: https://worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us https://worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us 4: https://reason.com/2011/10/04/more-anti-science-democrats-or/ https://reason.com/2011/10/04/more-anti-science-democrats-or...
- taxicabjesus 5y ago
  > massive improvement in care and containment practices between March and May 2020. This was 100% attributable to Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell's rebellion video to youtube, where he called out the academic doctors for giving doctors like him the terrible advice to ventilate SARS-CoV-2 patients as the best treatment. Dr. Kyle-Sidell's journal letter discussed his observation of hypocapnic hypoxia. This would've been easy to treat, if Medicine hadn't forgotten about #OxygenToxicity.
mbg721 5y ago
The only thing that would have changed meaningfully would be the attitude of the press.