Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

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I mean, if you're curious about differences in reaction I don't think you need to look any further than the handling and messaging going on. When Ebola was a concern Obama acted quickly to contain the threat and put a lot of resources into addressing the issue immediately - so much so that his administration was strongly criticized for wasting resources on a "non-issue".

This time around the outbreak originated in China that covered up the issue initially and ended up making the issue a lot worse than it could have been. Additionally, once everyone should've been paying attention on a global scale, Mr President down there in the US just tried to downplay the possible effects of a pandemic and it looks, at the moment, like he again just made everything worse.

Usually we can sit safe and confident at home that the government is overreacting to the situation and everything will be fine, this time around the authorities most globally visible (the US and China where the outbreak started) have obviously bungled their response and we're seeing a lot of panic because people don't have faith in the ability for the globe to respond in a unified manner.

Obama's response to the ebola crisis reminds me of the trolley problem. By making an attributable action to avert a bigger disaster for a smaller one he became accountable for the outcome. As the larger disaster never materialised he never received due credit.

It seems like Western democracies are very ill-equipped to deal with problems of this nature where all future outcomes are bad and the chosen executive has to deliberately choose the least worse. Facing such scenarios it's often the case our leaders choose not to take any political damage and do nothing until we are at the edge of catastrophe or take half-hearted measures that solve nothing. To take any deliberate and effective action would be not seen be seen as prescient aversion, but considered a wasteful diversion. The social, political and media environments, in particular the "news of the day" media, of the West are suited to guiding executives towards quick and decisive actions in the midst of the crisis because they are biased towards describing the here and now rather than the where and when. For most problems a society faces this may be a sufficient means of dealing with those issues. However in pandemics there are two catastrophes happening simultaneously, the one people think is happening in their midst based on the here and now, and the far more severe catastrophe epidemiologists know is happening based on the where and when. At the start of this crisis Western governments reacted to the former in the expected manner, that is with half-hearted measures and a dismissive attitude, what we needed was for them to react to the crisis epidemiology was describing.

There is very little excuse for Western governments during this pandemic. They caught a lucky break with the SARS outbreak in 2003 and became complacent, choosing not to bolster responses to epidemics as Japan, Taiwan and S.Korea have done. Then they wasted the time lag between the virus outbreak in China to it reaching their countries by declining to take effective actions.

Some (read: Trump supporters) say we should trust the government (read: the Trump administration) during this crisis, but how can that be possible when we've been lied to and this crisis has been downplayed over and over again?

Imagine if you're about to go skydiving and I'm responsible for packing your chute. As I pack, you notice a cord looks badly frayed. I tell you, "The cord is totally not frayed! They all look like that." Then I tell you, "Don't worry, we'll replace it before you go out." Then you find out we didn't actually replace it, and you look up on the internet that it can easily kill you. Then I say, "I knew it was a problem all along but we have a plan in place to handle that."

Would all of that make you feel less or more afraid of your skydiving experience?

The intelligent skydiver knows better than to allow the government to pack his chute.

Trumpian rhetoric aside, it's really unfair giving the histrionic media a pass on this. The toilet paper outages were stoked by the media. Instead of seeing op-eds with "stop raiding stores for toilet paper," all we saw (and still see) is "this president is incompetent."

Just this morning, CNN was frothing at the mouth at Trump calling it the "China virus" -- I mean, yeah, it's a virus that came from China -- and they have an op-ed on how this term is stoking xenophobia.

Honestly, "China Virus" is just xenophobia and deflection - it wasn't a term adopted by the populace at large - pushing it as a name for the virus has been a right wing effort.

The usage of that term is solely to try and deflect responsibility for anything domestic to China and pass the buck... it also has the potential to cause hate crimes in a time when we really should be unifying as nations.

> Just this morning, CNN was frothing at the mouth at Trump calling it the "China virus" -- I mean, yeah, it's a virus that came from China -- and they have an op-ed on how this term is stoking xenophobia.

That's because it is. There have been many reports of harassment and assaults on Chinese Americans, and this kind of label doesn't go away. The term "Spanish Flu" is still used 100 years later, not because it originated there (it didn't -- it almost certainly originated in midwestern USA) but because the media paid more attention there.

The terms we use matter.

> That's because it is. There have been many reports of harassment and assaults on Chinese Americans

This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN). It's just the typical race-baiting we've seen that generates outrage clicks. Calling it the "China Virus" has no more societal impact (which is: minor at best) than the "Spanish Flu."

Really, it just strengthens my point about the nonsense the media is peddling, instead of asking the populace to remain calm, take precautions, and stay safe.

> There have been only a handful of such attacks

How many are an acceptable number? Or tolerable number?

You can't control every agent in the world. You literally have to have a tolerance for the existence of a few stupid ones.

You can avoid stoking the flames and creating scapegoats. Just for reference when the Nazi party initially started to scapegoat Jewish and Romani people they used disease and hygiene concerns as an early way to paint people poorly and it's hellishly effective - blaming "mexicans taking jobs" is a pretty weak (relatively) scapegoating when compared to "mexican rapists" and trying to play to actors that may be causing a more personal harm. Painting the disease as being Chinese/Jewish/Romani is sort of the ultimate scapegoating - people feel personal pain from seeing sickness in their community and have no direct way to see that the attribution of that sickness to a people group is entirely bullsh.

Dogwhistling for racism isn't an innocent action and deserves no understanding, it is hate filled and driven out of self-interest by those doing it.

> Just for reference when the Nazi party...

This is an absolutely insane analogy -- not to mention grossly off-base. No one is scapegoating the Chinese people (or, even less so, Americans that happen to have Asian ancestry). Calling it the "Chinese Virus" simply points to its geographic source, i.e. Wuhan, China.

> insane analogy

Yeah, Godwin's Law strikes again. Not everything is literally Hitler.

> This is an extreme, uncited, and frankly inflammatory extrapolation. There have been only a handful of such attacks -- I believe 5-ish (reported by The New Yorker and CNN).[0]

So nobody is doing this? Or have there been incidents that you yourself have previously acknowledged?

I tried civilly engaging in discourse with you earlier[1]. But now it seems like you're arguing with people just to argue, not to actually discuss these topics.

Also, you can correct people who are mistaken about where it originated without saying "Chinese flu". E.g. "actually, the coronavirus originated in China". I remarked on this to another user who said they just wanted to stick to the facts about its origins.[2]

If you're intent on making sure China is regarded as the source and/or culprit, you can emphasize further by adding something like, "and that's why the majority of cases and deaths from [coronavirus/covid-19] were in China. It started there." And that can be said perfectly fine without "Chinese virus".

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22621821

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622069

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22622774

Why are you looking to what you refer to as nonsense peddlers for evidence that there have been attacks? I actively avoid and dislike the media too, but that means I discount everything they say, not just the things I dislike.

How about I provide some personal anecdata instead?

My (Asian) parents -- who prefer Fox over CNN and vote right, in case anyone fears they're under the spell of frothing journalists -- have been more nervous about going about in public. My dad's car's mirror was smashed a couple nights ago.

In a similar way that I'm not as deeply affected by the current economic environment as a low wage worker is, you're not as affected by the cultural perception as people like my family are. With that in mind, I ask that you acknowledge that such acts could very well be more common than the sensationalized ones that liberal media eagerly pounce upon, and thus more common than you personally might be aware of.

> Instead of seeing op-eds with "stop raiding stores for toilet paper," all we saw (and still see) is "this president is incompetent."

Well, if one believed that both these things were equally true, which one would be more worthwhile writing about?

Toilet paper? Even if one believes the president to be incompetent, that's not news. (The details of how that incompetence plays out today may be...) But toilet paper, last week, was making an actual difference in actual peoples' lives, right then, in a way that was new.

> Instead of seeing op-eds with "stop raiding stores for toilet paper," all we saw (and still see) is "this president is incompetent."

I've seen a LOT of stories about the problems of hoarding, pleas to stop hoarding, etc...

I just assume bad cases of confirmation virus when I see claims like this, now.

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