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Comment by nickysielicki | Hacker News Reader

I’m so sick of articles about unpreparedness. It’s real rich coming from the same exact media rooms that tried to make me and others feel like idiots when we saw what was going on in Hubei in January — ”it’s no big deal”. Now all of a sudden it’s supposed to have been obvious for years? Just stop with this bullshit, please.

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The media is not the Pentagon and it's clear that both the Pentagon (per this report) and epidemiologists have been aware of this possibility for years.

I do not understand exactly what you're suggesting here. Is this unworthy of reporting? The implication you're making is that no such articles should come out reporting on this material, since you believe the media made mistakes. Or maybe you're just venting – understandable, but it gives the appearance that you don't believe the article.

The problem, in my opinion, is they know about hundreds or thousands of scenarios that could possibly happen. It’s not possible or prudent to prepare for every one of them. Only hindsight is 20/20.

> from the same exact media rooms

can you point me to an article from NPR which was downplaying the outbreak?

And why does it matter?

They're a reporting and news agency. They're not in the business of strategically planning for an outbreak.

They were merely reporting the sentiment of the leaders of this country in the earlier days.

Here you go:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/01/29/8008132...

At the time, that was true.

By that logic, the Pentagon acted reasonably. So what's this new article about, then?

Different audience, different role. Their whole job is threat forecasting and risk management.

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