I’ve never seen such a large ratio of downvoted comments on a thread. I guess I’m not surprised by how polarizing the subject is. I guess I just thought this was a safe place to be contrarian and not just downvote ideas that are not on your team.
COVID-19 isn't that drastically different from SARS, MERS, etc. The main difference is transmissibility of asymptomatic carriers that allowed it to leave Asia undetected. So while the rest of these viruses had been handled in a mature and efficient fashion by the countries affected the very idea of a modern viral pandemic was new to the Western world and it showed, boy did it show.
Instead of just focussing on the issue at hand it was immediately the "Chinese virus" and the American political machine was in full swing to capitalise on the situation. Most of the Western world followed suit with political lines being drawn around responses (or lack there of) and assignment of "blame". In the UK and USA this resulted in probably hundreds of thousands of needless deaths off the back of delayed and then ham-fisted action by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump's administrations.
Meanwhile in Asia it remained apolitical for the most part (I say most part because aspects of pandemic control did become quite political of late). I was in Thailand for the entire duration of the pandemic and despite having access to less resources, late access to the vaccine and being one of the first nations to be exposed outside of China Thailand actually performed very well. Lots of insinuations were made this was due to climate and other factors, anything that shifted the blame away from politicisation of the pandemic as the root cause of performance differences. However as time has wore on and countries with more facts based approaches have continued to out-perform it's obvious - politics is the only real difference among the developed nations, hell it's so strong that it overcomes better access to vaccines and higher ICU bed/capita which should both dominate.
The accessory to all of this was the vaccine/lab origin censorship by big tech, who are kind of seen as over-woke liberal bastions.
To lockdown or not lockdown, to mask or not mask, to vaxx or not vaxx, to Ivermectin or not Ivermectin, lab leak or no lab leak … why so binary? Ah, because we went political with this a long time ago.
If there was one person we needed to literally not say anything about this, it was Trump. But alas, he was the fucking president and we also needed him to say something.
The Pandemic histrionics are an age old Shakespearean play. A tragedy.
History is something else when you have the primary sources right before you. I would never need to read a book on all the nuances of everything that happened. Makes you wonder how easily historians can spin history in all those books, when in reality those events could have been as simple and silly as this one.
This is incredibly dangerous and at this point I don't know what it takes to diffuse it. I thought Biden winning the US election would help and admittedly it has but by much less than I envisioned.
Unfortunately US politics spill over into the rest of the world through media syndication, doesn't help Murdoch owning almost all conservative media in US/UK/Australia... This means this extreme politicisation while birthed in America is spreading around the world.
I strongly believe this is the real threat. The pandemic just showed us how dangerous it can be.
Decent summary, you can find him discussing it on YouTube:
https://medium.com/@dina.osman/what-is-mass-formation-d2ac63...
The gist of it is what I’ve mostly concluded over the last few years. There’s a pathological level of frustration/anxiety/apathy that is leading to all of this at a mass scale (which makes sense considering we are virtualizing lives at scale, and I use the word virtual in it’s most abstract sense, not necessarily digital). We all have a very abstract identity that is unfulfilling because at the levels of abstraction we are at virtually is not relatable or realistic. I know, it’s a serious hot-take, but this is roughly where my line of thinking is at now days. The outcome of all of this is, well, people now bask in the cacophony of whatever life even is at this point (especially because there’s not a chance in hell any of us will be able de-scale the world (tech/vanity/capitalism/etc)).
Quoting the most important part:
… if ANY narrative is distributed through the mass media identifying an Object of the anxiety and providing a strategy to deal with that Object, mass formation can thrive. Since it provides the masses a sudden connection to a heroic struggle allowing them to meet their needs and provides them with a release — giving them a new social bond and meaning that has been lacking.
There you have it, people are literally bonding via this constant hysterical back and forth.
There are more powerful factors at work here. Some combination of exploitation of mass hysteria by politics, some amplification of that by modern technology/social media and some slow degradation of respect for custom and tradition that prevented such behaviour by politicians in the past.
The culmination of this is modern politics in US/UK/Australia, all of which are frankly embarrassing for intellectual citizens of all three but somehow staggeringly effective in elections.
The system does help intent to be shown by the first vote, but also shows that it does not lead to power.
This is why all discussions about STV, instant runoff, multiple rounds are essentially irrelevant. They may help show intent, but does not change the status quo.
At the most recent House election, 12 electorates were won by the candidate that was in second-place based on the first preferences (ie, the result differed from that under FPTP). Interestingly the Greens' seat was not one of these - Bandt lead on the first preferences and would have won under FPTP.
Single Member Electorates will often lead to overall non-proportional outcomes.
I think that is revisionist. Trump surely didn't help, but Hydroxychloroquine treatment was only ever promoted in special circles, while COVID-19 ravaged communities that would never even consider voting for Trump or consuming horse dewormer.
The actual failure is the CDC denying that transmission was mainly airborne and even later refusing to eat humble pie and publicly recant. WHO is even worse. (Google "situationally airborne" to read some of the mental gymnastics that they used to insinuate that they were right all along) Many regions to this day treat it as droplet based infectious disease, because there was never a clear and loud change of direction, it was mostly silent.
If CDC had taken measures against airborne diseases like mask mandates which helped Asia early on, there would have been a much different pandemic in the US.
Edit as this is being downvoted: the WHO's and national health bodies' resistance against labeling COVID-19 airborne is well documented. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/6-126
Only in May 2021, the CDC updated their guidance to state that there is airborne transmission (but without using the word "airborne", go figure).
I can't comment on the UK's history, but I can tell you that you are 100% wrong with respect to what you think the response was in the US. This isn't a matter of opinion on my part. This is a matter of documented fact. The timeline lives on the internet if one bothers to do the research.
The basic timeline goes something like this (again, google is your friend as far as stringing this together):
On January 31st. 2020, Trump announces travel restrictions from China. On February 2nd (and for about a month after that) various officials from New York as well as Nancy Pelosi are on video telling the public that there is nothing to this virus, that they should continue life as normal, get on the subway, buses, trains, go to work, restaurants, festivals and entertainment venues. You can find the governor, mayor and director of health of New York making these statements as well as saying and implying that Trump was something between crazy, racist and hateful for sounding the alarm.
If you look at how the infection spread in the US, you'll quickly discover that it absolutely exploded in New York and quickly launched everywhere. I am sure the data exists to trace with more detail. People were leaving the New York area like rats on a sinking ship. The infection quickly spread to adjoining states. And, from there, to the rest of the nation.
In effect, what happened, is that, in particular, New York officials, due to a combination of ignorance and absolute politically motivated hatred for Trump, caused the direct infection of tens of thousands of people and a chain reaction that likely infected beyond hundreds of thousands as secondary and tertiary layers of the chain reaction. I find it very interesting to see how the media narrative has the world believing Trump did not act, when, in reality, he acted early and it was New York officials who caused the massive early spread of the virus because of their political bullshit.
When I heard that Trump imposed travel restrictions on January 31st. I immediately checked our supplies, placed orders for six months worth of food and critical items and warned friends and family members. By the time the pandemic was in full force I, and those who listened to me, were ready to lock down and navigate the storm. And all of it was because of a simple observation: Regardless of what I thought of Trump, imposing a travel restriction on China was a serious enough move that there had to be far more under the surface than what the vast majority of the media narrative contained (he is a racist, etc.). It is quite possible that, by ignoring politics and taking action based on the meaning of the moment, I saved lives within our family and circle of friends.
One name stands in my mind, I remember because it is unusual: Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York Health Commissioner. Look up what she said to the public on February 2nd., 2020, just a couple of days after the travel restrictions were announced, and tell me that had no consequences. Then trace every NY official through video on a daily basis in February and March. No, that was criminal. Trump was trying to lock things down, these people fought him every day, the media fought him every day and effectively told everyone to go get infected during February and March, if not longer. Facts matter.
In the US the president and federal government do not have the authority to do as you suggest. That's part of the problem. When the other side chooses to wage war against him, despite the fact that we were at the doorstep of a disaster, well, the rest is history.
Please note that I did not disagree with you about the negative effects of playing politics with a pandemic. You are absolutely correct. What I wanted to note is that the Trump administration did take seriously bold measures very early on. The only reason the entire nation didn't take this seriously is because media is overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats in the US and they were so blinded by wanting to destroy Trump that they actually caused death through COVID across the nation.
Nobody likes to talk about this because people just can't escape their ideological bias and look at reality in an objective fashion. As the pandemic started nearly our entire media machinery as well as the Democratic party were in full-out, take-no-prisoners war against Trump at every level. When the pandemic starts, that train had so much inertia that it was literally impossible for media giants like CNN and MSNBC to halt their war and do a 180. They were making money with the hate Trump narrative. Imagine turning around to say he was right and that we all had to support him. Impossible. And so, people died.
I hope history looks at this objectively because there's an important lesson here that we must learn and there's a real risk of not learning it. Most historians are Democrats and it is probably fair to say most of them are part of the Trump hatred machinery. And so, nobody will be held accountable for what pain and loss they caused, not only in this nation but likely elsewhere.
Every time I heard Trump speak on TV I wanted to vomit. The guy had the social skills of a brick. However, I think it is fair to say that nearly every single program he initiated and measure he took was right on point, including how the pandemic was handled. The entire world owes the very vaccines we are using to save countless lives to the effort his administration organized and ran to develop multiple vaccines faster than ever in history. The current president and vice president were actively maligning the vaccines and promoting all kinds of doubt upon them until they got elected. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted everyone to get vaccinated. The game they and their party played was nothing less than disgusting, if not criminal. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that Biden actually publicly recognized that the Trump administration got us the vaccines in record time. Unbelievable.
While I would never denigrate scientific fundting, there's stretching the truth and there's propaganda. We do not "owe" the development of vaccines from the US funding program.
And while the ModeRNA and AstraZeneca vaccine took US funding, BioNTech did not. As vaccines for "the world" goes, a lot of it was Sinovac and Sputnik.
https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_565aa63a-4...
As the other commenter pointed out, the executive branch of government lacks authority to do so. Courts have decided over and over again (like with the eviction moratorium, worker vaccine mandate, etc.) that Congress needs to authorize this.
So it is very much a failure of Congress to act. And since no action was taken, neither before nor after changing majorities in Congress, all parties failed.
Facts matter indeed! Please do a google search as it sounds like you were completely checked out from news in the USA during February 2020 and have got your impression from politicized propaganda later on.
Trump downplayed the coronavirus that entire month and the democrats, while mildly sounding the alarm, followed his lead and repeated his theories that people shouldn’t take action.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/timeline-president-donald-trump...
* Trump Jan 30, 2020 “ "We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we're working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it's going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you,"
* Trump February 10 “ I had a long talk with President Xi — for the people in this room — two nights ago, and he feels very confident. He feels very confident. And he feels that, again, as I mentioned, by April or during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus,"
* February 24 “ The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
* February 26 “ And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done,"
The Nancy pelosi in Chinatown comment you reference took place on February 24, the same day Trump said there was nothing to worry about and Covid was completely under control. They were actually in sync! https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-sa...
For me, at least, when the travel restrictions went up on January 31st, this represented a very serious indicator that something was seriously wrong. This was a move three standard deviations away from the mean, if not more. As I said in a prior comment, the very next day I checked our supplies and placed online order for a six month lockdown, including N95 masks. I also told friends and family. Everyone who paid attention to my warning did very well and navigated 2020 with very little to worry about other than staying safe.
My point is that politicians have a back channel for communications that they should use during these kinds of events. If I had been in politics at the time this started to develop I would ask myself a very serious question: Why did the US president just shut down travel from China?
I would not have pulled the answer out of CNN. I would have reached out to the administration and had a serious conversation, regardless of being a member of the opposing political party. I certainly wouldn't have gone on TV to tell people to get on the subway, buses, trains and go to festivals without first understanding something three standard deviations away from the historical mean.
Trump was an idiot in public. Not so behind closed doors. The travel restrictions imposed on China on January 31st. carried gravity lots of people, news outlets and politicians chose to ignore, and this cost lives.
To beat this one to death: No, the US president --no politician really-- could not go out there and say "we are all going to die". The masses can't handle stuff like that. What the masses want to hear is "we are going to be OK". However, the masses also need to be told how not to kill themselves.
We likely would have saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives had we come out with a unified message asking people to not participate in high density activities (subway, etc.) because this new virus spread quickly. It would have been just fine to come out and say "we need a few weeks to asses the situation, until then, we ask that you do these five things...". Instead they came out and effectively said "Trump is racist. Ignore him.". And the rest is history.
Ironic, when you consider that their "racist" likely saved their lives and that of hundreds of millions by mounting and effectively executing the fastest and most effective vaccine development program in human history. Go figure.
It's OK to be politically partisan, but sometimes one has to also be willing to be honest. The man inspired projectile vomiting every time he spoke, and yet the things he did were pretty much always on point. Today we are seeing almost exactly the opposite: Someone who speaks well and is a complete disaster at almost every level. I can't even imagine what reality would look like today if Trump hadn't gotten vaccines done by November of his last year. It's probably fair so say millions would have died in the US. Biden/Harris would have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
This is not at all what Trump was trying to do behind closed doors. He’s on tape speaking to Bob Woodward at the time about his strategy. “Play it down” was what he wanted to do.
When the Democrats made even small suggestions about needing to make stronger action, he sent his chief of staff out to accuse them of wanting to shut down the country to destroy the economy and ruin his re-election.
This is all on tape.
Yes, Trump approved the relatively weak travel ban proposed by his staff like Fauci. He then spent a month saying everything was fine and attacking anyone who warned of danger.
When a CDC official went off message on Feb 24 to suggest that disruption to public life might happen, they were immediately removed from public communication by Trump who was still in denial. https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-official-warned-us-coron...
There's even a really obvious reason why New York and London were hit first that has nothing to do with Trump or Boris - look at when Milan Fashion Week happened and what else was going in that region of Italy, then at the other major fashion centers of the world that'd have lots of travel to Milan that week. It's right slap bang next to the epicenter of Italy's big outbreak which had somehow gone basically undetected, with Italy consistently reporting zero cases a day or two beforehand. Like, the reason populist politicans seem to have played such a disproportionate role in making Covid so bad is because the media ignores any screw-ups that happen in countries run by the kind of boring techocrat they like - I personally have no doubt Italy would've been blamed for dooming the world if Berlusconi or someone like him was in charge.
That's why I've started aggressively downvoting and sometimes flagging posts making claims against the common expert opinion as long as they are presented with unreasonable certainty. Presenting an unusual position is fine as long as it is accompanied by an adequate amount of self-doubt or clearly expressed as speculation.
I think the second half of this applies to the first. How can you be confident of your own judgment of "most experts" positions without being something of an expert yourself? I often see people claiming that something is "what most doctors/scientists/people/experts/etc say", and I'm always skeptical of how a non expert confidently comes to that belief.
In reality, I tend to assume that these positions are in fact what the most resources were spent on telling people, in other words the ideas that had the largest marketing budgets behind them (or whatever is viral at the moment).
When I see a random person on the internet claiming to echo what most experts believe, I assume that its really what their twitter feed believes, which I don't know how to value, so I don't value it very highly.
I very much agree on the arguing ferociously part though. I think a lot more humility is called for all around.
As a layperson the technical meat of the research is harder to assess, but there are lit reviews and editorials that you can read, in addition to reading blog posts and such by people in the field
This is basically how I've formed my own opinions, so I hope that its close to whatever consensus is (if there even is one yet, I assume real stable consensus takes time).
But I temper my certainty a bit and limit myself to saying things like "there is evidence that [xyz]", because I know that's a true statement that I can back up. I can't speak much to the quality of the evidence, but I can be aware that it exists and I can also try to find supporting/countering evidence, or a lack thereof. I don't know that I can get all the way to judging what the consensus is though.
Once I get to secondary sources, I feel like I'm on much shakier ground. There are just too many forces at play: social/political pressures, monetary incentives (bloggers have to give their base what they want if they want to thrive), the difficulty of understanding something novel, and a rapidly changing world on top of it all.
So when I see people pulling out the "most experts" card (consensus in other words), I can't help but discount it heavily. They could be friends with the actual only researchers publishing on a topic, or they could have gotten it from their uncle on Facebook, or anywhere in between.
Until there is new data, it's just a lot of noise and no signal.
Indeed, seeing the lab leak hypothesis mentioned in every comment was very confusing. There is some decent discussion of the paper, but it certainly took some scrolling.
edit: I take it back, there is incredibly little decent relavant discussion here. Should probably just flag the post.