I’ve been living and breathing COVID since it hit due to my job but sure, I’ll bite. CIte?
In Canada, all of the Federal and Provincial governments had the same information that the USA did at the start. Yet they did not fuck it up so badly.
Sure, they were not perfect - but they did some things early, and did not try to downplay it, as the Orange Buffoon did. And they changed tactics as more and better information came in. Changing your mind is not possible for the Cheeto-faced Shitgibbon and his enablers.
Canada’s Covid numbers have been dropping steadily, while numbers in the US are starting to really ramp up. This is due to idiocy at the top of the federal and state governments. Ignoring science and medical experts usually leads to bad results. As we can see.
Anyone would have made some mistakes, as you say, we were still learning.
Trump not only didn’t just make mistakes, he downplayed things and didn’t learn anything at all.
Look to other countries, pretty much all of them were operating on the same or less information than Trump had. Why did they do so much better than we did?
Alright but what’s the excuse now?
There is no excuse now. I’m very unhappy with the deniers on the right. Their response is undeniably making things worse but it’s like kicking a man who has already been shot. Not a classy move but the damage is nothing compared to the previous injury.
One of the biggest things I blame Trump for is making it a partisan issue. All of the sudden wearing a mask and staying safe, or not, has become a symbol of group membership and pride. The virus does not care about party affiliation. Yes, pundits and such played the partisan card, but if Trump was an effective leader he would have made responsible decisions and the pundits would have either changed to follow their leader, or been marginalized. Instead we’re dealing with a situation where a mainstream view is that wishing the virus away is a legitimate response.
Even with changing information about what the exact best response was, it is still possible for an effective leader to set policy, and adjust the policy in light of new information:
At this time wearing masks is not necessary. (A bit later) New information suggests that wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19, everybody should wear masks.
We’re nationally coordinating the distribution and procurement of PPE and ventilators. (A bit later) New information suggests ventilators aren’t as important as we believed, so we are de-emphasizing that, but continuing to make sure that PPE, drugs, and other supplies are available.
We have several medications we think might provide effective treatments. (A bit later) We were disappointed to learn the medication was not effective, but we continue to support the medical and research community in finding the best treatments.
etc.
What? Are you implying that someone could possibly change course? Admit that they were not endowed with perfect knowledge?
Clearly that is not in Trump’s wheelhouse. He needs someone to blame. He needs to make this a partisan issue because that is all he knows how to do.
Hammer, nail etc.
One of the smartest things the BC Government did in the very early days was to give up the stage to Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health Officer. When BC declared a state of emergency on March 17, the politicians stepped back, and Dr. Henry stepped up.
She became the public face of the Province’s response. And she handled it amazingly well. There is simply no way anyone can credibly call her partisan. The Premier does not even attend most of her briefings. Because she’s the expert and he is not. She tells it like it is, and she calls the shots.
Your metrics may vary, but they’ve got their daily new infection rate down to fewer than 200 cases a day within 4 months of their exponential rise. Scaling per capita, that’s 1200 new cases per day for the US. We’re seeing more than that many new cases per day in individual states.
If they see a new outbreak, it really will be a second wave. In not much less time than they experienced, we’re still in our first wave, with case counts still rising. I.e. they’ve gotten their outbreak more or less under control finally, and we aren’t close to the same yet. And while both the US and Italy are re-opening businesses, they are taking theirs seriously and with real hope that any new outbreaks can be contained. Not so much for Texas or Arizona or Florida.
Maybe you meant deaths? Sure, in terms of total deaths per capita, Italy is still ahead. I’ll grant you that. But as of June 29? Italy over the last 2 weeks is at around 20 deaths per day (and falling). The US in the same time frame? We’re still in the 250 range, and this is suspected of being an underestimate. But even at 250, that’s twice the number of daily deaths per capita, and again unlike Italy, our new daily case counts are still rising and we’re all hoping the number of deaths won’t start rising again in the next couple weeks.
So, um, yeah, our response has not been great, even compared with Italy. They had a horrible first month and then really nailed things down. We had a bad first month, coasted on cruise control for a while, and then decided we had done enough - only to see things get worse again. The NY region has done a reasonable job, but that’s decidedly due to Cuomo and the local government. The federal response has been a barely mitigated disaster.
Are we talking about the initial response or several months later? Because, while I’m not sure I agree, I could understand why someone might think Italy was doing better than the US now.
But at the start? No. It was pretty much the definition of worst case response.
USA: “Hold my beer and watch this”
I think it’s even simpler than that. Back when he was first briefed about the impending crisis, Trump didn’t believe it. He’s incapable of believing anything until he sees it. So he dismissed the problem and said so publicly.
What we’ve been living with ever since is Trump’s refusal to admit he was wrong.
It’s even simpler. Trump can’t think out past the end of his dick. The man is a moron, and is getting worse.
Anyone voting D is a serious fuckin retard.
they’ll get all the trump voters then?
Out of prison again I see. Good luck this time.
I disagree with you, the way the trumpist right has behaved has been instrumental in making things worse by orders of magnitude, and the accommodations made to the right has been instrumental in the original wave of infections. When you look at New York and New Jersey and the timeline, all the other states had gruesome warning and plenty of time to make effective arrangements. This disease did not strike all states at the same intensity at the same time. If you are going to try an analogy its far more like watching another man get shot, picking up the gun and shooting yourself and following that up by jumping off a tall building and hoping the fire services have a strong enough catcher to stop you plummeting into the ground.
That’s a quantum leap better than MAGAts.
If you look at the trend lines, EU countries have brought their cases steadily downward; the US is one of three or four countries that have not. Worse, we’re still debating whether to wear masks, and much of the country’s leadership is still minimizing how bad the contagion is. The responses and the information released to the public has been divided, distorted, and confusing. Hence, we’re not really dealing with a second wave…because we never really got over our first one.
Contrary to what you may believe, it’s not this bad in other countries. To be fair, other countries have had significant outbreaks and lapses of their own, but whereas they have learned from their lapses, we have absolutely not learned shit from ours. And that is the difference. If we’re having this much trouble controlling the outbreak now, wait until fall hits.
All President Trump had to do was to look at President Obama’s response to the Ebola crises. From the Obama Administration archives:
Since the start of the outbreak, the United States has sent more than 3,000 DOD, CDC, USAID, and other U.S. health officials to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to assist with response efforts, as part of a 10,000-person U.S.-backed civilian response. With their help, the U.S. government has:
Constructed 15 Ebola treatment units in the region Provided more than 400 metric tons of personal protective equipment and other medical and relief supplies Operated more than 190 burial teams in the region Conducted aggressive contact tracing to identify chains of transmission Trained health care workers and conducted community outreach Worked with international partners to identify travelers who may have Ebola before they leave the regionThanks to their efforts, and the work of countless others from around the world, the number of people who are contracting Ebola has declined sharply from peak levels.
Fighting the disease over there so we didn’t have to fight it over here. Gosh, that sounds oddly familiar. I wonder where I’ve heard it? Instead we get Cadet Bonespurs the Bunker Boy grinning about the Chinese virus and ignoring all the medical science and just wishing and hoping as hard as he could. Ha Ha China, sucks to be you. How’d that work out for everyone?
Hell, wait until mid-July. New cases stemming from covidiots ignoring social distancing procedures on the Fourth.