Its kind of hard to explain what I’m feeling, but I guess I always had this belief that there were people in charge, competent people, and they knew how to keep society stable. Society to me seems to basically go on a linear march forward. There are bumps but generally we advance forward technologically and socailly. Even the rise of fascism we are seeing now, I expect that will mostly be over in the next few decades same way the rise of fascism in the 1920s ended. And after its over, society will become more stable so the next wave of fascists can’t do as much damage (more checks and balances, more transparency, etc).
Then a virus emerges, and society doesn’t crumble but you realize how fragile society is and how ill equipped the people leading can be.
I’ve heard one of the big appeals of conspiracy theories is that they let people rest comfortably in the assumption that there is an all knowing, all powerful group who know what they are doing and have a full level of control. Basically like how religion makes people feel safe since they feel an all knowing, all powerful god is in charge. Even if they don’t agree with what happens, having that group in charge makes people feel safe on some level.
This pandemic is kind of having the opposite effect on me and I assume the opposite effect on others too. Nobody is truly in charge, and the ones who are in charge are a mix of incompetent and impotent.
After the black plague, wasn’t there some unrest because people realized the church and state couldn’t protect them? Will there be something similar due to all this? Will there be major philosophical shifts in how people approach life after all this? Were there after other major plagues? Basically a society wide existential crisis.
Worry about people dying and worrying about the economics of this health crisis concern me. But I also wonder if there will be long term consequences in peoples philosophies as they realize that the governments of the world are all pretty incompetent at maintaining stability when the shit hits the fan. Its like that invisible envelope of protection has been taken away.
This is not a universal problem. We are seeing the difference between a crisis when you have competent leadership and the same crisis when you have incompetent leadership. A competent President should have been preparing for contingencies, leading the country, listening to experts, anticipating problems, and taking steps to minimize them. Donald Trump failed to be a leader and all of us are paying the price for his incompetence.
At the moment this is asymmetric warefare, COVID-19 can kill us and we can’t kill it.
Since the rise of antibiotics and modern medicine we have become used to the balance being asymmetric the other way.
It’s also unsettling because it’s our very sociability that makes us vulnerable.
But give us a process and sufficient resources to allow those infected to recover, and a vaccine or treatment to effectively block the others from being affected and we’ll be back in blissful complacency quicksmart and everything will return to normal including TV ratings.
Germany and Austria, I believe, have received pretty high marks. Their stats seem to look much better than the US (much more testing per capita, lower per capita death rates, falling case counts at this point).
Leading to the meme: “This is the difference between your leader being a quantum chemist and a reality TV host”.
You don’t hear so much about countries that are handling things well because they’re … not having a crisis.
I think, out of OECD/high income nations, obviously we’ve all heard about the various success stories in Asia, but I’d also single out Czechia as having had a good pro-active strategy, and seeing the benefit of it - they started shutting things down and closing off borders very soon after Italy did, even though at the time they had only a few hundred cases. And, interestingly, they make everyone wear face masks. They’re a pretty high-density country, which IMO is one of the things that makes COVID control harder, so I’d give them good marks for an intelligent response.
Iceland is probably the stand-out success of Europe but since they’re an island, low density, and extremely wealthy, it’s kind of easier for them.
ETA: Having done a bit more looking through lists - Poland too, they started responding when there were only 22 cases in the whole country. But I don’t have any connections with Poland myself, so I don’t know much about it
There are a number of countries (and a number of states within the US) who have shown what intelligent leadership can do. Iceland, New Zealand, some others. Many countries do not have intelligent leadership, and the US is sadly for us one of them.
[KRYTEN SMUG MODE]…yep. The people in charge here knew exactly what to do and did before the shit-hit-the-fan. Still only one death. 14 in hospital, 4 in ICU.We have a four stage alert system and are currently in alert level 4. The plan is to remain in level 4 for two full incubation periods (or four weeks) before lowering the alert level. Then to start surveillance testing, identifying, isolating and working to eliminate any new outbreaks or clusters as and when they appear. AKA a plan. [/KRYTEN SMUG MODE]
We still can’t get complacent. We aren’t out of the woods until we get a vaccine. But it isn’t the case that “nobody knows what to do”. Plenty of people knew exactly what it was you needed to do. But instead of listening to the scientists and the experts and the people that knew what to do people accused them of overreacting. If you want to know why America has ended up where it is right now you really need to start by looking at yourself. America is going to be hardest hit by Covid-19 because of decisions that have been made going back decades. The cult of the individual. The embrace of capitalism, the rejection of “socialism”, science and safety nets.
Speaking of the Black Death, it is my understanding that the plague was effectively The thing that broke the Church’s power over Europe, allowing an end to the Dark Ages and paving the way to the Renaissance. Yes, people noticed that the Church simply could not induce God to halt the plague and end the (massive) suffering and death, and therefore kind of quit listening to them.
In hindsight, yeah, no peer-reviewed journal would publish an article promoting prayer as a response to the plague. But at the time this was a big surprise and a revolution in addition to the disaster.
OTOH, while they could not stop the plague in the general population, the Church may have succeeded in at least preventing the Pope from catching it. Call it superstition if you want, but they believed that fire could ward off such things. The Pope isolated himself in the center of a square whose corners were blazing braziers. Whether this was an early form of social distancing, or if the flames kept the rats and fleas away, or maybe it was a total placebo, the fact is the Pope did not get sick.
Which makes me think how much I would enjoy watching a Trump news conference in which he is surrounded by a square or perhaps a ring of flames.
OP says—Is this virus making people realize ‘oh shit, nobody is in charge and nobody knows what to do’?
It depends on what media you watch, maybe? But also…
Early in this crisis, one of my co-workers got out a box of clorox wipes or something like that. He noted that the label actually listed “Coronavirus” and the product could kill it. This co-worker is a pretty intelligent guy, but as I pointed out, this coming potential scourge wasn’t “THE” coronavirus, but “A” Coronavirus. In other words the product description might be accurate for what people had encountered from bugs in that family so far, but perhaps it didn’t apply to this particular member.
I suspect scientists play a higher level of that same game. Based on what we know about this group…you’re probably ok or not ok. Until it gets turned loose and we see whoa, black sheep of the family coming through! we don’t know. But if they tell the public not to worry we don’t. We assume they’re right because they’re experts but maybe that only goes so far.
So don’t wear a mask. No wait, do wear a mask!
The “Nobody is in charge” part seems pretty spot on.
While most governments around the world have handled it badly it’s an exaggeration to say that no one knows what to do. For the most part, after ignoring the problem for too long, those same governments have gotten their act together at least to some extent.
In the US Trump personally is obviously useless but other parts of the government have worked better. The speed with which Congress came together to pass the 2 trillion dollar package was impressive and there has been a solid ramp-up of testing. California has done a fairly good job of handling the crisis.
Some important context when evaluating the response:this is a new virus about which we know relatively little and it’s difficult to get reliable data in real time when it is expanding so fast. Also human being in general have difficulty with threats that grow exponentially.
No. It’s making at least one guy realize, “That sonofabitch will try and make a profit off ANYTHING!” Trump and crew are definitely in charge, and they know exactly what to do–to achieve their own goals. Were they not, the individual states would have an easier time getting what they need to deal with all of this.
lobotomyboy63, I’m not sure what your point is with the Clorox wipes. Yes, they kill coronavirus-- I don’t think anyone disputes that. Including the current one. But what real relevance does that have to the epidemic? It’s not like you can wipe down the insides of your lungs for a cure. You can cleanse surfaces with them (which is after all what they’re made for), and diligent cleansing of surfaces will slow the spread of the virus, but it’s not like “Clorox wipes exist, therefore the disease doesn’t exist”.
I think your last sentence kinda describes what my co-worker seemed to be saying. “How bad can this virus be? These Clorox wipes will kill it.” You seem to be ascribing that attitude to me, however. No.
I wrote in my post:
“In other words the product description might be accurate for what people had encountered from bugs in that family so far, but perhaps it didn’t apply to this particular member.”
When you say the wipes kill coronavirus “Including the current one” I wasn’t sure of that. Are they? This is novel, and it’s bad shit yet it’s the same family as the common cold. Wipes kill common cold virus…therefore they also kill this related bad boy? I haven’t seen evidence but it may exist; even as my co-worker said that, I never automatically assumed it. Time has passed since, and the different outcomes of the diseases (covid vs common cold) raised the stakes on the assumption that wipes would kill it.
I later wrote:
“So don’t wear a mask. No wait, do wear a mask!”
Yeah, home made…or home made hand sanitizer. I think scientists and doctors are revising their advice as they learn more. People are trying to arm themselves with knowledge and they get it wrong. Social distancing…but wait, then we find you can get it from a passing jogger. Great.
I think the OP was making a false assumption that govt/leaders could potentially be effective against any problem, which is not really true, humans have limited power compared to nature.
Although there have been a continuum of reactions by govts, some more effective and some less effective, in all cases it’s just mitigation, it’s not control of nature.
There will be problems that even the best human leadership is not able to significantly mitigate.