# Is this virus making people realize 'oh shit, nobody is in charge and nobody knows what to do' **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 9, 2020, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464 "2020-04-09T22:34:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/41 "2020-04-11T03:25:37Z")
My takeaway is that the most advanced healthcare system in the world…isn’t. Not even close. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/42 "2020-04-11T03:35:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Do you honestly believe that we could have convinced a majority of people back in January how serious the approaching epidemic was going to be and got them to institute the pre-emptive action that was called for? It doesn’t require belief at all to see what a stupid idea “anarchic democracy” is here. Social distancing is something that can happen individually, and furthermore is in the individual’s self interest (so no game theory dynamics here). Was there anywhere that 51% of the population started sheltering in place without government orders? No. So we already have our answer. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/43 "2020-04-11T04:04:24Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > 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. Sit down. Exhale. Inhale. Listen up. **Nobody knows what the fuck is going on.** Those who claim they know what the fuck is going on are lying, deluded, or living in a closed bubble. Some know enough to enrich themselves. Some know enough not to expose themselves. Some know enough to stay low, to not shit where they sleep, to take refuge in safe havens. But **nobody knows what the fuck is going on.** No omniscient deities or priests. Nobody with perfect knowledge. Only those trying to make statistical sense of it all. I’d rather listen to honest statisticians than folks with insightful intestines. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/44 "2020-04-11T04:39:17Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > No one is in charge and everyone is making it up as they go along. Two important lessons for everyone. > > There is no way to know which nations have done a great job and which have done a horrible job. We will not know until this is all over and even then it will be hard to know. The two countries that were hit hardest first, China and Iran, are totally untrustworthy and the threat didn’t really become clear until what happened to Italy. There were so many unknowns, and still are, that all decisions had to be made in the dark with people just hoping they were right. Seems that you missed New Zealand and other countries pointed at early in the thread. As I pointed in another thread [there is already evidence of the incompetence that was present in the USA where leaders did ignore science and turned an emergency into a disaster.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4yZaoA90Jk) In the issue of testing the situation is still an scandal, not knowing where the people that are still carriers, or the ones that are already immune because they had it already will slow down the efforts to get everyone back to work. And knowing is half the battle. Yeah, even a cartoon from the 80’s had it already. ---
**Author:** ![Themenin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ee59a6/32.png) [@Themenin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Themenin)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/45 "2020-04-11T12:17:02Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > People think that “government” or “big business” or “The Media” or whoever are single monolithic entities, controlled by some figurehead or council of learned elders or whatever. Theoretically as long as you put someone smart enough in charge, they will make correct decisions. > > That’s not really how anything works. > > I’m pretty close to the epicenter of the outbreak and, aside from all the precautions everyone is taking, society is pretty much moving forward as you would expect. Grocery stores have food. Restaurants are serving take out and delivery. Mail and packages get delivered. The internet, water and electricity works. Police, and fire services are still active. My kid’s school at least is trying to teach remotely. > > Maybe the response could have been handled much better, but I don’t see society collapsing anytime soon. Pretty much this. Democratic societies and institutions are surprisingly robust. Where I live we’ve been under full lockdown for about a month, and pretty much everything still works. This is not about Trump, it’s a disease - a chaotic natural disaster - robust societies will weather it - fragile societies may get hammered. On the other hand, they may just take it in their stride as yet another ordeal… (\*Necessary SDMB disclaimer \*- yes, Trump is a clown, and it’s an even bigger mystery to us all outside the US as to how he got to where he is, but this is still not about Trump.) As best I can tell the primary primary public policy goal here is to protect the health system, so the only really useful metric is usage of ICU beds. Where I am, we’re close to 100% but so far no stories of critically ill people being turned away (be it Corona or heart attacks or what have you), so I’d say we’re doing OK. This is coming at a huge cost, and who can say if it’s the right way to go, but it’s certainly a defensible public policy goal in a country with UHC (and a largely publicly run health system). I suspect it may be a little harder to articulate that as a goal in the US where you have a different health care philosophy. I wouldn’t frame that as a current deficit in leadership though, more a question of your nation’s priorities. Your electorate hasn’t come out in favour of UHC (so far). And having said all that, the US may start seeing higher death rates than Italy and Spain, but possibly not due to current policy, more as a result of past healthcare policy, and even national idiosyncrasies (diet, smoking etc). Over here we’re hearing more and more about obesity, diabetes and cardiac fragility as risk factors, so pre-existing unmanaged illness may turn out to be a bigger issue than speed of contagion, or isolation. So who knows, this may turn out to be a tipping point in the US healthcare debate as I’ve seen surmised in various other threads, but again, not really a leadership issue, more a matter of democratically chosen national priorities… ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/46 "2020-04-11T15:05:41Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > You don’t hear so much about countries that are handling things well because they’re … not having a crisis. So we are doing awesomely! USA! USA! USA! Success is measured by TV ratings right? ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Schmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Some\_Schmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Schmo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/47 "2020-04-11T17:32:32Z")
The thing the pandemic has taught me is that in the US, Democrat governors are miles more competent than federal leadership, and GOP governors (with the notable exception of Ohio’s Mike DeWine) are just as fucking dumb as Trump. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/48 "2020-04-11T17:34:26Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Seems that you missed New Zealand and other countries pointed at early in the thread. > > As I pointed in another thread [there is already evidence of the incompetence that was present in the USA where leaders did ignore science and turned an emergency into a disaster.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4yZaoA90Jk) > > In the issue of testing the situation is still an scandal, not knowing where the people that are still carriers, or the ones that are already immune because they had it already will slow down the efforts to get everyone back to work. > > And knowing is half the battle. > > Yeah, even a cartoon from the 80’s had it already. It is way too early to start saying which countries did great and which countries poorly. New Zealand has only conducted 60,000 tests. It may be doing a great job or a horrible job, there is no way to know at the moment. Currently they have a higher death rate than India, Russia, and Venezuela, but I bet that changes as more information comes out. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/49 "2020-04-11T17:37:12Z")
I think I’ve held the opinion that nobody is driving and the vehicle is just careening around for most of my life. It becomes more obvious at a time like this though. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/50 "2020-04-11T17:58:20Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > It is way too early to start saying which countries did great and which countries poorly. New Zealand has only conducted 60,000 tests. It may be doing a great job or a horrible job, there is no way to know at the moment. Currently they have a higher death rate than India, Russia, and Venezuela, but I bet that changes as more information comes out. _shakes head in disbelief_. We can tell that New Zealand is doing well by the number of deaths (currently only 1, although it will almost certainly go up as more current infections result in mortality). Comparing this to India (which has an absolutely abysmal amount of testing despite having a sophisticated biotechnology industry), Russia (which has essentially no information transparency), or Venezuela (in which social support and health care systems were already in freefall long before the SARS-CoV-2 virus became a pandemic) is the sort of “we can’t know anything for sure so why do anything” defense of the flailing US national response that can only come from a place of avowed ignorance. While we certainly don’t know enough to state any absolute statistics about mortality, contagiousness or effective mechanisms of infection, or to project the total number of deaths, we can look at the relative statistics of morbidity and mortality along with reasoned speculation of how undervalued those measures are in different countries and make comparative evaluations. By any standard, New Zealand is doing very well, and a large measure of that success can be attributed to early action to quarantine people coming into the country and various measures to enforce physical isolation to limit the spread of contagion. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/51 "2020-04-11T18:17:57Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > It is way too early to start saying which countries did great and which countries poorly. New Zealand has only conducted 60,000 tests. It may be doing a great job or a horrible job, there is no way to know at the moment. Currently they have a higher death rate than India, Russia, and Venezuela, but I bet that changes as more information comes out. The information I concentrated was about testing, again, knowing what is going on. It is clear already who is doing a good job and who is doing a terrible one, specifically when per capita numbers are used. > **[Coronavirus is exposing all of the weaknesses in the US health system](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/16/21173766/coronavirus-covid-19-us-cases-health-care-system)** > > High health care costs and low medical capacity made the US uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus. [![](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q8Ouyuj3oJPuy5AvdRG7JXr8ryA=/0x0:1567x1959/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1567x1959):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19786951/covid_19_testing_per_capita.jpg) ](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q8Ouyuj3oJPuy5AvdRG7JXr8ryA=/0x0:1567x1959/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1567x1959):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19786951/covid_19_testing_per_capita.jpg) Trump, as always, has to lie about how well we are doing. > **[FACT CHECK: Trump Claims U.S. Testing For Coronavirus Most Per Capita — It's Not](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/826368789/fact-check-trump-claims-u-s-testing-for-coronavirus-most-per-capita-its-not)** > > During his briefing with the coronavirus task force on Thursday, President Trump once again inaccurately described the per capita testing within the United States. > [@](#): > > FACT CHECK: Trump Claims U.S. Testing For Coronavirus Most Per Capita — It’s Not BTW New Zeland has tested [12,182 per million while for the USA is 7,894](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) and according to other sources, the testing in the USA has been branded as["inconsistent units"](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/52 "2020-04-11T18:44:20Z")
> [@Themenin](#): > > Pretty much this. Democratic societies and institutions are surprisingly robust. Where I live we’ve been under full lockdown for about a month, and pretty much everything still works. > > This is not about Trump, it’s a disease - a chaotic natural disaster - robust societies will weather it - fragile societies may get hammered. On the other hand, they may just take it in their stride as yet another ordeal… Yeah, it’s kind of a double-edged sword. Centralization vs distributed leadership and systems. Yes, it would be great if we had a competent President and excellent leadership at the Federal level. But the fact that we decentralization at the State and Local level, plus various independent agencies and businesses means that all of society is not beheld to the whims and competency of a single source of leadership. The the major failing of dictatorships and centralized governments is that even at their most altruistic, they are unable to process all the information needed to make the best decisions. At most tend to not be very altruistic beyond their own desire to maintain power. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/53 "2020-04-11T23:03:51Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > It is way too early to start saying which countries did great and which countries poorly. Let me guess; we should wait until the second week in November to consider that issue. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/54 "2020-04-12T01:17:42Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > By any standard, New Zealand is doing very well, and a large measure of that success can be attributed to early action to quarantine people coming into the country True, to give the Kiwis (pop 5mil) their due but you need to include that 1) the country is socially distanced anyway and 2) they had more notice of the infection and that the alternative “herd immunity” strategy wasn’t going to work. Now given those advantages they could have pissed them away so yes they couldn’t have done much better even with hindsight. The contrast vs Australia who were later to shut down and did a couple of avoidable fuck-up regarding cruise ships (community infection rates here are low) but with 6k infections reported and 54 deaths in Aus (pop 25mil) you might also need to factor in a seasonal boon as the virus arrived in the antipodes at the end of summer. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/55 "2020-04-13T14:26:48Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Let me guess; we should wait until the second week in November to consider that issue. Not everything is about politics. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464/56 "2020-04-13T17:23:27Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Not everything is about politics. Right, we have a Republican in office. :rolleyes: We’ll go back to making things political again when the Democrats hold the office. Then we can complain about incompetence, corruption, the deficit, how much vacation time the president takes, etc… But for now, we need to keep our eye on the ball and not politicize national problems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-virus-making-people-realize-oh-shit-nobody-is-in-charge-and-nobody-knows-what-to-do/851464.md?page=2)