Two recent Republican Presidents have grossly failed to deal with global pandemic diseases: Reagan with AIDS and now Trump with Covid-19. Which is worse?
I’mleaning to say Trump’s response is worse, because his firing the experts beforehand left us so unprepared to respond to this disease. And then his early denial (“a Hoax”, “it’ll go away in warmer weather”) actually prevented critical early prevention. Reagan just completely ignored AIDS until some personal friends sickened & died, he didn’t actively deny it existed, just neglected to do anything.
Also, I fear Trump’s bungling will be worse because this disease will turn out to be much worse: it’s much more easily spread, and much more acute pathology.
Not even in America will this be worse than AIDS. Ask some of the gay board members who’ve spoken before about how AIDS completely gutted their circle of friends.
We’ve no idea if this disease will be worse. It probably won’t… but then again, maybe it will. Maybe it’ll kill a hundred million people in the next twelve months and cause the Second Great Depression. God, I hope not, but it’s within the realm of possibility
I would guess, though, that Donald Trump’s part in it will not be something history will see as particularly important one way or another. He has bungled to be sure, but it’s not going to be the lead story in the history books the way it is contemporaneously.
On the other hand, though, while AIDS was certainly worse overall, even in this country (and much worse yet in Africa), the current situation is a lot faster-moving. With AIDS, if you take a year or three figuring out what you’re going to do, it makes very little difference in the long-term effects. With Covid-19, the relevant timescale is days.
The other difference is that Trump isn’t just underreacting or overreacting. He’s doing both, often at the same time. He’s not deciding that it’s not a problem; he’s just not deciding at all. That’s the exact opposite of leadership.
Yes, it would have to mutate to get anywhere near as lethal.
Right now for the vast majority of people the concern isn’t about whether or not they will get sick and die, but rather whether or not they will get infected and pass it on to someone who is vulnerable. You’re fine but you were visiting grandma last week and now her life is in danger.
You’re sure of that, huh?
Iif the mortality rate is 1% (and, it looks to be more than that), and 50% of the world’s population contract it, that’s 7.7 e9 * .5 * .01 = 38.5 million deaths. All it would take is a small change in the mortality rate or the transmission rate to push that number to over 100 million.
Give me a sample size of two, and I can make any argument you want, especially if I get to pick members of an extremely high risk category. No one is claiming that Millenials/Zoomers, et al. are immune to COVID-19 or will only suffer the slightest of effects, only that they are at MUCH lower risk of serious issues than Boomers.
Okay, so that was a conveniently round number to overstate the case, In fact, however, we do not know if it will be worse, nor not worse, than AIDS, and your certainty is completely without any basis in fact.
That’s not clear at all. According to Wikipedia, about 700,000 people have died in the US due to AIDS since the beginning, and about 13,000 die per year today. But COVID-19 could easily kill a million people in the US, and that’s over a much shorter timescale.
Yes, for the gay community, it’s hard to imagine COVID-19 being worse than AIDS was. But for the broader US population it’s much less obvious.
Possibility of an 18 month shelter in place situation, see London Royal College report, could damn near destroy us. It took a LOT of fuckups to get here, but Donald’s done it.
But that is assuming 1% mortality for everyone who gets it, but the rate is lower for those who aren’t elderly. I believe in China the total deaths are around 4000 or so. If that is true is it because there were mostly able to contain it to the Wuhan area and mostly able to stop it spreading to other areas, and you don’t believe that will happen here and in other countries?
The worst case scenarios I’ve seen were all based on 50% (or more) of the population of the world getting it, but that was based upon no preventive measures being taken
I don’t have a link because there are dozens of them and I don’t know which to believe.
Fuck. It’s only been a few weeks and already comparing it to Aids and bringing Reagan into it to fuel your rage. Relax. I see you need to be angry about something, pick something more important. This panic has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in my 46 years.
Can’t go to my corner bar that has at most 20 people on a busy night but if I don’t go to work with 80 other people I’m homeless. I need the bar to deal with going to work! How the fuck is this Trump’s fault? Evers, our Democrat savior in Wisconsin is who I’m pissed at. Or whom. I’ll never get that one straight.
Take a breath, realize that new diseases crop up all the time, and understand your anxiety and anger are hurting your health much more than the risk of this bullshit.
