Sorry, I guess I derailed my own thread with my offhand remark that I feared Covid-19 will be worse than AIDS. Forget that; we’ll all find out in the days/months to come.
My main question was comparing Reagan’s actions with AIDS to Trump’s actions with Covid-19: which is worse?
Reagan didn’t actively gut any institutions with oversight over it, did he? So on that score, Trump’s actions at the start of his term already count as worse, I think.
You could make the same argument for some mutated resurgent HIV…
Fair enough on the rounding, but no, my certainty does have *some *basis in fact - both the current spread numbers as well as the numbers from previous similar infections.
And yes, I’ve read (summaries of) the London models. The “90 million dead worldwide in a year” scenario is the one* based on no action at all*. That’s *already *off the table, thankfully.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Straight Dope, I give you an example of Reality, Denier Of. That would be the same type that got us the disaster of a president we have right now. Make no mistake; this is not a benign manifestation.
I think a fundamental difference is that Covid-19 is a disease from a well-understood type of virus that presents reasonably promptly with expected symptoms, and for which we know the method of transmission. As to the U.S., there was clear evidence and experience in the progress of the disease from China.
With AIDS, it was a mysterious disease that presented in a unique way a long time after infection, and that was at that time limited to distinct sub-groups of the population. In the beginning, nobody really knew its cause and how to limit its spread. It took a tremendous effort to find that it was caused by a virus, and identify the virus causing it.
With AIDS, in hindsight there are many things that could have been done, and perhaps should have given the then-state of knowledge. But Reagan and his medical advisors were fundamentally dealing with an unknown disease that did not appear to threaten the population as a whole.
COVID-19, on the other hand, was a clear and present danger to the entire U.S. (and world) population for which there were some reasonably obvious things that could have been done at much earlier times. Plainly, Trump’s denial of the seriousness of the outbreak, combined with his ongoing efforts to muzzle or fire those that didn’t go along his view of things, severely limited the ability of the Federal Government to react.
I have no doubt that a substantial amount the federal government’s bungling of the Covid-19 response can be laid directly at Trump’s feet. For AIDS, the government’s underreaction was caused by multiple factors, and rather little of that was based on Reagan’s personal intervention.
Trump clearly wins this bungling contest.
Say, aren’t you one of those folks who calls damlibruls* “snowflakes”, “bedwetters”, etc?
*Is that one word or two? It’s generally pronounced as one, but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be two…
Would you like the list sorted alphabetically, chronologically, or in order of increasing culpability?
I recommend strict social distancing from carriers of the MAGA-15 plague.
That to my mind is clearly the difference. As much as Reagan is blamed for not addressing AIDS, at least in that case no one fully understood what the hell was going on. The equivalent would have been if Jimmy Carter had created an organization specifically designed to address STIs, and Reagan had fired everyone in 1981.
Duffer, go ahead a live your life the way you want. Nobody here is going to stop you, however we will try and talk you out of doing something stupid. But if you want to be this fucking ignorant and this fucking stupid because you won’t listen, go ahead. Just do me these favours-
Don’t bitch if/when people who do take this seriously start shunning you to keep your distance.
Don’t bitch if/when you or somebody you know gets sick.
Riffing on that:
Covid-19?
No, the most serious and debilitating disease is MAGA-45.
That one causes impaired mental cognition, confusion between fantasy and reality, nonsensical speech, delusions of grandeur and profound stupidity.
In 2017 the World Bank estimated that only 6 countries had made plans for a global pandemic.
Then Trump fired the pandemic response team.
Reagan is ‘recent’?
Kids!
Shush you, and mind yer elders, you little whippersnapper.
Well, since you asked (sort of, anyway,) it’s whom. You’re mad at him, not mad at he, so Evers is whom you’re mad at. The “m"s point the way. One small ignorance fought, one giant ignorance stubbornly fighting back.
Trump’s response has been more incompetent, but Reagan’s was more malignant. Trump just doesn’t care if people die, since as far as he’s concerned only the life of one being in the universe matters: his. He wouldn’t care if a billion people died of a disease, as long as it wasn’t* him.*
Reagan on the other hand wanted as many homosexuals as possible to die from AIDS; if he could have I’m sure he’d have had every identified homosexual on the planet forcibly held down and injected with the virus and then denied medication.
And when asked about it, claimed it was a “nasty question” and he didn’t know anything about it. He also cut funding for the CDC.
Whatever happened to AIDS? I thought it was supposed to kill everyone. I don’t know a single person who ever got it. It’s a manufactured crisis like Covid 19.
The Covid 19 crisis is Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids. Every day for four years you liberal assholes were one hundred percent convinced Trump was going to destroy the world. And every day it didn’t happened. In fact, the opposite occurred and it’s driven you insane.
So along comes a normal flu outbreak, and in order to validate yourselves because you all have such fragile egos, you’ve created mass hysteria and destroyed the economy.
You’re like the wife who kills her children to get back at her husband whom she suspects of cheating.
Do you enjoy showing everybody what a loathsome fucking idiot you really are? Is this some sort of self abuse fetish you have? I mean, happy to oblige, but you make it far too easy. Maybe try harder next time.