Red Mosquito

tragabigzanda wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Also the US had intel on this in Dec Burt

I think Trump has done a shit job in a lot of ways, but I don't see any scenario where the economy wasn't gonna get wrecked in the response. No country has been able to avoid either the disease or the economic damage.

Do you think the net result, on an economic level, would be the same if a more prudent president had jumped on top of this thing in December?

I don't think any president would have jumped on it in December, and I'm not sure what they were supposed to do to stop it in China.

Maybe if a president took it more seriously, there would have been less infections due to Mardi Gras or Spring Break?

But no one was taking it seriously anywhere, so Trump's behavior isn't that unique, so it stands to reason that, up to this point at least, things would have played out more or less the same.

But it's very possible we haven't seen the full effect of Trump's incompetence yet.

tragabigzanda wrote:That's a ridiculous view. An intelligent, conservative approach would have looked like "start testing at our borders, start producing PPE, start investing serious money in vaccines right away."

He could have done all that and still held rallies, played golf, pushed his agenda, etc.

Nobody did though, so I don't see how that's ridiculous. And in December?

tragabigzanda wrote:That's a ridiculous view. An intelligent, conservative approach would have looked like "start testing at our borders, start producing PPE, start investing serious money in vaccines right away."

He could have done all that and still held rallies, played golf, pushed his agenda, etc.

It was already in LA and Seattle in late January and the federal task force was in place in less than 2 weeks after that first confirmation. By 01.Feb we had restricted flights to regions in China, but when China is lying to the world about the nature of a virus that escaped from its labs, you cannot expect a good response. I highly suggest you go back a couple pages and read the article on the “list month”. It gives a highly detailed breakdown of exactly what went wrong in the federal response.

Trump conduct here is reprehensible, but the entire world was unprepared.

What I'm saying is:

- He wasn't the only world leader who had access to this information in December or January, and yet no one anywhere did anything about it. It was a Chinese problem. Thus, this isn't uniquely Trump's fault, and I see no reason to think Hillary or some other president would have acted much differently.

- Countries that acted faster and more decisively have had at least the same amount of economic problems that we have now. World leaders elsewhere weren't saying "it's just the flu, bro!", yet their countries became infected anyway. So it probably didn't matter what he did. We were screwed either way.

I just don't think you can blame the economic downturn exclusively on Trump. Not yet anyway. He simply doesn't have that much power.

tragabigzanda wrote:From ‘It’s going to disappear’ to ‘WE WILL WIN THIS WAR’
How the president’s response to the coronavirus has changed since January
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... Fstory-ans

Again, not defending this clown, but adjusting your position based on new evidence is not exactly a bad thing.

Balance that with what the head of the WHO said on 07.March about tying the virus to China: “Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself”

WHO bullshit in late Feb / early March here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51712437

Lost Month Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/t ... demic.html

His budget proposal had a 16% cut to CDC finding. Not great optics.

So if the CDC was fully funded, things would be different right now how?

BurtReynolds wrote:So if the CDC was fully funded, things would be different right now how?

it wouldn't be sunny, rainy and hailing in a 10 minutes period, burt

tragabigzanda wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:So if the CDC was fully funded, things would be different how?

I'm no expert, but I tend to trust the experts. Tough to trust them when they're not hired.

Then I have failed in my role as teacher and mentor.

doug rr wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:So if the CDC was fully funded, things would be different right now how?

it wouldn't be sunny, rainy and hailing in a 10 minutes period, burt

Maybe it's a sign.

BurtReynolds wrote:So if the CDC was fully funded, things would be different right now how?

It just illustrates how clueless he is about pandemics. Fire the pros, cut the funding. Then, when COVID19 comes you end up looking pretty fucking stupid.