"Dignity"What’s with the casual dress intern behind him? Such a professional image for the President and White House.
Some honest, trying to be respectful thoughts on your post.Government will do what government always does - planning for the same thing and not reasonably adjusting when something else happens..
Within weeks of this pandemic's onset it was very clear that those most at risk were overwhelmingly older, and that young people were at low levels of risk. Instead of acknowledging that and advising that older people and those with ill health isolate, they isolated everyone. When it was clear the demographics of those at risk, they changed tactics to "you need to isolate to protect Grandma", "you might get MIS-C", "look at this one healthy guy who died", etc.
Disaster planning is fruitless because you can't plan for a disaster. We don't know what a future pandemic might be so we can't plan for an unknown. And when it happens, the government won't adjust to, ahem, the science, it will proceed with the predetermined plan.
Edit: in on 666.
Then we need to spend a [ #2020 ] ton of money building thousands of USS Comforts to treat tens of patients. Maybe permanently create mass casualty wards in convention centers that treat no one. Or maybe your fears about hospital capacity have been overblown for two years.Some honest, trying to be respectful thoughts on your post.
Thought #1- If we can’t isolate the at risk now, what evidence is there to think we could done that effectively early in the pandemic? We’ve basically proven that isolating the at risk is impossible with a virus as infectious as Covid. It’s going to get to everyone if we allow for organic spread.
Thought #2- I get the distrust of Government, but if not Government to lead a response, then who? Since a pandemic affects us all, some sort of coordinated response is necessary, no? I think decentralized response with mixed messages and inconsistent approaches is going to have worse outcomes than a flawed centralized one. I do think a take home point is to allow for vigorous debate about the approach. Squelching alternative viewpoints is never right. But at some point some sort of buck stops here entity has to come up with official recommendations during a pandemic.
Thought 3- The biggest issue I have with an early back to normal approach is the impact of high level spread on hospital capacity, supplies and overwhelming care personnel. Opening the spigot full bore and having NYC and Northern Italy like spread everywhere all at once would have overwhelmed the system. It would have been catastrophic. We had no testing, no treatments, no vaccine. It was touch and go as is during the first few surges Mortality would have been much higher and not just from Covid- all other diseases would be negatively impacted.
Again, once we got through the delta wave, after plenty of time to distribute the vaccine, develop better therapeutics and had upped testing and support capacity I think there is a good argument that was the time to “let virus be virus”. I do agree there now are individuals and governments that are holding onto pandemic mentality too long now though.
Cheers!
It seems to me that your analysis would indicate that we did nothing wrong. If that's the case, rinse and repeat - no planning necessary!Some honest, trying to be respectful thoughts on your post.
Thought #1- If we can’t isolate the at risk now, what evidence is there to think we could done that effectively early in the pandemic? We’ve basically proven that isolating the at risk is impossible with a virus as infectious as Covid. It’s going to get to everyone if we allow for organic spread.
Thought #2- I get the distrust of Government, but if not Government to lead a response, then who? Since a pandemic affects us all, some sort of coordinated response is necessary, no? I think decentralized response with mixed messages and inconsistent approaches is going to have worse outcomes than a flawed centralized one. I do think a take home point is to allow for vigorous debate about the approach. Squelching alternative viewpoints is never right. But at some point some sort of buck stops here entity has to come up with official recommendations during a pandemic.
Thought 3- The biggest issue I have with an early back to normal approach is the impact of high level spread on hospital capacity, supplies and overwhelming care personnel. Opening the spigot full bore and having NYC and Northern Italy like spread everywhere all at once would have overwhelmed the system. It would have been catastrophic. We had no testing, no treatments, no vaccine. It was touch and go as is during the first few surges Mortality would have been much higher and not just from Covid- all other diseases would be negatively impacted.
Again, once we got through the delta wave, after plenty of time to distribute the vaccine, develop better therapeutics and had upped testing and support capacity I think there is a good argument that was the time to “let virus be virus”. I do agree there now are individuals and governments that are holding onto pandemic mentality too long now though.
Cheers!
Trust me (and I know you don’t!) they haven’t been, at least through the delta wave. I think the fears about the omicron wave stressing the system were overblown in retrospect. We had the treatment, community immunity (via vaccine and prior infection) and testing infrastructure built up by then to withstand that wave.Then we need to spend a [ #2020 ] ton of money building thousands of USS Comforts to treat tens of patients. Maybe permanently create mass casualty wards in convention centers that treat no one. Or maybe your fears about hospital capacity have been overblown for two years.
California is still counting votes from their June 7 primaries. Meanwhile Florida, a state that is large with a lot of mail/absentee ballots, somehow can have 100% of their ballots counted within 1-2 hours of the polls closing.Absolutely - we have seen the playbook before. “Mail in ballots are essential to safety and democracy!!!!!”
Yeah, I know you know I completely disagree with you on that one. No doubt in my mind that doing nothing would have led to much more morbidity and mortality.
I do think having a constructive discussion about what could have been done differently is important to do. But I don’t think this is an area where we can afford to stick our heads in the sand. There will be future pandemics and we don’t want to be caught unawares. Important we allocate some of the budget for pandemic preparedness.
Some honest, trying to be respectful thoughts on your post.
Thought #1- If we can’t isolate the at risk now, what evidence is there to think we could done that effectively early in the pandemic? We’ve basically proven that isolating the at risk is impossible with a virus as infectious as Covid. It’s going to get to everyone if we allow for organic spread.
Thought #2- I get the distrust of Government, but if not Government to lead a response, then who? Since a pandemic affects us all, some sort of coordinated response is necessary, no? I think decentralized response with mixed messages and inconsistent approaches is going to have worse outcomes than a flawed centralized one. I do think a take home point is to allow for vigorous debate about the approach. Squelching alternative viewpoints is never right. But at some point some sort of buck stops here entity has to come up with official recommendations during a pandemic.
Thought 3- The biggest issue I have with an early back to normal approach is the impact of high level spread on hospital capacity, supplies and overwhelming care personnel. Opening the spigot full bore and having NYC and Northern Italy like spread everywhere all at once would have overwhelmed the system. It would have been catastrophic. We had no testing, no treatments, no vaccine. It was touch and go as is during the first few surges Mortality would have been much higher and not just from Covid- all other diseases would be negatively impacted.
Again, once we got through the delta wave, after plenty of time to distribute the vaccine, develop better therapeutics and had upped testing and support capacity I think there is a good argument that was the time to “let virus be virus”. I do agree there now are individuals and governments that are holding onto pandemic mentality too long now though.
Cheers!
I definitely think things could have been done differently and better, mostly in the direction of points/ concepts that you make or have made in the past. But in a pandemic with a novel virus, someone has to be the buck stops here entity that issues recommendations and guidance and coordinates response based on the best available information. I don’t see any other way than Government leading that effort. I think the focus should be on making that effort better.It seems to me that your analysis would indicate that we did nothing wrong. If that's the case, rinse and repeat - no planning necessary!
I know I'm being glib and don't mean disrespect but that's what you wrote. And honestly I feel the government will approach it that way. At its heart, government is a bunch of bureaucrats. There are many well-intentioned employees as well and some "disrupters" who come in and make great changes, but despite changes in administrations, the bureaucrats remain and often end up in leadership roles because they're the ones who stay. And it doesn't really matter who is in the White House or State Capitol; government is a left-leaning, slow-moving bureaucracy that isn't very introspective.
That's not uncommon in corporations either, but the private sector has to have an "adapt or die" mentality that the government doesn't.
Back to the virus: what some of us said early on was that there was clear evidence very early that a significant portion of the population had little to no susceptibility to COVID. If we'd let it burn through those people while we more sufficiently quarantined the elderly, it's very possible that we would have shortened the peaks and reduced the transmissibility. It's very obvious that we could have kept kids in schools and kept businesses from failing. But the fear peddled (what about unknown long-term effects, what about MIS-C?) wasn't adaptation to the data, it was doubling down. Government doesn't learn, it seeks to reinforce what it believed while ignoring evidence. That's why I distrust it.
I'd like to learn something from what happened, yet the government is celebrating vaccinating 3 year olds.
I definitely think things could have been done differently and better, mostly in the direction of points/ concepts that you make or have made in the past. But in a pandemic with a novel virus, someone has to be the buck stops here entity that issues recommendations and guidance and coordinates response based on the best available information. I don’t see any other way than Government leading that effort. I think the focus should be on making that effort better.
Why? Why does someone have to be the buck stops here entity?I definitely think things could have been done differently and better, mostly in the direction of points/ concepts that you make or have made in the past. But in a pandemic with a novel virus, someone has to be the buck stops here entity that issues recommendations and guidance and coordinates response based on the best available information. I don’t see any other way than Government leading that effort. I think the focus should be on making that effort better.
Because a disorganized, decentralized response leads to confusion and inconsistency. In any emergency, clear consistent messaging is key. People want that, businesses and institutions need that in order to make policies and procedures and individuals want that to guide behavior.Why? Why does someone have to be the buck stops here entity?
Is "pandemic" some sort of magic threshold? And what if the virus really isn't that deadly? Someone on here said from the very beginning that they weren't going to worry about it unless young, healthy people start dropping. Which never happened. Not even close.
And spare me the "oh, the hospitals were overwhelmed" baloney. I know enough people in that field to know that the situations in the hospitals were sensationalized, because the people that work there said so. It was never as bad as they wanted you to think. Nobody can convince me otherwise.
Com'n man, you know these people were overwhelmed. I know the occasions I had to work 100 hour weeks in my life (which happened a couple of times during an electronics factory build out) I didn't feel like doing [ #2020 ], much less dancing.Why? Why does someone have to be the buck stops here entity?
Is "pandemic" some sort of magic threshold? And what if the virus really isn't that deadly? Someone on here said from the very beginning that they weren't going to worry about it unless young, healthy people start dropping. Which never happened. Not even close.
And spare me the "oh, the hospitals were overwhelmed" baloney. I know enough people in that field to know that the situations in the hospitals were sensationalized, because the people that work there said so. It was never as bad as they wanted you to think. Nobody can convince me otherwise.
No, they didn't. That's speculative BS.Because a disorganized, decentralized response leads to confusion and inconsistency. In any emergency, clear consistent messaging is key. People want that, businesses and institutions need that in order to make policies and procedures and individuals want that to guide behavior.
I definitely am not exaggerating the potential for overwhelming hospitals if we did nothing. The shutdowns in early 2020 saved the system from collapse. We did not have the capacity to withstand an open spigot approach to the virus. I do think it could be argued that we could have achieved similar outcomes with a shorter and less aggressive interventions though.
In that regard, I think it is important to remember that in the spectrum of covid response by all countries, the US was probably on the less aggressive side all in all.
I still to this day have absolute disdain for the dancing nurses. It was like a giant middle finger to everyone's face.Com'n man, you know these people were overwhelmed. I know the occasions I had to work 100 hour weeks in my life (which happened a couple of times during an electronics factory build out) I didn't feel like doing [ #2020 ], much less dancing.
Yes, but any "how could we have responded differently" discussion is going to be speculative (including most of your assertions, btw). That's the nature of a look back. But we know the natural history of unchecked spread in NYC, Italy. I know that the dogma around here is that it only spread fast in those areas because of population density, but as we are seeing right now with the variants, respiratory diseases spread everywhere regardless of how densely populated a place is. The real key to how much as disease spreads is its R0 (how infectious it is in its baseline state) and Rt (how much it is spreads with interventions/ behavior change/ immunity). In the spring 2020, we got the Rt down below 1 (i.e. every person infected spreads it to less than one person and the peak goes down) because of our behavior changes which (IMO) prevented the overwhelming of the medical system.No, they didn't. That's speculative BS.