Posted on 04/01/2020 4:11:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
The problem as I see it, was the panic got way out in front
on this one. By the time this was headed to our shores, it
was big news and the hype was gigantic.
People anticipated landfall, and were flat ass panicked over
the prospects.
In that atmosphere, governments have very little choice
except to “do something, anything” to make it clear they care
and have done everything they can to mitigate the worst
possible outcome.
I don’t think a Conservative could have ignored this like
Obama ignored H1N1. If they had, they would lose the next
election by a landslide.
Trump was essentially over a barrel. He had no choice but
to address COVID-19, and do everything in his power to
confront it.
H1N1 came in without a big buildup. The media wanted to
support Obamacare. They avoided mentioning H1N1 much at
all.
Something like 1,000 people had already died before Onama
declared it an emergency, but I don’t think he did much
on the order of what we’re doing today.
We clearly didn’t stay home, shut down businesses, or
disrupt the economy like we are now.
And somehow we survived.
We need to develop a better plan for the next time, and
education the public so that they understand we can’t
simply shut the nation down every time this sort of thing
takes place.
Was the heavy handed, economy wrecking response weve seen due to early intelligence assessments that this was indeed a bioweapon? The spooks badly overestimated Iraqs WMD capabilities after Sept. 11. Even if the intelligence agencies were only telling Trump that they could not rule out the possibility that this was an engineered bioweapon, Trump would have been forced to accept worst case thinking and act accordingly.
This COVID-19 Wuhan virus thing is a one-shot wonder. Short of an approaching asteroid aimed at the Pacific Basin, not much will exceed it in importance. But it had to hit at just the right juncture in history to have the impact be as great as it is turning out to be.
There is a state of equilibrium called homeostasis, in which even extreme events can upset things for only for a short while, then the “normal” quickly recovers. The “new normal” is only slightly displaced from the “old normal”, if at all, and the extreme condition is absorbed into the existing balance. That is how life has managed to exist on this turbulent planet for billions of years, and why it shall again resume, rather more quickly than slowly.
As others have said, this too shall pass.
“We need to develop a better plan for the next time, and
education the public so that they understand we cant
simply shut the nation down every time this sort of thing
takes place.”
My only problem with your statement is that it presumes we had a plan in the first place. There was no plan as far i as can see.
Besides, the gerrymandered-elected political hack office holders and their limitless, largely incompetent bureaucracy in place and ability to print money with their lock on the mass media and universities - they will not be willing to develop an actual plan that doesn’t run over the citizens’ rights. Look at how in the middle of this they are using it to blame POTUS and ram through spending pork.
If you had paid close attention here, you would have noticed that there was a “Merry Band” of Freepers who were writing about this long _before_ the mass media had a clue.
_We_ went out and prepped before other folks knew what was happening.
Knowledge was power.
The mass media was _late_ to this news, not early.
Read this old FR thread and you will get the idea:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3820145/posts
You are so right.
I think the general fallacy is that people in high places
have all the answers. They really don’t.
You get some agencies trying to provide as clear a projection
as they can, but that can be a very hard thing to pin down.
Some of us tend to think there’s a big bad plan behind
some of these things, but I think we can see how poor
some government wonks are at thinking their way out of a
paper bag.
Yes, there is some subterfuge. I’m not convinced it’s as
big as we think. We do know that people gamed Trump. I’m
not denying that. I’m just not sure that people are as
intelligent as we think, and I think there’s a lot of
mistakes made through ignorance.
Some of the people may have thought there was a bio-weapon
aspect to this. Others may not have thought so.
It’s hard to determine the truth or magnitude of those things.
I more or less listen, but file things away rather than
think I’ve got enough handle on it to take some sort
of action, or urge other to join with me to form
some type of response or reaction.
Thanks for taking the time to post your non-armageddon thoughts.
It made my morning.
I think Sweden has a pretty good plan.
They are allowing the public to make their own choice what
they want to do. They can stay home, or they can work.
If they work they keep their distance, wash hand often, and do other things to minimize the threat.
Older people stay home.
Anyone else that can, is free to.
I’m pretty sure they encourage folks to work remotely too.
They are seeking to keep their economy going.
IMO < this is a good core, to develop a plan around.
We need to do that.
As for government types, they are geared to fix things.
Sometimes you can’t, and you just need to keep your mitts
off the problem. Let it self-heal.
H1N1 seems to have turned out pretty good.
We could learn from that too.
Thank you.
Im not suggesting subterfuge, though thats possible. Im suggesting incompetence. Are we saying the same thing?
This will be the norm as every hypochondriac runs to the hospital with a hang nail. We should just hybernate between Dec and March. This is the facists dream come true. Control everyone with the threat of the flu. What a weak and pathetic society.
Few libertarians would disagree.
Why wouldnt they disagree? The real heroes have been in private industry, not government. Private industry is feeding people, making masks and PPE, developing tests, developing vaccines, and, by and large, treating the sick.
If you arent sick of government by now, you are crazy.
Few libertarians would disagree.
Why wouldnt they disagree? The real heroes have been in private industry, not government. Private industry is feeding people, making masks and PPE, developing tests, developing vaccines, and, by and large, treating the sick.
Governments, on the other hand, have generally made things worse through their futile, destructive lock down orders and by spreading panic. Even where government action could have helped in the early stages, the government dropped the ball.
If you arent sick of government by now, you are crazy.
I think you are partly right.
The media may not have been deep into this on 02/27, but it
wasn’t completely turned out.
If you’ll remember back to that time, the Diamond Princess was very big in the middle of February.
The media made that a sensational story.
While it may not have been on top of things at the turn of the months into February, I think that by the 15th, the MSM was pretty much all in.
There as big talk of closing off Wuhan too.
I’m not sure I’m with you on that line of thought.
I think we may be.
Some of the biggest moves by Trump have been during the last couple of weeks, and the public has indirectly been driving it.
People have been freaked out, and I think government officials have been motivated to “do something, almost anything”.
Incompetence is a factor I’m sure.
I heard one local government employee say to another “they should just let us run things all the time”.
Few libertarians would disagree.
Socialists are cynical about society, and - concomitantly - naive about societys opposite, which is government. Socialists should therefore more properly be called governmentists.The opposite of cynicism about society and naiveté about government - naiveté about society and cynicism about government - is basically what Karl Marx called capitalism. Which, of course, was the straw man he excoriated.
Conservatives, and even libertarians, are not so naive about society as to reject the necessity of (at least some) government. They are therefore skeptical of both society and government.
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