pokerface
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There is an open letter from an anonymous history professor from UC Berkeley, slamming the academia, DNC, large corporations for their hypocrisy on supporting BLM. It is in several local news, but none of the MSM (another major hypocrite) has picked it up yet. Here is the zerohedge link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/anonymous-berkeley-professor-shreds-blm-injustice-narrative-damning-stats-and-logic
I suspect that one of the reasons why US is so incompetent is that some in the administration intentionally delayed the testing. They knew that when things got worse, people will lose jobs and government will have to pass a big stimulus. They also knew that they will be able to get a ridiculously large sum of money for their rich friends and themselves in that stimulus. That was exactly what happened. Trump may be too stupid to plan that, but I wouldn’t be surprised some in his administration did. Weeks after Trump appointed Pence as the lead to be in charge of the coronavirus task force, they still could not provide testing for enough people. Not even close. That is intentional.
I don’t think flattening the curve/social distancing that we seem to be doing everywhere is the best strategy. I have been thinking about it for a while, and I don’t think I hear anyone talking about any realistic strategy. I do have a simple and bold idea, which I would like to share below.
First, let us say we keep doing social distancing for 2-3 months until things are under control. Then what? Don’t tell me that we will be able to entirely get rid of the virus then. At this point, most reasonable people already accepted that it just won’t happen. We also cannot go back to ‘normal’ because the minute we do that, the cases will go back up, and then we go back to all these social distancing controls for another 2-3 months. Basically, we will go through this cycle of getting in and out of social distancing every few months until we get the vaccine or herd immunity, either of which is going to take at least a year. You can argue that when we get out of the first social distancing, we can ‘carefully’ go back to our ‘slightly modified’ normal way of life such as no hand shaking and all sport events taking place inside closed doors (if you can call that normal). Does anyone really have any answer how much we need to modify our behavior such that the infected cases do not rise out of control and overwhelm our hospitals again? Also, all countries have to precisely synchronize their social distancing periods because if some countries are out of phase, then we will need to completely block the borders of those countries. Just see what China, HK, Singapore are doing now. I hope you all see what a challenge it is to keep all these things right. With the incompetence displayed so far by our leaders and the way this virus works, I wouldn’t bet on that we will be able to control the virus with the current social distancing strategy. Basically, the current social distancing strategy will surely disrupt our lives for extended periods of time.
I have seen a few countries (UK, Nertherlands?) have thought about trying to get herd immunity quickly and get it over with. But when they realized it would quickly overwhelm their hospitals, they changed their path and followed the social distancing/city lockdowns (a bit too late and at the expense of numerous lives). Also, let us say some countries managed to achieve herd immunity. Then what? As long as there are still counties without herd immunity, those vulnerable countries will have to strictly control their borders (Again, just see what China, HK, Singapore are doing now), and for how long? The only things that our leaders could think of is printing money for businesses and people and wait out until there is a vaccine.
Here is what I think we need to do. We have to mobilize/organize people and resources at the WWII scale. During the green new deal under FDR, the government hired people at a massive scale to clean up federal lands and so on. We need to do something bold like this, but at a global scale because all countries need to work together to get this virus under control. It is quite clear that millions of people who work in restaurants, travel/tourism industries and many others are now losing their jobs. We also know that the hospitals are massively short of people and resources. The governments should hire/recruit all these millions of people, train them to take care of coronavirus patients, build hospitals, make ventilators and other PPEs. It isn’t not going to be easy, and we need great leaders to organize things such a large scale. So far, I haven’t see any such leader. We have a lot of experts. Now, we need some leaders to organize all these experts and millions of newly unemployed people to solve this problem. So, here it is, my simple and bold idea. I definitely think it is better than printing and giving trillions of dollars to corporations and every single person.
Two people in a senior nursing facility in Washington state have been tested to be positive. 50 more there have shown symptoms. As far as I know, it is not in any breaking news.
Ilargi,
What we need to do is to shift the Overton window among the mainstream discussions. I just created a WordPress account and posted my first blog at https://gnd2.home.blog/. My argument is from a Progressive viewpoint, but it is obviously inspired by many including you.
Best wishes
PS: This is my first comment here although I have been lurking here for quite some time.
