I think people here (USA) see the news out of China/Italy and think it's not that bad here, without realizing we're 1-4 weeks away from starting to see how bad it will actually get.
I think it's because they read that the majority of cases are "mild" symptoms not understanding that mild symptoms includes being bed ridden for 10 days and contracting pneumonia.
Hey, I am really happy we're starting to take this seriously.
Cancelling everything and drastically reducing travel should slow down the spread significantly. We still desperately need wide-spread testing here. It seems crazy that this many weeks into it we still can't do that.
Right. Up until last night the president just kept comparing it to the flu. I'm glad we're getting serious, though since the coronavirus is already wide-spread in the US I'm not sure how much a travel restriction will do now. Hopefully it will slow it down, which would help.
We really need massively expanded testing now, though we've known that for a while and somehow it hasn't happened yet.
Yeah, for those in the West who are virulently anti-CCP, last month was the best time in decades to topple their power. There was real indications that the simmering discontent would exceed the Chinese censor's ability to control and widespread public anger could have been harnessed into real regime change.
All the West had to do was fuck up less than China and the CCP could have been gone for good. Now, the exact opposite has happened, any anti-CCP voices inside of China have completely lost their legitimacy as the West manifestly has handled the virus worse than China. At the end of this, Xi has basically cemented his status as dictator for life with unchecked power because he was the leader that saved China from the worst of the virus (even if it eventually spreads to China, everyone is much more prepared now and the death toll will be much lower).
Never mind that the best predictive factor of how well you handle COVID 19 was whether your country was traumatized by SARS. Never mind that democracies like Taiwan were arguably more effective. Nobody in China is going to want a "Western" style government for the next 100 years because of COVID 19.
And yet anyone I know who actually approves of Trump behaves nearly identically to these bots. He has an absurdly high approval rating in his own party
these numbers look really scary when you have them in front of you. it's easy to miss in scales and charts. the date here goes only to May which is even more alarming.
That exponential growth. It is amazing to think that the numbers have grown so much that even the most pessimistic number of 10k hidden cases in the US (since we don't test) -- using that number only pushes us out a day globally and not even much locally.
For all intents and purposes then, globally we're on a very aggressive path that's going to be almost impossible to stop.
But if you've been following Wuhan, Italy, Iran -- you already know this.
Yes at some point the new infections has to go down if for no other reason than there is no one left to infect. As you said it must be logistic, because after a while infected people simply bump into fewer and fewer uninfected people.
yeah china (after they quit pretending it didn't exist) actually started to quarantine people an mean it, not just pretend its the flu an refuse to test people because it might make the official numbers go up.
People are already largely suspicious of the US government's statements and responses about coronavirus. This sort of thing doesn't exactly improve that problem.
I am a US citizen and believe that I am rightly suspicious of our current government. It's also my opinion that, since the number of questionable situations has continued to rise for the last three years, there is no road to the administration recovering their credibility.
Let's put it this way: If the administration had come out with strong actions and warnings about covid-19, those who still trust the administration would be better-informed, the messaging would be more consistent, and those who are inclined to think the president lies about everything would, for the most part, not be saying "it must be a hoax". So we would, in fact, be better off, even if it didn't restore their credibility.
That's true ... my in-laws believe everything he says (or that's reported on Fox News) and they truly believe it's just the flu. They're 78 and 80 so they're in the high-mortality population - the logical reaction would be to take steps that might lead to self-preservation.
China, Iran, and South Korea don't stamp passports. If a traveler from one of those countries wants to bypass a "closed border" they can simply connect through an unblocked country.
An interview might reveal that the traveler came from an affected region, but someone working to bypass border restrictions is probably less inclined to answer those questions honestly.
Couple that with the fact that traveling to a country with far fewer cases and is not under quarantine related lock-downs, and being sick in another country but getting treatment, even if it's expensive, might be a compelling option when people in your home country are dying because there aren't enough facilities to care for them.
It's a pretty shitty moral perspective, but it is a perfectly valid individual perspective. This is one of the reasons why the WHO pointed out early on that increased screening at borders was more effective, and why closing borders may actually accelerate the spread of the disease.
Closing the borders wasn't a strong action, it was a misguided action intended to look strong and play well with the Republican base, and was the first in a string of shitty mistakes that the US Government, and other organizations within the US have made in handling this crisis.
There's no interview necessary. If the plane comes from an country of interest it doesn't matter if it's connecting or not. I disagree that it's not a strong action
The WHO and the US government have lost their credibility. I'm looking to state and local governments to step up. The California state government looks like they are doing and saying the right things ( better than the federal government at least ). Actions speak louder than words, look at what is working ( South Korea ) and what isn't.
The problem with travel bans is that there can be all sorts of unintended side effects that exacerbate the problem. It encourages people to make heavier use of illicit and non-mainstream travel channels that can't be monitored or controlled effectively. It may reduce overall travel, but much of the travel that does occur takes place in conditions that are dramatically more likely to cause problems. Also travel bans can lead to severe humanitarian issue on top of the existing health crisis.
This virus is going to be around for a very, very long time. As soon as it spread through the general population in China, it was over. Take China, everyone is talking as though they solved the problem, but it’s only a matter of time before it breaks out there again. In fact it’s almost certainly already happening.
Even draconian lockdowns of people entering the country can only delay the inevitable. Now delays can be valuable. The slower the spread, the lower the peak strain on health services, but it cannot be stopped. How long is Israel going to do this, a week? A month? Six months? What about next year when there’s another outbreak? Maybe we’ll have a vaccine by then, but maybe not.
This is all true, but for now China has developed antibody based fast test kit that can give response in 20 minutes without laboratory testing and knowing them they could produce it in huge quantities.
Now they simply have to apply constant mass testing to keep the outbreak under control.
Hmm, do you have evidence of the threat being downplayed?
The initial advice against the travel ban was quite political, but it's the classic case of a nonprofit needing to appease its donors. At any rate, I recall them saying that travel bans are ineffective against stopping viral spread (which has clearly been proven true). Their utility on slowing transmission is less clear, though I've read that travel controls have indeed proven helpful.
I'm impressed by academic institutions' response in Seattle, although I think they should've have gone even further.
It's still incredible to me that local labs discovered community transmission and federal officials told them to immediately stop testing and effectively did nothing to further intervene:
> That's literally their primary function: to sound the alarm.
Yes, but if they sound the alarm too frequently they'll get a reputation as "the boy who cries wolf." When there really is a wolf, their alarm needs to be believed for it to have any value.
What they have here is an unenviable balancing act. Sound the alarm too frequently, and the alarm is worthless. Sound the alarm too infrequently, and the alarm is worthless.
Edit: Blackwater rebrands itself to make itself more obscure, which runs precisely counter to the goal of spreading public awareness / sounding alarms.
I actually don't know if that's really a huge concern - if the WHO burned their public trust they could always be publicly dismantled and replaced with a new committee[1] - these outbreaks happen rarely enough that public memory isn't going to sustain that well across multiple failures.
Good behavior induced by fear is a real asset in pandemics so we need to not be hesitant to use it.
They did not. They have been saying it is likely to become a pandemic from very early on.
They didn't suddenly radically redefine “pandemic” to mean “likely near future pandemic”, but they didn't miss it. They were ignored by lots of governments, but that's the involved governments’ failure.
It’s crazy people now think who downplayed the epidemic. I had the opposite feeling until the situation got really bad in italy too : that they cried wolf for something that looked a lot like a flu..
There was always this possibility that china communist party was overreacting for fear of alienating its population, after having denied the virus itself for months.
The flu theory was never reasonable. Clinical case studies were available from the beginning of the pandemic and long before the first media personality came up with the flu thing.
My impression was they were very clear, said (to my recollection) that they considered a pandemic to be significant growing endemic transfer on all continents, then appear to have called that when it happened. They don't appear to have hidden numbers, and seem to have helped with knowledge sharing and expertise.
If they had credibility for being able to move quickly for something this widespread, or anything at all really, I think it was fiction in someones mind.
From your source: “Correction: This article and headline has been updated to clarify that Governor Newsom was specifically referring to the support from the White House regarding the docking of the Grand Princess cruise ship.”
There is no endorsement of the federal policy beyond the handling of that specific task.
Honestly, at a time like this, where California might need federal resources if a bad outbreak occurs in the state - it serves no one to needlessly antagonize the federal government.
It's politics - everyone else should be criticizing the white house in particular, but government officials really need to remain on the administration's good side.
The vast majority of the relief effort has been apolitical. Dem house and GOP senate got an $8B bill through in two weeks- that's pretty nuts in terms of bipartisan effort.
Oh, I'm not applauding the state of affairs - it's insanely depressing (especially when coupled with the recent primary developments). But, yea, politics is a thing. There have been other petty administrations in the past and this is, sadly, how they tend to function.
I am hoping, hope being the operative word here, that Governor Newsom is trying to telegraph to us that behind the scenes, he is having somewhat productive conversations with the Vice President.
Here's one: A conversation about whether allowing this to turn into a national emergency could allow the cancelling or postponement of elections or executive hand over.
Highly unlikely. In fact it really can't happen as elections are defined in the constitution. They would have to suspend the constitution, or pass some monumental law that would lead to not only a monumental meltdown at the court, but chaos in the streets. Good thought, fun conspiracy theory, but really so far out there it's unlikely.
"is a Presidential Directive establishing a comprehensive policy on the federal government structures and operations in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". Such an emergency is defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."
I think it's more likely that low voter turnout in November (if this lasts that long) allows the administration to reject the results on the basis that "the people's voice was suppressed" - I agree they're not just going to call off the election, but I think it's pretty likely they'll try and cast doubt on the results if it goes against them.
What area is more likely to have low turn outs due to a pandemic, densely populated areas or rural areas? How think about how each area tends to vote. This is probably moot because many states would likely go to mail in ballots. In Georgia you can already request an absentee ballot without being required to give a reason. States with more restrictive absentee rules would be under heavy pressure to change them.
> but I think it's pretty likely they'll try and cast doubt on the results if it goes against them.
That is certainly true whether or not there is a pandemic. I don't think that inevitability really has anything to do with pandemics; they'd blame it on the phase of the moon if nothing else came to mind.
It's fairly likely that this will no longer be "a pandemic" by November, and that nobody will even be able to raise this as a concern in any sense.
The bigger problem is really with the Democratic primary, which is happening now. A critical element of elections is that they have to not just be fair, but be seen to be fair. How is the primary going to be seen to be fair if some significant number of the delegates are elected from elections that occurred while the electing states are essentially locked down? No matter what you do, it will be seen as unfair somehow.
Agreed, probably (hopefully) some combination of: drug therapies succeeding; mitigation measures succeeding; seasonal variability; accumulating immunity; normalization of risk of disease impact, will eventually get us to a new normal steady state.
e.g. we happily accept some risk of being killed in an airplane or road traffic accident even though those things could almost certainly be made less risky than they are now. We're ok with some non-zero risk, provided it's reasonably constant and known.
It's really uncharitable to suggest they're "using" it then, since they don't control the pandemic. What should they do differently from what's being done right now?
Doesn't Bernie's supporter base skew younger than Biden's? It seems to me the average Bernie supporter has less to fear from corona than the average Biden supporter. If anything, fear of corona should suppress turnout for Biden more than for Bernie.
You can't cancel or suspend the elections, there is no provision for it in the Constitution. Also, Trump could never extend he time in office unless he is re-elected since there is literally nothing in the Constitution to extend a Presidential term unless elected.
The constitution doesn't actually decide what we do. Elections could be postponed, probably not all of them but enough that you wouldn't have real results. States would sue, it would make its way to the supreme court. The supreme court might find in the administration's favor, because they vote how they like; they aren't required to follow the constitution. They may rule against trump and trump ignores them; if the military is on his side, does he need anything else?
I'm not saying any of that will happen, but you talk as if our social constructs and institutions are barriers that limit where we can go, when in actuality they're breadcrumbs that we choose to follow.
> The constitution doesn't actually decide what we do
The 20th Amendment:
Section 1: The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January...
Section 3: If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
If there's no election, he stops being President at noon on the 20th of January.
Sure, but that 20th day of January might come really late. The constitution does not define a calendar, time zone, or second. Suppose we add 80 more months. The 13th month is Trumpuary, the 14th month is Trumpember, and so on. Another option is to put Washington D.C. in a timezone that is off from UTC by 50000 hours. Another option is to make December 1000 days long.
Reading over your quote, it actually seems that a simple law could keep the president in power as long as no President elect or Vice President elect exists. As it says, "the Congress may by law provide for the case", "declaring who shall then act". Nothing says it can't be the old president.
On 6 Jan 2021, the votes of the electoral college will be counted in a joint session of Congress. Disputes about the votes will be addressed, if they exist (and if no general election is held, I'd imagine there would be plenty!).
Once that ends, if nobody has an absolute majority of votes, the Nancy Pelosi-led House of Representatives immediately goes into session and votes for President (the Senate votes for Vice President).
President Trump needs to win a fair election to continue being President.
It would be the new house, not the old one, and it is only permitted to choose from the candidates offered by the electors.
Also, does January 6th have to exist? By law, we could shorten January to just 5 days. We could compensate by lengthening March. There would never again be a January 6th.
The Constitution is the only thing that gives the government (and thus the nation) any authority. Violating the Constitution to that degree would essentially mean the end of the United States.
Who knows what would happen after that, but it likely wouldn't be anything anybody wants.
This didn't happen in WWI at the same time as the 1918 Flu pandemic, so I don't see it happening now. It was not a presidential election year, but elections were not cancelled from what I can find.
None of which should matter. In a time of crisis, at the very least, the administration needs to start actually taking care of the entire citizenry rather than just the portion they like.
I have written off the federal government. I am writing to state and local officials here in Oregon - the mayor and state rep and state senator - to encourage them to start putting aggressive measure in place now.
Like Paul Graham just tweeted:
"When you're dealing with exponential growth, the time to act is when it feels too early."
It is my understanding that there needs to be a specific reason to classify something (national security, etc.). Is that true or can the President classify anything, in the same way he can unclassify anything?
Even if the President has to have a good reason to do something, that has no practical effect on whether the President will do something. There will be no consequence to the President, and in most cases to his order followers, beyond "you shouldn't have done that" and much harumphing in Congress.
Social constructs are shared illusions that only work when we decide to adhere to them.
Documents like this were requested during impeachment and were either not provided or heavily redacted in ways that suggest a cover up of damaging material not valid reasons allowed by law. The administration is already hiding critical information from the public because it might look bad for the president. This is the same thing but will directly impact our response and likely raise the fatality rate in the US.
It has, it just takes time. We're still waiting on the court decision about declassifying the Mueller report (the subpoena was just upheld at the appeals court level, we can assume that the Trump administration will appeal to the Supreme Court to try to keep the report secret).
In the spirit of the principle of charity, it isn't that hard to believe that part of the discussion is the impact the virus will have on classified activities, including but not limited to intelligence activities, military activities, or may have included information considered sensitive (like, just by way of example, proof that the virus was gene engineered, which may cause an undesirable international stink if publicized; I mention this just as an example of something that they might classify, not as a claim that it is engineered).
I'd expect "the President" did not literally decide or not decide to classify this; it was probably driven by rules.
What's in the classified briefings isn't really the question; it's what's in the unclassified briefings and actions that are the question. That classified briefings are taking place is to be expected, as it will certainly be impacting classified things, along with all the other "pretty much everything" it will be impacting. I'm sure all the other countries are having classified briefings as well.
“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go,” one official said. “These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”
Always worth noting when this topic comes up that the first time a classification was used to deny revelation of documents for "state secrets" reasons in a court of law, it turns out (we know this because the document has since been declassified as its classification expired) it was to shield the military from culpability in the death of civilian contractors in a plane that crashed due to a maintenance lapse.
This appears to be an attempt to criminalize the dissemination of some critical healthcare information.
Even if state and local officials are briefed by federal officials, they may not be able to talk about what they know or face possible legal repercussions.
I've heard that the CDC has stopped collecting statistics on total tests and positive/negative counts. Are there other government agencies collecting this data?
It's not clear to me if this includes numbers from private labs. My kid's pediatrician now has access to a test from Quest Diagnostics and they can make their own determination as to whether testing is needed. They said that they can't use the local health department testing "for many reasons". I'm glad to hear that the private tests are rolling out, still concerned that it's so hard to get testing through public health labs.
> Robert Redfield, CDC Director, said there are no plans to set up drive through #COVID19 test centres because "We're tryinjg to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers."
> "We're tryinjg to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers." ...
... because drive-throughs and their lines and problems are visible to everyone, but visits and phone calls to doctors aren't so easy to see by the general public.
I work in government relations and this is neither news, nor anything new. Deliberations at the highest level have to be confidential at times, because the players are speaking brutally honest. They need to be able to make decisions and speak their mind without the media and the public second guessing everything. Passing legislation or making policy over time is one thing, but in a crisis like this, they have to move fast. I think the last thing we want is for policymakers to have to stop and keep justifying every single thing they do, that will just lead to paralysis.
==I work in government relations and this is neither news, nor anything new. ==
Lots of people in this article disagree:
> A high-level former official who helped address public health outbreaks in the George W. Bush administration said “it’s not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis.”
> Attendees at the meetings included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his chief of staff Brian Harrison, the officials said. Azar and Harrison resisted the classification of the meetings, the sources said.
> One of the administration officials suggested the security clearances for meetings at HHS were imposed not to protect national security but to keep the information within a tight circle, to prevent leaks. “It seemed to be a tool for the White House - for the NSC - to keep participation in these meetings low,” the official said
Those quotes appear to prove OPs point about giving people in the discussions the ability to speak freely without second guessing from people like "a high-level former official".
Something such as "we should prioritize efforts in cities besides Seattle/New York as the virus has clearly spread beyond reasonable containment, yet can still be contained in Atlanta/Miami" could be reported as "U.S Government elects to leave the people of Seattle on their own."
Replace the cities or issue with anything you want. The point is, something has to be prioritized, and the ones who aren't prioritized could be seen as victimized.
Sometimes in life you actually do have to prioritize. The alternative is maybe doing a half measure and being far less effective. So the rational course is often to prioritize.
However, no politician/official necessarily wants to be on record as making this kind of priority decision.
So if you insist on radical transparency in these situations, you're insisting on people being less effective.
Not classifying meetings that have never been classified before is not insisting on radical transparency.
But even if you assume that politicians have misaligned incentives because they care more about optics than saving lives, why reduce transparency?
You're making the assumption there are more good decisions with bad optics than bad decisions with bad optics. Which seems like an unlikely assumption to be true.
> Not classifying meetings that have never been classified before is not insisting on radical transparency.
Agreed. I was referring to the principle of the thing, not this specific instance.
> You're making the assumption there are more good decisions with bad optics than bad decisions with bad optics. Which seems like an unlikely assumption to be true.
I think it might be true in certain situations, e.g. emergency situations like we're in now.
I didn’t say embarrassing, but if you’re talking about a mass casualty event and how many body bags are going to need, and limitations that are in the system, and where resources are going to be diverted, how many might die, etc etc the last thing you would want is the public questioning every single thing. Because they will. If they don’t, the opposition party certainly will.
Using the classification system to shield yourself from criticism is abusing it. The criteria is damaging to national security, not damaging to an officials reputation.
The same logic used to keep lots of important information out of the prying eyes of voters and oversight committees.
==the last thing you would want is the public questioning every single thing. Because they will. If they don’t, the opposition party certainly will.==
And if you classify it wouldn't that also cause the public to question "every single thing" just the same? Seems like the case we have proves that to be true as they hid it and people are still questioning.
They're allowed to have discussion that exist off the record. Classifying things mean they are forcing such discussions to happen in secure facilities and under very specific terms in order to prevent foreign interception. That seems a bit like overkill to me.
Yes, this is absolutely true, in a dictatorship. On the contrary, in open societies, it is precisely the fact that policymakers have to justify every single thing they do that provides the stability and prosperity that democracies generally enjoy and prevents the abuses of power that are endemic to dictatorships.
It is definitely not normal for public health emergency planning outside the military to be classified. If there is information in there whose public availability would cause serious harm to national security, something has gone terribly wrong — a far more likely explanation is that the classification decision is the kind of quotidian lie that undergirds the self-serving corruption that habitually ruins authoritarian societies.
If high level meetings are not classified it would be hard to brainstorm about the potential impacts on military readiness, quarantines, shutdowns, lockouts, etc.
Otherwise, meetings would have to be compartmentalized which would limit their usefulness.
If high level meetings are classified, important SMEs are unable to participate. This is not about protecting the deliberation process, this is more the typical Trumpian attempt to prevent embarrassing information from being revealed.
The important people have been kept out of the room by the secrecy urge. This isn't about preserving the ability to deliberate, it's about trying to avoid embarrassing Trump to the detriment of the process.
> The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.
There's the first para of the article which contradicts most of the arguments you're trying to make. This is according to officials dealing with this problem today.
This sort of analysis always gets downvoted on HN, but it's true. In many ways we are further along in the direction of having an obedient population (compared to China) but we still have our own great firewall and social credit score systems in place to help keep everyone under control.
China is more overtly authoritarian than the modern US, which is actually an advantage* in fighting a pandemic. So ironically most of the criticisms of China (as hypocritical as they may be) give China a leg up in this kind of crisis.
* Note that I am not condoning authoritarian rule, just noting that it is in some cases effective.
Like most things, there are shades of gray and it’s not black and white.
China made some critical missteps early on in silencing doctors who spoke up about a novel virus. They also downplayed the crisis to avoid bad news around the New Years celebration (and kept the banquet in Wuhan that was a turning point in the explosive growth of the virus).
Once they mobilized, yes, it was impressive — and judging by their numbers today, it has been effective.
The US is also a mixed bag. There’s going to be _wide_ variation in the response at state and local levels. But something really stinks with the lack of testing. And despite having China and then Italy show us how seriously we needed to be taking this, we sleep-walked through a critical period and are now creating the top of the roller coaster.
The US did not just sleep-walk, they actively suppressed the warnings of doctors and health professionals.
Today they are saying they do not plan to mobilize drive-thru/mass testing because they don't want to get in the way of the relationship between a patient and provider, the same bullshit private-insurance talking point, now applied to an even more intense and immediate public health crisis.
edit to clarify:
1. I agree there are shades of grey here, but the US' shade regarding suppression of information is closer to China's than is being widely reported.
2. The US' patchwork, profit-driven health system and purposely-underfunded government agencies are completely incapable of mobilizing at the necessary scale, even if it somehow found the motivation for any greater good beyond the profits of the private insurance industry and the asset managers that are buying up and gutting hospital systems.
> They also downplayed the crisis to avoid bad news around the New Years celebration (and kept the banquet in Wuhan that was a turning point in the explosive growth of the virus).
And we're downplaying the crisis to avoid bad news in an election year.
How is the story you linked anything like arresting people for taking this seriously? Not having adequate testing early on is not the same as arresting good samaritans.
> Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. While acknowledging the ethical questions, Dr. Chu and others argued there should be more flexibility in an emergency during which so many lives could be lost. On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether.
While the researches weren't arrested, they were obstructed and then prohibited from continuing to test even though they helped uncover a major outbreak.
This is not a prohibition on testing to protect the egos of politicians, this is a refusal of authorization for a specific medical practice, because of bureaucracy. They are not being reprimanded for speaking their mind, they are literally being published in the New York Times.
There is no moral equivalence between these two things. Nobody is barred from expressing whatever knowledge they have of the outbreak by anything except their own professional agreements.
No reasonable parallel is drawn between the total suppression of independent expression about an outbreak, and a regulator inflexibly deciding that a clinical professional is not qualified to practice some field.
This is true, but knowing China well I think the same would probably have happened anywhere else. It's a direct result of the system of controls and incentives imposed by the party.
The difference is, here we're allowed to speak up, even the CDC to some extent, counter the President's opinion. The facts are still available
No one has that opportunity in China when it comes to Xi Xinping's message, if they do, they're censored or get a visit to their home by the police.
I see Trump to some extent trying to negate a mass panic amongst the populace by downplaying it while the real decision makers look to the CDC to make decisions about what actions to take. At least the optimistic side of me believes that's how its working. Problem is its now backfiring and people are saying its just another flu, which curtails any advice the CDC has on cancelling events, limiting contact, etc.
Reuters reported today that Coronavirus briefings have been classified to limit information sharing [1]
They've blamed it on Mexicans running over the southern border [2]
They've called it "the flu"
They've kneecapped professionals at every turn (stopped the CDC from reporting how many people have been tested, tried to muzzle Nancy Messonnier for saying a Coronavirus outbreak was inevitable in this country, [3]
They're still asking for cuts to the CDC [4]
The president called the Governor of Washington "a snake" to cut down his credibility, cut off his head of HHS to lie to the public and say tests were available, he's most concerned that the US count of infections will go up if they let the cruise ship passengers on US soil, preferring, presumably, to let them die and infect each other [5]
They overrode CDC's plan to recommend that elderly people and fragile people not get on airplanes [6]
Generally, it is beyond clear that they are most concerned with not looking in control, and giving out mixed messages that will lead to death.
That perspective is remarkably charitable to Trump, who not only claimed that the virus was a "hoax", but mobilized his loyalists in the media to spread harmful ideas about the level of contagion and lethality.
It is important to realize that Trump's comments about COVID-19 likely caused many people to defy their own common sense intuitions and do the opposite of what the experts have recommended.
In the US, direct censorship by government is not necessary. Voices that the government doesn't approve of are quickly censored/deplatformed by private sector firms, news feed algos are updated to suppress certain kinds of information, etc.
The extent to which firm authoritarian measures are necessary is determined by how compliant/obedient the citizens are. The Chinese government must be more heavy handed because there is an active culture of dissent, not because China is somehow innately more authoritarian.
The president did not call the virus a hoax. You're either being intentionally disingenuous or are poorly informed. Before you post an out of context link to a partisan blog, go find the entire statement in context and realize everyone else here is quite able to do the same. If you wish to remain in an information bubble, that's your choice but don't be surprised when others who do not pop that bubble when you attempt to spread misinformation.
Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated. He is the most talented politician the US has seen in decades, and this is just one example.
He says the word salad, the sound bite is picked up as outrageous, and then when the tiny subset of his supporters who care to look carefully at it examine the transcript, they can vindicate him based on technicalities of the syntax he used.
But make no mistake, he intended to communicate that the virus was a hoax and he did so quite effectively, just as he intended to show support for the white nationalists in Charlottesville and intended to convey that he thinks many immigrants are rapists.
While I am not a partisan for either party and despise most of the major pols, one must admit that Trump is very good at politics, and this is a great example. Once called out, his supporters defend him by dissecting the word salad and finding a well meaning, thoughtful comment where none ever existed :)
tldr; If you're sick with Corona virus, the blame lies entirely with Trump, not China for hiding it early on, not the WHO for recommending countries continue as normal and tried to downplay it, Trump, and we should call it the Trump virus (the new "thanks Obama" I guess).
Two days later in reaction to this, Trump called this kind of talk in the media and on Twitter by DNC pundits (who take their talking points from NYT) a hoax. Everyone at the rally he was talking to had seen that article, cause it was shared and mocked, talked about on Fox News, everyone there had the same context, its your lack of awareness that causes the context shift, and when the media reported on it they also conveniently left out that context, because they're lazy at best, trying to steer the narrative at worse. People see the misrepresentation and they believe the media even less. They realize the bias is both ways, the people who claim to be factual ignore facts that aren't convenient.
It is only word salad to you because you walked in half way into the conversation, and are happy to assume the worst (that he said the virus itself was a hoax) without doing some background on it.
Those are reasonable points, and I acknowledge based on the details you mentioned that the incident of Trump referring to a "hoax" may not fit the standard pattern Trump uses. In another comment in this thread I describe the pattern as he used it about immigrants, about Charlottesville, etc. I'm curious if you think those cases are also situations where Trump deserves to have his character defended.
But, to your point, I strongly agree that the NYT has done a horrible job at journalism in the Trump era. Nearly every day there are headlines that focus on Trump's persona rather than the substance (or lack thereof) of his policies, and the paper seems to prefer to publish stories that appeal to its in-group rather than stories that report what happened and contextualize it over time. Often, nearly every single story on the front page starts with the word Trump, with a few left of center stories just to create the impression that the paper is not a right wing voice itself.
For instance, NYT readers likely do not know that Obama stared the tent camps for children of illegal immigrants who committed certain kinds of crimes, and that the audio of children crying was captured while Obama was in office.
To be clear, I have zero respect for Trump, and zero respect for the NYT. The article you linked is a shameful and unnecessary (and low quality) bit of drivel, meant only to secure more subscription fees from partisans. It doesn't add anything of value to the dialog.
I do think the word salad is a deliberate tactic used by Trump to achieve both a textual and subtextual outcome from his speech. He knows what will turn into a sound bite and tailors them to be the kinds of sound bites that will resonate both for him and against him. If you are skeptical of this point I will be happy to dig into it in more detail as it worked in his favor during the 2016 campaign.
> Nearly every day there are headlines that focus on Trump's persona rather than the substance (or lack thereof) of his policies, and the paper seems to prefer to publish stories that appeal to its in-group rather than stories that report what happened and contextualize it over time.
This!
I just assume Trump can't talk, but apparently his supporters think he's talking off the cuff so he's just being authentic even if they wish he'd not do it so much or be so crass, which I guess to them is him being genuine or honest. Trump will openly admit the only reason we sell arms to Saudi Arabia is because of oil, where as every other President made excuses, that's weirdly more transparent. His misspellings etc on Twitter are people seeing someone tweet stream of conscious, not even taking the time to spell check or reword it, which is terrible for public office but things have gotten so bad with politics they see him as telling you exactly what he thinks even if its terrible.
I don't give him that much credit as far as tactics, I know he likes to troll the media, the media reacts predictably, and some of his supporters love to see the predictable reaction. The media has become addicted to it, and the ratings, the DNC listen and pander to fringe voices on Twitter mistaking them for average people. They've started focusing so hard on Trump they've gotten nothing done, their talking points are losing moderates. People remember Bush being called Hitler, now everyone is numb to it. People just expect news organizations who live in their own Twitter bubble and major blue cities who pretend to be impartial to shit all over the GOP and never give credit, and over look the same behavior when committed by their own side. People with center right positions on the political compass positions even Bernie Sanders supported, are called alt-right, people have just turned off to it. They routinely misrepresent their position, or setup a strawman in the headline and clarify in the bottom paragraph if at all. Nothing was learned from the last election. They pushed a man to the front of the line who wasn't polling well is just as bad with words but for different reasons, and cusses out union workers on the factory floor when they accurately describe his position he explained in a news interview.
> Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated.
"It's the President's fault that I ignored what he was saying so that I could interpret it uncharitably, and share that interpretation without a second thought."
> he thinks many immigrants are rapists
You got this from... What? A speech talking up the border wall, a measure that by definition only pertains to a subset of illegal aliens, not "immigrants" broadly.
You are responsible for your own ludicrous interpretations of plain language. It is not anyone else's fault that you choose to believe something is meant that isn't said.
When the President continues to say things like “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally”, you can't credibly interpret that as an indictment of immigrants.
I didn't downvote your comment, by the way. It's a fair point.
Many politicians have tried to rally support for border security by describing illegal immigration as a source of violent crime. Trump mentioned "rapists" in his remarks as a way of communicating that same narrative, albeit a bit more colorfully.
The word salads are very ingenious, as they are essentially two messages in one. The message "immigrants are rapists" gets through to some of his supporters (who are happy to hear it) and the more nuanced message gets through to those who read the transcript or who parse the words more carefully.
It's an added benefit that when the opposing party's media jumps all over the comment, some portion of Trump's supporters believe that they intentionally ignored the intent of Trump's statement and are unfairly characterizing him as racist. Yet to many of his supporters, the racism is a welcome change and a sign of honesty and courage.
Whether you personally agree with Trump or not, you must acknowledge the mechanism I'm describing. It's brilliant, and it is why Trump has been so successful. He's able to break through the wall of fake-sounding language that holds back much political speech and reap the benefits of a more raw and hostile form of speech, while still being viewed as having expressed a reasonable view by his more sophisticated supporters.
If you don't view them as deliberate word salad bombs, then they are gaffes, but there have now been way too many of them for it to be accidental. Trump understands how to speak both in text and subtext for maximum emotional impact.
So while I personally find Trump to be one of the most reprehensible characters ever to hold high office in the US (and also a big embarrassment), I do give him credit for being skilled at political rhetoric.
> Many politicians have tried to rally support for border security by describing illegal immigration as a source of violent crime. Trump mentioned "rapists" in his remarks as a way of communicating that same narrative, albeit a bit more colorfully.
It is true that the subset of illegal aliens entering over the border (rather than overstaying visas) is very high in criminals. This subset is desperate, motivated, willing to break the law by definition; and most importantly, a large proportion of them enter this way because they don't qualify even to enter as tourists, because they have a criminal record of relevant offenses.
> If you don't view them as deliberate word salad bombs, then they are gaffes, but there have now been way too many of them for it to be accidental. Trump understands how to speak both in text and subtext for maximum emotional impact.
I agree that they are designed to be misinterpreted by some people, but the interpretation that manifests in the President's actions seems to be more the plain language one, rather than the "nefarious subtext" one. If the nefarious subtext were intended to be read by supporters rather than opposition, then it probably would be.
Because the nefarious subtext seems designed to enrage the opposition, or especially because some of it seems designed to make the President look bad, I sorta assume it was meant to be read by opposition, to enhance the team sport aspect of politics and give supporters a sense of camaraderie against the people who are controlled by the President's reverse-psychology.
I think we generally agree. As you point out, all illegal immigrants are criminals by definition, so there is a lot of sloppy rhetoric and innuendo that is possible based on that technicality. Trump exploits it to the max.
I think Trump intends for the subtext aspect of his word salads to be consumed both by his opposition and by a small (but important) subset of his base. There are a lot of people in key voting districts who deeply resent immigrants because of competition for jobs, etc. For those voters, hearing politicians focus on things like latinx identity politics makes them feel alienated and resentful. In that context, Trump coming across as a bit biased against immigrants (if not outright racist) provides emotional proof that Trump is on their side, and lends credibility to his claims about returning America to its heyday when blue collar work offered a significantly higher standard of living than it does today.
Many modern politicians have done this. Some of Sanders' rhetoric from a few decades ago evokes xenophobic themes to underscore support for the working man, and nearly all serious presidential candidates from the Democratic party have found nationalistic language to communicate that rust belt workers will not be abandoned. Lots of this has been anti-trade, border security oriented, etc.
Worldwide, reductions in free trade are typically accompanied by nationalistic sentiments and political rhetoric. So it's all quite normal and to be expected.
But what I think sets Trump apart from the normal (and frankly already ugly) way that politicians try to do this is that his rhetoric is even more direct and the subtext hits on an even more direct emotional level. There are many ways to explain how someone from the GOP won over a lot of working class voters who had been loyal Democrats for years. It took this kind of extreme messaging.
Tangentially, Trumps tactic works because of how social media news feed algorithms work, since even old school media uses analytics that are heavily influenced by what spreads on social media. So all the efforts to police content and deplatform fringe voices are not going to make any difference in Trump's ability to use this technique, since the articles are written by the NYT and are seen by the target voters because one of their friends or family members in a blue state/district got riled up and shared it on social media.
Anyway, I find it very interesting and I appreciate your engagement with this discussion.
He said, at a rally, about Democrat criticisms of the administration response:
'this is their new hoax'
That's pretty incoherent (criticisms may be untrue, but they're never a hoax), but strongly hints he thought the virus unimportant in the most charitable interpretation, or the threat a complete fabrication from democrats.
He then went on to lie about the number of cases in the country and the likely impact and said it was less serious than flu.
Trump's ignorance is going to kill a lot of people in the US.
How about they use some of that authority to stop these diseases from festering in cesspools of animal & human waste repeatedly in their country? Pivoting from allowing this to occur to saying they have an advantage or painting them in a positive light is so backwards to me. Hopefully all the dissenters being tortured in black boxes over there are safe from the virus at least.
China is a very big place. Lots of modern clean areas and lots of areas that are best described as cesspools. Neither is truly reflective of the entire country. Pretty much the same can be said about the United States and many other countries.
I showed someone a picture of one of China's metropoles a while ago and asked where they thought it was. Everywhere but China apparently. It is surprising how hard it is for people to let go of such badly outdated information.
granted, at the street-level it is mostly not so glamorous - but gosh reading comments online makes me feel like people are still operating on an early 2000s conception of China.
Most of the press coverage about China in the US focuses on pollution, sewage, labor practices, authoritarianism, etc. It's not surprising that many have such a one-sided view and forget how easy it would be to present the US in similar (or worse) light to an unbiased audience.
Yes, my wife is Chinese and unfortunately there is actually some truth to that comment. I've seen Chinese public toilets with piles of human excrement around them, because the stink was so bad inside people just did what they needed to do nearby. Animal markets can be truly noxious, and the conditions animals are kept in can be hard to believe.
I'm not really understanding your point. The US media has been rightfully critical of both China and US governments for their response to the pandemic.
I've seen a lot of the opposite: China is what you (as a country) think you are. For example, lots of people have criticised the US/the Trump Administration/the CDC for not developing a novel coronavirus test in December, including at least one comment in the other thread. This is not, of course, something the US could've done but China potentially could've if they were on the ball enough. There also seems to be a widespread belief that the number of confirmed cases in the US and other Western countries is simply a function of the number of people tested. This is true of the rise of confirmed cases in Wuhan but pretty much nowhere else (though that's not to say the numbers elsewhere are 100% accurate either). Some smart people have repeated this one, including the author of Signal. I think there were a few more I can't remember off-hand too.
I'm in Missouri. I've been sick for the past few days, then overnight obtained a pretty bad dry cough. I called the local urgent care, and they basically told me that they've got to rule absolutely everything else out before testing for coronavirus, requiring a respiratory panel that would cost over $4k.
I'm staying home and self-quarantining, but am I being counted? No. I'm willing to bet there are thousands of others like me in the US in a similar situation.
Partly, but it's quite a weak effect. The UK had been testing much more aggressively than a lot of European countries, but our number of positives has been pretty much what you'd expect considering our distance from Italy.
And then they botched that and the virus rapidly manifested across the developed world and beyond, even in countries Trump doesn't work in. At this point prevention is just wishful thinking, the mass fear mongering is helping no one while simultaneously risking shortages of supplies for the people who can help.
Just look at how China was condemned at the start of this crisis - "they're not being open about the numbers", etc..
Meanwhile, UK government aren't issuing any numbers for Wales (and Scotland, NI?) but they're giving details for Italy, Vietnam, etc.. I'm getting more information about the crisis in other countries from UK gov than I'm getting about areas of my own country. At this stage in the proceedings that seems worse than what China was accused of.
We still haven't instigated checks on flights arriving from infected areas.
Do you find that good enough compared to Scotland's figures? For counties in Wales one has to hunt for press statements and work out the numbers, then go to the press to find where those infected are? Isn't that woefully inadequate? Isn't the _UK_ government only having _England_ figures on the UK website plain wrong?
The Chief Scientific Officer for the _UK_ only reporting on the infected in English counties, surely that's wrong too - seems to be a way to play down there numbers to the national press.
Sitting on info that helps the public help themselves, that's bad.
It's not ideal but I wouldn't go the conspiracy path.
Just looks like typical issues with devolved services and responsibilities vs. centralisation. Knowing how this crap usually goes, each org demands they remain the sole source of truth for their nation. No doubt the PHE digital team is much larger than the others and probably sits in the same office as the UK digital team. One of them suggests integrating the data and they get it done in an hour. Request goes out to the other nations but they don't have the resources to respond or you go down a rabbit hole argument about how the data is collated because of different criteria and announcement times skewing comparisons. 80% solutions suck when you are in the 20%.
As I've grown to expect, Scotland seems to be doing it right wrt healthcare. The gov.uk page says (or said) "UK figures" then gave only English regions. At that time the gov.wales page referred people to the gov.uk page ... where there are no figures.
There are updates saying "X new cases" for Wales, but still no page with where, details of numbers of tests, details of infections and treatment as there are for other places.
Newspapers have details (but not of numbers tested).
Yes, but PHW were referring people to the "UK figures" on the gov.uk pages (PHE figures), which still don't give details except for England (and Italy, Vietnam, ...).
I watched the HBO Chernobyl mini-series which tells a similar story about the clamping down of information. The "party" was most concerned about protecting itself and saving face rather than letting on to the seriousness of the issue and taking actions to protect the people. They only started admitting a problem after other countries picked up elevated radiation levels and were able to determine the isotopes involved would most likely come from a meltdown.
They said that it was "just steam explosion" and "not nuclear explosion in any way", even though they must (through sigint, atmospheric sampling, and remote sensing) have known otherwise at the time.
I see that this is heavily downvoted, but I have to say that the Chernobyl analogy is feeling more and more accurate to me.
The administration's lying about the availability of tests, and subsequent bragging about the low number of cases makes things feel more and more deliberate.
Combined with the CDC restricting and preventing the testing done by the Seattle Flu Study, I just...I've completely lost faith in the political apparatus of the CDC.
US corporate culture is primarily one of absolute loyalism. Absolute loyalty is demanded and expected all the way up the management chain and it trumps (no pun intended) all else, including job competence. What some Americans may not realize is that this isn't universally true globally.
What we have now is a president who comes from and exemplifies this culture so his administration absolutely reflects that. Jeff Sessions recusing himself on the Russia investigation instead of blocking it even if it cost him everything, personally, was an unforgivable sin to an absolute loyalist.
So I guarantee you that the prime consideration for this pandemic (which it now officially is, according to the WHO) in the US government is how this impacts the GOP in general and Trump's reelection in particular. Nothing else matters.
Go back to, say, the Watergate era and you had behaviour by a president that even his own party ultimately found unacceptable. If Watergate repeated today, it would be "fake news", painted as partisan Democratic slander aimed at the administration and defended beyond all reason.
The sad and scary part of this is that we now have 40% of the population who will absolutely eat this up and refuse to believe anything that makes the president look bad. To be fair, there are absolute devotees on the other side too but objectively we've seen nothing to the degree of GOP blind loyalism on from the Democrats (yet).
There was a time when our representatives held higher loyalties to the institutions they represent because undermining those is incredibly dangerous. Those days seem to be a distant memory as we have a mass organized effort to disenfranchise those who tend to vote Democrat (under the guise of removing "felons" from voter rolls), a refusal by the Senate to take up legislation that would pass at a completely unprecedented rate, a Senate whose only priority is filling lifetime judicial nominees with more loyalists and the refusal to even take up a president's Supreme Court nominee with flimsily-constructed justification you know for a fact wouldn't apply if the situation was reversed.
This is the trait of dictators and despots. Why do you think Trump admires Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-Un?
So yes, it should come as no surprise that the planning, messaging and response to this pandemic is being seen through the exact same filter: how does this help or hurt Trump?
And it will kill people. I don't wish ill on anyone here but it's hard not to see the irony that the most at-risk groups of death from Covid-19 are, well, Trump's core voters and Fox News's core target market for fearmongering and dog-whistle racism.
Classifying public health responses is unprecedented. Yet as long as Trump's base (40% of voters) don't hold the government to account absolutely nothing will change. And the only time that's happened that I recall is the family separation for detained illegal immigrants. Has there been any other reversal of policy like this?
My interpretation is that the Trump administration maximized the effect the virus outbreak had in a trade and propaganda war against China but in return sacrificed America's internal preparation for a potential outbreak.
No surprise. We had Larry Kudlow saying a week or two ago that the virus was "fully contained" in the US. [1]
We had the CDC take down the number of folks tested from their website because it was embarrassingly low and different then the Pence / Trump narrative of a million tests. [2]
We've had a weird / crazy argument being made by at least some at the top that masks don't help with transmission reduction of a viral disease. While not perfect, they are low cost, low impact and even surgical masks, while likely not used by doctors treating patients may help general population by reducing hand to mouth / nose transmission, transmission from sick to healthy and environment when sneezing and/or touching face mouth and then environment etc. Other countries are going the other way (masks distributed via post offices, mask wearing mandatory in high impact areas etc).
(Kudlow is the Director of the National Economic Council and advises WH)
The book Superforecasting (2015) uses Larry Kudlow as an example of 'hedgehog forecaster' that is consistently wrong.
Not only is Kudlow consistently wrong in forecasting, he also fails nowcasting. When Financial crisis was unfolding Kudlow did not realize that something was going wrong.
>The National Bureau of Economic Research later designated December 2007 as the official start of the Great Recession of 2007–9. As the months passed, the economy weakened and worries grew, but Kudlow did not budge. There is no recession and there will be no recession, he insisted. When the White House said the same in April 2008, Kudlow wrote, “President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country.”20 Through the spring and into summer, the economy worsened but Kudlow denied it. “We are in a mental recession, not an actual recession,”21 he wrote, a theme he kept repeating until September 15, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Wall Street was thrown into chaos, the global financial system froze, and people the world over felt like passengers in a plunging jet, eyes wide, fingers digging into armrests.
Wow! Fascinating! So wrong so many times - I did not know this history.
You can see how having this guy on TV re-assuring people starts to reduce confidence people have in "authoritative" news sources - and they end up on the internet reading conspiracy theories.
Because audience likes the way he and others like him talk.
From the book:
> Not that being wrong hurt Kudlow’s career. In January 2009, with the American economy in a crisis worse than any since the Great Depression, Kudlow’s new show, The Kudlow Report, premiered on CNBC. That too is consistent with the EPJ data, which revealed an inverse correlation between fame and accuracy: the more famous an expert was, the less accurate he was. That’s not because editors, producers, and the public go looking for bad forecasters. They go looking for hedgehogs, who just happen to be bad forecasters. Animated by a Big Idea, hedgehogs tell tight, simple, clear stories that grab and hold audiences. As anyone who has done media training knows, the first rule is “keep it simple, stupid.” Better still, hedgehogs are confident. With their one-perspective analysis, hedgehogs can pile up reasons why they are right—“furthermore,” “moreover”—without considering other perspectives and the pesky doubts and caveats they raise. And so, as EPJ showed, hedgehogs are likelier to say something definitely will or won’t happen. For many audiences, that’s satisfying. People tend to find uncertainty disturbing and “maybe” underscores uncertainty with a bright red crayon. The simplicity and confidence of the hedgehog impairs foresight, but it calms nerves—which is good for the careers of hedgehogs.
I have a hunch that the "masks are no use anyway, don't wear them" narrative was disinformation designed to avoid panic buying, people stealing each other's masks and so on.
It's really not looking good.
I'm still hopeful, though that's because it's the only thing I've got.