Living in Germany I don't really feel there is a lack of leadership. So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them. And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US). On top of that we have paid leave, so people who are showing symptoms can stay at home without worrying about money.
This is a very different story in the US of course — but is it really only a leadership problem? Isn't it more of a systemic issue in the sense that now the weaknesses of e.g. certain centralized testing structures, not having universal healthcare etc come to light.
Trump might be the worst president the US could have at that point in time, because he acts actively destructive on top of a system that hasn't that much ressilience anyways.
>So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them. And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US).
And with all of that Merkel still said that 60% to 70% of the population will end up infected with the virus. It doesn't sound like Germany's going to be much better off than most other European countries.
Isn't Germany one of the slowest countries to respond to the epidemic? Aren't schools still open in Germany, with thousands of cases and quite a few deaths already?
In my country (Romania), our normally horribly inefficient government has closed schools the moment our 25th confirmed case was announced, it has banned events of more than 100 people, has encouraged people to work from home, and encouraged those who can't to change their work schedule so that people come in at different times to avoid mass transit overcrowding (and enforced this in public institutions). Many large shops have started limiting the number of people allowed in at once, preferring to firm queues outside. Flights to several countries have been canceled. And all of this in addition to screening travelers, putting everyone coming in from Italy/China/France/Germany/Spain in isolation for 14 days, as well as anyone who came into contact with a confirmed case, and of course tracking everyone who came into contact recently with an identified patient.
And all this is before we saw our 100th confirmed case, with 0 deaths so far. How can you say that the German response was efficient?
>And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US)
I don't know what's actually happening in Germany, but here's one reason one might think that:
You can use the number of deaths to reason about the true infection rate, independent of the testing strategy. (Until something happens that changes the death rate, like the health system getting overwhelmed.)
For example, Germany and France started seeing cases at about the same time and have found about the same number of cases. But France has 10x the deaths. This suggests that Germany has found a larger proportion of their cases, i.e. they've got better test coverage.
> So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them.
This is simply not true. The response of the Merkel administration is one of the slowest and inconsequential in whole Europe. Very probably accompanied by deliberately playing down death cases and infection numbers in general if anectotical information and comparison with the numbers of surrounding countries has any value.
I think they have handled it pretty well. I'm pretty sure they spent some time talking to experts. I've worked in a research project on crisis management before and have a very high opinion of the Robert Koch Institute which was one of the partners (and am generally quite critical of government organizations).
Given the political infrastructure (states can make the decisions in many areas), I think the reaction was pretty good so far. One of the major concerns is always avoiding panics. I'm pretty sure they are balancing all official statements against that.
Tbh. the most important thing for me is that you listen to experts and don't overreact.
In retrospect I think three things could have been handled better. Screening for fever at airports and clearer rules for self quarantining of people after traveling. Third point is control of medical and hygienic supply chains.
Otherwise okish response I would say. Also no indication for dow playing. Maybe a bit reluctant with shut downs of Carnevale, clubs and ski vacationing
Trump is part of the problem, for sure, but it seems to me that a world that is strongly divided into nation-states is just not able to effectively tackle pan-national threats.
Even at an individual level we're so used to thinking in terms of 'our country vs. the rest' that our ability to empathize with people from 'far-away' is impeded.
But it makes sense to think that way. The ones who know the local situation best are the locals, not bureaucrats thousands of miles away. And when it comes to empathy, then those bureaucrats tend to have little of it towards the people affected by essentially any problem that doesn't affect where they are.
I don't get why coordination is equated by many people with centralization. You can agree on a set of measures that should be taken by everybody under certain circumstances and then let individual countries apply those measures.
Any "pan-national" effort implies massive transportation of goods/specialists.
All this will let the virus thrive.
Moreover such pan-national tackling will let the apparently most adequate response be adopted, therefore if it fails too badly we may be all wiped out because it will fail everywhere.
Such a major pandemic is only possible thanks to our current population densities, massive transportation of persons/goods. Our central administrations were, as usual, patently totally unable to cope and even in some cases their very actions amplify the threat (cops in Wuhan silencing the local doc who early understood the threat, grotesque CDC actions in the US...), and are always pushing towards more densely populated huge territories for them to 'administer'.
... and further transportation of persons/goods and centralization of control should be in order?
In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets. They've done such a good job of providing robust and affordable healthcare in the US, markets can surely handle an international viral outbreak simply by maximising efficiency and ROI.
>In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Because of economies of scale and specialization? It's often cheaper for one place to produce a lot of a narrow list of goods and trade that for the goods they're lacking rather than every place making everything they use. This means that a lot of goods need to be moved around and a lot of people too.
>Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Like what? Shut down international travel? Test every person coming into a country for a new disease? Both of these are very expensive, especially the former.
> In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation"
Mirioron answered.
> Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive
The very reason why the virus spreads like it does February is because it is difficult and expensive.
> Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets.
The current state of affairs in the US, as in most countries, is crony capitalism, which has nothing to do with 'leaving it to the markets'.
Isn't 'maximising efficiency' the very raison d'être of the 'pan-national effort' you proposed?
Isn't it also the reason why huge amounts of humans live in giant and dense cities, with strong central government powers? From an organizational standpoint those are the main causes of the present crisis: total failure at detecting it early (the Chinese doc was censored), then at devising and implementing adequate measures (the faulty CDC coronavirus test is a prominent case, there are many others), and now at managing a major crisis (in most European countries the reality is that nearly no new potential case can be tested). And just wait for such a Supa Dupa Central Mega Pan-National Gov decision, applied everywhere, which will prove to be an error...
Centralization and transport are sure ways to enforce the pandemics. We may be reckoning that high population density and centralized power not only aren't usefully efficient because the efficiency gain they induce is mainly used to produce nearly-useless (at best) products, and that they are extremely dangerous. We may, instead, appeal to moar of all this.
The man leading the richest and most powerful country on earth is a unilateralist and a physical embodiment of the Peter Principle. He’s doing an awful job and not reaching out globally to solve a global problem. How is this derangement syndrome? If anything it seems your inability to see criticism of him beyond shallow catch phrases exhibits a form of “derangement syndrome”
Although this wasn't exclusively about the US: Most issues the US now has, indeed existed before Trump became president — so much is true. Yet Trump still is the worst president you could have at that point in time. Nearly a month into the whole thing he decides it would be a good thing to call the virus a hoax, disregard expert advice and ultimately acts (as he usually does) purely on symbolical plane by blaming it on foreigners and closing the border. Closing the dissease control unit Obama built in the white house is only the cherry on top. Nothing to adress the issue of not beeing able to test people, there is no real oversight what is going on in the US.
And quite frankly: if your leader's decisions are worse than throwing a dice, why even bother having him? Because it is more entertaining?
In times of a pandemic you want to have something in leadership who does the unpopular thing, that ultimately stops the spread and saves the lives. Not someone who only thinks about themselves and changes their stance on the topic with every turn of the wind. But feel free to argue otherwise, if you know how the poststructuralist ways of trumpian confusion somehow help in times of a pandemic.
We have leadership in the state governments. Colorado and even health officials in my county are taking this seriously, have closed schools, all big events canceled etc.
Often I feel that Europeans forget wet have state governments that have more local authority than the federal Gov.
Trump isn't some dictator. I'm perfectly happy with how my state officials are dealing with this virus.
The U.S. federal government had a significant amount of control and formerly had the sole resources to deal with issues like this. Ironic that the sole raison d'être one of those resources was in mitigating and coordinating responses to events just like the one we find ourselves in.
Destroying that resource is squarely on turmp.
We've been watching the tearing down of the federal government since the Reagan years. We've witnessed the slow evisceration of everything outside of the department of defense.
The federal government could have and should have led a coordinated response to this. But now that the conservative dream of having a federal government big enough that it could be drowned in a bathtub is in reach, it's nearly impossible to.
This is the consequence of forty years of coordinated effort to hollow out the federal government from within.
States have very limited resources at their disposal. There's simply no way that they can coordinate the kind of response needed for an epidemic that knows no borders.
The US is probably doing terribly because of the CDCs absolute fumble of the test kit debacle; but assessing Trump's response as good or bad will take a lot of time. His border closures, believe what you will, were totally in character and probably good ideas for this specific crisis.
"During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." "
So while he didn't exactly, it doesn't show a person who cares for reality. Snopes says "mixture" on it's veracity.
> he's happy to have people on his task force who will publicly contradict him
You mean he doesn't care enough to put out the right information in the first place, and relies on being 'cleaned up afterwards' by his staff (who he keeps sacking)? He's made a mess of this primarily. The buck stops with him. The CDC does seemed to have fouled up badly but that doesn't exempt Trump's bizarre and dangerous response to a real crisis.
The Snopes article is perfectly clear; the answer to the question "Did Trump call the coronavirus a hoax?" is no and atoav was precisely wrong on that point. There is a Hoax hoax afoot here.
Trump banned travel from China in early February, and the hoax comment is late February. It is pretty obvious from his actions that he takes Coronavirus much more seriously than the flu whatever his public message.
> He's made a mess of this primarily. The buck stops with him.
Yeah, but we don't know how this plays out. There are a bunch of drugs against Coronavirus starting to complete clinical trials, so this may actually get nipped in the bud as far as the US is concerned. It is a real test of the Trump administration though, no argument there.
Depends what standard you hold 'ready' to. There are a bunch of things that by rights should help treat COVID-19, the clinical trials are due to start finishing in late March through to May and - depending on the drug - production might be fast or slow.
I've read patchy reports (eg, https://www.hngn.com/articles/228138/20200223/coronavirus-cu...) that the Chinese have started marking out specific drugs as effective for treatment. And of course Remdesivir is getting positive sounding press although I havn't seen any actual data.
It isn't really a question of whether we have something that works against COVID-19 because we surely do. The tricky part is figuring out what so it can be systematically delivered, and working out manufacturing. With a bit of luck (eg, chloroquine working out) the risk profile of the pandemic looks very different.
It could be. I did my own research on that a couple of weeks ago. If you look at the latencies involved with developing antibodies they're not that high, especially if you get lucky and are willing to throw money around. Humanity is right at the start of the whole protein design revolution - I don't think our regulatory infrastructure is set up for it yet. But where there's a will ...
Trump deliberately sabotaged efforts to protect the American public at almost every step along the way. He fired the team tracking pandemics and tried to gut their budget, and when the virus broke out he stopped the implementation of large scale testing in order to reduce the numbers of people who tested positive, and forbade use of the UN tests. This past week his CDC has completed 77 tests, as compared to Obama, who had completed one million tests in the month after H1N1. He’s also classified information regarding the disease in order to hamper the spread of vital information, and has actively lied and shifted blame regarding the availability of testing, the timeline to a vaccine, and even the efforts of private companies.
Acknowledging that he is the single worst person to lead America through the crisis isn’t partisan, it’s objectively considering reality.
This administration's handling of this pandemic is absolutely atrocious as you point out, perhaps that is where we have a silver lining. Coming close to a US presidential election perhaps Americans will consider their penny-wise, pound foolish healthcare policies.
The fact that the richest nation on earth permits about 10% of its population no access to decent healthcare is morally repugnant. But even if one is not persuaded by the moral argument, perhaps the economic impacts can change views.
With no national sick leave policy, potentially infected uninsured citizens will have the incentive to go to work, raising the risk for all. Children of uninsured whose parents are unable to take sick or medical care leave may be shunted to older care givers who are most at risk. Uninsured families are acting rationally for their own economic circumstances, but creating a larger risk profile for all.
Let's hope Americans are sobered by this experience and consider a more sensible healthcare policy.
Do you believe most of the issues at the CDC are due to Trump? The development of their own kit, refusal to allow independent testing, a lack of any stockpiles (is this their job? Well, whoever), etc. Did someone from the administration throw out all the stockpiled masks in medical institutions across the country for example?
Also, we have similar issues with testing and shortages of obviously critical supplies here in Canada, as do many other countries. Can one man do that much damage?
I don’t really care to debate strawman arguments- I never blamed him for lack of masks, so we can summarily move past that. Acknowledging that he is the cause of many actual issues is not fantasy. In reality, the United States has the worst testing capacity and infrastructure of any developed nation - this fact has to be specifically trumps fault. Obama was not caught unprepared during H1N1, and it’s impossible to imagine that the CDC is the most powerless among every major nation to secure critical supplies.
Yes, I believe most of the issues at cdc are due to trump - so far he has fired the experts who can best work with the CDC to implement policies needed, and has censored and classified their attempts to spread critical information. He rolled back Obama’s executive directives regarding pandemic response simply to spite democrats, and now is rushing to reimplement those same directives, with much less effectiveness. It’s literally a government agency under his sole control - by definition the failures of the cdc are his failures. That’s how accountability works.
I know that he specifically said that it’s not his fault and that he doesn’t stand for anything, regardless it’s still his fault. This crisis is the most current proof that he is utterly incapable of being an effective leader.
> I don’t really care to debate strawman arguments
Straight to rhetoric. One can characterise this as a strawman argument I suppose, but is it true?
I asked very specific questions, that can be answered. If you accuse me of framing, well...guilty as charged. In fact, I'm the one bringing this up.
> I never blamed him for lack of masks, so we can summarily move past that.
I never said you did, so we can summarily move past any insuation that I in any way made that assertion.
Please, argue against my words, not a distortion of them. And especially not while accusing me of using a strawman argument.
> Acknowledging that he is the cause of many actual issues is not fantasy.
I am not disputing that. Again, please argue against my words.
> In reality, the United States has the worst testing capacity and infrastructure of any developed nation - this fact has to be specifically trumps fault.
For you to know that is true would require some specific evidence, much of it quantitative. I've seen absolutely nothing even remotely resembling this, have you? Please note: the current lack of this data in no way proves anything one way or the other, and me asking such questions in no way requires that I believe it is false, or am making a suggestion - had I not written this disclaimer, that would have been a common rhetorical escape route. It is now closed.
> Obama was not caught unprepared during H1N1
Can you define "not caught unprepared" in more explicit detail? Specifically, can you provide a reference to inventory levels of critical care supplies over the last 20 years?
I have seen no such data, therefore I will continue to classify this as ~"Inconclusive - significant non-evidence based news that is highly narrative-based; numerous stories across independent media outlets all point back to the same 2 or 3 "fundamental" media stories (also narrative based). Biased reporting highly likely, even though their hearts are probably in the right place."
And again, none of this is to say I'm suggesting Trump has handled this well. He's handled it atrociously. I have zero doubt Obama would have handled it way better. But I suspect what really has gone on, is no one was prepared, not really. Beyond doing the standard "fund this 2500th "obviously a good idea" bill", I doubt anyone did too terribly good of a job.
If they did, but then this finely tuned, incredibly robust system fell apart in the span of 3 years under one rogue leader, with hardly anyone noticing....may it not be fruitful to investigate and discuss the actual events that occurred here? Is looking at reality, to the best of our ability to discern it, a bad idea?
I would support a full investigation into this. I welcome the full exposure of Trump's sins with open arms. Do you feel similarly unattached about Obama, or other parts of "the system" as it is? Are you willing at all times to reconsider everything you hold to be true?
And as for investigations, I think random members of the public need to start being on these investigations, like a variation of jury duty. I can pick out obviously misleading stories in the media as easily as finding cigarette butts on the ground. There is ample evidence that many fishy things are going on (think: reefer madness, racism, sexism, war propaganda & rationing), and the public's trust of media, government, and experts is unsurprisingly low as a result.
Did the US actually do widespread testing for H1N1? Or do anything at all?
My memory of the H1N1 outbreaks are that it was downplayed heavily in the media, and doing nothing was our response. It's pretty easy to do nothing. The way I remember it is that Asia did all of the heavy lifting by quarantining anyone with a fever.
I see 1 million estimated in June 25, then by september we had done 1,000 test kits (which I assume have many samples).
> Your memory seems to be quite selective.
It was 11 years ago. Most of us don't remember what actually happened.
Edit to add: The biggest original difference in testing seems to be that the existing influenza tests worked for H1N1, then were easily modified for H1N1, while producing the corona virus test and running it appears to take far more time + we have shortages in sourcing chemicals because everyone is trying to get those chemicals atm. That 1 million number may be correct since existing tests that everyone can perform may have worked. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with who the president at the time was, or their actions though. I don't see any regulations being lifted/waived to make that happen. Do you remember that being a big deal at the time?
Trump didn't create this but all signs indicate that he and his merry band of luddites will continue to exasperate the situation.
Where's the international cooperation? As the article mentions Bush and Obama were regularly on the phone with world leaders to coordinate their responses to the Avian Flu and Ebola outbreaks. This administration has done none of that and has effectively taken it's hand off the wheel.
Believing that all international communication must be routed through the United States government is a very U.S. centric way of looking at things. Other nations are free to cooperate with each other without first checking in with the U.S. president for his blessing.
Believing that the US somehow isn't a part of the international community is definitely a strange take that I haven't heard before. I don't really see the advantage to the US taking action completely separate from the rest of the world.
No US airports until a few days ago screened arriving passengers. They were not asked if they came from regions with large outbreaks.
After a month from 1st infection, less than 2000 tests was conducted in the US. Right now, it's 12,000+ tests which is the lowest tests per million in the world.
Schools, theaters, theme parks are closed. Sports events are suspended.
What other evidence do you need that there is lack of leadership?
They've got it via Germany apparently. The decision to suspend all flights from China should have been taken earlier at EU level. Either that or we go back to border controls, which is what has actually happened at least in countries that still have operational checkpoints.
