Posted on 02/25/2021 8:45:33 AM PST by Onthebrink
They say journalism is the first rough draft of history. With the Covid pandemic now a year old, we are starting to see books on the topic. And various libertarian studies and articles, critically examining government and private-sector responses to the crisis, have appeared. But some of those rough drafts in the major media add up to a pretty strong critique of government failure by themselves. Just consider the disappointing, even tragic, analyses that have been appearing over the past year:
The federal government had reports and warnings and war games about pandemic danger at least as far back as 2001, but was apparently unprepared when it hit.
(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...
Trump made what would be a two year pandemic, a one year pandemic. It is fading and all parts of the economy can effectively be opened quite soon.
When you had Nanzi and DeCommieo saying in the beginning that it was no big deal,what could go wrong?
Smart professors from Harvard and Yale said the USSR would win the cold war and Communism would triumph.
Of course that’s because they thought people like them were running the USSR.
It’s a freaking PANDEMIC!
People are really stupid.
Unless you are willing to interact with NO people and engage in NO commerce, you are just flat likely to encounter the virus.
You can’t dodge left to avoid it.
Covid is literally “in the air”.
No other country on earth has been able to avoid the virus so why would the US, perhaps the most accessible country in the world, be expected by some to have been able to avoid it. The big security fears have always been nuclear and biological attacks. The current pandemic is as good as any biological attack and may very well be a test.
And nearly all the failures are in the lap of the career GS-15s and SESs who were unable or refused to think outside the box/their rice bowl.
I’ve doing mathematical simulations of a field I know well for over 40 years. IMHO no simulation ever proved anything. Depending on fidelity and validation, they can provide useful insight, but they prove nothing. As Norman Augustine said, any simulation that cannot be explained on the back of an envelope is worse than useless, it’s dangerous.
Hey hey hey! That was before Biden came along. Now that he’s here, all is well
I hope so, but I revert to the man vs nature question. Man seldom wins. Nature will play its course. This virus may have indeed been man made in a lab but it became a part of nature. Humans make mistakes (assuming unleashing it was an error).
It is just anecdotal statistics, but while the number of new cases in the US seems to be on the decline the number of deaths is up several days in a row.
I always thought that masks would give people a false sense of security and possibly cause more harm than good. I don’t know enough about these vaccines but it seems they do not prevent anyone from catching or spreading the virus they just mitigate the symptoms. I am open to correction on that.
I didn’t read the full article yet but I am completely disgusted by the institutional response and lack of preparedness. The lack of critical PPE stockpiles - why do we have a CDC at all if they cannot even perform their most critical tasks like stockpiling hospital equipment? And the NIH and FDA’s outright obstruction of potential treatments such as HCQ+ and Ivermectin+ is worse than treason it was an intentional assault on humanity.
The pandemic preparations were always about how to recognize, respond to, and mitigate a pandemic.
Yes, you can stop an outbreak before it becomes a pandemic. We stopped SARS, which was slightly more contagious than Covid-19. I’ve even seen SARS described as a pandemic, albeit with far fewer cases and deaths than Covid-19.
There are characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 which make it especially hard to fight. The fact that it’s contagious prior to symptoms appearing is one of those characteristics. New research shows that superspreader events drive the majority of SARS-CoV-2 spread. A superspreader typically is someone who is presymptomatic or mildly symptomatic who infects several other people. Very often this superspreader does not mask properly and fails to observe social distancing guidelines. Superspreading events happen when people gather in large groups, very frequently in restaurants. Ten to fifteen percent of Covid-19 patients are responsible for 80% of the spread.
Source: “Superspreading drives the COVID pandemic — and could help to tame it”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00460-x?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=d15e33148b-briefing-dy-20210224&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-d15e33148b-45629818
The bottom line is that the spread of the pandemic is driven by individual behavior. The government can mandate control measures, but it is up to individuals to take steps to stop the spread.
Two words that should never be put together.
True, but this extends well beyond pandemic response.
From the article:
Governments and bureaucracies don’t respond well to changing challenges. Government agencies don’t have the right incentives. They lack necessary knowledge. They operate in a system that rewards longevity, seniority, and inertia. Protected from competition, they become sluggish. Their rules, regulations, policies, and procedures are always backward-looking, based on yesterday’s problems. Private entities suffer from these afflictions too, but competition pressures them to respond more quickly to change. As numerous scholars have pointed out, these problems are systemic in government.
‘Superspreading events happen when people gather in large groups, very frequently in restaurants.’
sorry, not buying that horseshit...
They didn’t lock down like this when the London Imperial model predicted 150 million dead of bird flu.
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