The lockdown needs to end before it wipes out the economy. — Chester

Even if you ease the social distancing rules, it won't help. We will have the economic downturn independent of easing of lockdown measures. The spike in unemployment and the consequences of social distancing (like basically stopping tourism etc.) will hurt the economy even if you want everything to get back to what it was earlier. Aggregate demand has collapsed. People know that we are in a recession. There's no V-shaped recovery.

The simple reason is that this is over only after the pandemic has gone over.

I don't think he wants to kiss Obama, that's for sure.

But otherwise....

Trump wasn't trying to kiss anyone. He was speaking French. "Bonjooour!" — Hot Potato

Well, that's your view of it. :grin: Trump you see has a habit of awkward kissing attempts. But hey, he likes Pence and Putin!

I think you’re wrong to downplay American meddling in Ukraine and the failure of the previous administration’s push for regime change there. — NOS4A2

The US has a policy for regime change in Iran. Both the US and the EU were OK with Yanukovich before. And Yanukovich had been negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU since 2012. What happened?




What you are leaving out is that the demonstrations started because the pressure that Putin put to Yanukovich was the real powder keg here.

Following talks between the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers, a government decree curtly suspended preparations for the signing of a trade pact and political association agreement between Ukraine and the EU at a summit next week in Lithuania.

The pact has been years in the making and was to have been the centrepiece of Lithuania's current rotating presidency of the EU.

Senior EU officials conceded there would be no signing in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Instead, the Ukrainian government announced that it was "renewing dialogue" with Moscow on trade and economic matters and with the Kremlin's embryonic rival to the EU, the Eurasian customs union.

Putin offered to lend 15 bn dollars to Ukraine and to give cheaper oil, and even after that the EU was open for a trade deal. As a Finn I can well understand how difficult this is when Russia puts pressure on a country when it see's the country being under it's sphere of influence. For my country it was a tight-rope act to negotiate a trade deal with the EEC when we had the Soviet Union as a neighbor.

Then to what you utterly fail to grasp: You see, there is a huge difference in being the instigator of a regime change or reacting to political events in a country. Countries do try to influence each other: that's why they have diplomats. And Great Powers and Superpowers are even more brazen what they do. The protests started IN NOVEMBER 2013 right after Yanukovich walked out of the deal with a demonstration organized by Yatsenyuk. (So what do you know, Americans choose to back one of the founders of the movement) McCain went there to show support in DECEMBER 2013. The Nuland tapes were recorded in JANUARY 28th of 2014.

If those Nuland tapes would have been recorded prior to the demonstrations then yes, it would be obvious that the US would have plotted a regime change and created an astroturf demonstration. Yet in January the Maidan revolution was well under way, hence the US diplomats were reacting to current events.

Then the second thing is that there is truly a difference on giving support to some political actors and occupying and annexing a part of a country (even if the majority of the people there were OK with it) and then starting a war inside the country and making threats of straight forward invasion. The occupation and later annexation was one of the most brilliant military operations ever, that I have to say. Talk about total strategic surprise.

I'm not so certain Biden will be a huge improvement over Trump. He will certainly be a more traditional president. We will probably have the opportunity to find out. — jgill

I don't think anybody here believes that Biden will be awesome.

But what he can do is abstain from crippling the administration to inaction the way Trump has done it now. That's the thing he can do at least.

Or do you want to have Trump to be in charge when sh*t hits the fan in the South China Sea, China invades Taiwan and a US carrier is attacked or something? Do you think that Trump could dissolve a crisis similar to the Cuban missile crisis? Show cool judgement and lead the nation?

We genuinely have seen him now how he acts during a true and severe crisis. It's not anymore a maybe: he is as bad in leadership as he has shown earlier.

Who is this guy, NOS4A2?



Why even those who started a secession from Ukraine and a civil war against Kiev didn't want him back from where he came? He's still in Russia I guess.

But you aren't interested in the real events, just simply eager to reurgitate the old Kremilin line pushed during the crisis that argued right there and then that the whole Maidan revolt was a US lead coup acted by neonazis. Hence you reurgitate the narrative promoted by a country which annexed Crimea and instigated the Ukrainian civil war by backing (and creating) the Donbas rebels. Yeah, that of course is the credible source for everything NOS4A2 believes in.

But let's just look at how stupid your this idea is. Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Svoboda party, didn't get a cabinet position in the first administration after the ouster of Yanukovich and got a whopping 1,16% of the votes in the 2014 Presidential elections. And of course the important person in the photos above is Arseniy Yatsenyuk who was then the prime minister... from late February to mid April 2014. The second Yatsenyuk government that lasted until 2016 was without the Svoboda Party. And otherwise would be needless to say, but just to get things correct, economist Yatsenyuk wasn't from the far right. But yes, they indeed met with Americans. We of course have tapes from the Russian intelligence services of US diplomats talking about what politicians they'll back up, so BRAVO again for the US for the professionalism they showed there!

What you utterly fail to grasp is that just like with Serbia (where the US really helped to ouster Milosevic, first with bombs, then with State Department assistance, not the CIA), the US is just one actor which typically very poorly plays it's cards as there isn't any long term thinking in the US. Milosevic was ousted and Serbia remains a close ally of... Russia. (The bombing of the country might have something to do with it, I guess.)

Nope, you believe the incredible line that it was the US that planned, executed a coup by creating an astroturf movement in Ukraine...or in your words: "helped far right fascists topple the government". As if Ukraine wouldn't have a history of corrupt administration being thrown over. It both tells about ignorance about Ukraine and the focus on a politically charged narrative which doesn't see the forest from the trees, and only some specific trees I should add. (And quite insulting to Ukrainians just at to say that Trump supporters are neonazis, because some supporters are indeed neonazis.)

Since consciousness is internal, not observable, I cannot answer that. I can only infer. I think my dog is conscious. But lacking first hand experience, that is all I can say. — hypericin

OK, so we can agree that we both think your dog is conscious, at some level at least.

Can we also agree we don't think that a unicellular organism like an amoeba is conscious?

Can we then infer that there some things that make us conscious or leave some organisms to be unconscious? Now, we surely don't know exactly what those are and we can perhaps understand consciousness in a totally wrong way, but excluding that dismal situation, wouldn't it be so that there are things x,y,z... that make something conscious?

I actually felt sorry for him! This sounds exactly like a machine figuring out that this whole consciousness thing was just something it was programmed to espouse. But to me, a conscious being, it is clear that after subtracting all these things, you are still left with the phenomenal experience of blue.

Am I missing something fundamental?
Could Dennett be that confused?
Or, is he a Zombie? Or, as a commenter on youtube put it, a NPC? — hypericin

If you are conscious, then where do you draw the line on being conscious? Is your dog conscious? Is it fully, somewhat conscious or not at all? How about a more simple life form? And if you draw somewhere the line between being counscious or not, what are according to you those defining characters to be conscious?

Perhaps answering those questions might make you understand his point better, even if you disagree with them.

. The US had just finished helping far right fascists topple the government. — NOS4A2

Ah YESS, Tovarich NOS4A2!

Here's those evil US stooges, the far right fascists with their evident neonazi insignia and symbols trying to topple their government all because of the US of A:




All nazi stooges of the US! No, correct that tovarich NOS, Biden stooges!


(Trump wants to give a kiss, just one little kiss...)

It's telling that Trump desperately wants to change discourse to anything other than the prevailing pandemic.

But the truth is that this pandemic clearly shows how utterly inept and incapable this populist bully is. I can understand that in 2016 Trump was for many the perfect middle finger to wag at Hillary Clinton and even the leadership of the GOP. But the truth known then and still totally apparent is that this person has no leadership abilities and is unfit to be the president of the US. He simply is not up to the job elected to, to be the head of the executive branch of the federal government. This person has no ability to lead people, to motivate them to perform better and make agencies with opposing agendas to work together as a team.

Perhaps the US Constitution should be amended to create a position of Chief Commentator of the US, where Trump tweet his heart out and the media, the officials and citizens would have to listen to his great wisdom, thanks to his constitutional position. Trump would like that so much. If Trump would have lost the election (which he anticipated happening), he would have been OK having his own TV channel where he could vent his anger on Hillary, the democrats and the liberals and everything, but as we know from experience, that TV network would have gone bankrupt as Trump is such a lousy businessman.

But as a Chief Commentator he would have what he wants: to bask in the media spotlight and have people talk about him. And likely many people would like his outrageous style and it would be great entertainment, and wouldn't have actual effect on things like how many people die of a pandemic because this nutjob doesn't know anything and dragged his feet in responding to a global pandemic and still is having a real negative effect on how the US fights the pandemic.

It would simply be amusing to hear all the media outlets discussing the Chief Commentator's idea of using bleach to fight the virus and his other bizarre remarks. Now it's not.

It depends on what the alternative looks like. If the alternative is potentially large numbers of people dying with no end in sight, then I'm sure they would abolish tourism. But realistically, they won't need to. They can simply partner with other regions that are also virus-free. — Andrew M

The realistic options aren't either a total lock down or a Trumpian denial of the pandemic being still prevailing catastrophe.

The main problem in the idea that a certain country or area can "eradicate" the virus simply isn't reasonable NOW as the global pandemic is still going strong. Some countries, as you know, are unable to make a genuine effort on the federal level and opt to leave the states to invent their own policies. EU has been totally unable to coordinate anything as member states have chosen their own path to fight the virus. This is the biggest obstacle to the idea that just one country/area can with itself eradicate the virus and then live normally after.

Yet I have to say that it is good marketing and a policy that can instill trust in the public that the officials are really prioritizing fighting the pandemic. Just like a leader of country at war will rally the people assuring victory for them and a defeat to the enemy. It wouldn't sound good to the people and the soldiers fighting to say: "Well, will continue to fight this war because we are confident we bleed them far more than we ourselves suffer losses and hence we'll get a better deal during the peace talks." The quite Clausewitzian approach doesn't sound so good and doesn't motivate anyone.

They may require a mandatory test to see if you have any virus. This might even involve a quarantine period while the test is being processed. — Punshhh

And what do you think that quarantine period does for example to tourism? Who would want to go for a leisure trip for couple day to somewhere where you can be (possibly) quarantined?

And with other countries the idea that they can create themselves to be artificial islands is even more difficult. Just to give one example from real life, Sweden was totally against Finland closing it's Northern border with it as it feared a total collapse of it's health care system in the north as so may health care workers are Finns living in Finland, but coming to work in Sweden. Under the pressure Finland opted to have the border open for this "essential workforce".

Interesting to compare this discussion to here where masks haven't been recommended by the authorities and masks haven't been a huge topic. Outcome: Few people wear them and usually only in shopping malls etc, but if you go for a walk in the park nobody is wearing them. When I went to the hospital for a check up I noticed that none of the nurses and health care workers wore a mask. The doctor put on a mask only when inspecting me, but otherwise didn't have it on in the meeting. On the other hand, Finns seem to be quite OK and good with social distancing. So let's see if this country is setting up itself for a disaster without wearing those face masks.

How absolutely everything is politicized by some is evident again in the discourse, btw.

The fact is that eradication of COVID-19 is a very real possibility for some countries, and there have been precedents of that with Ebola and SARS in the past. — Andrew M

Especially Ebola is totally different: it is so deadly that it basically kills itself. With this virus it's quite the opposite with many people carrying and spreading the virus without any symptoms.

The thing with eradication is problematic: what if the disease becomes like influenza, a disease the is now called "the common flu"? Will you have a quarantine procedures for rest of our lives? Will Iceland and New Zealand basically abolish tourism? I don't think so.

Yes, what's with that?

The only thing I can figure is that Trump or the Trump family has a personal financial gain in the selling of hydroxychloroquine, that they were somehow in the deal. I really don't believe otherwise Trump would be so enthusiastic and persistent in the promotion of the "miracle-drug". In fact, when going so far to fire people who have cautioned about the use of hydroxychloroquine:

Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, alleges he was reassigned to a lesser role because he resisted political pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug pushed by President Donald Trump. He said the Trump administration wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug.

“I witnessed government leadership rushing blindly into a potentially dangerous situation by bringing in a non-FDA approved chloroquine from Pakistan and India, from facilities that had never been approved by the FDA,” Bright said Tuesday on a call with reporters. “Their eagerness to push blindly forward without sufficient data to put this drug into the hands of Americans was alarming to me and my fellow scientists.”

Someone as lazy as Trump wouldn't do anything without personal gain. Trump personally has a small investment (1000$) in the pharma giant that makes the drug he's been pushing to fight COVID-19. Still, the US government has ordered 29 million doses of the malaria drug (see article) and there has been some hassle over these purchases (see here).

Eh, I guess we'll see what happens. Trump's insistence on screwing over the country's diplomats has been pretty stupid. — fdrake

Perhaps there would be better threads to talk this, but just a quick response.

It's not only Trump, but Trump surely has done immense harm to the US role in the world. But this is a far longer process than just Trump. I think the downfall really started with George Dubya Bush let the neocons invade Iraq. I think the last US President that was looked as having that leadership role was Bill Clinton and older Bush. Before that you had naturally the juxtapositioning between the two superpowers.

But in short, The most damage Trump has done is he has given an example of how utterly unreliable the US can be. So if we get a democratic President, who knows, in four years there can come a republican president that is totally against on what earlier was agreed. I don't think the vitriolic partisanship will go away. And now it's not just a crazy theoretical possibility that the US can leave NATO, it's a genuine possibility that the US will fold on it's agreements and simply leave, go it's own way as obviously someone like Trump simply doesn't need allies, just like he showed with his former Kurdish allies.

What the US withdrawal looks like. From half a year ago:


Once Americans have shown how inept leaders they can choose, why would it never happen again?

But of course, you can listen to for example Peter Zeihan how utterly awesome the US of A is and how well the US has done everything and how badly everybody else is doing.

Yep. Noticing the link between Russell's paradox and limits means that you get it.

Think that's an overstatement regarding the leadership position I think. The US's military position has not been weakened due to the coronavirus, they will still have all the economic influence the dollar brings so long as international trade relies upon it, and they're almost certainly not going to lose their veto in the UN. — fdrake

The US is still the sole superpower.

But I was talking really about leadership: the ability to lead, to coordinate, to get other nations to follow your agenda. To get various countries to go along with your policies even if not close allies (or those in need of help). That is what I mean by leadership.

That is totally different thing as being the sole superpower and the biggest economy.

You might not understand just how much Trump just has done and how different it was, well, like when George Bush senior formed an alliance with Muslims countries like Pakistan, Egypt and Syria to fight against Saddam Hussein and got the green light to go ahead from the dying Soviet Union.

That time was different.

The blatant corruption of this administration is staggering. — Michael

In this situation I hope you share my optimism and think that Donald Trump will be the absolute worst US President in our lifetime.

(And I assume we both do see many US presidential elections still)

Is this not why we invent government in the first place? — Lif3r

No. Government is basically just one part of specialization of work in our society and the institutions created with a government is a way for our species to prosper. Unlike other animals, we are not anymore all just "hunter-gatherers" like animals are.

We need to reinvent success to mean who can help biology sustain existence the most, not who can grab the most stuff. — Lif3r

Or perhaps just to get the message through that we won't have that prosperity that we now enjoy if we don't take care of environment we live in. It first sounds counter intuitive, but if people are more prosperous and wealthy, they will take care of the environment far better. If you are starving to death, your first objective is to get food and only then worry about the impact it makes on the environment.

Is growth in a sustainable sense across the board just completely unattainable? — Lif3r

Do you need rapid growth IF the population isn't growing or is decreasing? Isn't sustainability about having the ability to sustain a level?

Wealthy educated people seldom have huge families, the largest families are in the poorest countries where it's the "retirement policy" for people to have children who will look after them.

I think we can start to forecast what is going to happen:

- The Trump administration has no strategy to tackle the pandemic other than it will refrain to the most bizarre wishful thinking (an miracle drug is just around the corner) and will continue to disrupt any kind of actions taken against the virus on the national level (one example the watering down of the CDC guidelines) because the President fears "it will look bad" and hurt him in the elections. What this means is that Trump has utterly incapacitated the federal government of any coherent leadership or action on the issue.

- The incapacitation of federal leadership and guidelines will assure that NOTHING will be prepared in the time now for the future and every response taken will be performed at a substandard level compared to other OECD countries.

- The majority of Americans will draw the correct conclusions from this and if possible, will stay home and continue social distancing. A minority won't and this will keep the pandemic strong.

- The above likely assures that the pandemic won't just fade away and this assures an economic depression in the US. No V-shaped or U-shaped recovery.

- The economic depression in the US will guarantee a global economic depression. Even in the countries that have successfully contained the pandemic will suffer from this.

- As the US has already basically lost it's leadership position in the world thanks to Trump, it will also lose it's clout in fighting pandemics and in the health care sector as everybody now understands how US institutions like the CDC or NIH are totally open to the whims and delusions of totally ignorant ideological politicians.

At least that's what I think. Counterarguments?

"Obamagate" is evidence that Trump and the Republicans are nervous about November — Maw

Well, time to change the public discourse when in a short while over 100 000 Americans will have died in the pandemic, which was under control and supposed to have gone away already according to Trump.

Perhaps they think that what works is what Goebbels said about the English in 1941: "The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

Aye. I'm hoping that in the wake of it wage repression stops. I'm also hoping that the demand shock prompts that. But I don't think it will happen much.

It's likely to be another huge covert wealth transfer and another run through of the austerity/defecit bollocks; now that the bailouts are on the public balance sheet as debt by fiat of accounting. — fdrake

Well, think about it positively: If we have a serious economic depression, the likely outcome is that income inequality decreases for a short while.

What is likely to happen is what typically happens in an economic depression:

We fall to a lower level and then start very slowly to pick up from there. It will again take years before unemployment is at such rosy level as it was before last year.

And what is happening is that Trump will try to rosy up the statistics, both economic and health statistics and simply will put the government to lie about the situation. That's the next step.

Oh geee what a surrprrrisseee who could have seen this coming! — StreetlightX

The 2007-2008 so called "Great Recession" is small compared to this.

That Ricardo was right about the specialization of countries, but the economic theory didn't take into account what happens when a pandemic happens?

You just call me part of the ignorant sheeple, truther.

As with the quote from Castro, I tried to explain that companies are surely willing to sell governments what the governments want (even at their own peril). Yet it is the government and the political leadership that decides what it wants. Once some industry is in a dominant position, it surely can influence the government or simply want it's own status quo being defended, but the objectives of the government aren't simply handed down from an industry.

Since the now age old Echelon, started in the 1960's and established in 1971, the US and it's allies have wanted better and better tech for their surveillance needs. You simply cannot think that companies in the 1990's have themselves made this appetite as the interests are as far older than the internet (which itself started as ARPANET for the department of defense).

Because when you say that the tech companies are "interested in using government to further their interests by expanding government reach for their sakes", yep , it is quite different from saying that "tech companies notice the interests of governments and are eagerly willing to offer the technology and service to fulfill those". That's not what you are saying.

You put the tech firms being the starting engines of the "government overreach" and this is what I disagree with. The government isn't the vehicle of tech firms especially when it comes to the corona-epidemic.

My point is that government overreach isn't an agenda of the tech companies. The agenda and the reasons are elsewhere. And just what is the overreach with the COVID?

As once Fidel Castro said: "If I order all capitalists to be hanged, a capitalist will come to me and sell rope."

Yes.

I ask you, where does the overreach come from? As the article says:

To be clear, technology is most certainly a key part of how we must protect public health in the coming months and years. The question is: Will that technology be subject to the disciplines of democracy and public oversight, or will it be rolled out in state-of-exception frenzy, without asking critical questions that will shape our lives for decades to come?

The fact is that AI gives finally a way for a police state to operate. Before you really had to have a person to listen to the conversations and others to process it. It didn't work, never could. Now with AI you do have the possibility of a genuine all controlling police state, which China is building. The question, who wants to build it and why?

This is an exemplary way of critiquing state overreach during COVID in a way that's not just a shitty reactionary vomit spew of 'Muh Freedoms" and "Muh haircuts": — StreetlightX

Is it really? I don't think so.

The state overreach doesn't happen because of the tech companies. It really doesn't. Having meetings over the internet and working from home is something that we'll get used to thanks to the pandemic and surely Google and Microsoft are happy about it, but it genuinely doesn't constitute a government overreach.

What constitutes a government overreach is the length where the US citizens want to create a pre-emptive security apparatus to fight a miniscule group of terrorists and the American reliance on boogeymen being this threat to your existence. Of course, you could have gone the other way: treated the 9/11 perpetrators as criminals and given the case to the NYPD and the justice system as you did with the first Twin tower bombings some years before. And not started a perpetual war fought still in many places.

Of course, a pandemic that is DAILY killing the equivalent number of Americans that were killed in the 9/11 attacks seems at least to me a genuine reason for social distancing and some restrictions. And yes, I think the US would be better off with a real national plan to fight the pandemic. Likely before this month ends or at least in June the US will break that 100 000 number on those who have perished to the pandemic, so I guess the argument for government overreach is a bit strange.

Though there may have been “missed opportunities”, unlike some countries, these volunteers didn’t sign bad contracts or purchase any crap.

What year did those masks expire in? — NOS4A2

Lol.

Not only did you not read what I wrote, but you didn't even read YOUR OWN link you gave. :roll:

Purchasing with 69 million dollars non-existent ventilators would be in my view a bad contract. (And read the link you gave again.)

The absolute ineptness of Donald Trump is evident in putting his "wunderkind" Jared Kushner, who has among other things "brought peace to Middle East", in charge of the response to the pandemic. Yeah, don't follow ANY of the prior plans for a pandemic, even from the Bush administration...

A group of young, inexperienced volunteers was tasked with securing much-needed medical supplies for hospitals fighting coronavirus, hampering the government's response to a growing pandemic, according to reports by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The group of roughly a dozen volunteers, mostly in their 20s, were part of a broader coronavirus supply-chain task force assembled by the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the two news outlets reported. - The volunteers, who were recruited from consulting and investment firms and began their task in late March, had little to no experience in health care and dealing with procurement procedures or medical equipment

And when you put totally inexperienced people to do something, the result is the following:

two of the volunteers in March had passed along procurement documents filed by a Silicon Valley engineer, Yaron Oren-Pines, who claimed he could provide more than 1,000 ventilators. The volunteers forwarded the lead to federal officials, who then sent it to New York officials, who assumed Oren-Pines had been vetted, the Times reported. New York state awarded the engineer a $69 million contract, but didn't receive a single ventilator, which was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Just to compare this very typical phenomenon of all kinds of conmen getting into the action when money is floating freely around during an emergency, there was a similar case in my own country where a shadowy businessman suckered government officials to buy PPE from China. It least the "PPE" existed, but wasn't appropriate for health care workers. This case made a huge political outcry, the media was all over it and the outcome was that the director of the government institution responsible for that resigned after the Prime minister said the the person didn't enjoy the trust of the government.

Now that Kushner isn't fired or that even this "little" snag doesn't even cause any kind of turmoil just tells just how utterly bad and totally incapable the Trump administration is. And this is one incident among many, just like silencing the CDC advise on how to prepare to open the economy.

Likely it's worse that we see it to be. And that will have a huge effect on the effectiveness fighting the pandemic. If this was a novel, people would argue that it's too fantastic, that actually a Republican administration cannot be such ludicrously incompetent.

Obama puts it well:

It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’

And that's putting it mildly.

Not a good reference actually.

First of all, it's far too early to say that. This hasn't ended yet...at all.

Secondly, when you really look at those countries it seems that what is only thing that has been looked at is the graph without any reference to the actual number. Is it REALLY so that Singapore has done worse than Iran and should take example from the Islamic Republic??? I don't think so, with 3/million deaths compared to 77/million, the obvious Trumpesque response of the mullahs plus totally unreliable stats I wouldn't say that Singapore has done it bad and Iran has made better response. What that site (perhaps unintentionally) paints as the picture is that the pandemic has been beaten. Several of those "covid-19 beating" countries are scaling back their quarantine measures, so that will have implications.

But needless to say what the best action for a government is: DON'T GIVE ACCURATE STATISTICS. Try hiding every fatality that you can as death due to other causes. Doesn't matter if historians later will argue that the deaths were multiple times higher.

Would Trump not be so ignorant and totally inept, he would have, just to further his agenda of getting the economy back to normal and him getting re-elected, opted to talk in a smart way of the mitigation / herd immunity option now that the US health care system could be argued to be prepared (which it naturally isn't, but still). Many countries are likely looking at that now when easing restrictions from the lockdown and understanding that the economy cannot be in a quarantine for a year or so.

But the incoherent rambling moron doesn't do that and here is one great example of how clueless he actually is:


So try after that to talk about mitigation. But of course with Trump, first he lays rules and then he's enthuastic about breaking them, so... :brow:

Anyway, what is totally lacking is a genuine strategy, a long term plan and a road map how to tackle the pandemic when vaccines are way in the distant future. And that is truly a political decision which simply cannot be just be given to medical officials and epidemiologists to decide as it has quite a lot of moving parts than washing hands and social distancing. This is the problem that all countries are now facing, but unfortunately with the US, this planning is now totally absent with Trump.

There simply is no coherent strategy now, just states doing their own thing.

That whole area is nice. It's really rainy, but really green. I prefer the mountains of the northwest, until winter. — Hanover

The Puget Sound archipelago seems at first like in Finnish lake district, except it's the sea (I once saw a group Killer whales from a ferry, it was awesome!) and the pine trees are different, which instantly you can notice (I cannot describe the difference, but there is one).

Back to the subject, Rick Bright's whistleblower story tells, and this is all too usual now, just how inept and bad the Trump administration is.

And I feel it's simply getting worse as many in the administration start to think about the elections and life after the Trump administration. The cronies have to make their buck now!

Vancouver, such a lovely city. — Hanover

When I visited Vancouver in the 1980's with my family from Seattle, I noticed how far more cleaner the city was to US cities. And even Seattle was quite nice too.

Do note that the name of an event can change in history until a consensus view has been reached. And typically an event is later put into context of the whole Century, just like they didn't call it WW1 but the Great War after the conflict.