I don’t know why there was a shortage, but back when he was President, Trump could have used the Defense Production Act to ramp up production considerably. According to an article by BI (linked at the bottom), while Trump invoked the law through an executive order, he refused to actually use it, because in his words, “[w]e’re a country not based on nationalizing our business”. He didn’t use the law to make companies produce more masks and other medical equipment, despite Cuomo and Pelosi imploring him to do so:
I suspect that part of it stems from Trump disbanding the NSC pandemic unit in 2018.
I suspect that another part of it stems from nobody in Trump’s administration reading the NSC’s pandemic playbook.
Had they not done the former or done the latter, maybe someone would have bothered to check the stores of PPE and found them depleted, then, and I’m spitballing here, perhaps they would have restocked them. Like in 2017, 2018, or 2019.
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I anticipate my opinion about how the US handled Covid will fall in the unpopular category, but I tend to be less angry than most with how it was dealt with. I mean, yes, if we would have all cooperated earlier and isolated in unison we could have drastically reduced the outcome of this year’s deaths. I am also realistic and at peace with the non perfection of our society. The ideal solution would have taken the following to be true: all Americans to be compliant, obedient, and unquestioning to authority as well as a government that has authoritarian control over it’s people. I don’t understand why people expect the simultaneous existence of a whole county who will have the same free thinking notion of what the right thing to do is AND a county full of independent people who think for themselves. I guess ideally all members of society would be able to logically come to the correct behavior to deal with a situation such as Covid by their own free will. However, you have to take the bad with the good. If you have a society of free thinkers, some are bound to be irresponsible, illogical, or even plain corrupt. I don’t believe you can decouple the two. That reality of that trade off being what it is, I will take it…and so I am at peace with how well we have actually kept things under some control.
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i think the us handled covid appropriately. covid didnt really kill much people considering there is 7 billion people and only 2 million died. for comparison, the black plague in the 1300s would have killed 50% of the population or 3.5 billion.
that said relative to other countries, us did a very poor job. on a deaths per million people, last i checked we were in the top 10 worst countries. to make it worse our mortality rate was lower, we just had a lot more cases to deal with.
also there are plenty of countries that dealt with covid a lot faster than us. the origin of the pandemic china handled it extremely well.
imo the us chose the worst possible choice, which is to prolong this disease and cause it to spread at a slower pace.
imo, we either treat it as a non event and spread it fast until herd immunity, or we do what china did, which is restrict people’s freedom until we nip it in the bud.
i think at the end of the day, us made the situation far worse for the world, but at the end of the day, i blame the source of it all: china.
lastly, i think its hilarious that we blame trump protestors when the blm protests were far worse in terms of damage. libtard hypocrites.
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My question was more related to the preparedness of the western societies, not just USA.
Let’s say that Trump did horrible job before and during the pandemic and let’s benchmark his performance to France, Italy, Belgium and Sweden. He did OK.
I find it curious that you are analysing Trump in a silo. You’re kind of like an investor being livid at his wealth manager for posting -10% return when the market tanked -8%.
Most people I know keep plenty of N95s around, but many were shocked by the depleted toilet paper stockpiles throughout the world. Fortunately, our land sits on large untapped toiletpaper reserves, but for many this was a major issue and lives were lost.
A lot of people might benefit from learning about the pandemic instead of licking boots.
I haven’t read all the replies in the last two days, but from what I’ve read, I tend to agree with SamCryBaby and Track Suit.
Did Trump goof up the COVID thing? Yes.
Would Hillary/Obama/Biden have done any better? We’ll never know, but my answer is “I don’t think so”.
Fact is–one third of the county will hate Trump no matter what he does.
- If he said, “Don’t worry–it’ll blow over” and it kills half a million people, they will say, “Look–he murdered half a million people!!!”
- If he locked down the country and it blew over, they would say “Look at the damage he did to the economy for no reason!!!”
- If he locked down the economy and it killed half a million people, they would say “Look at the damage he did to the economy!!! And a mass murderer to boot!!!”
- If he did nothing, and nothing happened, he would be criticized for doing nothing.
So it doesn’t really matter what he does–he’s going to get the same sh!t from one third of the people in the country–because he’s red (for the time being) and they’re blue.
Similarly–he’s going to get unlimited support from 1/3 of the country–regardless of what happens. (EG - January 6, 2021)
And the other 1/3 (like me) don’t know what to think, because the media is dominated by the other 2/3, so we don’t know what to read or what to believe.
On another note–anybody who looks at “total number of deaths” as the only metric that matters—come on. There are a lot of other things to think about. That stupid mantra of “if it saves only one life, it’s worth it” is universally stupid, no matter what context it’s in. Savings lives comes at a cost. We need to know what that other cost is, and compare it to the lives lost. Of course, this gets into the moral issue of “what’s a life worth” and all the emotions and feelings around that–which we will disagree on.
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While I agree that the Trump administration would probably face criticism regardless, I am of the impression that, if he had taken the necessary measures to deal with the new virus, people on the fence would probably give him credit for trying his best, and Trump might actually have won the presidency race. Don’t get me wrong - even if he did his best to deal with the pandemic early on, the death toll in the US would still be very high (it is estimated that around 80-90% deaths could have possibly been averted. With over 400k deaths in the US, this means we would still lose around 40k-80k people regardless. This is of course, far from being “fine”).
What could have he done differently? For starters, being honest with the American people and encouraging them to listen to the medical doctors. Rather than interrupting actual doctors trying to answer questions from the general public, he should have let them answer the question to the best of their abilities as actual experts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/06/coronavirus-fauci-trumpdrugs/
When medical doctors recommend that people wear a mask when shopping indoors, the President should, in turn, encourage its citizens to do the same and not give a mixed message such as “you can use it but i wouldn’t”, nor mock its use or suggest “treatments” that are not only ineffective, but that can pose a serious health threat. If he was joking, it shows a complete lack of maturity on his part.
One other thing that he could have done is immediately use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of medical supplies that are in short supply. As can be seen in one of my previous posts, he refused to use said law when asked to do so by Cuomo and Pelosi back in March. It was only at the end of August that he finally made use of the law. One could argue that his inaction was in part due to partisan politics (both Cuomo and Pelosi are Democrats).
Ultimately, the economy would probably slow down, but probably not to the point of requiring trillions of dollars in government stimulus. People, mostly the left, would still criticize him, but he would likely get enough support from those in the middle to secure a victory.
Fun fact: most ethical standard boards in medicine define a year of life in good health to be worth around 40,000-50,000€.
I wonder how it’s calculated.
For some interesting reading:
lol. how much life insurance yall got. i got mine pegged at 500k.
This made me chuckle
Judging by the stringency index developed by Oxford team (see one of my previous posts here), the US initial response was objectively poor relative to many countries.
Whatever.
You are using some “index” developed by some guys who have prostituted their expertise in exchange for money.Pay me a few million bucks and I will “develop” an index by Cambridge team to show the US initial response was good relative to many countries.
I like how you refer to these metrics as if they are some ground truth. Stop watching too much CNN.
I find it interesting that whenever people oppose whatever I post, they have trouble making a coherent argument and will often resort to logical fallacies. There may be some exceptions, but the post I’m responding to is certainly not one of them. It should be noted that Oxford University is in the UK and the researchers have zero incentive to be biased in either direction. Just because you don’t like the findings from actual experts, that doesn’t mean they are being biased. As is often said by the right: facts don’t care about your feelings.
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SCB is an idiot – not worth arguing with him. He doesn’t understand how masks work
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I will assume my discussion with you when you understand the difference between facts and findings.
Usually when a lot of people die, people start producing babies. It’s amazing how society reacts after something bad happens. I did see a recent news article that mentioned the amount of covid damage to the economy. They call it the lost output from dead people. I thought it was interesting but far fetched. Especially if the dead people are mostly retired.
Babies are low value – spend their time crying and eating instead of labor.
If they do work, it’s usually low quality.
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