Nails it. You could be so good at your job that people think your job isn’t even necessary; or you could be putting out fires caused by your incompetence all day every day and people think you’re a hero.
His base is, however, going to be disproportionately impacted by this virus.
While I don't agree with the US's lackluster response, bear in mind there's other repercussions besides "just political". The quarantines and shutdowns will almost certainly destroy a lot of people's livelihoods. From people that aren't getting paid so can't pay their bills, to small business owners that will lose their businesses because they can't pay their bills. The effects of even a 1 week shut down can expect to be massive, and impact exactly the people who are already most struggling financially.
This need not be this case. Any authorities who take action to shut down social contact now, before they turn into Italy, will be praised several months hence for being forward thinking because it will be clear what happened in every jurisdiction where they didn't shut down social contact, i.e. absolute catastrophe.
The election season is in full swing and you should have the opportunity to vote on how well you think the crisis has been handled by November.
Example: Why didn't we start testing with 100x or 1000x the number of tests? Maybe the reason is regulation on independent labs doing their own tests. Maybe there wasn't enough money banked up at the CDC such that, when a pandemic it's recognized, we can't immediately start mass producing tests.
The point is, I want it documented and explained what the failures were so that future people handling future disease outbreaks will perform better or at least not make the same mistakes. Further, a practice of exploring major mistakes would help motivate government bureaucrats to avoid making them. There should be a potential political cost to be dramatically wrong in vital scenarios.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19...
Yep. People do this with Y2K, for example. "Nothing happened, what an overreaction!"
Nothing happened because an enormous amount of work was done in advance, but people don't see that side of it as it's reasonably hidden.
Though to be fair, most of the media predicted bad outcomes were completely unrealistic and wouldn't have happened even if no effort was put into mitigation.
I think this is exactly what's happening. It's an extension of the way individuals feel -- no one wants to be seen preparing too early, because people might think they're silly.
Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future.
I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle.
What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."