If one party is against them, should experts (in this case economic) not weigh in?

Muddying that message with political and partisan discussion is not helpful. Your comments are not constructive to this discussion and the messaging around healthcare and artists is not constructive to the messaging in the document.

The fact that you cannot see that only highlights my point.

But this idea of yours that by disagreeing with you, it means you're right, is absurd. If we agreed, would that mean you were wrong?

US Coronavirus team referenced this (very short, very clear) paper with short, concrete guides for school, work and home. It's completely apolitical.

and regardless of what one thinks about the issue, there is no way the US is passing sweeping legislation overhauling the whole system, and getting it implemented, in time to do any good at all in the current situation.

Congress saying they are going to pass a bill to pay for testing and then doing it would not be difficult, and it would reduce qualms about getting tests.

There will have to be a bailout, and the aftermath should mean nationalization. Public health has been neglected for far too long.

The people that have the money to do so.

Which is kind of amazing in itself given it's a basic human right in so many countries and taken for granted.

"Live performers are going to be hard hit economically. Consider supporting their work on Patreon, directly via PayPal, or attend only the smaller shows. Promote them on social media. Buy their work directly."

I do not really agree with removing this line, as it is good advice. I wouldn't be against expanding the content to include other professions, although the single-payer advocacy kind of does that for some of them.

In addition, artist are indeed a small fraction of the population, but this offending sentence is also a very small fraction of the writeup..

Unless you have real property, reserves or a salary to ride, the only option is to try and adapt.

Apart from this in the age of streaming the only spurce of income for eg bands are live gigs, so the advice is good, and not just now; do support your favourite bands, painters, musicians, etc., and do it directly. If the gig is out, buy merch.

The idea that we should ignore the state of our healthcare system because we find politics icky is counter-productive to building an effective system for dealing with public health systems. We can't avoid facts because they're uncomfortable and the public needs to be engaged with political leadership for problems to be solved. That's politics.

You don't "save lives" by saying discussion of the healthcare system is off-limits. The two things are quite related to one another!

Sure, you can argue that single-payer healthcare would have been good to solve this crisis and others would certainly argue that it would make things worse, but the debate is totally fruitless because implementing such a system will take years--well after coronavirus is either endemic or wiped out. Thus, even bringing it up makes me question whether you, as an expert, are capable of divorcing your personal bias from your scientific objectivity. I immediately think, "is this person speaking from their objective expertise, or do they look for the data that satisfies their political arguments, and ignoring the rest?"

Scientists should tell people the facts as objectively as possible because that is the purpose of the field and discipline. Leave activism to others, who will use the facts to come to whatever conclusions they can.

There's a separate point you make about what things can and cannot be done in this moment. But that's not the original point made. Most of the "politics" recommendations could in fact be done during this time. Some are even being discussed, short-term.

> by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand

which seems to be their core issue.

Some proposed solutions may become political as you describe, but that doesn't change their utility as proposed solutions to the problem. Whereas it seems like the entire section "Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics" could have been omitted entirely without losing any value related to slowing the spread of COVID-19.

How about experts talk about what's in their experience and then it's the job of open-minded citizens to evaluate it, hopefully with good political leadership from elected officials? Now, it's fair to weigh different public health experts advice, and it's fair to also weigh what experts on economics have to say, so that we can evaluate pros and cons.

But this idea that experts shouldn't talk about healthcare systems that need to be changed in order to better meet the moment because talking about it is "politics"... Sorry, but I don't think it makes sense. You don't solve problems by running away from them. Experts can do more than say that we should wash our hands. In fact, we need them to!

There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership.

If you're making a narrower point about Medicare for All, I'd put that in a different category than most of these political recommendations simply because it would take years to implement. But that's different from arguing that we should ignore the merits of sound public health recommendations on the basis that some people have an ideological aversion to hearing it.

> There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership.

I'm arguing that any such attempt is doomed to failure if it so much as even stirs the beast of partisanship because of how far gone our civic discourse is. I believe most or all of the things you listed can be done quickly by the executive branches of local, state, and federal governments within the bounds of existing legislation. At this point, anything but the most bipartisan bills are impossible to do on a short time frame. The place to be is lobbying governors, political appointees that lead state and federal agencies, and civil servants on the ground. They have unilateral power to actually do something about the situation because emergency powers are very broad (Lincoln used his to suspend habeas corpus!) and justices will be even more hesitant to reign in executive power during a pandemic than whatever immigration state of emergency enabled the travel bans. That way, even judicial branch challenges will slow down partisan interference instead of obstructing the intended goal.

I hope I'm wrong and our legislature does pull it together under threat of an emergency. After all, if JFK getting shut down was enough to end the government shutdown, maybe a pandemic cratering the global economy is more than enough to bring us together, at least for a little bit. However if the goal is to get something done instead of arguing over what to do, I'd look to the executive branch, not legislative. The former is meant to do, the latter is meant to argue.

Edit: I wasn't trying to make a point with medicare for all, just trying to pick out some examples from different sides of the isle (single payer on the left, free market reforms on the right). I'll admit I don't know enough about either group of ideologies to predict which relevant bills would be bipartisan enough to pass quickly but based on how antagonistic partisans have become, I don't think it'd be much since we don't have much time for the normal pork barreling process to work.

So really, here's the comparison: 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. Do I think doctors should be afraid to talk about obesity because it might turn people off listening to their other recommendations?

No, listen to experts.

I am not even from US, we have universal healthcare, but it is even more broken than yours.

Which is outrageous. The manner in which basic societal discussion get short-circuited into being partisan is grotesque.

Though recall that Donald J. Trump promised universal healthcare (several times). Seems like it isn't partisan at all.

Regardless of your political point of view, when you see political statements like this, it should raise serious doubts about the veracity of everything else in the article, regardless of how factual it may be. Even if every fact in it is true, the clearly political motives of the author indicate that they likely cherry picked facts to support their viewpoint. One only need tune into CNN or Fox News to see how political propaganda masquerading as “news” is toxic for society and how “facts” can be warped to support any point of view.