I don't take much solace in a surveillance state being a way out of this either, besides, what use is contact tracing for those commuting on crowded underground trains every day?

Contact tracing works by pulling sick people out of circulation. So when you stop a sick person from getting on the train, you eliminate the potential infections that would have come with their journey.

(1) You require competent coordination from federal government to coordinate effective response.

(2) Jared Kusher would not be one of the greatest minds of his generation. It's incomprehensible that person who is in charge of Middle East peace can't fix simple pandemic.

The data from the Roosevelt will probably put a damper on the idea of eradication in Australia and testing even 10% of the population in a small time frame is just not possible.

There are better arguments to be had, and the story linked isn't one of them.

While I thought this was about COVID-19 before clicking, I assumed it would use WWI as an example of how experts and those in charge could get predictions of how long something would take really, really wrong, and was kind of disappointed to not see any mention of that in there.

https://www.historynet.com/over-by-christmas.htm

"Experts and those in charge" and "public journalists and propaganda" are two distinct categories of people.

Hmm, perhaps this was an unpopular opinion, because the entire German military strategy depended on an extraordinarily fast decisive victory in France [1]. Of course, there were contingencies based on whether Russia was allied with France, or netural. Once the Schlieffen Plan fell apart, then the Germans knew it would be a long two-front war, but they didn't seem to suspect that in the first several weeks, from what I've read

Though I'll have to check out the book you mentioned, Pandora's Box.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan

I had difficulty hunting down exactly who thought it would be over quickly, although from what I remember from watching/reading about the war (for example I know it was talked about in at least one video of The Great War Youtube series), there were military and political leaders (non-German) that did seem to think they could end the war quickly.

The extreme differences in competencies between nations in dealing with the crisis, with the US near the bottom of the pack. Which brings up the possibility that the US's decline, apparent to much of the world even before the witless 45's comic ascendancy, accelerates apace, with SARS-CoV-2 delivering the coup de grace.

His blogging style combined with outright deleting the comments from people he disagrees with, or those who don't share his political beliefs makes it increasingly less likely I will read his next published book.

- (I predict the USA will merrily go its own way and faceplant, unless y'all elect a competent next POTUS. Or VPOTUS, insofar as Biden appears to be past it and Pence is incompetent at anything but arse-licking.)

- Extra lulz in the UK: the Prime Minister is out of hospital but hasn't been seen since Monday—my guess is he's hors de combat for at least another two weeks. A quarter of the senior ministers of state are rabid objectivists who actively hate the poor and want them to die, and a majority of the cabinet are still going full steam ahead for a no-deal Brexit transition on January 31st, at which point the UK economy shrinks another 8% overnight.

Really unnecessary. Maybe there are interesting thoughts in this blog post, but adding stuff like this doesn't lend me to take you seriously.

Though I agree this article is BS. Where are your references man? where is your data?

It’s ironic that so many authors who hate Ayn Rand fall into exactly the same trap as her: start with their own politics then attempt to construct a story around it in which it saves the day/country/entire universe.

He’s written some good books in the past but a lot of his recent stuff has very obviously just been churned out to meet a deadline or contract for x number of books.

Seems to be a trend recently, authors have abandoned the classic trilogy for something more open-ended but then run out of steam after book 4 and have nowhere to go. GRRM being the highest profile example but it’s an industry-wide phenomenon.

I agree $1200 for 10 weeks is a bit low, but $1200 per week is really high and maybe a bit excessive? Can somebody get Andrew Yang back on the case?

This is all assuming the crisis is managed well enough that it actually ends in 8 weeks. Part of that is communicating the plan so people don't think they are choosing a risk of sickness over certain famine. Someone like Newsom or Cuomo needs to do a presser addressing how they are making sure the lockdown does not ruin you if you're living paycheck to paycheck.

It further assumes that a) enough cereal, pasta, and canned whatever is available to purchase for everyone and b) that everyone is easily able to plan for exactly enough of all of it to get them through.

I do not find any of these assumptions to be terribly credible.