Our "leaders" likely know little better than we and we barely know what is happening. Under such circumstances it is difficult to know "the right thing" to do.

The public is so naive that they cannot comprehend a monotonically increasing function (e.g., total deaths/cases). The news daily points out "the total number of deaths/cases is increasing &c...", a trivial truism in an epidemic, yet it engenders fear and panic.

Our federal leaders are clearly trying to pretend as hard as possible that the virus is a hoax (and failing).

a good reminder to people to vote in elections based on candidates’ track record and not based on FB/youtube ads

"Who do you want running your country/state when a pandemic hits" is a different axis than most voters have historically decided on. We're finding out that competence matters, not just ideology.

AnimalPuppet says>""Who do you want running your country/state when a pandemic hits" is a different axis than most voters have historically decided on. We're finding out that competence matters, not just ideology."<

I am unconvinced that one should choose leaders based on the likelihood of a pandemic, nor do I believe that one can predict competence under such circumstances given our contentious political environment. Its all a crapshoot and someone has stolen the dice.

competence matters always, not just during pandemic. I hope US will learn the lesson

Luck, yes. Competence, no. There is no "lesson" here unless you mistakenly believe history repeats itself.

I feel like half a month is being generous. They don't have a plan for 3 days in the future, it seems.

They better get one. As they just made their tax issues even bigger.

Here in Austin our city had some decent plans to combat the coronavirus and deal with the shutdown. Unfortunately, Greg Abbott decided to override local leadership across the state and force reopening. Now our state leadership is having a slapfight over mask requirements being a violation of our state constitution while our medical groups are begging us to stay home or wear masks [1].

So if you ever wanted to see an example of what a place is going to look like without any leadership versus the virus, Texas is the place to watch.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv4kCwo1JMc