Re:Operation Warp Speed: A new model for industrial policy
by Yoric on Monday January 31, 2022 @03:07AM
(#30145680)
> Yeah, that's false. [1] He used the word "xenophobia" in direct response to the border closures.
I've watched the debate on this specific quote from Europe. I don't know how it was meant but I read it as "Please stop calling this the Chinese virus" (or something such, I don't remember the exact terminology adopted by Trump at the time).
Seen from Europe, the way that Trump called it was indeed... surprising. Everybody else (in our media) called it "the coronavirus" or "covid". I'll take your word that everybody was using that term in the US, I don't follow CNN or NPR.
Took me some time to realize why US Conservatives understood that tweet as branding closing travel from China as racist.
Now, I remember that closing travel from China was very much criticized, but for other reasons:
- the way it was implemented was extremely porous (you only needed to change plane anywhere on the way and you could get into the US), so this travel ban was guaranteed to have very little impact on circulation of the disease;
- actual policy didn't block travel from China, as US citizens (and I think several other countries, if my memory serves) could take a plane from China to the US.
- numbers from China closing internal travel showed that it had delayed the epidemic by ~24h, if my memory serves, so epidemiologists kept warning that it wouldn't solve anything but were drowned in the media circus;
- epidemiologists were begging for quarantines to be implemented – they weren't.
In other words, that travel ban was basically security theater.
> Calling vaccines "rushed" is anti-vaccination disinformation.
Have to agree with you on that one. Fortunately, I believe that this didn't last.
I've watched the debate on this specific quote from Europe. I don't know how it was meant but I read it as "Please stop calling this the Chinese virus" (or something such, I don't remember the exact terminology adopted by Trump at the time).
Seen from Europe, the way that Trump called it was indeed... surprising. Everybody else (in our media) called it "the coronavirus" or "covid". I'll take your word that everybody was using that term in the US, I don't follow CNN or NPR.
Took me some time to realize why US Conservatives understood that tweet as branding closing travel from China as racist.
Now, I remember that closing travel from China was very much criticized, but for other reasons:
- the way it was implemented was extremely porous (you only needed to change plane anywhere on the way and you could get into the US), so this travel ban was guaranteed to have very little impact on circulation of the disease;
- actual policy didn't block travel from China, as US citizens (and I think several other countries, if my memory serves) could take a plane from China to the US.
- numbers from China closing internal travel showed that it had delayed the epidemic by ~24h, if my memory serves, so epidemiologists kept warning that it wouldn't solve anything but were drowned in the media circus;
- epidemiologists were begging for quarantines to be implemented – they weren't.
In other words, that travel ban was basically security theater.
> Calling vaccines "rushed" is anti-vaccination disinformation.
Have to agree with you on that one. Fortunately, I believe that this didn't last.