Report from Shanghai

[grzegorz]

Actually we had a pandemic task force whose job it was to keep the country prepared and ready for a pandemic and Trump cut it.

"The threat of pandemic flu the our number one health security concern. We know that it cannot be stopped at the border."

- Dr. Luciana Borio
2018

The day after this speech Trump ended the task force.

[grzegorz]

To be fair and for those outside the States it is worth mentioning that with the exception of those of us who believe in science the right wing media and others in between (like anti-vaxers) poopoo-ed the whole thing as something that happens over there (China) and it wasn't until Trump addressed the nation and states that he was not responsible and a number of other mixed messages including getting tested that the store shelves became empty. Not sure what Iran but like the US the government denied the facts and virus spread. So I do give Trump credit for admitting he was wrong in his own way.

As to hysteria, I will be fine and my family will be fine. But I am concerned about senior citizens and grandparents in my family and society. As a delivery driver I go to an old home with hundreds of people and it wasn't until Friday that they actually started checking my temperature before I just signed a paper saying I wasn't sick for a week. Unfortunately they told me that most people would get upset about signing that paper which I blame on misinformation and a misunderstanding of what is happening.

As to the States (not the Feds) taking responsibility that just ridiculous. Mr. Executive Order could have taken action 2 months ago which is what Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia did and as a result have a very low infection rate. My criticism of Trump is his timing because he was trying avoid a panic to win re-election.

[Finny]

this is a type of "flu"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses for the 2019-2020 season, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the U.S. The CDC reports there have been 54 reported flu-related pediatric deaths this season from Influenza B ...Jan 27, 2020

Kind of amazing when one thinks about it...its just the "flu".

Hate to nitpick, but it's not. Perhaps you mean 'it's just the common cold'. Influenza is not a corona virus.

[windwalker]

Hate to nitpick, but it's not. Perhaps you mean 'it's just the common cold'. Influenza is not a corona virus.

ya I know , but then you have the following

COVID-19 and the flu are both contagious viruses that cause respiratory illness. While public health officials are still learning more about symptoms and severity of COVID-19 vs. the flu, the best way to prevent either illness is to take everyday precautions including frequent hand washing; refraining from touching your eyes, nose and mouth; and staying home if you are sick.

Maybe it’s the name that’s confusing

[grzegorz]

From Rush to Trump people have been trying to say it's just the flu. That happens when you elected a phony reality TV star as president.

As it is he still refuses to meet Pelosi to discuss how to deal with the pandemic.

First he screwed Puerto Rico and now he is screwing the US.

[windwalker]

@ finny

Administered Vaccinations as an army field medic in an infantry Battalion in Germany back in the 70s

Back then it was H1N1.....

H1N1, vaccinations not thoroughly tested knocked out about half the battalion
Some people suffered serious side effects from the vaccination.
The military soon stopped the process after a risk assessment was done.

Developing, testing vaccination against a different viruses is very important.
In this day and age it should take about six months to a year.

hopefully

The historic measures being taken now, will mitigate a lot of what other countires have /are going through.
IMO a lot of the panic is being driven by the news...

The local gov. not really ready to address the problems they were elected to address,
now being made a little more visible by the focus on the virus .

Takes a little time, they'll get it together.



It is interesting reading about what happened having been part of it..

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lost credibility over the ’76 swine flu affair, not only due to about 30 deaths from adverse vaccine reactions?

In ’76, two major networks gathered background on the initial story of an immunization programme in different ways, and that formed differences in attitude on each network that held throughout the entire year.

The network that talked to the political figures in Washington came to the conclusion that the immunization programme must have been a scientifically driven decision.

The network that talked on background to key experts within the CDC, who believed it was a case of “damned if we do, damned if we don’t”, concluded the decision must be political.

We are well beyond that today.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/6/09-040609/en/


The US will get it together,,,takes a little time...

[grzegorz]

Well Poland, for example, is kicking our ass.

1 week after patient zero they have shut the borders, closed schools and churches are screening people and new arrivals are spending 2 weeks in quarantine.

Also a conservative government but they actually believe in science. No, "In a few weeks it'll all go away..."

We are laughing stock of the world.

[windwalker]

In the US bureaucracies can grow to such a size that they inhibit what should be done.

The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses. But when it was sent to labs across the country in the first week of February, it didn’t work as expected. The CDC test correctly identified COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. But in all but a handful of state labs, it falsely flagged the presence of the other viruses in harmless samples.


As a result, until Wednesday the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration only allowed those state labs to use the test — a decision with potentially significant consequences. The lack of a reliable test prevented local officials from taking a crucial first step in coping with a possible outbreak — “surveillance testing” of hundreds of people in possible hotspots. Epidemiologists in other countries have used this sort of testing to track the spread of the disease before large numbers of people turn up at hospitals.

https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc- ... id-19-test

But because the CDC declared the virus a public health emergency, it triggered a set of federal rules that raises the bar for all tests, including those devised by local hospitals.

Helps to explain what happened in the US
The administration had to cut through a lot of the rule sets at the fed level
to speed up the process.

[grzegorz]

All Trump talking points.

Why they didn't make these moves 2 months ago.

Trump in January.

Trump says he trusts China’s Xi on coronavirus and the US has it ‘totally under control’

PUBLISHED WED, JAN 22 20205:01 AM ESTUPDATED WED, JAN 22 20208:02 AM EST

[windwalker]

an overreaction

Bay Area coronavirus updates: All bars and nightclubs must close in California

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ ... 129171.php

He leaves the restaurants citing the need to eat....

and other shopping centers for food, drugs, ect......

must not be.a drinker.....limiting the occupancy would have been a better move.

looks like drinking is not an option

It’s impossible for any alcohol you drink to kill an ongoing sickness. If you’ve got a cold or virus, your bloodstream is affected. Now think back to the 60–80% range. Attempting to reach a blood alcohol content that high would kill you far before you reached it — 0.5% can be deadly. Not to mention, as Gizmodo reports, alcohol will dry out your throat and make it easier for abrasions to form. As a diuretic, alcohol makes it harder to stay hydrated, which is important when recovering from a sickness.

maybe green tea is better....

[Giles]

Also a conservative government but they actually believe in science. No, "In a few weeks it'll all go away..."

We are laughing stock of the world.

Not necessarily, and we in Europe can still distinguish between the USA as a whole and the current administration.

Here's a perspective from Germany that might be of interest:

........................................................................................

The Corona crisis exposes nationalists and populists for what they are: dangerous agitators who don't care about the truth - and therefore make serious mistakes.

When it comes to solving real problems, the truth has a clear practical advantage: it works. An engineer who designs a bridge based on untrue facts will almost certainly create a structure that will later collapse. Truth is extremely useful.
The opposite of truth is "bullshit", as the philosopher Harry Frankfurt called it. Bullshit in this sense means disregarding the truth. This is what distinguishes the bullshitter from the liar: the liar has at least so much respect for the truth that he consciously tells the untruth, says Frankfurt. The bullshitter, on the other hand, simply doesn't care: he just claims something, anything. The main thing is that it is useful to him at that moment.

Unfortunately, bullshit has an enormous advantage over the truth: it often makes for the better story. In the tough competition for attention, the bullshitter regularly wins, especially when it comes to complex issues that most citizens cannot judge for themselves.
This explains the rise of populists in many countries: Bullshitters have a competitive edge over their serious rivals. Their stories are easy to understand and sometimes even entertaining. As long as populist bullshitters are in political opposition, their lack of content may not be particularly noticeable. Even in government, they may be able to hold on for a while in relatively quiet times.
But times are anything but quiet. The Corona crisis will overshadow everything that the Western world has experienced in peacetime. In recent weeks, it looked as if the consequences of the epidemic could be largely overcome in a few weeks' time, as if governments and central banks could possibly do too much of a good thing.

Last week's developments have taught us one thing for the worse: we are dealing with a global epidemic that will lead to a synchronous global recession. This is now inevitable. The only question is how deep it goes, how long it lasts, which states, companies and banks are threatened with bankruptcy in the wake of the corona crash - and what the world, Europe, Germany and our personal lives will look like when the virus is eventually under control.

Bullshitter-in-Chief

US President Donald Trump impressively demonstrates how much damage a bullshitter can cause to the government. First he talked the virus down and dismissed the threat as an invention of his political opponents. Then he announced on television that he had "some kind of idea" that the mortality rates were not as high as experts had assumed. Yeah, who believes experts?
Shortly afterwards, however, he declared a national emergency and announced an entry ban for Europeans (with no previous coordination or communication with the EU) - except for the British and Irish (for reasons of traditional solidarity), a decision he had to revise a little later.

The initial diversionary tactics have led to the USA losing valuable time in medical preparation. The US government's economic policy responses to the looming corona recession are also inadequate. The strategy of small steps is likely to bring even more uncertainty into the economy - and thus further increase the economic problems. It is unlikely that the US Federal Reserve will be able to make a significant contribution to stabilising the difficult economic situation at its meeting on Wednesday with a further substantial cut in interest rates.

Populism, nationalism and incompetence

The heads of state and government of the G7 countries have agreed to meet for a video summit on Monday. There is to be some kind of joint response. After all.
Actually, it should be the G20 now. Unlike the G7, they represent a large part of the world's population and economic output. The Forum was founded in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. At that time, the countries involved cooperated quite effectively.
But a look at today's round shows that populism, national egoism and plain incompetence at government level are now widespread. Two members of the forum, Saudi Prince Salman (currently G20 Chairman) and Russian President Vladimir Putin, are fighting an oil price war in the midst of a global economic crash, further destabilizing the economy.
In Syria, Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is also a participant in the G20, have clashed militarily. In China, a nationalistically powered-up Xi Jinping is ruling with a firm hand and resisting the threat of a loss of confidence. In India, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi leads; international cooperation is not a priority for him. Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro follows Trump's line of unconditional priority of national interests (or whatever they think this to be). It does not look as if the G20 could be easily resuscitated in this situation. Competition instead of cooperation - this thinking threatens to unnecessarily exacerbate the medical and economic problems.

"Whatever it takes"

Here is a hopeful thought: the severity of this crisis exposes nationalists and populists for what they are - dangerous agitators who rely solely on communicative bullshit, do not care about the truth and therefore make serious mistakes. This also applies to other policy areas - from climate policy to financial and migration policy. But in the Corona crisis, the consequences of which are rapid and immediately felt by citizens, political mistakes are immediately punished.

Boring technocrats, on the other hand, show what they can do. In Italy, where in the last election the populists of the five-star movement and the Lega came together to form a majority, the technocratic head of government Giuseppe Conte is fighting the (protracted) epidemic and is considered the man of the hour.

In Germany, the ruling coalition, recently declared dead, has managed to put together an unlimited financial rescue package for the entire economy within a short space of time - a "bazooka" (Finance Minister Olaf Scholz). Health Minister Jens Spahn has gained authority in the matter of epidemic control, despite the confusion resulting from federalism.
"Whatever it takes" - whatever is necessary to keep the shop together: For this sentence, former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi was sharply criticized, especially from Germany. Now this is exactly the line of the German government. It is the right strategy against uncertainty.

In general: the core task of the state is to pacify societies and protect them from major threats. That is why there is a need for professionals at the top of the state and in politics who can do exactly that. Those who do not care about facts will fail in serious times – and in a way that’s obvious to the citizens.

Source: Henrik Müller, Spiegel Magazine, Germany
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unter ... 6979b8dc22

[grzegorz]

Thank you Giles.

Here too they have been preaching that less government is good government and then when the shit hits the fan they blame the government aka. regulations.

I have realized that they were full of shit long ago and at times I wish I could hold my tongue but as I get older (and hopefully wiser) instead of tolerating bullshit I let them know what I think and if I lose a friend I have no fucks to give and simply accept that their values are not my values so why waste my time with their bullshit? Life is too short. I can agree to disagree and understand that everyone has their own opinion but I won't tolerate bullshit.

The irony is, (in the case of the US) I will be fine as will most of people at my age and obviously younger people the majority of whom see through Trump's BS and don't watch FOX news yet senior citizens who do watch FOX and wear MAGA hats or sympathize with some of Trump's agenda are the ones who will be at dying at hundreds a day as they are in Italy which as I understand went from 250 a day to 300 a day and we who oppose all things Trump will still be here.

In fact I think we will be worse off than Italy because we have a huge population of people who don't have healthcare and avoid going to the doctor at all costs knowing that if they do they will owe thousands in hospital bills and of course we have a huge homeless population due to the housing and opoid crisis.

Again thanks for your feedback I think I got what I was seeking on this thread and I can move with my life and go back to enjoying a long fast to prepare my body for anything which may come my way.

[windwalker]

Shortly afterwards, however, he declared a national emergency and announced an entry ban for Europeans (with no previous coordination or communication with the EU) - except for the British and Irish (for reasons of traditional solidarity), a decision he had to revise a little later.

its called sovereignty.
The principle is called incrementalism,
and allows adjustments as needed.

Had Germany and others controlled their own borders sooner
if at all, they would not have the problems they were having now

China iseems to be doing better if the numbers are to be believed.
Had they reacted sooner they may have been able to contain it within the origin site.

[grzegorz]

...

[Trick]

i follow the swedish news and i try to understand what the swedish government are trying to do, perhaps they as grzegorz say the US governmet are all about wanting to be different and special and hope that it works. the swedish state virologist/epidemiologist saying someting as - quarantine meassures are outdated and not proven to be effective ?? as an quite strange example of "meassure"

Not about "trying " to be different ..The US is different from almost any other society in the world

To understand "why" the response from the US gov, is different one must first understand how the gov. is set up.
The states are essentially the governments who are responsible for their own people.
Each state will have different responses based on their governance.

Over the yrs the states have been abdicating their role in governance...
using the "fed" gov more, and more for things that they as a "state" should be addressing..

In some cases working against the fed gov in others working with...

this is a type of "flu"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses for the 2019-2020 season, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the U.S. The CDC reports there have been 54 reported flu-related pediatric deaths this season from Influenza B ...Jan 27, 2020

Kind of amazing when one thinks about it...its just the "flu".

yes you are right. its for many to not see that, that the USA is a union of states, something of what EU is too but not yet fully are. the EU president is for now just someone lurking in the shadows aspiring to come out in the light........Yes, "the flu" is also put in the shadows now because of this new corona virus. corona viruses are said to be much more difficult to handle than "regular" viruses because of its 'corona' which i suppose here mean a though shell like structure, difficult nut to crack ?? thats why it get so much attention.