The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[MKSheppard]

Illinois will do the same starting Tuesday (Bars and Restaurants).

...

Jaerius will love this:

Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches massive $700 billion quantitative easing program

Also:

The Fed also cut reserve requirement ratios for thousands of banks to zero.

Better go cash your tax refunds now while you can....

[MKSheppard]

From Twitter:

#update one of the positive cases is the deputy manager of the central lab that conducts the #COVID19 Testings in #Israel.
Yonat Friling (@Foxyonat) March 15, 2020

Worrying news from Italy's epicenter in Bergamo: Hospitals have reached full capacity, a burial every half-hour, crematorium works 24 hours a day https://t.co/h6FebDO97Y #Covid19

Gregor Peter (@L0gg0l) March 14, 2020

From Forums:

Walmart just canceled March inventory dates.

That’s kind of a big deal.

My girlfriend is a civil service meterologist for the USAF at Scott AFB, IL.

She got a call earlier today from her squadron's director of operations (DO... an Air Force Major) saying that Scott AFB is only going to be open to mission essential personnel starting tomorrow, Monday March 16th, 2020 for two weeks all the way up to 60 days.

Around media:

https://patch.com/new-jersey/oceancity/ ... -new-cases

NEW JERSEY – Gov. Phil Murphy said on Sunday that New Jersey is considering a curfew now that the number of coronavirus cases has risen to 98, and two people have died. Thirty-one new cases were announced on Sunday.

Murphy also said New Jersey is still not ready for a statewide shutdown of schools, but he said he will likely take that action on Monday "with 99 percent certainty." Hundreds of districts have already closed. Read more: Coronavirus NJ School Closures: Here's The Latest (UPDATED)

Murphy said a curfew is "something we're looking at very seriously." As for details on a possible curfew and state school shutdown, Murphy told reporters during a 2 p.m conference call: "Stay tuned tomorrow." Read more: NJ Coronavirus Updates: Here's What You Need To Know

"It's just not time to panic," Murphy said.

A statewide curfew would follow similar steps that several communities have already taken, including Hoboken, Asbury Park and Teaneck, where restaurants and bars have to close at a certain hour.

[MKSheppard]

So in Tennessee, some guys got together and bought up like all of the hand sanitizer for miles around.

https://www.wsmv.com/news/tn-brothers-a ... 4ff68.html

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) – The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has issued a stop and desist against two Tennessee men.

A release says two brothers, identified as Matt and Noah Colvin of Hixson, TN bought lots of medical goods and products and have tried to price gouge them. The Attorney General’s Office has reason to believe the brothers bought the medical goods and products at stores in both Tennessee and Kentucky.

“We will not tolerate price gouging in this time of exceptional need, and we will take aggressive action to stop it,” said Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III. “During this pandemic, we ask that you report suspicious activity to the Division of Consumer Affairs and refrain from threatening or hostile communication with individuals or businesses you may suspect are price gouging. Our team will review complaints closely and we are prepared to act to protect Tennesseans.”

On Thursday, Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency in Tennessee as the coronavirus (COVID-19) began to spread. The declaration of a state of emergency triggers Tennessee’s anti-price gouging law that prohibits vendors from charging too much during a crisis tied to a state of emergency.

Under the way, the Attorney General’s Office can stop price gouging and may seek refunds for customers. The court can also impose civil punishments against price gougers for every violation.

The law also applied to all levels of the supply chain, stemming from the manufacturer all the way to the distributor and the retailer.

“This is a time where we have to focus on helping our neighbors, not profiting from them,” said Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. “We’re not going to tolerate selfish actions that put the health of Kentuckians at risk, and I’m grateful for Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s partnership in bringing an end to this harmful scheme.”

UPDATE: Tennessee Attorney General investigating Hixson brothers who bought 18,000 bottles of sanitizer hoping to profit on the COVID-19 demand

PREVIOUS STORY: A Hixson man is dominating headlines after the New York Times wrote about Matt Colvin, who stockpiled goods amid the coronavirus outbreak.

After the first COVID-19 death in the United States, Colvin went state-to state clearing out sanitizer shelves.

He now sits with nearly 18,000 unused bottles in his home and storage unit while people in the Tennessee Valley struggle to find one.

"The bulk of it was purchased just driving around to retail stores in the Chattanooga area," said Colvin.

Colvin bought the sanitizer with the intention of selling them for a profit on Amazon before they took his listings down. He says he felt a sense of panic when he was notified.

"Oh crap, is the PG way to say it," Colvin told Channel 3.

[Zaune]

Doesn't work that way. If you double team people; you just end up with sleepy driver B replacing Sleepy driver A, since Driver B was in the seat next to the driver.

Same issue the railroads face with their locomotive crews.

Better way would be to establish shift changes at set mileposts.

Fair, but don't the majority of long-haul trucks have at least a basic sleeper cab? That wouldn't work so well for smaller trucks for last-mile deliveries but they're not going to have as much of a driver shortage; it's not hard to find people licensed to drive a box-truck or a transit van.

[TimothyC]

Ohio has:

Ordered all restaurants to close seating allowing for take/carry-out, delivery, & drive-thru service (meaning the booze barn is still open).

All people under medical quarantine or from a place of work closed for the duration of the crisis will be considered eligible for state unemployment. The job-seeking requirement is waved for the duration, and benefits start week one, not week two.

School closures will be done in such a way as to continue to provide meal services to their communities. In many low-income districts (both urban and rural), the school breakfast/lunch programs are critical in meeting the nutritional needs of the kids. Preserving this is a priority. The current three week closure time is likely to be extended.

Notice that Adult day-care closures are coming. So are likely closures of most child care facilities in the coming weeks, and parents are asked to start the planning now.

The State leadership is calling on people to look out for their neighbors who might need help.

[aerius]

Jaerius will love this:

Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches massive $700 billion quantitative easing program

Also:

The Fed also cut reserve requirement ratios for thousands of banks to zero.

Better go cash your tax refunds now while you can....

Can you say "bank run"? Also, "bank holiday". And "FDIC Fridays are back".
There's already reports that a bunch of banks in Manhattan and the Hamptons are running low on bills since all the rich assholes are yanking out as much cash as they can.

[Broomstick]

An administration run by sensible people would mandate that haulage firms moving medical supplies etc double-crew their trucks instead, so they can keep going almost round the clock without running the risk of drivers falling asleep at the wheel and causing a wreck.

Doesn't work that way. If you double team people; you just end up with sleepy driver B replacing Sleepy driver A, since Driver B was in the seat next to the driver.

There are truck cabs with actual beds in them. Of course, the guy trying to sleep in the bed had to be strapped in will still get jounced around. According to truckers I know, it's not very restful.

Better way would be to establish shift changes at set mileposts.

There's a lot of merit to that idea.

[Broomstick]

Can you say "bank run"? Also, "bank holiday". And "FDIC Fridays are back".
There's already reports that a bunch of banks in Manhattan and the Hamptons are running low on bills since all the rich assholes are yanking out as much cash as they can.

Holy shit - we haven't had a rash of bank runs in the US since the Great Depression!

That must be ATM's being plundered - it's Sunday, back lobbies aren't open.

[MKSheppard]

CDC now recommends that, for the next 8 weeks, events with more than 50 people are canceled throughout the U.S.

BNO Newsroom BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) March 15, 2020

[MKSheppard]

Claim on Twitter, unverified:

https://twitter.com/scott_mintzer/statu ... wsrc%5Etfw

I’ve been in touch with an intensivist at a Seattle hospital with one of the highest numbers of COVID-19 admissions in the US.

They’ve been too exhausted to post much themselves, so I am conveying some of what I’ve been told, which is… eye-opening. To say the least.

The Seattle situation isn’t quite at Lombardy levels yet… but it’s getting there.

First of all regarding the clinicians. None are sleeping more than a couple hrs a night. Everyone is utterly exhausted. My colleague has seen so many people die as to have become totally numb.

It’s also nearing Status Lombardosus with regard to resources. They haven’t run out of ventilators (yet), but every single ICU bed in Seattle metro is full. And the onslaught shows no signs of stopping. They’ve run out of other things as well.

My colleague saw a patient who had a half-full syringe left attached to her IV line. The syringe had an antibiotic. First thought was that this was some gross nursing error.

It turned out not to be a mistake at all, but rather an accomodation to dire circumstances.

It was a drug that was supposed to be infused over hours. But there were no IV pumps available. So the nurse had given some of it, left the syringe attached, and planned to come by to give more a little later, and then finish it.

Here in the wealthiest country in the world.

They are also at the point of having to ration some kinds of care. For the most severely ill patients, there’s a machine called ECMO — extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — which is basically like an external lung that oxygenates blood when the patient’s lungs won’t work.

Seattle has 12 machines, which is less than what’s needed. So a central committee there is deciding: you can’t go on ECMO if you're >40 yrs old, if you have another organ system failing, or… incredibly… if your BMI is>25. Turns out these are all major poor prognostic signs.

(Note: that doesn’t mean that anybody with a BMI >25 is in trouble if they get COVID. Just that if you’re critically ill from it, that is apparently a poor prognostic marker. Not sure anybody has a clear idea why.)

Meanwhile the combo of exhausted health care workers & no open ICU beds has made a very hazardous health situation for the entire region. If you have a stroke, a heart attack, etc., it will be hard to get the best care. There are patients in ERs for hours waiting for ICU beds.

My colleague told me something else remarkable: COVID patients are not dying of lung disease.

This seems to be a very distinct syndrome, and in severe cases the pneumonia leads to ARDS, a condition in which the lungs leak fluid & the patient can’t breathe w/out a ventilator.

But apparently the ARDS is not too severe, and they can manage people through that part of it.

Instead, after several days, the virus suddenly attacks the heart, causing it to precipitously fail. The myocarditis phase is savage and kills people within a day or two.

My colleague has seen a number of cases in which multiple family members were in the hospital and critically ill. Maybe this means there’s some genetic predisposition, but it’s probably too soon to say.

And then there’s the fear that comes with an epidemic. Apparently people shopping wearing the hospital’s logo on their clothing have been asked to leave the store. And some who work in the hospital have been asked to move out of their apartment buildings for a few months.

Restaurants have refused food delivery, with some of them refusing to even leave the food on the ground outside. The hospital had to send the medics to go pick it up. One doc’s housekeeper refused to come clean for her.

In short, this is a nightmare, teetering on the precipice of even worse destruction. The goal of every American city should be to avoid becoming the next Seattle.

Everyone needs to understand not just how bad this could get, but HOW BAD THIS ALREADY IS in one major US city.

P.S. This isn’t my first hand info.

Obviously the colleague who told me this has no reason to make stuff up. But on basic journalistic principles I would welcome anyone who can corroborate this picture.

##############

UPDATE: I have been contacted by a couple of people who say that this thread doesn’t not entirely paint an accurate picture of the whole Seattle area situation.

I do not want to delete and leave no trail, but anyone there other info should by all means report what’s going on.

[The Romulan Republic]

Can't copy the whole article for some reason, but Germany confirms that Trump tried to buy up the German firm working on a coronavirus vaccine, to develop it for US use only:

https://politico.eu/article/germany-con ... ccine/amp/

German politicians are rightly pissed:

"The American regime has committed an extremely unfriendly act," said Social Democrat MP Karl Lauterbach

I won't comment further, because anything I could say about Donald Trump right now would likely violate both board rules and Federal law.

[MKSheppard]

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... id-19.html

Guidance as of 3/15/2020

Large events and mass gatherings can contribute to the spread of COVID-19 in the United States via travelers who attend these events and introduce the virus to new communities. Examples of large events and mass gatherings include conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events, weddings, and other types of assemblies. These events can be planned not only by organizations and communities but also by individuals.

Therefore, CDC, in accordance with its guidance for large events and mass gatherings, recommends that for the next 8 weeks, organizers (whether groups or individuals) cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States.

Events of any size should only be continued if they can be carried out with adherence to guidelines for protecting vulnerable populations, hand hygiene, and social distancing. When feasible, organizers could modify events to be virtual.

This recommendation does not apply to the day to day operation of organizations such as schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses. This recommendation is made in an attempt to reduce introduction of the virus into new communities and to slow the spread of infection in communities already affected by the virus. This recommendation is not intended to supersede the advice of local public health officials.

[mr friendly guy]

The health department in Western Australia are now telling doctors all tests for covid are to be ordered via covid clinics and not by GPs. There are just not enough kits for the whole of Australia. We also have strict criteria on who to test.

https://mcusercontent.com/c973db7b85e56 ... 4FINAL.pdf

https://mcusercontent.com/c973db7b85e56 ... VID_19.pdf

Shit, maybe we should buy kits from China. I hear they have a new super dooper kit which tests from drops of blood. Not sure how accurate it is though.

[Col. Crackpot]

Jaerius will love this:

Federal Reserve cuts rates to zero and launches massive $700 billion quantitative easing program

Also:

The Fed also cut reserve requirement ratios for thousands of banks to zero.

Better go cash your tax refunds now while you can....

Can you say "bank run"? Also, "bank holiday". And "FDIC Fridays are back".
There's already reports that a bunch of banks in Manhattan and the Hamptons are running low on bills since all the rich assholes are yanking out as much cash as they can.

It’s been busy but not excessive. We have been going through more cash than normal but I wouldn’t call it a run. At least at my bank. Though we do have to manage some expectations about what denominations are available, there is plenty of cash.

[Zaune]

Reddit informs me that there's also been a surge of interest in amateur radio licensing, "in case of emergency". Unless anyone dying of this thing has been observed standing back up and lurching around trying to eat people's brains I'm not sure why people think this will help with this particular SHTF scenario, but I suspect the hobby's going to need all the fresh blood it can get.

[The Romulan Republic]

Reddit informs me that there's also been a surge of interest in amateur radio licensing, "in case of emergency". Unless anyone dying of this thing has been observed standing back up and lurching around trying to eat people's brains I'm not sure why people think this will help with this particular SHTF scenario, but I suspect the hobby's going to need all the fresh blood it can get.

Speaking of Reddit, r/legaladvice is full of people asking if they can be fired for staying home due to coronavirus, either as a precaution or in response to possible exposure/official recommendations, because their jobs won't let them take time off. As well as people asking if they will get in trouble for skipping jury duty due to fear of coronavirus. The answer to both questions generally being some variant of "yes".

Just saw one post where someone said their boss had been potentially exposed, but they were told not to tell other coworkers.

[The Romulan Republic]

Ohio has:

Ordered all restaurants to close seating allowing for take/carry-out, delivery, & drive-thru service (meaning the booze barn is still open).

All people under medical quarantine or from a place of work closed for the duration of the crisis will be considered eligible for state unemployment. The job-seeking requirement is waved for the duration, and benefits start week one, not week two.

School closures will be done in such a way as to continue to provide meal services to their communities. In many low-income districts (both urban and rural), the school breakfast/lunch programs are critical in meeting the nutritional needs of the kids. Preserving this is a priority. The current three week closure time is likely to be extended.

Notice that Adult day-care closures are coming. So are likely closures of most child care facilities in the coming weeks, and parents are asked to start the planning now.

The State leadership is calling on people to look out for their neighbors who might need help.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see a red state government engaging in such proactive measures to help the poor and unemployed.

Nothing like a crisis to force people to confront reality.

[bilateralrope]

New Zealand had advised canceling of any event with more than 500 people

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says gatherings of 500 or more people should be cancelled because of fears of coronavirus.

This covered indoor and outdoor events, but not schools or universities, who would get more specific advice from the Ministry of Education.

More guidelines from ministers will follow for smaller events, such as weddings, and smaller venues such as gyms, movie theatres or places of worship.

Within the next month, about 107 events around the country were expecting more than 1000 attendees, she said. "Our job as a Government is to limit the potential spread of the virus to ensure the health of New Zealanders."

These would not be the only requirements on gatherings. Ardern said social distancing would be "the new normal" and people who hosted events such as weddings would also see detailed guidelines later in the week about how to host smaller events safely.

Oh and the person who was found to be infected in Wellington had travelled from Australia while awaiting his test results.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2 ... sk/608023/

On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed into Tokyo Bay with two steamships and two sailing vessels under his command. He landed a squadron of heavily armed sailors and marines; he moved one of the ships ostentatiously up the harbor, so that more people could see it. He delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore demanding that the Japanese open up their ports to American trade. As they left, Perry’s fleets fired their guns into the ether. In the port, people were terrified: “It sounded like distant thunder,” a contemporary diarist wrote at the time, “and the mountains echoed back the noise of the shots. This was so formidable that the people in Edo [modern Tokyo] were fearful.”

But the noise was not the only thing that frightened the Japanese. The Perry expedition famously convinced them that their political system was incapable of coping with new kinds of threats. Secure in their island homeland, the rulers of Japan had been convinced for decades of their cultural superiority. Japan was unique, special, the homeland of the gods. “Japan’s position, at the vertex of the earth, makes it the standard for the nations of the world,” the nationalist thinker Aizawa Seishisai wrote nearly three decades before Perry’s arrival. But the steamships and the guns changed all that. Suddenly, the Japanese realized that their culture, their political system, and their technology were out of date. Their samurai-warrior leaders and honor culture were not able to compete in a world dominated by science.

The coronavirus pandemic is in its early days. But the scale and force of the economic and medical crisis that is about to hit the United States may turn out to be as formidable as Perry’s famous voyage was. Two weeks ago—it already seems like an infinity—I was in Italy, writing about the first signs of the virus. Epidemics, I wrote, “have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.” This one has already done so, and with terrifying speed. What it reveals about the United States—not just this administration, but also our health-care system, our bureaucracy, our political system itself—should make Americans as fearful as the Japanese who heard the “distant thunder” of Perry’s guns.

Not everybody has yet realized this, and indeed, it will take some time, just as it has taken time for the nature of the virus to sink in. At the moment, many Americans are still convinced that, even in this crisis, our society is more capable than others. Quite a lot was written about the terrifying and reckless behavior of the authorities in Wuhan, China, who initially threatened doctors who began posting information about the new virus, forcing them into silence.

On the very day that one of those doctors, Li Wenliang, contracted the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a statement declaring,“So far no infection [has been] found among medical staff, no proof of human-to-human transmission.” Only three weeks after the initial reports were posted did authorities begin to take the spread of the disease seriously, confirming that human-to-human transmission had in fact occurred. And only three days later did the lockdown of the city, and eventually the entire province, actually begin.

This story has been told repeatedly—and correctly—as an illustration of what’s wrong with the Chinese system: The secrecy and mania for control inside the Communist Party lost the government many days during which it could have put a better plan into place. But many of those recounting China’s missteps have become just a little bit too smug.

The United States also had an early warning of the new virus—but it, too, suppressed that information. In late January, just as instances of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, began to appear in the United States, an infectious-disease specialist in Seattle, Helen Y. Chu, realized that she had a way to monitor its presence. She had been collecting nasal swabs from people in and around Seattle as part of a flu study, and proposed checking them for the new virus. State and federal officials rejected that idea, citing privacy concerns and throwing up bureaucratic obstacles related to lab licenses.

Finally, at the end of February, Chu could stand the intransigence no longer. Her lab performed some tests and found the coronavirus in a local teenager who had not traveled overseas. That meant the disease was already spreading in the Seattle region among people who had never been abroad. If Chu had found this information a month earlier, lives might have been saved and the spread of the disease might have slowed—but even after the urgency of her work became evident, her lab was told to stop testing.

Chu was not threatened by the government, like Li had been in Wuhan. But she was just as effectively silenced by a rule-bound bureaucracy that was insufficiently worried about the pandemic—and by officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who may even have felt political pressure not to take this disease as seriously as they should.

For Chu was not alone. We all now know that COVID-19 diagnostic tests are in scarce supply. South Korea, which has had exactly the same amount of time as the U.S. to prepare, is capable of administering 10,000 tests every day. The United States, with a population more than six times larger, had only tested about 10,000 people in total as of Friday. Vietnam, a poor country, has tested more people than the United States. During congressional testimony on Thursday, Anthony Fauci, the most distinguished infectious-disease doctor in the nation, described the American testing system as “failing.” “The idea of anybody getting [tested] easily the way people in other countries are doing it? We’re not set up for that,” he said. “Do I think we should be? Yes, but we’re not.”

And why not? Once again, no officials from the Chinese Communist Party instructed anyone in the United States not to carry out testing. Nobody prevented American public officials from ordering the immediate production of a massive number of tests. Nevertheless, they did not. We don’t know all the details yet, but one element of the situation cannot be denied: The president himself did not want the disease talked of too widely, did not want knowledge of it to spread, and, above all, did not want the numbers of those infected to appear too high. He said so himself, while explaining why he didn’t want a cruise ship full of infected Americans to dock in California. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

Donald Trump, just like the officials in Wuhan, was concerned about the numbers—the optics of how a pandemic looks. And everybody around him knew it. There are some indications that Alex Azar, the former pharmaceutical-industry executive and lobbyist who heads the Department of Health and Human Services, was not keen on telling the president things he did not want to hear. Here is how Dan Diamond, a Politico reporter who writes about health policy, delicately described the problem in a radio interview: “My understanding is [that Azar] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear—the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.”

Once again: Nobody threatened Azar. But fear of offending the president may have led him to hesitate to push for aggressive testing nevertheless.

Without the threats and violence of the Chinese system, in other words, we have the same results: scientists not allowed to do their job; public-health officials not pushing for aggressive testing; preparedness delayed, all because too many people feared that it might damage the political prospects of the leader. I am not writing this in order to praise Chinese communism—far from it. I am writing this so that Americans understand that our government is producing some of the same outcomes as Chinese communism. This means that our political system is in far, far worse shape than we have hitherto understood.

What if it turns out, as it almost certainly will, that other nations are far better than we are at coping with this kind of catastrophe? Look at Singapore, which immediately created an app that could physically track everyone who was quarantined, and that energetically tracked down all the contacts of everyone identified to have the disease. Look at South Korea, with its proven testing ability. Look at Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to speak honestly and openly about the disease—she predicted that 70 percent of Germans would get it—and yet did not crash the markets.

The United States, long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technologically advanced society in the world, is about to be proved an unclothed emperor. When human life is in peril, we are not as good as Singapore, as South Korea, as Germany. And the problem is not that we are behind technologically, as the Japanese were in 1853. The problem is that American bureaucracies, and the antiquated, hidebound, unloved federal government of which they are part, are no longer up to the job of coping with the kinds of challenges that face us in the 21st century. Global pandemics, cyberwarfare, information warfare—these are threats that require highly motivated, highly educated bureaucrats; a national health-care system that covers the entire population; public schools that train students to think both deeply and flexibly; and much more.

The failures of the moment can be partly ascribed to the loyalty culture that Trump himself has spent three years building in Washington. Only two weeks ago, he named his 29-year-old former bodyguard, a man who was previously fired from the White House for financial shenanigans, to head up a new personnel-vetting team. Its role is to ensure that only people certifiably loyal are allowed to work for the president. Trump also fired, ostentatiously, the officials who testified honestly during the impeachment hearings, an action that sends a signal to others about the danger of truth-telling.

These are only the most recent manifestations of an autocratic style that has been described, over and over again, by many people. And now we see why, exactly, that style is so dangerous, and why previous American presidents, of both political parties, have operated much differently. Within a loyalty cult, no one will tell the president that starting widespread emergency testing would be prudent, because anyone who does is at risk of losing the president’s favor, even of being fired. Not that it matters, because Trump has very few truth-tellers around him anymore. The kinds of people who would dare make the president angry have left the upper ranks of the Cabinet and the bureaucracy already.

But some of what we are seeing is unrelated to Trump. American dysfunction is also the result of our bifurcated health-care system, which is both the best in the world and the worst in the world, and is simply not geared up for any kind of collective national response. The present crisis is the result of decades of underinvestment in civil service, of undervaluing bureaucracy in public health and other areas, and, above all, of underrating the value of long-term planning.

Back from 2001 to 2003, I wrote multiple editorials for The Washington Post about biological warfare and pandemic preparedness—issues that were at the top of everyone’s agenda in the wake of 9/11 and the brief anthrax scare. At the time, some very big investments were made into precisely those issues, especially into scientific research. We will now benefit from them. But in recent years, the subjects fell out of the news. Senators, among them the vaunted Republican moderate Susan Collins of Maine, knocked “pandemic preparedness” out of spending bills. New flu epidemics didn’t scare people enough. More recently, Trump eliminated the officials responsible for international health from the National Security Council because this kind of subject didn’t interest him—or very many other people in Washington, really.

As a nation, we are not good at long-term planning, and no wonder: Our political system insists that every president be allowed to appoint thousands of new officials, including the kinds of officials who think about pandemics. Why is that necessary? Why can’t expertise be allowed to accumulate at the highest levels of agencies such as the CDC? I’ve written before about the problem of discontinuity in foreign policy: New presidents arrive and think they can have a “reset” with other nations, as if other nations are going to forget everything that happened before their arrival—as if we can cheerfully start all relationships from scratch. But the same is true on health, the environment, and other policy issues. Of course there should be new Cabinet members every four or eight years. But should all their deputies change? And their deputies’ deputies? And their deputies’ deputies’ deputies? Because that’s often how it works right now.

All of this happens on top of all the other familiar pathologies: the profound polarization; the merger of politics and entertainment; the loss of faith in democratic institutions; the blind eyes turned to corruption, white-collar crime, and money laundering; the growth of inequality; the conversion of social media and a part of the news media into for-profit vectors of disinformation. These are all part of the deep background to this crisis too.

The question, of course, is whether this crisis will shock us enough to change our ways. The Japanese did eventually react to Commodore Perry’s squadron of ships with something more than fear. They stopped talking about themselves as the vertex of the Earth. They overhauled their education system. They adopted Western scientific methods, reorganized their state, and created a modern bureaucracy. This massive change, known as the Meiji Restoration, is what brought Japan, for better or for worse, into the modern world. Naturally, the old samurai-warrior class fought back against it, bitterly and angrily.

But by then the new threat was so obvious that enough people got it, enough people understood that a national mobilization was necessary, enough people understood that things could not go on that way indefinitely. Could it happen here, too?

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

[mr friendly guy]

OMG, a NYT reporter actually said things accurately. Hell has frozen over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3gCbke ... =emb_title

[ray245]

But by then the new threat was so obvious that enough people got it, enough people understood that a national mobilization was necessary, enough people understood that things could not go on that way indefinitely. Could it happen here, too?

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

[/quote]

Democracy will start breaking down when the people think they are better than the experts. Once democracy devolve into a self-validation exercise, its utilitarian function will become limited.

[madd0ct0r]

But by then the new threat was so obvious that enough people got it, enough people understood that a national mobilization was necessary, enough people understood that things could not go on that way indefinitely. Could it happen here, too?

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Democracy will start breaking down when the people think they are better than the experts. Once democracy devolve into a self-validation exercise, its utilitarian function will become limited.
[/quote]

pedantically, han't democrary always ran on the asusmption that the wisdom of the masses outweighs a few experts? It's kinda the point.

[loomer]

pedantically, han't democrary always ran on the asusmption that the wisdom of the masses outweighs a few experts? It's kinda the point.

It's not, and has never been, that simple. Democracy and expert opinions are not incompatible, and you can even have technocratic democracies without any real difficulty.

[ray245]

pedantically, han't democrary always ran on the asusmption that the wisdom of the masses outweighs a few experts? It's kinda the point.

Nope, it can function as long as there is public trust in the experts. The issue is we've experienced a rupture in that public trust over the past few years, as populists seek to gain power by undermining and exploiting the connection between experts and the public.

[mr friendly guy]

Serbia now declares a state of emergency. The President of Serbia slamming the European union for their help. But its not the EU's fault, it seems they can't even support their own member states properly. Since I am "supposed" to talk about the politics of this, I am going to suggest Serbia might want to rethink joining the EU.

https://balkaninsight.com/2020/03/16/se ... inas-help/

Speech is available on twitter, with translations, which is similar to what the above article states

https://twitter.com/laki_mn/status/1239 ... 66049?s=09

The grammar is a bit off when translating to English, so I decided to correct it myself.

By now, you all understood, that great internationall solidarity, actually, does not exist.

European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper.

Today, I dispatched a special letter, because we have a huge expectation and lot of hope we have, at the only ones that can help us in this hard situation is the People's Republic of China.

I dispatched a letter to the President Xi where for the first time, on several occasions officially, in a well known manner to the Chinese, I addressed him not only as a dear friend, but as a brother, not just myu personal, but a friend and brother of this country.

As of today, as the know, we can not import goods, according to resolution of EU. Ursula von der Leyen stated a moment ago. We are not eligible to import medical equipment from the EU. There is not enough for them.

I would jump out of my skin! That resolution was made by people that lectured us here that we are not supposed to purchase goods from China. People from around Europe that wanted us to adjust the terms of tenders in a way that price should not be the primary condition as theirs (EU) goods is supposedly more much better quality.

Thus we have to buy everything from them. When they needed Serbian money, then it was like, make tenders, and adopt tender conditions so the European companies could get Serbian money.

When there is torment and pain, then the Serbian money is no good. As if we asked for anything free of charge.

I believe in brother and friend of mine, Xi Jinping and I believe in Chinese help. The only country that can help us is China. For the rest of them, thanks for nothing. Trust me that I will find a way to thank them.

What I have spoken today are the words of one president. Nice ones and polite.

1. Even as a Chinese person, the sucking up seems a bit cringe inducing. Its part of diplomatic speech I guess.

2. I LOL when he slammed the EU. I wouldn't be surprised if the EU did lecture Serbia not to buy Chinese goods. They certainly lecture African nations about dealing with China like some paternalistic parent so very plausible.

3. China if you're listening, please, please supply Serbia with medical supplies. Not just to give the middle finger to the EU, which is no doubt what Western media will spin it as (which I gave an example of in the old thread), but mainly to help Serbia. Because the progressive paradise known as the EU ain't going to do it.