I imagine in terms of medical care access and affordability or welfare stimulus, practically negligible, but in terms of CDC funding, science literacy, public policy, and general preparedness, it would be a whole lot better put together.
So I'd say... 10% fewer deaths? 200K vs. 220K deaths sounds about right.
Eh. The biggest issue is that the US is governed hyper locally. There is no national public health service. There's a collection of 3,000 county public health offices and around 55 state and territory public health offices. Testing is organized mainly by each county. Mask standards are mostly decided at the county level with various degrees of overlapping with cities and states.
This is how the US government is organized.
It honestly doesn't matter if the president was Hillary or Bernie. The capacity of the US state to respond to something like a pandemic is largely restricted by it's decentralized nature.
Common sense. Small municipalites arent going to have their own virologists on hand to help guide policy.
That doesn't changed the fundamental issue. The feds lack the authority to enforce any guidelines that they set. They have to be enforced at a local level.
Do you really think that rural counties or Ron Desantis would be enforcing guidelines set by Hillary's HHS?
A random county in bumfuck idaho really doesn't matter. However most counties will adhere to the state, who will mostly adhere to the feds. You'll find differences amongst municipalities, sure, but with something like a pandemic going on, ignoring federal guidance would put you in the minority
It's not some random bumfuck county in Idaho, it's any office held by Republicans across the entire country
Exactly. There would have been allocated resources and personnel dispatched immediately.
Welcome aboard the HRC Rehabilitation Tour, make sure to check out the Dancin' With Ellen exhibit on your way out!
I think it's an objective fact that Hillary would have had fewer deaths on her watch. The real weirdness is the people getting triggered by it.
The death toll would've been the same. This does not start and end with the president. The US having a for-profit healthcare system and massively defunded hospitals all across the country, set the stage for them to handle this poorly.
COVID is really the best example and a rude awakening to this country about how fucked up our system is and that we are not set up to prevent any of this. Clinton wouldn't have handled it any better, nor would've Obama. We would still have neo-libs like Cuomo in NY pushing austerity right in the middle of the pandemic.
Under Clinton, the government would've just sat back with both parties pointing fingers and blaming each other while the death toll numbers rack up.
Pretending Trump's public image and response -- in line with the rest of the GOP leadership -- didn't have any appreciable effect on the number of infections is patently absurd. This is clown world thinking.
This site feels like an accelerationist honeypot at times.
Pretending Trump’s public image and response – in line with the rest of the GOP leadership – didn’t have any appreciable effect on the number of infections is patently absurd. This is clown world thinking.
This site feels like an accelerationist honeypot at times.
Did you even read my comment before having your little hissy fit here? Americans like you think everything starts and ends with whoever is sitting in the oval office. It does not. This pandemic was largely handled badly on all scales of federal and local state governments. NY is a blue state and they were the biggest epicenter in the world. Clinton wouldn't have handled it any better.
The GOP turned wearing a mask into a culture war thing. How the fuck you think they would've responded under a Clinton presidency?
For one; they would've totally focused on some moron Dem governor like Cuomo who handled it badly. We would've been in year 4 of them talking impeachment of Hillary and not wanting to work with her at all. The GOP made it loud and clear back in October of 2016 that under a Clinton presidency, they would be ready to push for impeachment and investigation over her emails and they made it very clear that they didn't want to work with her. The GOP most likely retakes the house in 2018 midterms if Hillary would've won and the entire landscape of our government would've been different.
Go back to reddit and hang out with the libs on r/politics if you want someone to pat you on the back and tell you what you want to hear. If it was Clinton in office right now, I am 99.9999999% positive, we'd have a much larger far right movement right now and they would be calling for her to be fucking impeached for handling this so badly.
Macron's liberal government has double the infection rate of the USA. It's not as simple as "libs are better than fascists".
I mean, it really is. The "liberals are just as bad as fascists" is reactionary nonsense.
Besides, the question wasn't framed either/or, but shades.
It's shades. Liberals are just as capable as fascists. Fascists are just more direct.
I don't think it's nonsense.
No one was taking it seriously back in January-February. I am not convinced she would've acted sooner. The entire western world was painting it out as China's problem and not even thinking about the possibility of it ending up in their own countries.
I can mostly picture the GOP standing up to her like they did all through Obama's 8 years and telling her to fuck off with anything she would want to do and they absolutely would be the loudest voices leading the charge about how bad she'd be handling it.
How would they have reacted worse than they did under Trump? It's easy to say "it can always get worse," but even 6-8 months into this thing you'll still find conservatives saying it's no big deal, you'll still find conservatives holding superspreader political events, and you'll still find conservatives proudly baking mask opposition into their day-to-day business (been to a gun store recently?). I'd say "at least they've stopped having armed marches on statehouses," but that seems a little silly considering the (at least semi-serious) plans to kidnap a governor over her covid response.
I think Covid would have still exposed much of the deficiency in how we prioritize health care.
But, the US would have adopted masks A LOT sooner. Clinton hated talking in front of people, so there would not have been any ridiculous spreader events.
The Clinton admin would have had much less turnover in its admin positions, just a less chaotic bureaucracy overall
Honestly it's crazy how bad trump handled this.
They pushed back on recommending masks because they were afraid that the public rushing to buy masks would put an even bigger strain on the lack of medical supplies for hospitals at the time. I suppose you could argue that Clinton might have maintained better surpluses/CDC funding but at the end of the day, the delay in mask use was a failure to allocate resources, not a policy position or personal preference.
I know that's the excuse used, but unlike trump the clinton's were good at disaster capitalism and probably would have sniffed out the potential mask windfall when Covid was still in Wuhan.
Good was a bad word choice, but from the sense they'd at least recognize a vampiric business opportunity ahead of time, whereas trump admin tried ignoring the situation for as long as possible. without making this about Clinton in particular, I think just about anyone else in the potus seat would have put together a better response than trump.
Ah, fair enough, I see what you mean about the masks. It would be better under not-Trump but I don't feel that the difference would be meaningful in any way
Is it really crazy considering he tried to sell steaks at fuckin Sharper Image?
I'll just list off all the things that I feel have nothing to do with who is the president-
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First off, no one, regardless of political background, took it seriously when it was still primarily in China. I remember all the articles about how EVIL China was for lockdowns, and people theorizing it was fake and actually just a way for the evil, terrible government to take freedom away from citizens. I seriously doubt that Clinton would have acted sooner than Trump. You can also look at Obama not giving a fuck about ebola, ignoring the WHO, until cases showed up in the US if you want another loose example of how it might play out.
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Huge fighting between cities/states/feds about how to handle it would have likely occurred regardless. Florida would probably still stick their fingers in their ears and keep everything open
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Huge failures in supplies, especially early on. While it's true that Trump gutted surplus and the CDC we were never going to have enough masks for everyone, and wanting to preserve available masks for hospitals and doctors led to people like Fauci downplaying the effectiveness of masks for the general public. Supply failures also caused issues with early testing, and testing rates in the US vs say, Vietnam or China were abysmal. Also lack of available beds early on led to a lot of issues
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The most effective way to kill off the virus/prevent its spread is through lockdowns, and lockdowns hurt capital, and the last thing we do in this county is hurt capital. Ghouls crying about the economy would always override actual safe practices, especially given the length of this pandemic
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Americans by large are incredibly individualistic, lack proper healthcare, lack savings, and don't have a healthy relationship with their employers. All this leads to people failing to maintain best practices (not everyone, but enough to matter).
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We've seen a general refusal, regardless of what level you look at, to accurately report the risks of the virus, amount of deaths, or impact it has on the people. Lots of shit about how the line went down though. And the refusal to take it seriously has been proven to be non-partisan and removed from who is president.
Because of all this, plus some other smaller things, makes me believe we'd be looking at an absurdly small difference. Like 219k deaths vs 220k we have now. And who knows, I could see right-leaning states report numbers more accurately just to stick it to Hillary so the 'official' number might be higher under her
Regarding your second point, I feel the most important aspect of the US' COVID response that doesn't get enough attention is that because of how our government is set up, we've had every state/county/city/ ZIP code all doing their own things, which is of course a recipe for disaster when dealing with a pandemic. It's a massive, massive failure of the "states rights" approach to things. But at no point in the last year have I heard anyone suggest maybe COVID shows our system doesn't work. It should be fucking obvious to anyone that you don't solve a pandemic at the local level. If Hillary was president the right would just be going on and on about "federal overreach" and the Dems would have balked.
COVID has shown the world that the US is completely incapable of adapting to changing circumstances and even just beyond socialism vs capitalism, it's gonna be what bring this country down. Americans would rather let this country collapse than admit that maybe the way our government is set up isn't absolutely 100% perfect.
Yeah, it really highlights how fucked up it all runs, but nothing really has changed lol. I was hoping when everyone was reading stories about how local, state, and federal orgs, as well as private companies, were all fighting to outbid each other on masks or ventilators it would have woken a few people up to it but we've already moved past that
You're suggesting that if Republicans had amped up pandemic panic that it wouldn't have registered more mask compliance?
By saying not only would Republicans accurately report, but perhaps overstate the number of deaths to make Hillary look bad would only facilitate mask compliance and shutdowns, and fewer deaths.
You know that was a half baked idea I threw out and don't think it stands up because I really cannot predict right wing states reporting things under Hillary, and definitely can't predict how that reporting would in turn affect things. Please ignore that part lol
Plus some of the biggest vectors for spread are nursing homes and meat plants. Places where people are incredibly close to one another for hours at a time. The mask shit definitely didn't help, but it was keeping places open that really fucked us over.
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I know she's an insufferable imperialist neolib who allegedly drinks babies, but macron and Trudeau are too and they seemed to handle it better, by comparison. The wild card is the density of American Stupidity that doesn't quite exist in such high numbers in other countries.
The wild card is the density of American Stupidity that doesn’t quite exist in such high numbers in other countries.
Exactly this. Libs going with Obama/Killary takes forget that a lot of Americans are stupid. The chuds would've ABSOLUTELY not followed the mask mandates just like they aren't now. Double so if Obama told them to.
Not to mention our federal government is handicapped by design from leading a coordinated, national response. Even if Bernie was president, every single municipal jurisdiction would insist on doing things their own way.
Yeah but I still think the average dumbass would have been more prone to wear masks or stay home if there was an authority figure constantly telling them how serious this was instead of doing trump things. Chuds aren't a huge percentage of the population, just an extremely loud portion.
lol she would have been arrested or at the very least impeached after 10k people died, the right would be unstoppable right now if she won
Not much would've been different with the pandemic under Hillary or even Obama.
One thing to take into consideration is that Trump really was better off losing in the first place. His victory pushed the far right into the spotlight before they were ready. Had Clinton won, they would've had 4 years to sit back and keep building up their base and pushing propaganda while a neo-liberal president continues to do fuck all about the problems we have.
The GOP was already set to block everything with Clinton had she won and they were going to try and impeach her in 2017. We would've entered 2020 with a completely inept government and probably with the GOP retaking the house from 2018's midterms. All in all, it would've been like Obama's second term where they are unable to do anything and we most likely would've had a government shutdown at one point.
As for the pandemic, I can see all this happening under Hillary
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Back in January, no one was taking it seriously at all. As another commenter pointed out, I too doubt that Clinton would've acted sooner than Trump. It would've been ignored until it reached us.
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Republican governors and red states would've blocked any attempts from a Clinton administration pushing lockdowns and safety measures. Remember how during the Obama years none of them wanted to work with him and would stand their ground and basically tell the president to fuck off? Imagine that, but with Clinton, they would be even more hostile due to how hated she is.
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On the other hand, the lockdowns hurt the economy and this wouldn't be much of a conversation anyway. Clinton wouldn't be serious about lockdowns and the talk would be short lived. The conspiracy stuff about the vaccine being a hoax would've still happened.
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No stimulus check whatsoever or a relief bill that even offers us crumbs. Dems made it 100% clear earlier this year they wanted to offer tax credits and were against the stimulus all together (and when the first talks of a 2nd relief bill began, Pelosi and company were still talking about tax credits). We would've got a COVID relief bill that still bails out the banks, wall street and corporations, while we just get tax credits.
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The conservative media would be the only ones on TV criticizing Hillary and talking about how poorly she's handling this. As a result, you would've seen a far more critical eye focused on New York and how Cuomo had the biggest epicenter in the world for COVID earlier this year. There wouldn't be much push to make him out to be a hero. The right would be screaming at the top of their lungs about how bad Dems are handling this.
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The death toll wouldn't have changed much. We would still be sitting on a number of 200k and it growing.
I basically agree. The Trump admin did do some screwing around with federal supplies that might have made things a little worse along with his general incompetence. Under Clinton we would have a slightly slowed pandemic escalation but anti-lockdown craziness would have likely escalated faster. Overall, it was a failure of American institutions and culture rather than the Trump admin.
Overall, it was a failure of American institutions and culture rather than the Trump admin.
This is basically what I was trying to tell the OP when they had a hissy fit.
The US absolutely does not have institutions to deal with a pandemic like this. Since the 80s and embracing neoliberalism, they have been stripping the government of institutions, safety nets and defunding things. Not just Republicans but Democrats too all in the name of bipartisanship.
Just look at that asshole Cuomo in NY, who flat out said that a pandemic wasn't going to prevent him from doing budget cuts. He cut medicaid and defunded hospitals anyway. That's the kind of stuff that people don't think about from the Dems. They push austerity too while whining "we need to balance a budget and raise taxes".
I think an argument can be had for how this pandemic would've shaped things for a better healthcare system maybe 50-60 years ago, before our culture became so individualist and our government centered around neoliberalism. If this was going on during the 70s, oh yes, we might have a real movement and push for a universal healthcare system in response to this failure.
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Way more than 10%.
She would have handled it similarly to Obama handled pandemics.
Just having the entire government onboard with wearing masks would have saved at least half of our dead.
How do I know masks prevent the spread of airborne viruses?
Looking at the other countries that have mask wearing as an accepted and common practice.
Half is way too low for how well just wearing a mask protects you.
Combine that with social distancing measures that weren't actively derided by the president and yeah, we'd be a fuck of a lot better off.
Surpress the urge to call everything you disagree with "liberal" for a second.
Look at the worst infected countries. US, Brazil, India. It's conservative leadership that causes this sort of massive pandemic fuck up.
There's no way Hillary would have done a UBI or something that actually benefited the struggling people like Bernie called for, but her or Obama would have let a Fauci lead the messaging and then would have fully supported it.
Embracing the USPS plan to mail a cloth mask to every person in the US, you think that wouldn't have had a massive impact? Trump scrapped that.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/postal-services-plan-send-650m-face-masks-americans/story?id=73081928
A socialist government would handle it far better than the Obama admin ever could, but the difference between Obama or Trump in charge during this truly would have been incredible.
It’s conservative leadership that causes this sort of massive pandemic fuck up.
India had some pretty strict lockdowns when everything started. My parents needed to get a permit to drive to a nearby city to get our grandparents.
capitalism itself that was weak against the virus, doesn’t matter who was in charge.
There are lots of capitalist countries that are in better situations than the US though
Under Trump they marched into a statehouse armed and have a whole cottage industry of covid conspiracy theories. It's hard to imagine them being more opposed to any sort of covid precautions.
There was a pandemic response unit in the National Security council that started in 2015 but was disbanded by Trump in 2018. Perhaps if Clinton kept it, it would've been useful. Also doing small things like mailing masks to everyone could've helped
Lol Biden literally has a trump card right there just by mentioning that Trump dismantled the pandemic response unit. That would literally be the number one talking point to use against Trump in a debate or town hall but Biden is too stupid or trying to lose on purpose
I could see half the deaths. I mean it's all about the early days. I can see Hillary and Dems acting about a month earlier than Trump. That's not insignificant. PPE probably would have been distributed better as well. Remember that Kushner was just taking shit from states and reselling it to businesses. Also they cut Obummer's pandemic response shit in 2018, which Hillary probably wouldn't have done. So we would have been slightly more prepared. I don't think 100-150K is unreasonable.
The right's response to quarantines and mask mandates would be on a whole nother level though. I could see someone taking a shot at Hillary over it. Arguably we'd be more afraid of the right rn.
If Hillary won, T_D would have lost steam by now. Which means r/cth wouldn't have been deleted because nobody would have cried about JB posting. Then that means chapo.chat wouldn't be here.
I think you could have 10% of the deaths you have. Look at many European countries that didn't get hit by COVID when it was still new, but later. Any response then would have had the same effects in the US than here, but Trump literally didn't do anything for a month, when everyone else was preparing. Well, he banned chinese people from entering the country at the time where banning europeans would be useful instead.
I would even argue that just 10% fewer deaths is highly unlikely (both numbers too close) due to its exponential spread.
