Read: It would theoretically be salvageable, but under Trump/the Republicans and Biden/the Dems, it won't be.
We had one shot to do it right like China did (Who have been pretty much actually back to normal for months now), but our government on both a federal and state level have just absolutely, royally fucked it all up. Mainly because they were/are too much of greedy, stingy, capitalist assholes to give people the aid they need so that their lives aren't completely destroyed.
After 8 months of annoying-ass variable on/off lockdowns (Instead of doing 1 sustained national lockdown at the beginning), the public will to continue has overall been destroyed, and it ain't comin' back.
Everyone could have stayed home for 2 weeks, got a small check to cover losses, ate a couple fucking popsicles and watched increasingly shitty Netflix shows and bing-bam-boom COVID's over.
But the wheels of industry need to be slicked with fresh blood, and the idea of staying home for two weeks to an absolute tantrum-throwing, foot-stamping toddler chud is unfathomable, akin to a fucking war crime.
We're literally the worst.
I feel like most chuds fucking hate their spouses/kids but put on a show because of "tradition". If they had to stay home for two weeks there would probably be an exponential increase in domestic violence and/or murder/suicide.
I've spent ~36 weeks working from home and you end up realizing your house is not as comfortable as you think it is, when you have to spend almost 24 hrs inside. I legit think that's one of the reasons why. Boomers took around at their material stuff, felt like shit, and decided to throw a fit instead.
Some of the worse case scenarios that epidemiologists were telling us is all coming true. The exponential growth is astounding. So many people still don't get how bad it is. They cite the survival rate as it being not so bad, but that is only one factor. Plus many people are experiencing life long lung damage and other side effects like chest pain, brain fog, permanent tiredness. And our medical system cannot handle it, many spots are now almost full or are full and more people will die simply because there isn't enough hands on deck to help them or resources. So that survival rate is going to continue to go down but even still, most people survive it, so in the minds of the smooth brained, it's never going to be a real issue.
I will never forgive our original response to it. And the way fauci gave our conflicting information early on sowed so much doubt. The whole mask thing early on basically sealed the deal we would never get this contained, and I still believe it, unless some miracle happens or a real vaccine is found it will never end. The fact they told people masks aren't important early on doomed tens of thousand of people+, because forever will the reactionaries point to that is the reason they wont wear masks ever (among other things ofc.)
Also the way the feds raided that New York hospital and stole all their PPE is insane, idk how people just let that shit go and nothing was done about it. Just the most dysfunctional government with the most docile citizens imaginable
And the way fauci gave our conflicting information early on sowed so much doubt
Fauci lied and people died. Not gonna forget.
He took over in the middle of the aids crisis not at the beginning. The biggest complaint against Fauci from that era was he wasn't approving anti-retroviral drugs fast enough, not that he was covering it up because they were well past that point when he had this job.
I don't disagree with you, but generally speaking Fauci is one of those people who thinks he's doing the most good by working from the inside even given its constraints.
He's not just some moron who kept falling upwards like a lot of other people in government. He's good at his job, it's just that his job is insanely difficult. The politics of pandemics are negative sum by default.
In Febuary, and after, that fucker said :
you look at the masks that you buy in a drug store, the leakage around that doesn't really do much to protect you ... now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask
Later on he admitted that he was lying when he said that. Of course the CDC and every other Health org knew masks were effective against COVID from the very start. And yet, even now he says that he has "no regrets" for lying to the public.
But the biggest lie is the idea that he said that for reasons only relating to Public Health. Not true, there's no reason he couldn't admit to the Public that N-95 like masks would need to be prioritized for Healthcare providers, but that makeshift masks would be effective against Covid, that would've been the best move from a Public Health POV because it's not fucking lying, which will always raises future skepticism against anything you say.
He lied about masks for the same reason he lied in MARCH about cruises being safe, his job is primarily to protect Capital, and at the time that meant preventing peoples well founded panic from causing economic disruption.
Now we can of course see that sane Public Health measures would've done far more to preserve the American economy in the long run than the short sighted policy, and lies, overseen by Fauci. Unsurprisingly Capital is as stupid as it's deadly.
To the last part, capital isnt stupid. It literally only cares about the short term. Who gives a fuck if you can make a billion next week, if today you can make half a billion
Remember in March when there were supply chain problems for masks, and their solution was to issue a public health guidance that told people they didn’t need to wear masks?
And the libs hold up him up on a pedestal as if he is just totally immune to criticism, like usual. They lionize anyone who has even a hint of disagreement with trump. Bolton being another good example of this. The most insufferable self righteous people hold up the most ghoulish evil people.
The fact they told people masks aren’t important early on doomed tens of thousand of people+, because forever will the reactionaries point to that is the reason they wont wear masks ever (among other things ofc.)
Reactionaries would have whined about masks no matter how the information was presented.
Americans genuinely can't come to grips with the fact that the world has changed forever and there is no turning back the clock again. Ever. Like climate change, Americans have finally come across a problem that requires that they sacrifice aspects of their pampered and comfortable lifestyles of mindless mass consumption, which can't be resolved with simple Reagan-esque rhetoric about how "we can push the frontiers of human ingenuity and prosperity again" by doubling down on "good old-fashioned American idealism and can-do attitude". So it should come as no surprise that those segments of American society most susceptible to Reaganite (and millenarian evangelical) rhetoric are resorting to the only response that is an alternative to a fundamental shift in habits and mindset - a nihilistic, Zen-like embrace of apocalypse. These anti-mask anti-vax people legitimately prefer spiteful quixotic gestures to "own the libs" over coming to grips with an unstoppably-changing material reality.
Having lost 3 friends and potentially losing my best friend in the near future to this virus (he's been in ICU for 6 days now), I have gotten to the point where my depression over the pandemic has made me completely numbed. Outside of my friends dying, 3 other people I've known and worked with have died. It's a strange feeling to go through so many losses in a short amount of time. People you worked with and were used to seeing every day. My coworkers who have passed all had families and I can't imagine the pain that their spouses and children are going through.
I had a bad feeling this was going to be handled poorly cause I knew the US was not set up well to handle this. My fiancé worked as an EMT for years and used to always tell me about how defunded the hospitals were back in her home state and over the years, these conversations lead me to getting curious about the infrastructure of our medical system and I started to realize that it wasn't just her home state, the one we live in also has defunded hospitals that are ill-equipped. We saw this on the local news too when our state ran out of ventilators back in May.
This is a nightmare after the US has spent 4 decades defunding and destroying institutions that were previously meant to be safety nets to help in a scenario like this. This was a worst case scenario after decades of neoliberal austerity. Look at Cuomo in NY who flat out bragged to the media that he wasn't going to allow a pandemic to prevent him from enacting budget cuts and slashing billions of dollars in medicaid. If anyone back in the 80s screamed that we would have a doomsday scenario like this after the first budget cuts were beginning, their predictions are sadly coming true now.
I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Even if we get a vaccine, the death toll is already so high and it's had a major effect on people's livelihood and economic stability. None of this is counting mental health and I am guessing that will go completely ignored. I know people suffering from extreme anxiety and PTSD as a result of this virus and I myself am starting to really feel my mental stability declining. Americans are always expected and told to just "tough it out" and go back to work. But how much longer can a human being put up with this before they snap? There's going to be a mental health crisis after all this is done and I can just imagine they'll want to dehumanize us further and act like we are criminals.
Jesus, I'm sorry for your losses.
I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
Exactly. Even if there was a vaccine tomorrow, we've not even begun to experience the height of this crisis. Mental health is in fact already going to shit for a ton of people, both due to the crisis itself and the (justified) lockdowns; a non-negligible proportion of covid survivors may also have long term effects even if they didn't die; and finally the economic depression that's coming will probably put the "Great" depression to shame.
DSA and socialist candidates should run on prosecuting every single government official responsible for the covid-19 response. Just sayin'
It really varies from province to province. BC did really well during the early months but god damn it's getting out of hand now. Still no mask mandate. Still no testing of asymptomatic people. Public health officials recommend AGAINST mass testing. I think they're just worried about health care spending and deficits I don't know why else they would recommend such asinine policies.
Our testing regimen is fucking pathetic. In order for me to get a covid test done I had to wait on hold for THREE FUCKING HOURS and talk to like five different people, all of whom had to verify my health number date of birth etc etc. Once I got my test done days later I never even got my results back (?) I phoned the hot line like NINE FUCKING TIMES and they never answered. I assume I was negative because I can only hope they would have tracked me down if my result was positive.
For all we shit on America's (objectively horrible) health care system, compare this to Arizona where you can literally do a drive through test and it takes five minutes.
I got back from Arizona two weeks ago (today is my last day of quarantine hooray) and it makes me wonder why they don't just test everyone coming into the country it would be so much easier holy christ.
Trudeau has given some very nice speeches about covid and national unity and washing hands etc etc but unless I'm mistaken everything has largely been left up to the provinces, not unlike in America where it was all left to the states to decide themselves.
BC NDP ( "The only Social-Democratic Government in Canada or the United States") always finds a way to disappoint.
I thought I lost all hope in them after the Wetʼsuwetʼen raids earlier this year, but their recent COVID response has destroyed the last additional bit of hope I didn't even know I still had.
Atlantic Canada has surprisingly been the most sensible region regarding Covid from what I recall.
Yeah the Maritimes have done great, and I heard they have an agreement with Cuba to open up resorts to ONLY Atlantic Canadians which is fucking rad.
My biggest personal gripe with the BC NDP is the LNG project which makes a pathetic mockery of their entire climate change plan. They'll take their new majority government and probably do literally nothing with it, with the exception of paltry, mediocre improvements to the minimum wage that will be made irrelevant due to inflation by the time they are implemented.
If they can work up the courage to pass card check my feelings toward them will improve significantly but I have a feeling they're not going to want to piss off the small business community that much.
The old guard cabal of BC NDP that has been leading the party for my entire lifetime needs to fucking go and be replaced with new blood, young people with skin in the game.
Yeah, I'll be interested to see what they do now that they don't have the Greens to blame for not passing progressive policies. I think NZ Labour is in roughly the same position for what it's worth.
Arden seems to be cutting a deal with the Greens even though she doesn't need to. She'll give them a few scraps and then use that as an excuse.
I was speaking more towards NZ First, my understanding of Kiwi Politics is not great but I thought that the Greens were the more "left" option in comparison to Labour (at least since Roger Douglas)
Yeah, they are. Like in Australia, the Labour/Labor plan is to offer a few progressive policies that the Greens support and then go "We've already made the compromise with the left, we can't do more, it's not practical and you're all purists."
Which I guess is better than the US approach of "You lose! Good day sir!"
I think we all know what they're going to do now: sweet fuck all
I'll be honest, looking in from the outside in the UK I think the vaccine in America will fail because you won't get enough people to use it. I'm concerned about it here but we're setting up precautions now by legislating that anti-vax content online is illegal and forcing social media sites to take it down, this will do a lot to stop the spread of the content that would make it fail here in the UK too. In America? It's going to fail.
Every single anti-masker will become an anti-vaxxer for the covid vaccine. The groundwork is laid for them to seamlessly transition from one to the other.
Ironically this COULD be prevented by having Trump as president -- his voice selling the republicans the vaccine would work. But that ain't gonna happen now. The Republican base will be anti-vaccine because the Dems are the ones that will be pushing it.
It's utterly astounding watching the pandemic unfold in America from an outsiders perspective. It's just ... jaw droppingly horrifying.
We still fucked it pretty hard over here
Eat out to help out was the most idiotic policy possible and i bet they do it again after this lockdown is done
Oh I absolutely agree but the goals are different. They are keeping it down a certain degree but not aiming to get rid of it because they're intentionally using it to genocide the elderly and disabled.
it’s like everything’s going back to day 1.
I agree with everything you're saying, except now it's objectively way worse than the early stages of the pandemic. The US is setting new world records for cases every day.
As you said, there was no uniform policy, procedure, orders of any kind from the Federal level, responses to the outbreak differed by state, county and even cities, all of them varied in what actions they called for and the effective dates.
The #1 reason I think the US will either collapse or balkanize is that our federal, decentralized power structure means we are completely incapable of a coordinated response to any challenge that arises. And a big reason organizations collapse - from small teams to whole civilizations - is because they are unable to deal with challenges.
Idk, we seem pretty uniform in our responses to mass uprisings. I think the police state can probably loosely hold together the federal system through force for quite a while.
If argue that with the uprising response, yeah it's decentralized but everyone is also reading from the same tactical playbook, so the response is pretty similar around the country. Whereas with stuff like covid the top of our organizational structure just says "idk, you figure it out" and you can really see the effects of decentralization
Sure but to me that's simply the result of a decades-long campaign to strip away all the welfare functions in the various levels of government. I can definitely buy a future where that project has completed and states are left to fend for themselves in the management of environmental and social issues, but I have doubts about "balkanization" to the point where states are raising their own fighting forces and are effectively nations in their own right. Well, doubts about that happening any time in, say, the next two decades.
do you think the US will be capable to muster a nation wide vaccination drive? between the broken healthcare system and the anti-vaxx movement i don't see it going well at all.
Anti-maskers will become anti-vaxxers. Ironically this COULD be prevented by having Trump as president – his voice selling the republicans the vaccine would work. But that ain’t gonna happen now. The Republican base will be anti-vaccine because the Dems are the ones that will be pushing it.
the Democrats were literally gearing up to become anti-vax if Trump were president when it came out. this country is a fuck
Get a feeling it the same in Europe, people are sick and tired of perpetual lock downs and trust in local governments is waning
It is, yeah. I think what really did it for a lot of people was that during the first lockdown everyone was told, amd was expecting that the govt. Would use the time wisely. That we'd come out of lockdown, the govt would have a working system in place to track infections and trace contacts etc. And instead we just got shit.
There was genuine good will there for a few weeks. People were largely obeying lockdown rules etc. Then it became obvious the govt had no fucking clue what it was doing and sort of bungled a worst of both worlds measure that saw a tonne of already teetering businesses shut down, people already struggling going under etc. And for what? Loads of politicians and advisors broke lockdown and precious few of them saw consequences, there wasn't a track and trace system that worked (it still won't work on older smart phones ffs) and we just keep getting story after story of yet another billion or multimillion contract handed out to one of their mates.
Isn't it brilliant the way we let a handful of rich psychopaths play with the entire population like some sort of twisted boardgame with zero consequences for them?
I knew the US was fucked as soon as masks became a partisan thing. I knew we were fucked in the UK because we always get shit like that influencing us due to the terrible human centipede like geopolitical relationship our countrys have.
The American populus simply just doesn't trust their institutions the way China's citizens do. Full lockdowns to the same way China did was never going to happen in this country.
Yep. If you're looking at the US from afar, a serious strategic weakness is complete lack of confidence in the state to do anything. Can you imagine if there was a sudden need for a military draft? Lol.
