It is going to be very disturbing
Badness alert. There will be badness. It will be bad. Prepare for bad. It will definitely be bad, repeat, definitely bad.
Top disease researcher Dr Anthony Fauci has told the US Senate that he “would not be surprised” if new virus cases in the country reach 100,000 per day.
“Clearly we are not in control right now,” he testified, warning that not enough Americans are wearing masks or social distancing.
And that’s not because we can’t, it’s because we stupidly stubbornly won’t. In large part it’s because of our stupid reckless infantile “president.”
Testifying to a Senate committee on the effort to reopen schools and businesses, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases criticised states for “skipping over” benchmarks required for reopening, and said cases will rise as a result.
“I can’t make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing, I will guarantee you that,” he told Senator Elizabeth Warren.
And by “disturbing” he means “bad.” That’s the “it will definitely be bad” part.
“Because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country even though in other parts of the country they’re doing well, they are vulnerable.”
“We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk,” he added.
Can we put up roadblocks everywhere?
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican, said it would help if Trump wore a mask now and then.
It probably would, but will he do it? Of course not. He doesn’t care if millions of people die because of his refusal to wear a mask. A minor scratch on the back of his leg is a bigger tragedy to him than the death of tens of thousands from the virus. Of course he’s not going to wear a mask just to save millions of lives.
I think you might be forgetting that Trump knows more about viruses than all the so-called scientists and doctors.
He told us this himself. It couldn’t be more clear.
@Ben And his uncle had a PhD and a faculty position at Harvard! What more evidence do you need of this man’s genius?
Tony Fauci is an amazing scientist but he suffers from the same problem all scientists suffer from – we’re cautious about our findings (well, we are if we’re any good). We’re painfully aware of the limitations of our studies and are trained to discuss those caveats rather than jump around pretending to be Archimedes. Add that to the careful dance between truth-telling and not outright accusing Trump and his lackeys of lying their tits off.
This is good science but it’s not great public communication of science. Tony does his best, but his approach isn’t working. I wish Francis was doing this, he’s a much better communicator of science, especially with congresscritters. Trouble is, Francis is a geneticist, not an infectious disease epidemiologist and so isn’t best placed to answer questions outside of his area of expertise. I still think someone other than Tony should be doing the public appearances.
Trump’s uncle was at MIT, not Harvard.
@Colin Day Dammit! I knew that but for some reason, my brain went gaga and typed Harvard instead.
Claire – so true. It’s the same problem we have with global warming. No, we won’t tell you there is going to be catastrophic warming with 100% certainty. We will point to models, explore probabilities, and hedge our bets, because we KNOW we don’t know. The trouble is, all the Trump supporters I know (and that is way too many) know that they DO KNOW…even (especially) things they don’t actually know.
And if you try to point to the science, you hear “Science doesn’t know everything!” as though we were trying to say it does. (I got that – five pages of it – in a student paper this past semester, who was upset that science doesn’t accept the things she knows to be true, like ESP, ghosts, and the singular creation by a trinitarian god approximately 6000 years ago).
Called it! I’m sure we all predicted Trump would fail, I’m just smugly reminding people that I did too. In writing! Somewhere.
Anyway, USA is now the global reservoir of covid 19 and other major nations are shortly going to ban travel from there. The EU already has.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/05/01/how-long-does-covid-19-coronavirus-survive-on-clothes-how-to-wash-them/#2cb31bee64e6
Masks, yes: if they’re disposable, and you dispose of them regularly at appropriate times, and you wash your face and hands right after you dispose of them, and you don’t fiddle with them constantly between picking up various items in the the grocery store . . .
You can’t re-use the same one for days on end, or drop it down under your chin when you’re driving away from the gas pump, then snap it back on and adjust it with both hands before you go into the daycare . . .
Masks are a tool, not a magic bullet.
The whole issue of masks is indeed complicated. Norway has been quite successful in getting the virus under control, and that is largely without requiring or expecting the public to wear masks. Instead, the focus has been on good hand hygiene, with hand sanitizers at the entrance to every store, and social distancing. Also, the closing of schools, gyms, restaurants, hair dressers etc., plus isolation for anyone with respiratory symptoms and quarantine for their closest contacts. There have been only two new confirmed cases in my county in the past two weeks. Both have gotten infected elsewhere, and are now in isolation.
iknklast @#5:
If she was my student, daughter or whatever I would tell her that science has no verifiable or repeatable record of any kind of a talking snake either, Genesis 3 being unverifiable. And if she can find such, a Nobel is sure to follow, not to mention movie contracts, book deals and speaking invitations galore. She could finish up with her own TV program, on her own TV station; no make that TV network. (Get outa here, Rupert.)
I wonder if the USA developing a pariah status among developed nations will have a special effect on our stock market as compared to European markets. I expect it will prolong our recession.
It’s not like I think the stock market is the most important thing. I am concerned, however, that COVID has done more than set us back temporarily. I wonder whether what COVID has done is exposed a rot that was hidden under the surface, to a degree we can no longer unsee.
Bloomberg has an interesting article up on that theme:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/coronavirus-brings-american-decline-out-in-the-open
I’ve talked to my son a lot about how different the US was when I was growing up, and a big part of that was a more even income distribution, both socially and geographically. Things are great if you live in the part of the country I do (both ways); if you live where I grew up (both ways!) you are ever more screwed.
I hope against cynicism that this COVID disaster will be a wake-up call for some people. Ignoring reality isn’t all fun and games. The bill does come due. Finding ourselves the only industrialized country that just can’t deal with a pandemic because reality and science have become too politicized has to give people who were happy to laugh all the way to the bank about the Republican racket some pause.
Europe won’t let us in anymore. My wife just applied for a job at an English company. So she can’t visit headquarters? How long does that last? How does that affect her prospects?
I think Biden can win. But in order to reverse course so America doesn’t end up a failed state will take help from across the aisle too. Let’s hope the few remaining Republican moderates find some courage once Trump is gone.
I don’t think that rot was all that hidden under the surface – I’ve been talking about it for years and so have lots of other people. The US is an outlier among industrialized democracies on a whole long list of items – maternal mortality, inequality, you name it.
Trump cannot be the disease, surely. A large number of Americans elected him to office; not a majority thanks to peculiarities of the US Constitution, but a serious number of them. Trump got elected on a promise to “make America great again,” raising the question as to what made it ‘ungreat’. Whatever disease that was, Trump himself is a symptom of it.
Papito’s @#11 is an interesting comment: “I think Biden can win. But in order to reverse course so America doesn’t end up a failed state will take help from across the aisle too. Let’s hope the few remaining Republican moderates find some courage once Trump is gone.”
Trump in many ways is to America in 2020 what Neville Chamberlain was to Britain in 1939. It does not need just a Churchill, but a massive change in public consciousness as well.
Trump’s not the disease. He just ripped off the scab.
Many people were aware of the problems here, but not enough. As proof of that, enough people voted for Trump for him to take office. Enough people could live in denial or skate on by and imagine the problems wouldn’t affect them.
Now, by the time this pandemic has run its course, everybody in America will know somebody who died from it. And almost all of those deaths will have been unnecessary.
Will this force enough of a change in public consciousness to drive enough people back to reality-based policy?
From the Bloomberg piece @#11:
The US is stuck till the next election with a disinfectant-swilling, climate-science denying ignoramus of a President, who wears his ignorance on his chest like some medal of honour. And the US voters enabled him. That is the most amazing part.
Boris Johnson in the UK is hardly better, but is certainly easier to be gotten rid of by the voters..
Excellent analogy. It’s like I always say, global warming is not the problem, it is the fever that warns us of a deeper problem. Trump is not the problem, he is the symptom of a larger problem, a disease that infects this country and could destroy a lot of innocent people, just like global warming, just like poverty. All of these things are symptoms of a larger, even more difficult disease.
The disease that brought Trump to power has been part of this country from the beginning. It is part of the underlying assumptions the built the country. The idea that it was okay to enslave people who don’t look like you. The idea that it was not only acceptable but necessary to destroy the native population to clear the land for European settlers. The idea that it was okay to keep half the population from enjoying equivalent rights with the other half, though the women certainly worked as hard, prayed as hard, and dreamed as hard as the men. The idea that the only acceptable sexuality was heterosexuality, and that was only okay within the confines of a traditional, female-oppressing marital structure. The idea that the greatest good was the wrench as much money as possible out of the resources of the land, and turn everything into concrete jungles and monoculture fields. The idea that everything must take second place to profit, including human lives. The idea that we had a Manifest Destiny to spread from sea to shining sea.
All of this is written into the American experiment, and is taught/breathed/consumed from birth. Some people shake off at least some of it, but not enough. Even on the left I see a lot of tolerance for the idea that America had some glorious past that we must find a way to recreate, or that we had some glorious past ideas that we need to fulfill. Some of the ideas are great, but were never really the driving force behind the system. Prosperity and bluster kept the country going for 200 years, but now we (well, a few of us) elevated a man who is the epitome of prosperity and bluster – who built his prosperity on bluster, in fact. We put the festering wound right out there for everyone to see, and we can’t hide anymore.
Americans came by some of those traits honestly. If you’ve ever encountered the British colonial attitudes in the days of Empire, there are still plenty who think that way today, this path has led us to Brexit and economic damage I doubt we will recover from fully. We still think we’re this giant on the world stage when in truth we are increasingly irrelevant.
I agree with the sentiment behind Papito’s statement. I had no idea such a boiling mass of pus and rampant infection lay underneath that scab.
I came to this country because it offered better opportunities than my home country in my scientific field. There’s no denying that I have been lucky and that the US has been very good to me. I was told fairly recently that if I didn’t like the way the country was going, I should go back to my own country. Hideous thing to say but some people are assholes.
But it made me think. I don’t feel like I belong in the UK anymore. I don’t want to go back. But I’m worried that the open arms that welcomed me here are now pushing me away. I applied for US citizenship a while ago, and I still want it, but I feel like I’ll be a second class citizen when it’s granted.
Claire:
Have you ever considered a move to New Zealand? My wife and I intend to visit there ourselves as soon as C-19 and circumstances allow. But the kiwis I have met here in Australia have all been very engaging, easygoing and friendly.
You might even consider Australia. An English couple we know who live 3 doors down our street in Canberra love the place, but when not travelling in Australia have to return to the UK periodically to look after the husband’s elderly mother.
I have visited the US, but would not want to live there. However, I felt very different once I crossed the border into Canada, which is very much another country altogether, and as Jane Austen might have said, most agreeable.
I doubt it. Voting behavior would need to change, and there’s little hope of that in a society that routinely tells itself that changing voting behavior means THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD.
That is, always voting for the prima facie lesser of two evils is a greedy algorithm. Greedy algorithms are simple and easy, but they’re also dangerous. If you’re trying to maximize something, a greedy algorithm can get stuck in local maxima. It can even spit out the worst of all possible solutions.