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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

I am extremely disappointed in the American government on this. We have had a significant warning and we've seen the virus in multiple countries and the response has been so lackluster.

Why should we wait 20 days for things to get terrible before going to quarantines and lock down? Surely China and Italy have shown us our future.

I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle.

What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."

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> If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

Nails it. You could be so good at your job that people think your job isn’t even necessary; or you could be putting out fires caused by your incompetence all day every day and people think you’re a hero.

Trump isn’t looking like a hero.

He is to his base. For now.

His base is, however, going to be disproportionately impacted by this virus.

Why would you think that? The virus is going to hit way harder in dense cities than in rural areas, and cities heavily lean towards the left

It's most deadly to older people.

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

While I don't agree with the US's lackluster response, bear in mind there's other repercussions besides "just political". The quarantines and shutdowns will almost certainly destroy a lot of people's livelihoods. From people that aren't getting paid so can't pay their bills, to small business owners that will lose their businesses because they can't pay their bills. The effects of even a 1 week shut down can expect to be massive, and impact exactly the people who are already most struggling financially.

It will happen sooner or later so the number of people quarantined will just grow the longer you wait.

> If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened. However, if you wait till it's sufficiently bad and then you quarantine everyone will understand what you did, and later, you may get praised for your decisive leadership in a time of struggle.

This need not be this case. Any authorities who take action to shut down social contact now, before they turn into Italy, will be praised several months hence for being forward thinking because it will be clear what happened in every jurisdiction where they didn't shut down social contact, i.e. absolute catastrophe.

> What I mostly wish is that citizens could throw some sort of flag now to say "This crisis is being poorly handled. If this goes badly, let's have a review, figure out why, and correct the problem once this is settled."

The election season is in full swing and you should have the opportunity to vote on how well you think the crisis has been handled by November.

What I want though is a report that explains what incorrect actions the government took and the proximate and ultimate causes for those reactions. I want the causes addressed so we'll do better in the future.

Example: Why didn't we start testing with 100x or 1000x the number of tests? Maybe the reason is regulation on independent labs doing their own tests. Maybe there wasn't enough money banked up at the CDC such that, when a pandemic it's recognized, we can't immediately start mass producing tests.

The point is, I want it documented and explained what the failures were so that future people handling future disease outbreaks will perform better or at least not make the same mistakes. Further, a practice of exploring major mistakes would help motivate government bureaucrats to avoid making them. There should be a potential political cost to be dramatically wrong in vital scenarios.

How do you start testing with 100x the number of tests? You have to figure out how to make a test this takes time in itself. The disease is only a few months old so it isn't like there was time to prepare. This is a very hard supply management problem. Don't forget to account for tests that fail quality control, something that happens but can't be predicted.

South Korea has done almost 4k tests per million people. Guangdong in China has done 3k per million. The US has done 5 tests per million. That's three orders of magnitude worse than China or South Korea. Explanations like "This is a hard problem" or "There wasn't enough time" are simply unacceptable given that other countries are doing dramatically better.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19...

Well, cutting funding and firing staff from the CDC can't have helped. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

If you're disappointed in the American government on this, you haven't been paying attention for the past two years. They are handling this crisis exactly as they showed us they would.

I'm feeling the same. I just started becoming concerned on Friday, and trying to keep up on accurate news. Do you, or anyone else in the US know how to help raise public awareness for prevention, preparedness for the worse, or lessening the impact on healthcare systems and communities? I feel like this needs its own thread, or platform for collaboration. I'm worried that without wider availability of testing, we're already fucked and that quarantine = police state.

good luck with that. you think it would be possible for people to look at china and italy and realize the same thing is now happening here in the US. but large percentage populace has already been fed multiple contradictory narratives and have convinced themselves it's "just the flu" as it's the most convenient reality. your "science" is fairly useless in combatting ignorance, arrogance and selfishness. but regardless i hope you do try.

Combatting selfischness is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, news outlets are to bussy spreading panic to adress the actual risks of hording stuff fromm food over medical PTE to toilett paper.

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

Yep. People do this with Y2K, for example. "Nothing happened, what an overreaction!"

Nothing happened because an enormous amount of work was done in advance, but people don't see that side of it as it's reasonably hidden.

Don't think we know why "nothing happened". I think the remediation was generally worth doing, but that's just a guess. There is no final reveal that tells you whether or not it was. We'll never really know.

There were a lot of small scale reveals. I worked in a lab in 1997 that turned the clock on some machines forward and watched what happened. We then told all customers this machine hasn't been made since 1975: it breaks and we won't update it - they responding by setting the clock back. We spent a lot more time testing (and fixing) the then current replacements.

Though to be fair, most of the media predicted bad outcomes were completely unrealistic and wouldn't have happened even if no effort was put into mitigation.

> I partly think the problem is political. If you quarantine and the virus is controlled, then it looks like you panicked over nothing, because you took this huge reaction and nothing much happened.

I think this is exactly what's happening. It's an extension of the way individuals feel -- no one wants to be seen preparing too early, because people might think they're silly.

obligatory xkcd

https://xkcd.com/2278/

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