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Comment by penagwin | Hacker News Reader

There's not a single person who would agree that the US president is handling this well - For purposes of discussion of COVID19 it's best to just ignore him (I mean this respectfully but seriously).

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There was actually a poll on Friday that showed 55% of respondents approved of his handling of the crisis.

Keep in mind that all of the data in polls comes from the type of people who respond to random polling with something other than hanging up. I'll admit, I may suffer from the mother of all sampling biases but in the social circles I frequent this is not at all a common trait.

Yet these same polls keep accurately predicting primary results on a similar small scale.

What we need is more of them and wider samples to reduce the ~95% error rate of the ABC results even lower. Not critiquing ones who have a well established reputation for following good methodology, as if polling never has value (FiveThirtyEight has litigated this to death and have largely won the argument).

That said, one poll is rarely ever enough.

Of course, the people who do polls go and fucking vote.

There was also a poll this week that showed only 37% trust what he says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816680033/poll-americans-dont...

I don't know the name of it, but there's a tick psychological tests do where they reverse questions, hoping to see if people are answering honestly. There was a window where most people approved of the ACA and disapproved of Obamacare.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/20/poll-majority-of-am...

This is ~13% (absolute) more than his approval rating, so a big chunk of people think his is handling this well.

That said, the GOP thinks this will impact his chance of reelection. Steve Bannon said "he's not running against Joe Biden, he’s running against a virus and the collateral damage from that." So far, the states in lockdown mode where deaths and job losses are likely were going to vote Biden anyway. If more rural states start having problems, expect a lot of swing states to swing left.

55% of Americans polled now think he’s doing a good job handling the epidemic.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-03-20/app...

That’s a pretty telling example of how far we’ve come from statesmen like Obama.

If your intention really was to reduce the mention of politics on here this is a poor way to go about it.

What should the US president be doing right now that he isn't doing?

Probably stepping out of the way and allowing epidemiologists to run the show and have the spotlight.

Have you watched any of the press conferences? That is exactly what he is doing. Drs Fauci, Burks, and Adams give lengthy addresses every day (although Burks and Adams were not present today), as well as answer questions from the press. Trump seems to be deferring to them pretty heavily in the question parts as well.

As far as having the spotlight: Dr. Fauci has basically become a household name amongst my peer group. He absolutely has the spotlight.

edit: could the people downvoting this please at least leave a comment?

Telling the truth ("anybody that needs a test gets a test"), taking responsibility ("I don't take responsibility at all [for the lack of testing]"), making tough calls instead of leaving states and cities to fend for their own.

And the switch from "this is a hoax" to "I always knew this was a pandemic" doesn't inspire confidence either.

Activating core engineers to build field offices which they are trained to do. Getting factories to build paper masks for the public. Getting the car manufactures to build ventilators. Getting money and supplies to the hospitals. Activating the reserves to setup drive through testing in every major city.

Is this sarcasm? This is exactly what is happening.

> Is this sarcasm? This is exactly what is happening.

I think this is what is said to be happening in press releases, but not occurring in fact (at least according to the governors who should be the beneficiaries of these acts)

Why do people go here and just post lies like this?

This absolutely IS what is happening, here is a press conference from the Us Army Corps of Engineers from two days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csfCKuy5HH8&feature=emb_titl...

Look, I don't like Trump, I didn't vote for him, but it takes a pretty ridiculous warping of reality to say that he isn't taking this extremely seriously, isn't deferring to experts on this, and honestly isn't doing a pretty good job.

What more do people want? I wish we had a time machine and could go back to November, I'm sure everybody does. But we don't. What matters is what we're doing RIGHT NOW, and right now the things that I see happening all seem like good things.

Yale gym today: https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1241471079358611457

Activating the DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) to handle supply control and distribution instead of this states vs. states and states vs. fed gangbang of bidding and suboptimal routing of resources that's going on right now.

I would say that the media’s reporting of the crisis has simply continued to show people that their coverage of the president is just hysterical nonsense. Those who have drunk the koolaid will continue to lap it up though.

Did the media make up the "Deep State Department" bit? How do you spin that?

Why would the parent need to spin an obvious joke? Is the media pretending he was serious?

Of course they are. Just as they like to pretend he’s the only person in the world who falls over his words every so often.

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