Hacker News Reader

Comment by tathougies | Hacker News Reader

The governors are explicitly in charge of this. The US federal government has no authority to order shelter-in-place. And this makes sense, since the states are as large as most countries.

Most states are not anywhere near the level of New York, and while they need a shelter-in-place order eventually, we need to recognize that practically, people can only stand them for X amount of weeks. If you do it too early you risk people flouting the order and continuing to do so once things get bad.

The US is more akin to the European Union than a single country, and it's high time people realized this and stopped looking to uncle sam for leadership. During the 1918 flu pandemic, there was no national response. Individual governors and mayors instituted lockdowns as they saw fit, with support from the feds in terms of money.

View on HN

The virus doesn't respect state boundaries. While you are not wrong wrt to Fed & State duties - if the leadership is going to take a 'wartime' stance then it needs to message to that effect.

The CEO of my company does not tell my team how to deliver product. However, if there's a disconnect between what they're saying and what we're trying to accomplish there is a morale problem.

> The virus doesn't respect state boundaries. While you are not wrong wrt to Fed & State duties - if the leadership is going to take a 'wartime' stance then it needs to message to that effect.

The federal government has been absolutely warlike. Unfortunately, the media reports coming out of the press conferences are completely out of touch and honestly false when compared with what was actually said.

With regard to the states not being warlike enough. I don't disagree, but I would have major issues with an American president telling governors what to do. Nevertheless, the administration has taken a very supportive role with regard to governors. Trump has openly praised several governors who have previously called for his own impeachment for their responses to the virus, and even said he wished more governors would follow along (in closing things down, as needed). I don't see how much more warlike trump can get. The governors need to follow suit.

> the media reports coming out of the press conferences are completely out of touch and honestly false when compared with what was actually said

> Trump has openly praised several governors who have previously called for his own impeachment

These are extraordinary claims and I think you'd have a much stronger argument with specific examples and sources.

Okay sure. Let's start with something the media doesn't report. You seem to think that this is controversial:

> Trump has openly praised several governors who have previously called for his own impeachment

However, if you listen to the press conferences, Trump has repeatedly praised both Newsom and Cuomo.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

> And I watched what’s been happening in California with Governor Newsom and, this morning, with Governor Cuomo, and I applaud them. They’re taking very strong, bold steps, and I applaud them. And we’re all working together. We’re working very closely together, including those two governors.

Since you didn't know that from reading media coverage, I think it's safe to say that the media does not report what goes on at the press conferences.

EDIT: being downvoted for citing sources clearly saying that I what I said was true. Hacker news!

Having a leader who says things like that CV will go away in a few days when that's manifestly not true is not helpful. Leaving the states to bid against each other for limited supplies is not helpful. The US is not at all akin to the European Union. Perhaps in the early stages between the revolution and the constitution that was true, but it's not remotely the case now.

> Leaving the states to bid against each other for limited supplies is not helpful.

What else would you have them do? Only states know what they need, not the feds. The feds gave them appropriate money to stockpile medical equipment. They have to spend it.

The feds can coordinate the response. This isn't the eighteenth century. Just like employing the DPA can enable more efficient deployment of resources. Some problems require a top-down solution, this is one of them. All the ideology in the world won't change that.

Why does it require a top-down solution. How would the DPA invocation help the automakers change their production lines? Does the federal government have expertise there? Can you lay it out for me?

> This isn't the eighteenth century.

In the twentieth century, our response to the pandemic flu was not a top-down one from the federal level. Local government and even non-profits were the primary responders.

The fact that it isn’t the 18th century, means that there is effectively no limit distance limit to governments.

There is no need for the US government to retain control here either. A unified response coordinated by the WHO could work.... all for the price of a little thing called national sovereignty.

Of course, in reality that’s unworkable. Which is why in reality, federal governments haven’t collapsed into centralized control structures either. Germany for example still has its individual states deciding on testing procedure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com