If we locked down society or accepted draconian measures at every single instance of a possible crisis, we would always be living in crisis because there are always potential crisis of some kind that could happen soon.
The first, lightest, basic-fucking-step was to start screening people by body temperature at airports. Anyone with an abnormal body temperature is taken into quarantine for a few days. They had three months from November to set it up. (For reference, China almost eradicated the virus in three months from December to Feburary. And South Korea managed to almost completely halt the spread of the virus in that time). Let's look at how that went:
I couldn't find anything from December or November.
January: "Travelers at 3 U.S. airports to be screened for new, potentially deadly Chinese virus"
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/17/coronavirus...)
Febuary: "CDC considering expansion of airport health screenings for novel coronavirus"
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-airpor...
March (15th): "The US administration has imposed a ban on non-Americans travelling from the 26 European countries in the Schengen free movement zone."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51895246
March (23rd): "Travelers shocked by barebones coronavirus screening at US airports"
https://nypost.com/2020/03/23/travelers-shocked-by-barebones...
The point is that the United States had three months of advance warning to do something. And they chose to sit on their hands and do nothing. And now 14,696 people have died, and almost 500,000 people are infected. This rate is rapidly rising. What's more, we don't even know if this data is accurate, it is very likely a lower bound given how difficult it is to obtain a test in the United States at the moment (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-testing-ch... | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51860529 | https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-test...). Again, they had three months of advance warning to set this testing up, within which South Korea had almost nullified the spread of the virus.
Even in January there were case reports of an up to 14 day incubation period, cases without fever, and asymptomatic transmission.
That's really the gut punch for me personally. Trump could have secured his reelection 100% by taking this seriously but instead he was too focuses on the short-term to look even as far as November.
Is that what we want? I think it seems to be the case. We could be entering a new normal.
I'll follow HN guidelines and I won't assume what you mean by that so I'll just ask. When did "hindsight" start? What date do you feel is a good marker for when it was obvious?
Even now, there is inadequate provisions and action by the US. It was only in March when the US gov started rolling out testing and screening, finally fully committing to it. If they had started doing what they're doing now, in January, it's likely the US would have been on the tail-end of the pandemic by now.
The statement I opposed was that we shouldn’t blame the administration for acting slowly so I’ll rephrase: at what point do you feel like there was enough information to act on? As in, people dragging their feet after this point can be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).