Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fao_ | Hacker News Reader

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You seem to be talking about the possibility that they overreacted though. That's not really the point. The point is that they did nothing. They took no steps to prevent the spread of the virus.

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.

An alternative take is that they did not believe that the screenings were going to have a meaningful impact on the spread to the US and were always a PR move.

Even in January there were case reports of an up to 14 day incubation period, cases without fever, and asymptomatic transmission.

Well the administration did a lot of things for optics/PR/the "markets" but none of those steps were taken to actually help or protect Americans.

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.

I’m honestly not sure how this relates to what I said. Are you agreeing? I’m not saying trump did a good job, just proposing that airport screenings may not have made a difference

Maybe the Chinese government shouldn't have been hiding information and silencing doctors, or the Taiwanese, or the WHO providing bad guidance even back in January.

It's easy to be right in hindsight. There was some probability it would've never left China. Let's say the probability was 10% of it leaving. If we need airport screening for a mere 10% chance of a virus potentially entering the U.S., we will always and forever screen people's temperatures at airports -- because there is always that (small) probability of a novel infection entering our borders from somewhere (China is one of 195 countries, after all).

Is that what we want? I think it seems to be the case. We could be entering a new normal.

> It's easy to be right in hindsight.

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?

If you personally weren't arguing that people should beware of a pandemic in November then for you hindsight is likely the entire time you've been discussing it.

That literally makes no sense. I never said that the minute they got that report they should have jumped into action but rather they got a constant stream of warnings starting in November or around that time. Waiting until March to really act was incorrect.

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).

It isn't that they needed to act in November. The virus was only taken seriously by the Chinese in December. However by mid-December no action has been taken by the US government. Only marginal action was seen in January, when it was a sure-fire knowledge that people would have gone to the US not knowing they had it.

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.

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