2. Downplay common sense individual actions like wearing masks, because it would demonstrate lack of preparation
3. Bail out large businesses quickly, throw individuals and small businesses some scraps as a distraction.
4. After gross shutdowns are effected, don't spend the effort to refine them - eg reopening various small businesses that could operate hygienically.
5. Reject fine-grained policy that would repudiate business-uber-alles, like forcing new safety guidelines on essential industries.
6. Get fatigued from the above, and write off everything that was attempted as unnecessary waste doomed from the start. (thread article)
7. Rationalize that nothing could be done, things just happen. The idea we could do anything about it was a hoax. (your article)
8. Repeat for next disaster.
We've basically given up, end of story. I keep trying to grasp the idea that this is the societal death spiral taking hold, but I can't yet wrap my head around it.
Now, I’m starting to think the US is already a failed state. I’m pretty frightened to be living in this timeline. It’s like the collapse of Rome, but with wifi, vape pens, memes and nuclear arsenals.
There may be a resurgence in covid cases in the US shortly, but it's interesting that there are some countries not named America, Italy, or Spain, that are seeing daily growth of 5-10% and we're not talking about them.
As for someone living in Australia, you'll be fine in that corner of the world. Why do you think so many billionaires are buying bunkers in New Zealand?
(While not a member) Australia relies on NATO. Without it they would exist at the mercy of China. Without the US, NATO goes limp, especially in the naval power department.
Australia is as safe from a war in Eurasia as the Americas are. The events of WW2 made that quite clear. Imperial Japan even at its greatest extent was only able to make bombing runs on Australia's north coast. Frankly, there's nothing really worth fighting over as far away as Australia is from the rest of the world. Australia's key foreign policy objective is to play nice with the global naval power. Not because it needs protection, but it needs to not get locked out of the global shipping and trade network.
This can be alleviated by fixing housing costs in the most productive cities - SF etc. - where the most intelligent and productive people congregate. Cheaper housing will encourage these people to have children instead of forgoing them.
It can also be fixed by fixing immigration, so that the most intelligent and productive can migrate, ensuring diversity (no more than 10% from any one country) and equality (no more than 50% male from any one country).
The country also needs to fix the 'welfare cliff' - where under certain conditions it is more financially rewarding to have children and not work than to do the opposite.
You can barely convince these intelligentsia that street defecation is problem that can actually be solved. No thanks.
It’s one thing to spread propaganda in order to influence elections and get a crooked bureaucrat into power that can enrich some corporate buddies. But it’s another to deceive people about a global health crisis. If you’re successful, people go outside and trigger a second wave of infections - lots of people die and we’re back to square 1. Economy will still be fucked.
What am I missing here?
The people protesting and doing other stupid things are actually helping those of us that are isolating. The quicker they spread it and create herd immunity, the less time we have to wait. This obviously depends on whether an individual can get reinfected, but I haven't seen anything conclusive one way or another and it feels like this has also been misleadingly politicized.
Obviously a deluge of cases is absolutely terrible for the healthcare workers, as well as other essential employees that are exposed to the mob-herd (eg grocery store workers) and likely won't receive adequate healthcare. So I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing.
>herd immunity
There is no natural herd immunity for the flu or common cold. It's totally possible that after a few months people who survive become reinfected, which would massively increase the death rate if you already have lung damage when you get it again.
If we are going to allow most people to become infected anyway, such that we encourage people to go to large gatherings without even wearing masks, then surely there is no reason to have any quarantine at all, so we wouldn't be waiting to lift it. But you seem to think we would still be waiting, just for a shorter amount of time, so you are clearly very confused about this whole situation.
>I'm certainly not advocating, merely analyzing.
So am I.
The Russian statistics look fishy to me, but not in the same way as the Chinese ones. They have surging numbers of new cases, but a outlier very low claimed death rate. Of course, the latter might just be lagging. And there are supposedly similar protests in Russia as in the US - what does that mean? Are they real? Is it, say, the CIA? Or some internal conflict, or genuinely grassroots?