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Comment by streamingvac | Hacker News Reader

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I'm no fan of totalitarian governments, but blaming America's problems with coronavirus on China seems like a reach to me - we had two months warning just from watching what happened in China and our government did literally no preparation during that time. I suspect if we'd had longer warning we would have just spent longer doing nothing.

2009 swine flu pandemic originated in Mexico and wasn't contained either. Killed 250,000 people. Don't see anyone blaming Mexico.

Flip side China and Vietnam have squelched the virus. While the Federal Government continues to do nothing leaving everything to various states.

Wikipedia says 12,469 deaths were estimated, 3,433 confirmed[1]. It says there were 274,000 _hospitalizations_ ... is that what you're referring to?

I'd like to think that if 250k Americans died, we'd know more about it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the...

> The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449,[7] though this 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic

I don't understand this PoV. Regardless of the Chinese government's incorrect handling of the coronavirus, deliberate or not, they did not dictate nor control the US response. I'm sorry about your friends' grandparents, but what's happening in the US right now is all on the US.

Might be how you approach the topic. I hang with some pretty far left folks and no one likes China's government and is pretty open about it. Might just be your circle. You could ask them I guess?

Hmm yeah maybe I should. Because my coworkers don’t mind making crude jokes and personal attacks on the president. Yet they shrink when I bring up CCP

Neoliberals do this, but otherwise most liberals have no love for China. In this case though I'd suggest that you blame Donald Trump for those two deaths, rather than the Chinese government.

Politics doesn't belong in a professional environment.

So employees should be avoiding the topic.

My coworkers have no problem discussing Donald trump and republicans. They laugh about our president a lot. Yet when I bring up the Chinese government, silence could be heard.

Are they discussing politics or bonding over their contempt of Trump?

Those are quite different things.

I despise Trump, but claiming that talking about his shortcomings is an apolitical conversation is totally disingenuous. Politics isn't this bloodless process of determining the best policies by rational debate, as much we'd like it to be. Politics, as often as not, consists entirely of making the other team look bad, to raise the relative status of your own team. That's just how humans operate.

Sure.

My point is that "discussing politics (A)", where people bring their best arguments to the table and have a friendly intellectual discussion is very different from "discussing politics (B)", where people bond over hating the outgroup of the other political tribe.

And I did this because OP seemed to naively think that since his coworkers do (B), they would also be happy to do (A) with him. Trying to give him a clue before he hurt himself.

I don't like that attitude. We should be able to discuss politics without the need for judging each other.

I agree it would be nice, but I think there's evidence that not every employee will remain civil during such discussions.

Where does this ever happen well? There's a reason companies have made it a policy to avoid for decades.

Ideally, yes. That isn't the reality, so it's best to leave that for outside work. Religion is the same.

>Politics doesn't belong in a professional environment.

hmm i wonder if your boss feels the same way (i.e. that his/her business interests are completely separate from his/her politics). the idea that you're politically neutral at work - the very locus of political contention - is laughable.

Not in 2020. That goes against the "bring your whole self to work" mindset that's recently become popular.

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