Fauci offers candid advice to city leaders
news.harvard.edu
news.harvard.edu
> “We are really almost morally obligated on our part to concentrate the resources in those communities so that they can do the adequate testing, and then, when someone gets infected, identification, isolation and contact tracing, and provide them with the resources to be able to physically separate when they do get an infected individual,” he said.
Unfortunately this has become a political issue, and the American president has already stated that much of the economic damage is self-inflicted by "blue" states, and that it would be unfair to provide more stimulus checks when it would primarily help blue states.
More to the point of the article, I find Fauci's appreciation of non-sickness issues to be refreshing and helpful. Most doctors are so focused on the disease itself that they don't seem to take 'collateral damage' from containment into account.
By leaving it up to the states, we’re creating a distributed system where there can be failure without bringing down the whole country.
The point is to reduce the infection rate so that the total number of hospitalizations (Covid19 or otherwise) does not exceed the healthcare system's capacity. I doubt your uncited claim here is comparing apples to apples.
Why not succeed as a country? Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan are doing much better than the US with their country-wide responses:
A little more speculative is my suspicion that a capitalist society storing its surplus in private hands may be correlated with a society that is unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude. The first time the President came on the radio to talk about the crisis, his tacit message was: We are hopelessly unprepared for this.
Take a look at this unemployment map:
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20200521093315/Table-2-of-Ci...
Several wealthy states seem to have forgotten that money doesn’t grow on trees and obliterated their tax bases. Most other states are pretty healthy and not in need of additional bailouts.
These states now have two crises instead of one.
And what of the economic damage of an epidemic raging out of control? Do we just assume it is zero?
Economic damage is part and parcel of living in a post-covid world.
And keep in mind there's a few confounding factors here (how easy it is to apply for unemployment).
> Several wealthy states seem to have forgotten that money doesn’t grow on trees and obliterated their tax bases. Most other states are pretty healthy and not in need of additional bailouts.
The list of states that are "healthy," economically, also coincidentally lines up with the list of states with the least accurate counting of current infections and have done the least to flatten their respective curves. Their actual health, the word often associate with human physical well-being, is a black box and it almost feels like they prefer to keep it that way.
Leadership is about balancing competing concerns, and five states in particular reacted in a way that is increasing human suffering rather than minimizing it. And even after paying a very high cost, they have infection rates similar to the rest of the country.
Whereas, places like North Carolina, Texas, and Florida not even peaked yet. Seems odd to declare victory, when their numbers are steadily climbing.
I wonder, what is the economic cost of people falling sick, and needing medical treatment? Are the red states including that in their accounts of human well-being? Or is it a 'screw you, you're sick, it's your problem now'?
However I grew up in the south and when I came to the northeast for college I had no idea how many northeasterners not only thought Republicans we're all dumb but also that the south should separate from the union and often heard the argument of how much money In a dollar per dollar of welfare goes to republican states, as a way to backfire on Republicans who don't believe there should be welfare.
It seems like this is a very specific dig right back at Democrats on this long standing argument.
Regardless, it's frustrating to know neither side is going to budge on their stances and either side will continue to badger and demonize the other not only during this time but always.
Though I stand by my personal ethics, I don't believe Democrats are blameless all of the time or that alienating each side is going to result in any progress in this country, only more radical responses from each side, of which Trump being elected is just one IMHO in a series of escalations fueled by spite for the other side.
Some Democrats may think like that, but that's never been the policy of Democrat presidents or politicians. Whereas what Trump and McConnell are saying and doing are explicitly GOP party policies.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan...