Comment by mjayhn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjayhn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

A lot of people didn't think the guy in the white house could matter that much until Trump. As a non-American a lot of Americans would likely be envious of your lifestyle right now. The 30 million currently unemployed for sure, the people who also can't get to a hospital if they need surgery or healthcare because they're closed because of our botched (guy in wh) response care as well. The essential workers with no healthcare who are making an extra $2/hour to possibly die.

This isn't a vaccuum in America. A lot of us have friends, family and coworkers affected by this.

Even if I ignore the president or the news I'm still trapped inside my house for the most part. If I leave my house it's an experience figuring out whether something is open or not, what their rules are, etc.

I mean I can go sit in my backyard and ignore the world but I still need to function day to day and right now I can't do half of my chores, errands, etc. So it's something definitely affecting my day to day.

And I'm on the lucky end, I can wfh and sit here and respond to you. I can't imagine having to go to work at some gas station to pay rent right now.

The guy in the white house isn't doing anything to calm anyones nerves or concerns. He's exacerbating them greatly. He has the largest microphone in the country, it's hard to ignore him or his affect on peoples mental health.

Everywhere we look is a reminder of our failure of a government. It's on everyones mouths. Now imagine going to work and fixing bobscars.com database while this stuff is in your face everyday.

I see your points and I don't understand those who disagree with you. 1. Your life is directly affected by the actions of those in power. 2. The future of your country is directly affected by the actions of those in power.

"I got mine, fuck everyone else".

I'm sorry you feel this way, but it kind of feels to me like you're linking everything back to a political landscape that you don't like, but which doesn't have a lot to do with the current state of things.

I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.

> I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.

We are literally in the polar opposite government than we were from 2008-2016.

I don't think we'd be at 100k dead today if our government was different and responded properly. Is this what we're debating? Why did Hong Kong only have 4 deaths the last I looked a few days ago? The government and societal response?

Maybe we're miscommunicating. Yeah, 90% of my life is the same but we all have friends and family affected by some part of it (healthcare or unemployment typically). The most mutual thing right now is our combined stress (except for the people partying at the beach).

Sorry to read that, mate. FWIW I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. It caught everybody on the planet off guard and exhausted already-provisioned healthcare resources pretty fast.

> I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference.

The obvious counter-argument to this are China and India. Significantly larger populations, living in far greater densities, possessing fewer healthcare resources, yet far fewer overall deaths. Even if China had 10x the deaths they're reporting (which would be hard to cover up, but you never know), it's still lower than the US. Their lockdown wasn't for as long. Schools in Wuhan reopened this month.

> It caught everybody on the planet off guard.

It caught China, and maybe Italy and Iran off guard. Surely after learning that a Chinese province of 20 million people had been put on house arrest, the rest of the planet should have cottoned on.

When did you quarantine? Most States have only been closed for a month and now they're opening. This "didn't catch us offguard" it is more like "our leader didn't tell us how bad it was for 3 months while the rest of the world shut down so most of our businesses didn't close and it's worse than it should be". That's the government. It's coming from the top. Companies weren't going to close offices until govs/Pres told them to do so, they had NO idea what to do.

Most of our Republican Govs will do whatever Trump tells them. That is the problem.

I just moved out of a red state that acts like this is nothing to blue state that is almost completely shut down until next week and has had FAR FAR fewer cases.

So yeah, I think government matters now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com