Comment by throwawaygh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaygh | Hacker News Reader

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> the time at which there is no risk to my political career

Do you live in the US? The situation is exactly the opposite here.

Downplaying the significance of COVID is practically part of the GOP platform at this point. It's gotten to the point in the last 2 months where even extremely mild and all-volunteer public health measures are political suicide in the majority of US states.

But also, even in the small number of very left-leaning areas like mid-sized/large cities, mayors and governors are under intense pressure to get things back to normal.

Hell. Even universities, which take tons of heat for being hotbeds of leftism even relative to left-leaning cities, are pushing forward with campus openings despite contrary advice from public health experts.

As far as I can tell, being too prudent for too long would be an enormous political liability in literally every US jurisdiction. In fact, being prudent at all is a political liability in >25 states even with new cases hitting highs. Here in rural PA I get harassed for wearing a mask into the grocery store.

The "permanent COVID emergency" concern is ridiculously disconnected from political reality in the USA. So much so that it's more of an unhinged conspiracy theory than a legitimate concern.

> Do you live in the US? The situation is exactly the opposite here.

I do. I live in the Bay Area. Your local situation may be different.

I stand by what I said. I’m surprised to hear some think there will be a permanent COVID emergency. I’m not really doing the whole partisan thing, so I don’t know the state of that debate.

We are in a pandemic; of course there will be pressure on our leaders. My conjecture is that career concerns may be leading some to ignore principles of good governance to minimize the risk that things will turn out poorly for them. I think it is not uncommon for political leaders who call all the shots to back themselves into such a situation. We need a way out.

You don't know the state of the debate on one of the most important issues of our time, but you felt the need to weigh in with your conjecture anyway? I'm not sure what exactly you think you are bringing to this conversation. Aristotle was a really smart guy, but he would have saved the world almost two thousand years of being completely wrong about physics if he had bothered to check how things actually worked instead of reasoning about it from first principles and assuming that his best guess was good enough.

Talking about hypothetical pressures that a theoretical government might face is a lot less interesting when we can look outside and see that the exact opposite of your hypothetical is actually taking place. Empirically, the pressure to not bankrupt the government and have to lay off police, firefighters, and teachers, to let people go back to their lives, and to not be seen as job-hating nanny-state bureaucrats is the dominant force in state and local decision-making, only barely being held in check by a sense of civic duty and concern for long-term consequences. And in places where civic duty and long-term planning aren't in vogue, we see that the former has won out entirely. Mayor Breed and Governor Newsom are doing what they do despite the political consequences of shelter-in-place, not because of them.

I was referring to the partisan mudslinging, the conspiracy theories, and so on. I do not keep up with that.

I am active in our local community and contributing my own interpretation.

Edit: and if you are implying that Newsom and Breed and others are holding the line because they know in their hearts to do the right thing, well, this pandemic proves nearly every politician on the planet must have a really big heart.

I apologize for my tone in my last comment. I realize now that it was unnecessarily harsh.

I don't agree though that it's out of a sense of charity or morality. I think it's a matter of self preservation, just acting on a longer timescale than others. Politicians don't want to live in a blasted hellscape any more than the rest of us. And I think a fair number have realized that taking unpopular actions now is the only way to avoid that.

> But also, even in very left-leaning areas like mid-sized/large cities, mayors and governors are under intense pressure to get things back to normal.

The refusal of the GOP (Senate, mostly, though the White House seems to be on the same page and perhaps the main motivator) to provide state/local aid, given that there are legal, practical, and other restrictions limiting state borrowing for emergency costs, especially non-capital costs, and structurally they have since not long after the founding relies on the federal government to backstop them for that is a big part of this.

Certainly. But even with temporary federal backstops cities and states would be under intense financial pressure.

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