The federal government's response to COVID-19

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bjs
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The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by bjs »

To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by Divine Insight »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?
I my opinion the federal government is 100% responsible. Especially in terms of intelligent leadership. They aren't necessarily responsible for the precise outcome. But they are responsible for how they conduct leadership through it.
bjs wrote: Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
I live in the USA and I would say that the Trump administration has not provided effective, wise, or clear leadership. To the contrary I see the administration as having behaved extremely political and even divisive.

I see the role of the President of the "United" States of America to Unite the states in collective cooperation for the entire nation. What I have seen instead is a President who has created a "Divided" states of America. In fact, I see the state governors as basically cooperating with each other in a united fashion in spite of the devise lack of leadership on the Federal level.

There is no question in my mind that ANY of our previous modern presidents would have been far more uniting at this time rather than being divisive. From Bush Sr. to Clinton, to Bush Jr., to Obama. Any one of those presidents would have done a far better job that our current administration. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

Those presidents would have brought the country together. Our current president is playing political divisiveness.

I think just about anyone would have done a better job that our current president.

I think it should be obvious to anyone who has been watching that President Trump as serious ego problems. I personally consider him to be genuinely mentally ill in this regard. I simply don't see how any sane person could behave as immaturely as he behaves on a daily basis.

His narcissism is a serious problem and threat to the national security of the USA as well as to our very system of democracy.

I think he's also on the brink of making things far worse by inciting people to do like they are currently doing in Michigan. He's filled those people's mind with very bad ideas that we should just ignore the thread of Covid-19 and just return to work like as if there is no threat.

Many of the the people who were protesting didn't even bother to wear masks or maintain social distancing.

I personally believe, quite unfortunately, that many Americans may actually behave this stupidly. Things could really get bad in the USA if people continue to behave this poorly. And I think it's fair to say that a lot of this type of behavior is being incited by Trump's rhetoric.

I think the USA is in for a big problem is people start to ignore the social distancing and social isolation behaviors. And our president is actually inciting this mentality.

So this is definitely not good.

We'll have to see how this all unfolds over the summer. It might be that our only hope is that the virus does indeed become ineffective when the weather warms up. But there's no reason to think that's necessarily going to happen. That would just be a stroke of dumb luck if it did happen.
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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by AgnosticBoy »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
In the US, there has been some inconsistencies in the president's plan. The president also underreacted which cause some delays in testing and response. However, with all that said, even if he was on top of everything, that would not have completely prevented this virus.

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by AgnosticBoy »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
There has been mixed results. The stay-at-home policy is receiving pushback as some are suing their governors and starting protest. Here's a source on one lawsuit and protest:
Reuters


In my view, if more start protesting and resorting to lawsuits over stay-at-home orders, esp. when there are things that can be done to ease the restrictions (like isolating only HIGH risk population), then this can turn ugly. And for now I think Democrats will get more of the blame because they tend to have tougher stay-at-home measures than Republican governors.

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?
Congratulations to the White House Messiah for shifting the blame to the state governors and accelerating the national death toll to over 37,000 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and reinforcing the necessity of a well regulated militia for the security of a free State and proudly bragging about increasing the TOTAL DEBT to GDP ratio to 128.54% and predicting that it will rise to 203.12% by 2024 if he is re-elected for keeping his eye on the ball and his wallet. https://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html https://www.usdebtclock.org/current-rates.html ;) ;) ;)
Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
At least we can be thankful that our elected officials have managed to keep our national death toll to only 65 so far. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... australia/

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by AgnosticBoy »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
What the governors need to do is clearly state what is the goalpost. It can't be getting the virus numbers down to zero because we haven't been able to get the flu down to zero cases and that's with vaccines. It can't be to wait for a vaccine because we can't afford to keep our economy shut down for a year.

In my view, the goalpost should not be centered on the rate of infection since the majority who get it will experience MILD symptoms. We don't worry about people getting the cold or flu or we certainly don't shut down because of it. The goal should be keeping the virus away from those who are high risk for severe symptoms from covid-19.

If you don't set a clear goalpost, then it will go through endless shifts and no one will be held accountable.

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

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Post by mitty »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
WOW!!! Now the White House buffoon suggests that injecting disinfectant might reduce the number of deaths from reaching 100,000. Perhaps he should use a nasal spray to shut him up as the unemployment rate passes 20% and the TOTAL DEBT to GDP ratio rockets past 120%

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Re: The federal government's response to COVID-19

Post #8

Post by mitty »

bjs wrote: To what degree is the federal government responsible for the current crisis people are facing?

Have elected federal officials in your nation provided effective, wise and clear leadership during this pandemic?
WOW!!!
Now the White House Buffoon suggests that injections of disinfectant may stop the number of deaths from hitting 100,000 before Christmas. Perhaps he should give himself a nasal spray of disinfectant to shut him up from bragging about the unemployment rate passing 20% and the TOTAL DEBT to GDP ratio rocketing passed 130% to over 200% by 2024 when the 538 voters re-elect him.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
https://www.usdebtclock.org/current-rates.html

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Post #9

Post by otseng »

mitty wrote: Now the White House Buffoon
Moderator Comment

I can understand why you'd call Trump a buffoon, but the rules here prevents calling anyone any names.

Please review the Rules.


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Post #10

Post by Danmark »

We have a President who is so ignorant of science he actually suggested people inject or otherwise introduce surface disinfectants into their bodies as a therapeutic for COVID-19. Then he denied he said it despite the clear video evidence.

This is emblematic of his entire, failed response to the pandemic. Gov. Cuomo has given us an approach that is a quantum jump better than Trump's.
What does the world see when they look at the USA now? Here’s what Ireland’s most respected mainstream political writer says. 🇮🇪 ☘� 🇮🇪 Irish Times-April 25, 2020-By Fintan O’Toole

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT

'Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.�

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities�.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.�

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state� and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority�, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all�. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

Fertile ground
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.

There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom� in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom� is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut� read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage� and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.'

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