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I see a lot of trash-talking about the US response to the #COVID-19 pandemic. The truth is, our national response could have been quite a bit better—starting by being honest about masks (“Wearing masks is proven to provide some benefit during respiratory virus outbreaks, but they are not a perfect or complete solution. We also don’t even have enough N95 or surgical masks for the medical community, so non-medical people should make your own masks for now.”)—and by reacting more quickly to give emergency production orders for medicines, PPE, ventilator machines, etc. Foremost among federal failures is President #Trump’s refusal to wear a mask until very recently, and his encouragement of rebellion against health-related restrictions. We now have people saying mask-wearing is “stupid” and ineffective, and that it causes psychological problems, and I would guess that the overwhelming majority of those people are his supporters.
But having read the national emergency plan and portions of the Stafford Disaster Relief Act, I know that the primary responsibility is with the states. I even question whether the federal government is allowed to do some of the things that needed (and still need) doing. This is a large country, with around 330 million people in it. Most of the most effective measures need to be applied at the point of most need, not pushed down from the top.
Not that you want 50 states, the District of Columbia, and some territories competing for supplies in an emergency. But the states should have taken the lead early on with behavioral and business restrictions (the lockdowns, are but one example of how they might have handled it), instead of waiting until they had out-of-control outbreaks and then panicking.
And, yes, I agree with @guizzy ... the USA 🇺🇸 has a huge number of deaths from #2019-nCoV ( the old name for the disease caused by the #coronavirus #SARS-CoV-2 ). But when you weight that by population (as one should), the US is not the worst-affected country. We’re not the best, either. That honor goes to the People’s Republic of China 🇨🇳, with the world’s largest population and a few thousand reported deaths. (And their numbers are increasingly believed to have been manipulated; with reports that the outbreak 😷 started in November, and only in late December / early January did they take action ... and that they’ve had continuing smaller outbreaks since the time it was controlled in Hubei Province.)
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I keep seeing references to a decision made in #NY state, to send / keep elderly patients in group care homes instead of dispersing them into less-crowded situations where fewer would be affected by any one person’s infection. I honestly do not have the time or inclination to dig into it.
But I can point to the state of #GA suing heavily affected #Atlanta to remove local mask-requirements and other restrictions. Instead of allowing local governments to respond appropriately, Governor Kemp said he wants people to voluntarily choose to behave appropriately. But he cannot be unaware of those who will not do so for political reasons.
There is over a century of precedent (since Typhoid Mary) that shows (1) that some infectious people will not choose to behave appropriately, (2) that their misbehavior causes other people to become sick and die, (3) that the only and best response is to force such people to restrict their activities, such that they can no longer infect others. In the original case, it was because the carrier did not understand how one could carry a disease without any obvious symptoms. That was still a new idea at the time. In today’s situation, it is willingly choosing not to understand that which requires restrictions on what one can do or where one can go.
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}
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