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[Iduno]

This is exactly like when dwarves wander into a siege ignoring the burrows.

No, that's the people out partying still.

Our contribution to the WHO every year is very low: 400 million compared to everything we waste money on. It is a significant part of the WHO's funding though. I hope they respond by blocking all information access to the US and encouraging all countries to close borders with the US.

Yeah, with our possible presidents at the end of the year being either a dangerous egomaniac, or slightly less egomaniacal person who actively hates the poor/non-white/environment, I don't have a lot of high expectations for this country.

[Reelya]

I think the real reason there is the WHO distraction at the moment is some information that was leaked recently about how far back the US inaction goes. Recently, intelligence was leaked that the White House knew about the outbreak waaaaay back in November. This thing about how they couldn't do anything because the WHO didn't tell them is a bullshit distraction:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House. Wednesday night, the Pentagon issued a statement denying the "product/assessment" existed.

From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

[TamerVirus]

Donald Trump being grossly incompetent
And
WHO being grossly incompetent
Can both be true statements

Let in Taiwan already!

[misko27]

There have been emails published by the New York times from government experts and employees all agreeing and arguing for swifter, bolder action. In particular is an email-chain known as "Red Dawn", hosted by the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Duane C. Caneva, which included various medical experts and grew over time. The timestamps are not favorable to the administration.

I'm still wondering how many apartments they're going to crack open to find people who have been dead for weeks once the lockdowns end and some people don't show up again. I bet it's more than a few.

In New York they added the toll of people who died at home a few days ago. With the 3,700 home deaths added in we swiftly broke 10,000 and then some.

[Iduno]

There have been emails published by the New York times from government experts and employees all agreeing and arguing for swifter, bolder action. In particular is an email-chain known as "Red Dawn", hosted by the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Duane C. Caneva, which included various medical experts and grew over time. The timestamps are not favorable to the administration.

I'm still wondering how many apartments they're going to crack open to find people who have been dead for weeks once the lockdowns end and some people don't show up again. I bet it's more than a few.

In New York they added the toll of people who died at home a few days ago. With the 3,700 home deaths added in we swiftly broke 10,000 and then some.

A 50% increase in death rate is nothing to sneeze at.

[PTTG??]

I believe democracy works. But this crisis has shown me that the US political system does not.

Having done some deep thinking, I've come to the conclusion that the root of the problem is a vicious cycle. First, that we do not have Democracy in the United States, but rather a failed democracy based on minority rule on multiple levels, from city/county to federal. This minority rule goes to whichever group is most effective at branding, not at policy, argument, coherency, or any other useful metric. Due to this, effective leadership and sound policy is the exception, rather than the rule. And so, the population of the voting public has less information, less education, less engagement, and less trust for its government.

This results in an impoverished, ignorant, and hateful populous that cannot discriminate between good leaders and bad, and is uninterested in policy or ethics. The only way to win over such a group is to have the right regional appellation. I specifically include Democrats in this not because they are as bad as Republicans (Democratic politicians are not so cynically broken as Republicans, and in fact in some places do indeed provide a path to recover), but rather because they are still stuck in the same system, so even the effective politicians of the left must use the same dirty tools.

We see ourselves that in the primary, the winner was not the one with an effective policy proposal, not the one who had no sex scandals, not the one who was most coherent and healthy, not the one who was able to reach out to minorities, and not the one who was closer in age to the voting public, but instead the one with the greatest brand recognition.

I do not know how to recover from this. We see that the ignorant American public is already killing itself by legislature by voting against healthcare, and against global cooperation. We see it is killing itself by turning against the WHO and other international cooperation.

In fact, the more I consider it, I wonder if this is how the purge of the unemployable will go. I don't see how the economy can possibly recover without a restructuring that there is no signs of happening. People think it will go back to normal on its own, but that will take decades of growth at old rates. Without a socialist reconstruction, the poverty will kill far more people than the plague. This is not to criticize shelter-in-place orders; it's the failure to plan for recovery that worries me. And that is, as they say, a plan to fail.

We need a new way of doing things. The lessons before us are obvious, but so many Americans will refuse to learn. Food is more expensive than we thought, when you aren't using slaves to harvest it. Communication networks are essential, and must not be built on arbitrary limitations and expectations. Medicine is a human right, and needs expert leadership, not partisan or self-interested administration. Commerce inevitably fails in emergencies.

[Kagus]

We'll get a social reconstruction when 4Chan decides to elect a social reconstructionist for the lulz. Biden is recognizable for his meme presence. Trump rose to prominence through his meme presence and an online grassroots campaign of weaponized nihilistic irony.


In other news, WWE Vince McMahon (among many glorious others) named as economic adviser, also what the shit even is this URL

[Lord Shonus]

If you look a little deeper, there's representatives of every major sports league in the council in question. It appears to be directly a "we need to get sports going again" meeting.


Which is pretty important for citizen morale, and overall economic repair. As long as you can keep the players and staff healthy otherwise, it may well be possible to reopen the leagues without a significant health risk. This would be a big step on a return to normalcy.

[Naturegirl1999]

We'll get a social reconstruction when 4Chan decides to elect a social reconstructionist for the lulz. Biden is recognizable for his meme presence. Trump rose to prominence through his meme presence and an online grassroots campaign of weaponized nihilistic irony.


In other news, WWE Vince McMahon (among many glorious others) named as economic adviser, also what the shit even is this URL

Question, why aren’t economists on the list of economy advisors? This is like putting people that aren’t scientists on science advisor positions

[nenjin]

You say that like that hasn't been Trump's MO since 2016. Ignore experts in their fields, put people in place that he likes instead.

"Unparalleled American prosperity."

Yes, unparalleled because the economy has fallen harder than in living memory, so any gain back to normal is going to look more significant.

[Loud Whispers]

Coincidentally, a time of unexampled prosperity is the title of an essay documenting the Great Mississippi bubble. It details how an intrepid Scottish minister and a pompous hedonistic Louis XV created the illusion of prosperity in order to transfer vast sums of wealth from the populace into their coffers, with the result being they accidentally create a bubble and destroy the French economy. This of course, has no relation whatsoever to the esteemed President and their time of unexampled American prosperity

[SalmonGod]

We'll get a social reconstruction when 4Chan decides to elect a social reconstructionist for the lulz. Biden is recognizable for his meme presence. Trump rose to prominence through his meme presence and an online grassroots campaign of weaponized nihilistic irony.

Trump won because

1.  Neoliberalism creates social and economic desperation among the majority.  This makes that majority psychologically vulnerable to reactionary extremism, and neoliberal ideology is also more compatible with reactionary extremist politics than it is with politics that actually address its problems.  So under neoliberal rule fascist sentiment is allowed to fester, while progressive sentiment is oppressed.  This is in a country that has always had fascist leanings.  Trump is a narcissist with decades of experience as a controversial public persona.  He knows how to read a crowd, tell them what they want to hear, and roll with negative publicity.  Trump has no ideology beyond himself.  He didn't win because he's a fascist.  He won because he recognized a fascist was what the crowd wanted, and was willing to play that part.  He saw that they were looking for someone to rip off the mask in the political arena and "say what everyone is thinking", when every other politician still thought that would be career-ruining.  4chan antics aren't responsible for that.

2.  The DNC conspired to give him shitloads of free publicity when he wasn't even seen as a serious candidate yet in the republican primary.  They made him a serious candidate.  They did so because they considered him one of their least "electable" candidates.  This has nothing to do with 4chan antics.

3.  Democrats don't offer anything that isn't better served by the right.  They offer hypercapitalist authoritarian systemic violence on a path to growing fascism and the environmental apocalypse.  People who want hypercapitalist authoritarian systemic violence will vote for a Republican, because they go harder at it and sell it proudly.  People who want hypercapitalist authoritarian systemic violence but want it polished and friendly looking so they're not prompted to analyze their political beliefs and feel like a bad person for them vote for Democrats.  Or people who are afraid of Republicans because they're more open about it will vote for a Democrat, like applying pressure to a massive bleeding wound on the country's neck while sobbing hysterically because they're all alone and have no better idea what to do than hope for a miracle.  The only voting base that's offered any appealing motivation to vote is those who want hypercapitalist authoritarian systemic violence, and that voting base is better served by Republicans.  Anybody who wants anything else isn't served at all, and has no appealing motivation to vote.  This has nothing to do with 4chan antics.



Btw - I haven't ignored the thing regarding HR1.  I just haven't had the chance to read into it very much yet.  But it might be the only convincing argument I've heard to go ahead and vote for Biden.

[andrea]

We'll get a social reconstruction when 4Chan decides to elect a social reconstructionist for the lulz. Biden is recognizable for his meme presence. Trump rose to prominence through his meme presence and an online grassroots campaign of weaponized nihilistic irony.


In other news, WWE Vince McMahon (among many glorious others) named as economic adviser, also what the shit even is this URL

Question, why aren’t economists on the list of economy advisors? This is like putting people that aren’t scientists on science advisor positions

That list of 20 names is just the most notable. The actual full list is much larger. Really, given the scope of the group it would have been more surprising to leave a WWE representative out. The article has a link to the full list, but there are economists.
From the (divided by groups but sadly otherwise uncommented) list I found Art Laffer which should refer to Arthur Laffer of the Laffer curve and Larry Lindsey as economists.
There is also Steve Forbes of Forbes (barring homonyms: list is just names, so I could be wrong) who is not an economist but surely has access to some.

[Naturegirl1999]

We'll get a social reconstruction when 4Chan decides to elect a social reconstructionist for the lulz. Biden is recognizable for his meme presence. Trump rose to prominence through his meme presence and an online grassroots campaign of weaponized nihilistic irony.


In other news, WWE Vince McMahon (among many glorious others) named as economic adviser, also what the shit even is this URL

Question, why aren’t economists on the list of economy advisors? This is like putting people that aren’t scientists on science advisor positions

That list of 20 names is just the most notable. The actual full list is much larger. Really, given the scope of the group it would have been more surprising to leave a WWE representative out. The article has a link to the full list, but there are economists.
From the (divided by groups but sadly otherwise uncommented) list I found Art Laffer which should refer to Arthur Laffer of the Laffer curve and Larry Lindsey as economists.
There is also Steve Forbes of Forbes (barring homonyms: list is just names, so I could be wrong) who is not an economist but surely has access to some.

If the purpose of advising economy, why have people who aren’t economists on the advisory in the first place? It sounds like it should be filled with economists

[andrea]

Economist can have a general picture, but it is also essential to have a wide representation from people who actually operate on the fields.
An economist may say that football needs to be restarted, but he probably knows nothing about football and what it actually needs to function at the level needed. The head of the NFL however does.

Same for every industry, really. The economist can give a general direction, but for any actionable decision you need somebody who knows how the specific field works and what it needs to operate. The number of economists is probably smaller than it should be, but having representatives from pretty much every industry is essential, because you will need those competences.


I hope somebody with better mind for words and knowledge of the situation can explain better, but I'll try an analogy:

Say you are the president of a group of people (I don't know, the local book club maybe).
The group is falling apart, so you hire somebody to help build bonds within the group. That is the "economist".
The economist may propose a monthly lunch. That is good. It works. However, to actually implement that advice, you need to poll the members of the book club to ask their dietary needs and preferences, otherwise you end up with a lunch nobody eats and you are worse off than before. This is where industry representatives come in.