Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Edge-]

To be blunt: I think it is too easy to blame this on only one man.
If he has that much power, your political system needs a revision.

He's the head of the Executive branch. It's his branches job to lead an effort against a national pandemic, just as its the governor's jobs to lead the effort in their state (they're the head of the Excutive branch there too) and mayors within their cities.

So when the guy at the top isn't taking it seriously, that causes a lot of negative affects. It's not that the job has "too much power", it's that its powers, as with the Legislature and the Judiciary, are important as fuck. And such a monumental failure of leadership like there has never been before (to co-opt some of Trump's language) can have disasterous effects.

[Granyala]

And such a monumental failure of leadership like there has never been before (to co-opt some of Trump's language) can have disasterous effects.

Yes but shouldn't the executive branch be able to overrule him?
I mean the scientific data speaks for itself, at this point even clearly enough that even the common man can see that the leader's judgement is incorrect.

It is difficult to imagine, that one man can be such a detriment to the very society he swore to serve. I wonder if the same could happen in Germany.

[Edge-]

Yes but shouldn't the executive branch be able to overrule him?

...what? He's the elected representative of the USA leading the Executive Branch. He's literally the boss there, employees serve at his pleasure.

I mean the scientific data speaks for itself, at this point even clearly enough that even the common man can see that the leader's judgement is incorrect.

If facts mattered as much as you, and I, wish they did, the course of US history would be radically different. Unfortunately, there are no provisions in the Constitution regarding "facts", or even good-faith governance.

It is difficult to imagine, that one man can be such a detriment to the very society he swore to serve. I wonder if the same could happen in Germany.

It's been happening for a long time. Vietnam being a great example of presidents engaging in dangerous and stupid behavior despite many of them either having direct evidence that the war was a pointless waste of time, money, and lives and an utter disaster without any meaningful benefit to the US, and the advisors they hired absolutely did.

But that didn't stop the US from staying in the war officially and unofficially for well over a decade, repeating the same bad mistakes over and over.

This is just the natural consequence of a failure of leadership and with a corrupted party that refuses to hold their party leader accountable. It's technically possible in any democratic nation to a greater or lesser extent. It's just rare that it happens to this degree.

[Granyala]

...what? He's the elected representative of the USA leading the Executive Branch. He's literally the boss there, employees serve at his pleasure.

And that is exactly the problem. One man should not have that much power, after all, that's why we have multiple representatives.
Corruption and blind support by the party is certainly another grave problem for you, esp. since you seem to lack a strong political opposition that could veto his party's decisions.

Anyhow, thanks for your insights, lets not derail this any further.

[Edge-]

And that is exactly the problem. One man should not have that much power, after all, that's why we have multiple representatives.

It's not greatly dissimilar from many other democratic countries. The difference being they don't have suicidal lunatics surrounded by sycophants in their respective executive branches.

We have a Legislature, the House/Senate. The issues are more on the fact that 1. They've consistently ceded authorities to the Executive branch for decades (none applicable here that I know of, but plenty of others) and 2. It's literally not their job to lead the response. They are the ones that write the legislation to provide additional funding etc., but even that has problems when one party seems far more interested in providing legal immunity to businesses that operate irresponsibly and get employees/customers sick.

TLDR: System is "fine", not terribly better or worse than any other democracy out there right now. The problem is that the political landscape in the US has fallen apart.

Corruption and blind support by the party is certainly another grave problem for you, esp. since you seem to lack a strong political opposition that could veto his party's decisions.

Agreed on the former, the latter isn't really an entirely accurate view of the way the US government operates. There is no way to "veto" his decisions really. The Legislature can pass laws that could neuter certain efforts etc., but he'd veto those and it's difficult to override a presidential veto. Beyond that, that's not really specifically the role of the Legislature. They're co-equal branches (at least in theory), they have different powers.

All that being said, I think that the past 3+ years, and especially the past 6+ months, have been positively illuminating on the myriad ways in which the office can be corrupted and the duty done in bad faith to the detriment of the country. And I think it should spark a lot of difficult conversations about further rules/limits for both the Executive and Legislative branch, as we've seen both dishonestly weaponized for purely partisan gain rather than putting the country first.

[cubby]

To be blunt: I think it is too easy to blame this on only one man.
If he has that much power, your political system needs a revision.

It entirely easy because it's 100% fact. Utter and abject failure of leadership. At this very moment he is saying that the CDC is fake, our top scientist is being actively discredited by his office, and Trump is insisting the virus is "nothing to worry about, and should be gone in a couple of weeks".

Meanwhile, the exact opposite is true. Factually. Objectively.

[Combatbutler]

I wonder if the same could happen in Germany.

Of course it could, given enough time. Ultimately no nation on this planet is safe from something like this, people like trump come about when there is something seriously wrong in their society.

[Yunru]

Croatia and Serbia seems to have increased numbers of casses. I have a felling we will close the border soon.

[Unholyground]

We have only had 2 deaths in my province from it so far, thankfully most of Canada has sparse populations on the east coast. This is why big cities are garbage, too many people which is just a pandemic waiting to happen.

[Granyala]

It entirely easy because it's 100% fact. Utter and abject failure of leadership. At this very moment he is saying that the CDC is fake, our top scientist is being actively discredited by his office, and Trump is insisting the virus is "nothing to worry about, and should be gone in a couple of weeks".

It boggles my mind that you guys have no way of stopping such a person. Ho much harm does he need to cause in order for him to get kicked out?

[Bodakane]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mask-resi...115358176.html

Mask resistance during a pandemic isn't new – in 1918 many Americans were 'slackers'

In Seattle, streetcar conductors refused to turn away unmasked passengers. Noncompliance was so widespread in Oakland that officials deputized 300 War Service civilian volunteers to secure the names and addresses of violators so they could be charged. When a mask order went into effect in Sacramento, the police chief instructed officers to “Go out on the streets, and whenever you see a man without a mask, bring him in or send for the wagon.” Within 20 minutes, police stations were flooded with offenders. In San Francisco, there were so many arrests that the police chief warned city officials he was running out of jail cells. Judges and officers were forced to work late nights and weekends to clear the backlog of cases.

Many who were caught without masks thought they might get away with running an errand or commuting to work without being nabbed. In San Francisco, however, initial noncompliance turned to large-scale defiance when the city enacted a second mask ordinance in January 1919 as the epidemic spiked anew. Many decried what they viewed as an unconstitutional infringement of their civil liberties. On January 25, 1919, approximately 2,000 members of the “Anti-Mask League” packed the city’s old Dreamland Rink for a rally denouncing the mask ordinance and proposing ways to defeat it. Attendees included several prominent physicians and a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm sorry but when the same problems crop every 100 years, then there is a fundamental rot in this country that needs to be addressed. We are entitled and pathetic as a nation and we need to start valuing logic, reason and science over emotion, selfishness and faith.

[Katchii]

It boggles my mind that you guys have no way of stopping such a person. Ho much harm does he need to cause in order for him to get kicked out?

The issue isn't that he says all that stuff, because he doesn't directly control the people and can't make laws by himself.

The major problem is the huge number of people that believe him, follow him, and borderline worship him and believe and spout the same bullshit he does about science being fake, that the experts don't know what they're doing or that the virus itself is a hoax.

On one hand, I completely agree that he's harming the nation with all the crap he says...but on the other, the only reason that's happening is because of the morons that don't think for themselves and just follow what he says. He's not making them do it, they're doing it themselves.

[Tuor]

First of all, it's personal experience, not just "visual information". The other senses all play their part. In fact, scent is more closely linked to memory, so it's arguably more informative than sight.

Theory of psychanalisis, by Sigmund Freud. Fallacy of 1st impression.

Feel free to google it, in the absence of other information you always judge by the look's, which confirms my previous statment that visual information is prioritised over other information.

You don't have to be in a hurricane to fear being in one.

But if you do, then it fulfils the requirements of some sort of phobia or obsessive-compulsive behavior, just because you don't need to keep thinking in it, for all it matters hurricanes are temporary.

Personally experiencing a hurricane may make the fear of a similar future experience more visceral and its attendant reaction more pronounced, but personal experience is not in any way required for any sane person to trust the knowledge of what a hurricane can do and to not willingly walk into one.

Let's see if you can understand this time, phobias are associated with the production of some chemicals, like adrenaline, dopamin or seratonin, these chemical's make you feel diferent, adrenalin normally forces you heart to beat faster, which means you may feel like not having enought air to breath, dopamin and seratonin may give you the sensation that time is slowing (actually its your brain that is speeding up, and yes, i actually experienced this myself), these are the symptoms associated with phobias or even anxiety crisis. In the other hand, and obsessive-compulsive disorder don't cause any of these sysmptons, because is entirely controled by knowledge, and the fact that you keep thinking in that knowledge, for example people with these may keep washing their hands over and over along the day, or they may wake up during the night just to go out of the bed to confirm the the living room TV was shut down, and they keep doing this over and over.

Phobias normally have an unknown cause (commonly associated with survival instincts when they deal with snakes, for example), whille obsessive-compulsive disorders are always associated with the way people think and their knowledge.
As you can see, one condiction is associated with chemical's whille the other is not. The survival instinct you were descriving are close to phobias, whille the symptoms of people fearing viruses is normally closer to obsessive-compulsive disorders, which means, THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

What a ridiculous statement. Things don't have to be the same in order to be compared.

Yet you nuked me when i compared Ebola with sars-cov-2, which was far much more accurate the comparing sars-cov-2 with a... HURRiCANE.

You don't need to have personally experienced a hurricane to have your sense of self-preservation tell you to shelter from the danger.

No, but you don't need to keep thinking in it, over and over.

You don't need to have personally experienced a deadly virus to have your sense of self-preservation tell you to avoid contamination.

Correct, but there is huge diference of knowing something, lets say a snake, is dangerous, and actually developing survival reaction similar to the ones in phobias. Huge diference, is that a healthy person just naturally avoid the danger whille other might think at the speed of light and react in a total unsual way to the snake, that would be a real survival instinct, the act of avoidance barely qualifies as one, but yes, it still is, we all are programed to survive.

Both reactions are informed by knowledge and intelligence, unless the person allows their intelligence to be overridden by another conviction: namely stupidity.

Can you classify stupidity? If you come from sciences you most likely don't know anything about humanistics, and you are labeled as being stupid, its obvious you know very few about psychology, and i can actually label you as being stupidy, but i won't, because one of the rules of psychology is actually not changing the person's personality, their believs, or in other words, what you call stupidity, what is valid for some people, is not for other, psychologists are not there to change people's believs.

[Stormspark]

It boggles my mind that you guys have no way of stopping such a person. Ho much harm does he need to cause in order for him to get kicked out?

Me too, but there is no way to expel someone from a government position in the US, because of parties. The party will just protect them and prevent them from having any consequences, while also trying to rig the vote to maintain their power to do such things.

[Cynep]

First of all, it's personal experience, not just "visual information". The other senses all play their part. In fact, scent is more closely linked to memory, so it's arguably more informative than sight.



You don't have to be in a hurricane to fear being in one. Personally experiencing a hurricane may make the fear of a similar future experience more visceral and its attendant reaction more pronounced

No. You survive by being cautious, not by being afraid. When someone is cowering in a deep hole, pissing themselves, they're not out there feeding their young and teaching them to survive in adverse conditions. Prolonging their life meant nothing, they're still an evolutionary dead-end.

I agree with you on the smell part though. A suspicious smell will make a human, or any animal, worry much faster and more seriously than anything else.

[cubby]

It boggles my mind that you guys have no way of stopping such a person. Ho much harm does he need to cause in order for him to get kicked out?

We have a process, it's just been politicized and those in some parts of power refuse to do their jobs. The GOP is now a cult, with Trump as their leader. If he wins in Nov, we're fucked.

[Edge-]

No. You survive by being cautious, not by being afraid. When someone is cowering in a deep hole, pissing themselves, they're not out there feeding their young and teaching them to survive in adverse conditions. Prolonging their life meant nothing, they're still an evolutionary dead-end.

Good lord, there's so much incredibly wrong with this...

Fear is extremely fucking valuable. It's not just something to be "conquered", it's an evolutionary trait in all animals that keeps us the fuck alive.

"Cowering in a deep hole, pissing themselves" during an overwhelming threat that they cannot directly combat is literally how you keep surviving. When a tornado passes, you're right afraid of the damage it can do. That's why we have storm shelter and basements for people to hide in until the danger has passed.

Human progress is the history of taking those adverse conditions and getting rid of them so that we don't have to learn to survive them anymore.

Prolonging their lives is why we're still around today.

[Cynep]

It boggles my mind that you guys have no way of stopping such a person. Ho much harm does he need to cause in order for him to get kicked out?

As others have said, Trump has support of 40+% of population (or maybe less now). USA has lots of checks and balances, as they like to say; so their problem is not that Trump is a maniac ruling against everyone's will, but because of their two-party system, one party is backing his incompetent actions.

Also to be fair, true power in fighting the pandemic belongs to states not to Trump. States with better governors are doing somewhat better than states with bad ones. They can't really close borders between states, so it's only "somewhat".

- - - Updated - - -

Good lord, there's so much incredibly wrong with this...

Fear is extremely fucking valuable.

Bravery and ingenuity are far more valuable than fear. We can agree to disagree if you want, though. Prolonging one's life at the cost of one's children starving is not why we're still around today.

[LeGin Tufnel]

This sums up absolutely everything that has been wrong with the UK's response to Covid: should wearing face masks in shops be compulsory or not.

Boris Johnson hints at a change of tack (to see how the Murdoch press-reading public will respond), cue a startled expression from Michael Gove who looks like he's just had a dildo shoved violently up his arse, cue media frenzy, cue lots of talking heads getting a bit emotional, result: utter confusion.

[Pohut]

It was just a matter of making a call on what to do, in this case full lockdown, and sticking with it.
If Trump from the very start said: We are doing what the scientists tell us, all the states, National Guard will enforce the orders if required.
This whole mess could've easily been avoided. Half-arseing the response is what caused the problem.
Same thing in the UK, Brazil, Russia and pretty much everywhere else.