The Blame Game MUST stop! - Printable Version

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The Blame Game MUST stop! - OutsiderFan - 04-20-2020

So now China-based reporting claims a new outbreak in the northern area of the country can be traced to a U.S. visitor.  Great, now China can claim the U.S. is responsible for starting an outbreak in China, after the U.S. is blaming China for its worst on the globe outbreak.

As I said before in another thread, what the hell difference does it make who is at fault for what, when we have a serious reality to address that impacts everyone on the planet and every country the same? We are never, ever going to get past this pandemic if we keep on playing blame games, fight with each other, and don't all act in cooperation to win the war on our hands.

https://www.ft.com/content/c1ddd0f4-1faf-4a50-a5ce-dad3ba341870

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - oregontim - 04-20-2020

(04-20-2020, 12:17 PM)OutsiderFan Wrote:  We are never, ever going to get past this pandemic if we keep on playing blame games, fight with each other, and don't all act in cooperation to win the war on our hands.

Absolutely right, of course. Totally agree. But so much harder to do when "blame games" and fighting comes from the very top, where we ought to be looking for leadership, and is broadcast daily on multiple channels under the guise of presidential briefing.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - 2006alum - 04-20-2020

The blame game is now spurring a race to the courthouse doors:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1252318682405056513?s=20[/tweet]

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - OutsiderFan - 04-20-2020

Of course the WHO wasn't perfect in its response. but FFS, it was pretty freaking obvious how serious the situation was to anyone bothering to pay attention, by the end of January. Those that did were aware of asymptomatic spread in the first week of February, and everyone should have figured it out from what happened on the cruise ships.

The biggest blunder The Who made, IMO, was not advising everyone in the world to wear a face covering. But, can it really be blamed for this? It first and foremost wanted to protect PPE supplies for health workers, so it advised the public not to wear masks, thinking the only alternative were the medical ones. It wasn't until people with a perspective beyond being in the medical field started showing how non-medical face coverings could be quite effective at stopping virus spread, that the call came for face coverings.

Lawsuits against The WHO are absurd.  It would be like trying to sue a fiduciary when the business judgment rule applies.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - ChicagoCard - 04-20-2020

[tweet]https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1251930586496860160[/tweet]

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - Genuine Realist - 04-20-2020

(04-20-2020, 01:06 PM)OutsiderFan Wrote:  Of course the WHO wasn't perfect in its response. but FFS, it was pretty freaking obvious how serious the situation was to anyone bothering to pay attention, by the end of January. Those that did were aware of asymptomatic spread in the first week of February, and everyone should have figured it out from what happened on the cruise ships.

The biggest blunder The Who made, IMO, was not advising everyone in the world to wear a face covering. But, can it really be blamed for this? It first and foremost wanted to protect PPE supplies for health workers, so it advised the public not to wear masks, thinking the only alternative were the medical ones. It wasn't until people with a perspective beyond being in the medical field started showing how non-medical face coverings could be quite effective at stopping virus spread, that the call came for face coverings.

Lawsuits against The WHO are absurd.  It would be like trying to sue a fiduciary when the business judgment rule applies.

I'm all for ending the Blame Game, and posted twice about it. But it does seem to me that most of the posters on this thread want to end the Blame Game  . . . against China, so that they can play the domestic Blame Game with more gusto. This seems to me to have polarities reversed. 

Maybe some prescient people could see where this was heading in January. However, throughout December and January the CCP put out systematic dis- and misinformation, including sanctioning concerned doctors in China who tried to give warning, which campaign really fouled up policy considerations in this nation and elsewhere. It wasn't until January 31st that WHO warned of pandemic, and by then it was way, way too late. Even now its data and reports are seriously suspect. I don't think the Italian or Spanish publics are going to forgive that, no matter what happens in the US.

You can think what you want about Trump. But I hope no one is going to misconstrue the actual deplorable record because you want to bash him all the harder. Not good.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - BostonCard - 04-20-2020

The CCP did bungle the initial response to the virus, including sanctioning doctors who sounded the early alarm, being slow to identify patient to patient transmission, bungling the implementation of the internal travel ban from Wuhan (such that millions of people left the city right before the restrictions were imposed).

That's true but irrelevant to assessing the performance of our own leaders in responding to the pandemic, which you already know how I feel about it.  Maybe Regan's admonishment applies, "trust, but verify".  Besides, the administration continued to bungle the response, minimize the severity here, and send out conflicting (I'm being nice here) messages long after the extent of the danger of the virus was aparent, nothwithstanding what the CCP and WHO said.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, given a choice between blaming China and blaming the Trump administration...



BC

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - Genuine Realist - 04-21-2020

(04-20-2020, 03:13 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  The CCP did bungle the initial response to the virus, including sanctioning doctors who sounded the early alarm, being slow to identify patient to patient transmission, bungling the implementation of the internal travel ban from Wuhan (such that millions of people left the city right before the restrictions were imposed).

That's true but irrelevant to assessing the performance of our own leaders in responding to the pandemic, which you already know how I feel about it.  Maybe Regan's admonishment applies, "trust, but verify".  Besides, the administration continued to bungle the response, minimize the severity here, and send out conflicting (I'm being nice here) messages long after the extent of the danger of the virus was aparent, nothwithstanding what the CCP and WHO said.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, given a choice between blaming China and blaming the Trump administration...



BC

'Irrelevant' is a strong word. 'Not decisive' is perhaps more accurate, but I don't think entirely correct. 

Leave Presidential personalities aside. What has struck me is the amazing speed at which this society, and others around the world, went from comparative indifference to Covid-19 to an acceptance of a massive, incredibly economically damaging and socially stressful, shutdown of society at large. The NCAA tournament canceled? Wimbledon postponed? No one even contemplated that on March 1st - yet it happened by March 10th. Wow. So what changed?

Very simply, the availability of massive, HONEST clinical data, largely from Italy but also the United States, that accumulated exponentially throughout the month of February and hit critical mass around 3/1. I'll give credit to a few seers, some on this Board, who saw more clearly. But this was not wisdom that percolated to the public at large - and you need broad public awareness for these measures to be accepted. Even a President as popular as Obama or Kennedy can't do much without that. And that was no thanks to China, or more accurately, the CCP. 

The reality seems to me that the CCP misinformed, disinformed, and obfuscated its actual experience with the virus throughout the months of January and February. Skeptics such as Tom Cotton were pummeled as conspiratists in the MSM. I"m going to link an article by Christine Rosen that summarizes the extent of CCP apologetics. One factoid stands out - the WHO was congratulating the CCP for halting the spread of the virus, when by that date it was active in 18 different nations. 

It is important to get history correct. In my opinion, it's a refusal to do that that opens the door for bigots of various types - because the unwillingness to acknowledge established fact takes you out of the game of fair judgment. Thus, twenty years ago, a refusal to acknowledge the obvious truth that a teeny-tiny minority of Islamic jihadists (though large in absolute numbers) had committed some horrific terroristic acts and were prepared to do more, left the field open for persons who wanted to condemn the religion as a whole and all adherents. You minimize prejudice by exploring known truth values, not ignoring them for ideologically convenient reasons. It's too early to make the definitive case against the Communist Chinese. But the prima facie case is very strong.

Take all the shots at Trump you want, but it is public awareness and concern that matter. The awakening of that was delayed at least six weeks by CCP obscurantism.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - 2006alum - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 09:13 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  The reality seems to me that the CCP misinformed, disinformed, and obfuscated its actual experience with the virus throughout the months of January and February. Skeptics such as Tom Cotton were pummeled as conspiratists in the MSM. I"m going to link an article by Christine Rosen that summarizes the extent of CCP apologetics. One factoid stands out - the WHO was congratulating the CCP for halting the spread of the virus, when by that date it was active in 18 different nations. 

The CCP locked down Wuhan and much of Hubei on Jan. 22 - 60 million people in total - the largest lockdown in peace times in modern history. If that wasn't a warning shot of how bad this was, I don't know what could have been. Apparently enough people in NYC noticed, because by Jan. 26, Walgreens were posting signs on their doors notifying that they were out of surgical masks. They were already out of stock on Amazon by Jan. 28. When I flew from NYC to SF on Feb. 4 at least 1/3 of the flight was wearing masks. There were plenty of people concerned about this by at least early February. 

And as folks previously noted, the White House got notices in January from many sources, including the President's own Trade Advisor, Peter Navarro, as to how bad this could be: 

Quote:A top White House adviser starkly warned Trump administration officials in late January that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death.
The warning, written in a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, is the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront a crisis that had already consumed China’s leaders and would go on to upend life in Europe and the United States.
“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil,” Mr. Navarro’s memo said. “This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”
Dated Jan. 29, it came during a period when Mr. Trump was playing down the risks to the United States, and he would later go on to say that no one could have predicted such a devastating outcome.

And clearly the President must have known how serious this was given that he issued a (flaw) travel ban from China on January 31. If he thought it was so bad he needed to ban "all" travel from China, presumably high-level U.S. leadership was aware of the potential for a pandemic.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - BostonCard - 04-21-2020

What I meant was that we evaluate the performance of our leaders based on the reality of the situation they faced, not based on some alternate universe where a non-benign state actor doesn't pursue a policy which adversely affects us.

It would be like trying to evaluate FDR's response to World War II in a universe where Pearl Harbor doesn't happen or Jimmy Carter's response to the Iranian revolution in a universe where the hostages aren't taken.

I mean, let's say that the virus emerged in sub-Saharan Africa, where the country in question simply lacked the capacity to do any basic epidemiology and find out about the virus until it is already widespread and it shows up on our shores.  Functionally it is no different than the situation we face.

Ultimately, I go back to the fact that Chinese leaders are "accountable" (in quotes, because it is not a democracy) to the Chinese population, while American leaders are accountable to Americans.  I already think the CCP is corrupt and repressive and the Chinese people would be better off with a different system, so I'm not disputing any of the criticism.  But the President has to play the cards he was dealt, not the cards he would have preferred to have, and he played them poorly.

BC

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - Genuine Realist - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 09:57 AM)BostonCard Wrote:  What I meant was that we evaluate the performance of our leaders based on the reality of the situation they faced, not based on some alternate universe where a non-benign state actor doesn't pursue a policy which adversely affects us.

It would be like trying to evaluate FDR's response to World War II in a universe where Pearl Harbor doesn't happen or Jimmy Carter's response to the Iranian revolution in a universe where the hostages aren't taken.

I mean, let's say that the virus emerged in sub-Saharan Africa, where the country in question simply lacked the capacity to do any basic epidemiology and find out about the virus until it is already widespread and it shows up on our shores.  Functionally it is no different than the situation we face.

Ultimately, I go back to the fact that Chinese leaders are "accountable" (in quotes, because it is not a democracy) to the Chinese population, while American leaders are accountable to Americans.  I already think the CCP is corrupt and repressive and the Chinese people would be better off with a different system, so I'm not disputing any of the criticism.  But the President has to play the cards he was dealt, not the cards he would have preferred to have, and he played them poorly.

BC

Right. That explains why we condemn FDR for not declaring war on Nazi Germany on September 2nd, 1939. Only we don't. I do believe that policy alternatives  for whomever is President are constrained by public awareness and information available. We do not expect (or should not) superhuma awareness.

I'm not going into the Trump debate here. What I am saying is that good policy decisions were made enormously more difficult both in the United States and around the world by deliberate Chinese Communist mis- and dis- information that persisted well into February. It was only after the clinical experience of Western doctors, particularly in Italy, proved vastly different than what was being reported that the public was aroused, and willing to accept a social discipline that it would never have accepted in January.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - 2006alum - 04-21-2020

[tweet]https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1252652964365447169?s=20[/tweet]
Seems to me it's hard to stop the blame game when the feds are literally threatening to sue states for trying to keep their residents safe.

SMH.

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More fun with lawsuits:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1252668661350969345?s=20[/tweet]
I look forward to Fox News rants about about opportunistic plaintiffs' lawyers.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - cardcrimson - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 12:10 PM)2006alum Wrote:  [tweet]https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1252652964365447169?s=20[/tweet]
Seems to me it's hard to stop the blame game when the feds are literally threatening to sue states for trying to keep their residents safe.

SMH.

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More fun with lawsuits:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1252668661350969345?s=20[/tweet]
I look forward to Fox News rants about about opportunistic plaintiffs' lawyers.

Did you read the Bloomberg article? Barr stated that the US might join lawsuits brought by others IF they believe the state is impinging on civil liberties or hampering national commerce AND the governor refuses to make adjustments after discussions. If one state's actions hamper another's or the greater country as a whole, seems reasonable.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - 2006alum - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 12:40 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:  Did you read the Bloomberg article? Barr stated that the US might join lawsuits brought by others IF they believe the state is impinging on civil liberties or hampering national commerce AND the governor refuses to make adjustments after discussions. If one state's actions hamper another's or the greater country as a whole, seems reasonable.

"Impairing national commerce" is not a free-standing cause of action, my friend, and the state's police powers are not susceptible to abstract federal interference provided they do not discriminate between in-state and out-of-state commerce. The (limited) exception is for dormant commerce clause issue, but the usual skeptics of dormant commerce clause theories are Federalist Society folks like Barr, so he should, in theory, be the last person to object to exercises of State Sovereignty. But I suspect you don't care, and I don't think Barr does either. It's all just rhetorical, and that's my point: the White House leadership has evinced absolutely no interest in stopping the blame game, and is now deploying the "Justice" department to shake down governors who'd prefer to listen to science than politics.

It's also not at all clear to me how the Justice Department is well positioned to second-guess governors as to whether conditions on the ground warrant extending shelter in place restrictions. Is there an epidemiology arm of DOJ that I've missed all these years?

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - BostonCard - 04-21-2020

If FDR bungled the World War II, do you not think he should have come under criticism?  Trump is not being criticized for what happened before Coronavirus made it to our shores; he's being criticized for what has happened since then.

BC

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - magnus - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 01:08 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Trump is not being criticized for what happened before Coronavirus made it to our shores; he's being criticized for what has happened since then.

BC

Are we talking MSM these days, or over the last month?  He's been criticized for not reacting fast/soon enough.

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - burger - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 12:57 PM)2006alum Wrote:  White House leadership has evinced absolutely no interest in stopping the blame game virus

Fixed that for you ;)

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - OutsiderFan - 04-21-2020

William Barr can f*ck all the way off.  If he hasn't trashed his reputation enough by being a partisan hack who can't be trusted to tell the truth by federal judges, mixes religion with government, and all the other things he has done to weaken the integrity of the DOJ, why not add trying to trample on states' rights and being laughed out of the Supreme Court for pulling such nonsense?

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - Scooter_Stepford - 04-21-2020

(04-21-2020, 01:39 PM)OutsiderFan Wrote:  William Barr can f*ck all the way off.  If he hasn't trashed his reputation enough by being a partisan hack who can't be trusted to tell the truth by federal judges, mixes religion with government, and all the other things he has done to weaken the integrity of the DOJ, why not add trying to trample on states' rights and being laughed out of the Supreme Court for pulling such nonsense?

Terry?

BC?

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RE: The Blame Game MUST stop! - 2006alum - 04-21-2020

Agreed. Let's reroute this train back to COVID-19 or I will close up shop when I get back to the computer (not as sure how to do this on my phone).

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