"The Bad Guy is the Virus" - Printable Version
+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: Emergency (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-11.html)
+--- Forum: Covid-19 (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-12.html)
+--- Thread: "The Bad Guy is the Virus" (/thread-20530.html)
+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: Emergency (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-11.html)
+--- Forum: Covid-19 (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-12.html)
+--- Thread: "The Bad Guy is the Virus" (/thread-20530.html)
"The Bad Guy is the Virus" - BostonCard - 09-28-2020
"The bad guy is not the person on the other side of your opinion."
[tweet]https://twitter.com/axios/status/1310706554358898688?s=20[/tweet]
Wise words from Fauci.
BC
RE: "The Bad Guy is the Virus" - fullmetal - 09-28-2020
I continue to promote the idea that public health is every bit as deserving of the political capital that national defense garners. War, famine, pestilence (and death)...these are all existential threats to any nation-state, and nation-states should be empowered to take action to defend themselves against such threats.
Of course if the nation-state is ruled by someone who doesn't want to combat such threats head-on...that is a problem.
RE: "The Bad Guy is the Virus" - Goose - 09-29-2020
(09-28-2020, 05:51 PM)fullmetal Wrote: I continue to promote the idea that public health is every bit as deserving of the political capital that national defense garners. War, famine, pestilence (and death)...these are all existential threats to any nation-state, and nation-states should be empowered to take action to defend themselves against such threats.Totally agree that public health is every bit as deserving of effort as any other form of national defense. There was a time in this nation when that wasn't even a question. It is also fortunately true that a perfectly good public health response costs a small fraction of what we spend on national defense. We can easily do this.
Of course if the nation-state is ruled by someone who doesn't want to combat such threats head-on...that is a problem.
I would however disagree with the "ruled by someone" statement. The past presidents going back through Ford knew that our public health response to an epidemic was limited at best. The congresses that served during these intervals knew it too. The Ford administration in 1976 was the one that approved a vaccine for swine flu that had big problems. In 2009 we had the H1N1 epidemic in which the CDC testing was shown to be totally inadequate. Nobody did anything. It isn't just Trump. It is much, much worse than that.
The good news is that "we" know how to address these shortcomings of our public health system, at least to a large extent. The State and County Health Departments need to be staffed appropriately and brought up to "modern" standards. The CDC needs to partner with industry to provide adequate availability of PPE. The CDC also needs to ensure tests developed in the future can seamlessly be used with the current and future hardware. We can do these things. Will we? I give it 60-40 against right now.