Today, a female reporter from CBS kept pushing the Democratic talking points that Trumpieboy didn't tell the country there was a dangerous epidemic, as if he deliberately ignored the problem (duh) and he of course answered testily how he closed the country to flights from China against advice, at which point she said he didn't stop Americans from flying in from China etc etc.
Must push talking points...
The problem? The infobabe was smirking the entire time... and of course, she wasn't asking for information, just asking snide questions that he had answered many times before. Why waste time this way? To embarrass him (and by implication the entire CDC who after all did advise him).
reality check: in the midst of an emergency, people try their best: And here that means a lot of government people. Outsiders who criticize people trying their best come across to us who have been in such situations not only as naive, but mean spirited.
sort of like this:
Watching too many in the US press (and Chinese press) smirk and pushing agendas is why it is valuable to watch the actual news conference than read about it: because seeing a smirk lets you know they are not being serious about the emergency, but playing a game of "gotcha".
I felt like shaking her and shouting in her face: Lady, the entire country is facing problems, and instead of trying to find information on how to fix things, or if there are new hotspots, or which areas might open up the economy to prevent societal collapse, etc. you are acting like this news conference is merely a convenient way to destroy Trumpieboy.
Please learn your craft; Ask about the problems and how to solve them, and then write information to us peons about this instead of gaslighting us with fake talking points that any 7th grader could google and find they are fake.
The second problem? The latest talking point is that Trumpieboy didn't tell the US people there was a problem.
There is a good reason to investigate why many levels of the government failed in their job, but making the entire epidemic about Trump seems to be political. It also means that the spotlight on the systematic failure to figure out what was going on on Trump rather than on China (are the talking points influenced by China to shift blame? )
But this begs the question: Did the highest level of government give the president reliable information and did he ignore it?
Or were there many different people advising about possible problems and different scenerios, and he had to chose which one to implement?
There is a good reason to think this latest talking point, i.e. that Trump ignored medical advice, is fake: Because if that had happened it would have been leaked back then, and it wasn't.
Indeed, the only leaks were suggesting xenophobia was the reason for shutting down flights.
But I wonder too: Why didn't the US MSM shout about the danger of the virus that was spreading and how dangerous it was? Isn't that their job? Every news show on the cable networks could have reported the rumors about the virus which Chinese doctors were posting about it on the web, including the worry it was spread person to person. This WAS reported: But only if you looked hard.
and of course the press could have pushed the importance of distancing and avoiding crowded rooms etc. so that the Chinese new year celebrations and the Mardi Gras would not have been held.
as the meme goes: You had one job to do, (report news) and you didn't do it.
.
China blew it: like Chernobyl, no one wanted to recognize how serious things were, and local authorities thought if they ignored it it would go away and they wouldn't have to report it to Beijing.
The rule is never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity: however, it was the clumsy coverup that has spawned conspiracy theories about that biolab.
but of course, the Chinese weren't the only ones willing to ignore what was going on.
the WHO didn't do their job either.
The WHO has done good jobs elsewhere, but the dirty little secret is that some folks there are corrupt, (2017 AP Article has details) so one does wonder if they were stupid enough to ignore hints about person to person spread (i.e. many doctors and nurses dying suggest it' wasn't bat stew alone causing the problem)
All the western governments should have noticed what was going on, but they didn't: and I suspect it was because they had faulty information. Sure, the official story is blame China, but let's have a reality check:
A lot of CIA/intelligence work is reading local news and checking on economic and political activity, so why didn't one of their analysts notice locals were becoming worried about an outbreak of an influenza/SARS type pneumonia? especially since the local biolab which was doing research with dangerous viruses and had a bad safety record ...
after all this systemic failure, it's no wonder conspiracy theories abound.
True, but it's easy to see these things afterward: in the midst of an epidemic, it's like the fog of war. What needs to be done if reform: of WHO, of various public health offices, and yes, of intelligence gathering priorities.
As for the spread of the flu: another reason it might have been underestimated is the "chicken little" problem of predicting disasters: Many possible outbreaks that go nowhere. and if you predict too many that don't become true, people will ignore your warnings when "The big one" actually comes.
the Swine flu epidemic of 1967 comes to mind... this LATimes article from 2009 discusses that epidemic, and the ramifications of over reacting to a threat. That article is about the 2009 influenza epidemic, but it could be written about why so many were cautious at over reacting to this threat.
No one person is to blame (even in China, the mindset of midlevel bureaucrats in Wuhan were probably too dumb to recognize the threat so didn't report it to Beijing, sort of like how the locals in Chernobyl under reacted to the threat for days).
But there is another reason I am angry at the US MSM: they are ignoring the famines that will threaten much of the poorer areas of the world in about six months time.
Shut down in the USA will cause a depression, but in poorer countries, people will die, because people won't have jobs to buy food, and because supply chain delays will make food unavailable.
There are quite a few articles on this on AlJezeerah and a few articles on the BBC on this.
The Philippines, for example, is short of rice: We have to import rice. The "hunger season" is coming up: The month when farmers are planting but have eaten or sold the rice from the last harvest.
So usually imported rice supplements local rice.
But the ships with rice from India etc. are sitting there waiting to have their loads removed, but they can't: Because the shutdown means not enough people working: The bureaucrats who process the importation papers are not working because they work in offices which are closed. The roadblocks mean delays.
one result, says Joy, is a lot of the ships turned around and took their cargo back home.
LINK StraitsTimes, Singapore newspaper has an article on the logistics of the problem, which is not limited to the Philippines.
The port backlogs that have crippled food shipments around the world for weeks are not getting much better. In fact, in some places, they are getting worse. In the Philippines, officials at a port that is a key entry point for rice said last week that the terminal is at risk of shutting as thousands of shipping containers pile up because lockdown measures are making them harder to clear. Hubs like Singapore and Shanghai have halted crew transfers to prevent the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, curfews in Guatemala and Honduras, known for their specialty coffees, are limiting operating hours at ports and slowing shipments. In parts of Africa, which is heavily dependent on food imports, there are not enough workers showing up to help unload cargo. The port choke points are just the latest example of how the virus is snarling food production and distribution across the globe.
Trucking bottlenecks, sick plant workers, export bans and panic buying have all contributed to why shoppers are seeing empty grocery store shelves, even as ample supplies are available. Food moves from farm to table through a complicated web of interactions. So problems for even just a few ports can ripple through to create troubling slowdowns.
LINK: many countries are hoarding their own rice and stopping exports for fear of famine.
Here, we need a pass to shop at the grocery stores etc: Two days a week for each barangay, Our days are Sunday and Thursday. And I saw more cops on the street, and more blocked roads to stop and check traffic.
but there are more and more news stories about people wanting to loosen the shutdown, especially in areas with few cases.
Duterte, like Trumpieboy, has frequent news conferences to keep people up to date. But the Inquirer notes he will soon be meeting with experts to see if he can start reopening the economy after April 30.
the original date was April 15...but they extended it and made it even more strict in our area.
Indeed we were told the reason for the increased strictness in the lockdown here was to stop transmission so they could reopen the economy on April 30.
We only have 5000 cases, and only a couple hundred deaths, (plus a thousand cases in OFW overseas) but since ten percent of the deaths are medical personnel, one can see that the problem is probably more common.
Ah, but what about those who are sick with other diseases, or now can't afford to buy their blood pressure or diabetes medicines? And what about "elective surgery" and those needing cancer treatment or dialysis?
the results of prolonged quarantine might be a lot worse than thousands of deaths from the virus: hunger, other infectious diseases, and civil unrest
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