Officials likely get told about many potential crises, but only a small percentage of those pan out. Can we really hold officials accountable for when the crisis actually happens?
If we locked down society or accepted draconian measures at every single instance of a possible crisis, we would always be living in crisis because there are always potential crisis of some kind that could happen soon.
You seem to be talking about the possibility that they overreacted though. That's not really the point. The point is that they did nothing. They took no steps to prevent the spread of the virus.
The first, lightest, basic-fucking-step was to start screening people by body temperature at airports. Anyone with an abnormal body temperature is taken into quarantine for a few days. They had three months from November to set it up. (For reference, China almost eradicated the virus in three months from December to Feburary. And South Korea managed to almost completely halt the spread of the virus in that time). Let's look at how that went:
I couldn't find anything from December or November.
January: "Travelers at 3 U.S. airports to be screened for new, potentially deadly Chinese virus"
The point is that the United States had three months of advance warning to do something. And they chose to sit on their hands and do nothing. And now 14,696 people have died, and almost 500,000 people are infected. This rate is rapidly rising. What's more, we don't even know if this data is accurate, it is very likely a lower bound given how difficult it is to obtain a test in the United States at the moment (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-testing-ch... | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51860529 | https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-test...). Again, they had three months of advance warning to set this testing up, within which South Korea had almost nullified the spread of the virus.
It's easy to be right in hindsight. There was some probability it would've never left China. Let's say the probability was 10% of it leaving. If we need airport screening for a mere 10% chance of a virus potentially entering the U.S., we will always and forever screen people's temperatures at airports -- because there is always that (small) probability of a novel infection entering our borders from somewhere (China is one of 195 countries, after all).
Is that what we want? I think it seems to be the case. We could be entering a new normal.
I'll follow HN guidelines and I won't assume what you mean by that so I'll just ask. When did "hindsight" start? What date do you feel is a good marker for when it was obvious?
If you personally weren't arguing that people should beware of a pandemic in November then for you hindsight is likely the entire time you've been discussing it.
That literally makes no sense. I never said that the minute they got that report they should have jumped into action but rather they got a constant stream of warnings starting in November or around that time. Waiting until March to really act was incorrect.
The statement I opposed was that we shouldn’t blame the administration for acting slowly so I’ll rephrase: at what point do you feel like there was enough information to act on? As in, people dragging their feet after this point can be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).
It isn't that they needed to act in November. The virus was only taken seriously by the Chinese in December. However by mid-December no action has been taken by the US government. Only marginal action was seen in January, when it was a sure-fire knowledge that people would have gone to the US not knowing they had it.
Even now, there is inadequate provisions and action by the US. It was only in March when the US gov started rolling out testing and screening, finally fully committing to it. If they had started doing what they're doing now, in January, it's likely the US would have been on the tail-end of the pandemic by now.
Maybe the Chinese government shouldn't have been hiding information and silencing doctors, or the Taiwanese, or the WHO providing bad guidance even back in January.
The government has crazy levels of surveillance but they took the Chinese at their word and didn't check? I smell bullshit.
There were multiple people warning that China was suppressing their numbers and outright lying about what was happening, the government/administration not listening is 100% on them. I'm sure we will continue to see evidence that people inside the government (not the administration) were yelling about this but no one (in the administration) would listen.
This is 9/11 all over again except even more unexcusable. They had intel about the plane hijacking plan but due to too much information and mistakes in the data (name mismatch) they didn't put 2 and 2 together. This time they had the data and regular citizens were able to see what was happening and started warning us and all of that was ignored.
Chinese Government knows, then covers up deadly virus causing mass world deaths and consequences, even makes people disappear = fine, any criticism is hidden, "it's a global virus"
U.S officials might have known about a potential crisis that might happen = end of the world, how evil is America and the orange man!
sigh Well it speaks volumes you created a throwaway just for this post. I'm not saying the Chinese government is "fine", I'm just saying it's not an excuse. China is going to do China things and acting surprised at that is just... intellectually dishonest.
> U.S officials might have known about a potential crisis that might happen
I see how changing my argument, and the facts, might make it easier to defeat but the bottom line is they did know. There is no "might" about it. Trump continually played down the virus, pushed unproven treatments, and attacked anyone who asks a question that might make him look bad.
Maybe I have a different viewpoint but downplaying something because it might affect the economy and therefore your reelection is pretty evil in my book. Funniest thing? If he had taken it seriously he would have locked up his reelection.
His use of a throwaway speaks volumes about fear of political repercussions. His regular account (assuming he has one) is probably associated with his name, and he most likely works in a place like San Francisco or New York City. If so, he could lose his job for being non-hostile to Trump. Some employers are really bigoted about that.
An alternative take is that they did not believe that the screenings were going to have a meaningful impact on the spread to the US and were always a PR move.
Even in January there were case reports of an up to 14 day incubation period, cases without fever, and asymptomatic transmission.
Well the administration did a lot of things for optics/PR/the "markets" but none of those steps were taken to actually help or protect Americans.
That's really the gut punch for me personally. Trump could have secured his reelection 100% by taking this seriously but instead he was too focuses on the short-term to look even as far as November.
I’m honestly not sure how this relates to what I said. Are you agreeing? I’m not saying trump did a good job, just proposing that airport screenings may not have made a difference
> Officials likely get told about many potential crises, but only a small percentage of those pan out.
Probably very true, but it's literally their job to identify which ones are important and which aren't.
> Can we really hold officials accountable for when the crisis actually happens?
Absolutely. The behavior of the administration verges on criminal. They had experts they ignored over and over. Why did 3M ramp up mask production in January but the administration did nothing until March really (And no, the partial ban on flying from China doesn't count). Why does a private company have more foresight than the government?
> If we locked down society or accepted draconian measures at every single instance of a possible crisis, we would always be living in crisis because there are always potential crisis of some kind that could happen soon.
Is it draconian to start working on test for COVID-19? Is it draconian to ramp up PPE production/procurement? Is it draconian to do some basic screening at airports?
>Is it draconian to start working on test for COVID-19?
To be fair, it is unclear when the CDC started working on a test. It was first used January 20th [1] and submitted to the FDA on Feb 3rd [2]. This means they may have started in January or December. Unfortunately, their test did not work out and they had not submitted the WHO test to the FDA as a backup. The entire issue could have been avoided with some redundancy planning.
If you listened to every expert, you'd be living in an underground bunker 99.9% of the time. We're on the precipice of nuclear winter; the market is always about to collapse. Bad things are always about to happen. There is always data and models that point to inevitable collapses. Sometimes these models are good, sometimes they aren't. Models are complex and have many variables. You have to pick and choose which are credible or probable. The models for COVID impact still vary widely. FiveThirtyEight discusses why it's so hard to model. [0]
It's okay to be critical. But it's unrealistic to expect administrations to always get it right. The costs would be far too high to address every risk at the earliest potential signals. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Can we be reactively responding to this with more testing, more PPE, etc.? Absolutely.
The market always being about to collapse part is actually true, as evidenced by all of the weakly-built companies folding like houses of cards when their cheap debt and demand ran out for ten minutes...
> If you listened to every expert, you'd be living in an underground bunker 99.9% of the time.
You are confusing "every crisis" for "obvious crisis". I'm not saying we lose our minds over everything but it was quite clear to even the layman that wanted to do a little digging that this was a big deal and we needed to take it seriously back in February if not earlier.
I agree we shouldn't all lock ourselves in bunkers over fears of being "on the precipice of nuclear winter" but by the same token if the missile has been launched maybe it's a good idea to go to your bunker or at least your basement. China (even with their underreporting) should have been enough, in the face of that Italy should have been a smack in the face. Instead our administration stood outside squinting at the sky and said "well I don't see the missile yet so I'm not going to react".
Many "obvious crisis" scenarios are only obvious with the benefit of hindsight from a view safely on the sidelines. Some people being sick in one city in China in November doesn't "obviously" lead to this.
> Some people being sick in one city in China in November doesn't "obviously" lead to this.
Agreed, but that reasoning loses all its weight when they didn’t act in December, January, or February. I’ve never said that we should have jumped to full alert in November but it should have happened a whole heck of a lot sooner than March.
Hmmm ... the director of the NCMI (part of the DIA) apparently refuted this:
"As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists," Colonel Dr. R. Shane Day, director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence, said.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 72.3 ms ] threadIf we locked down society or accepted draconian measures at every single instance of a possible crisis, we would always be living in crisis because there are always potential crisis of some kind that could happen soon.
The first, lightest, basic-fucking-step was to start screening people by body temperature at airports. Anyone with an abnormal body temperature is taken into quarantine for a few days. They had three months from November to set it up. (For reference, China almost eradicated the virus in three months from December to Feburary. And South Korea managed to almost completely halt the spread of the virus in that time). Let's look at how that went:
I couldn't find anything from December or November.
January: "Travelers at 3 U.S. airports to be screened for new, potentially deadly Chinese virus"
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/17/coronavirus...)
Febuary: "CDC considering expansion of airport health screenings for novel coronavirus"
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/health/coronavirus-airpor...
March (15th): "The US administration has imposed a ban on non-Americans travelling from the 26 European countries in the Schengen free movement zone."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51895246
March (23rd): "Travelers shocked by barebones coronavirus screening at US airports"
https://nypost.com/2020/03/23/travelers-shocked-by-barebones...
The point is that the United States had three months of advance warning to do something. And they chose to sit on their hands and do nothing. And now 14,696 people have died, and almost 500,000 people are infected. This rate is rapidly rising. What's more, we don't even know if this data is accurate, it is very likely a lower bound given how difficult it is to obtain a test in the United States at the moment (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/coronavirus-testing-ch... | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51860529 | https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-test...). Again, they had three months of advance warning to set this testing up, within which South Korea had almost nullified the spread of the virus.
Is that what we want? I think it seems to be the case. We could be entering a new normal.
I'll follow HN guidelines and I won't assume what you mean by that so I'll just ask. When did "hindsight" start? What date do you feel is a good marker for when it was obvious?
The statement I opposed was that we shouldn’t blame the administration for acting slowly so I’ll rephrase: at what point do you feel like there was enough information to act on? As in, people dragging their feet after this point can be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).
Even now, there is inadequate provisions and action by the US. It was only in March when the US gov started rolling out testing and screening, finally fully committing to it. If they had started doing what they're doing now, in January, it's likely the US would have been on the tail-end of the pandemic by now.
The government has crazy levels of surveillance but they took the Chinese at their word and didn't check? I smell bullshit.
There were multiple people warning that China was suppressing their numbers and outright lying about what was happening, the government/administration not listening is 100% on them. I'm sure we will continue to see evidence that people inside the government (not the administration) were yelling about this but no one (in the administration) would listen.
This is 9/11 all over again except even more unexcusable. They had intel about the plane hijacking plan but due to too much information and mistakes in the data (name mismatch) they didn't put 2 and 2 together. This time they had the data and regular citizens were able to see what was happening and started warning us and all of that was ignored.
U.S officials might have known about a potential crisis that might happen = end of the world, how evil is America and the orange man!
> U.S officials might have known about a potential crisis that might happen
I see how changing my argument, and the facts, might make it easier to defeat but the bottom line is they did know. There is no "might" about it. Trump continually played down the virus, pushed unproven treatments, and attacked anyone who asks a question that might make him look bad.
Maybe I have a different viewpoint but downplaying something because it might affect the economy and therefore your reelection is pretty evil in my book. Funniest thing? If he had taken it seriously he would have locked up his reelection.
Even in January there were case reports of an up to 14 day incubation period, cases without fever, and asymptomatic transmission.
That's really the gut punch for me personally. Trump could have secured his reelection 100% by taking this seriously but instead he was too focuses on the short-term to look even as far as November.
Probably very true, but it's literally their job to identify which ones are important and which aren't.
> Can we really hold officials accountable for when the crisis actually happens?
Absolutely. The behavior of the administration verges on criminal. They had experts they ignored over and over. Why did 3M ramp up mask production in January but the administration did nothing until March really (And no, the partial ban on flying from China doesn't count). Why does a private company have more foresight than the government?
> If we locked down society or accepted draconian measures at every single instance of a possible crisis, we would always be living in crisis because there are always potential crisis of some kind that could happen soon.
Is it draconian to start working on test for COVID-19? Is it draconian to ramp up PPE production/procurement? Is it draconian to do some basic screening at airports?
To be fair, it is unclear when the CDC started working on a test. It was first used January 20th [1] and submitted to the FDA on Feb 3rd [2]. This means they may have started in January or December. Unfortunately, their test did not work out and they had not submitted the WHO test to the FDA as a backup. The entire issue could have been avoided with some redundancy planning.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pa...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/testing.html
It's okay to be critical. But it's unrealistic to expect administrations to always get it right. The costs would be far too high to address every risk at the earliest potential signals. A broken clock is right twice a day.
Can we be reactively responding to this with more testing, more PPE, etc.? Absolutely.
[0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/why-forecasting-covid-19-...
You are confusing "every crisis" for "obvious crisis". I'm not saying we lose our minds over everything but it was quite clear to even the layman that wanted to do a little digging that this was a big deal and we needed to take it seriously back in February if not earlier.
I agree we shouldn't all lock ourselves in bunkers over fears of being "on the precipice of nuclear winter" but by the same token if the missile has been launched maybe it's a good idea to go to your bunker or at least your basement. China (even with their underreporting) should have been enough, in the face of that Italy should have been a smack in the face. Instead our administration stood outside squinting at the sky and said "well I don't see the missile yet so I'm not going to react".
Agreed, but that reasoning loses all its weight when they didn’t act in December, January, or February. I’ve never said that we should have jumped to full alert in November but it should have happened a whole heck of a lot sooner than March.
"As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters. However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists," Colonel Dr. R. Shane Day, director of the National Center for Medical Intelligence, said.
Quoted in the article and also here:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/politics/intel-agencies-covid... (a few paragraphs down)
One is a measured opinion, the other is an excuse. Which are you willing to accept from your government?
Also, when the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee dumps up to $1.7M in stock right before a market crash, you have to question the timing.