sudarshan wrote:Ambar wrote:I am saying lockdowns and masks are a state subject in US as is in India. Europe imposed strict lockdowns and masks, lockdowns ended, ,cases dropped to negligible levels throughout the summer. It has now exploded in the entire western hemisphere including the US, US is relatively low compared to its peak months (doubled) where as in many European countries it is 40 to 50 times higher than their previous peaks. So it is preposterous to blame it on potus and discounting everything happening across the western world.
Several things. US second wave was half the first wave, testing having expanded four fold. This current (third) wave - I haven't worked it out yet.
Two - "things are bad in the entire w. hem. and European countries can't blame Trump" doesn't mean "Trump is free of blame." There's still some things he could have done, no point washing off his hands saying "the general situation is that bad, what to do onlee."
Three - testing in some European countries (notably, Poland) has also expanded five-fold since Apr. (peak of last wave - if you can even call that a wave, with a peak of 300 cases a day in a country of 40 million). I'd say this (what is going on now) is really Poland's first wave. I seriously doubt many of those European countries got a significant fraction of their population infected the first time. Parts of the US did though.
I am still curious to know what is it that Trump could have done which the state governors could not/did not do themselves ? Saying "Orange man kill 230k" and "US is doing terrible because of Trump handling the pandemic" is silly & political unless we explain bad compared to whom ? China ? Which claims only 4k people/80k cases in a country of 1.4 billion where the virus started or someone like Pakistan with no means to test,trace and document ? Among the other western nations US is neither the worst nor the best. US' Observed CFR is in the bottom half Vs other nations -
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
The 30 day moving avg shows an explosion of cases even in Italy, Spain, UK, France and Netherlands which were devastated by the first wave in Mar/Apr. During the early months, the screams were "US is not testing enough compared to EU" and now that US has long overtaken EU in the per capita number of tests we are down to generalizations and conjectures such as "the administration grossly mishandled crisis & 230k people died". Whether the virus is natural or manmade, one thing is certain after 10 months that there's nothing governments can do once the virus enters the communities other than to board up doors and windows and lock people in forcefully like China did, but civilized societies fortunately don't do that.
sudarshan wrote:
I've been saying from the beginning that the first lockdown in India was inevitable, but lockdowns after that were unsustainable. In fact, I believe I was the first in this thread to talk about the unsustainability of the "Parikshit syndrome."
I am surprised you say this because the shoutingheads in the media were calling for more lockdowns in May and blamed the administration for opening up too soon.
sudarshan wrote:
I don't even see a correlation with flu season. That was my point.
In much of Europe , the flu season is in the later part of winter (Jan to Mar), in US it is fall and winter, in India it is during the summer and monsoon months, in Brazil and much of southern hemisphere the flu season starts from May and tapers by september, the only coorelation so far in this random, arbitrary pandemic has been with the flu season. There is nothing that India did differently in October that we were doing in Jul/Aug which dramatically reduced the number of cases.
sudarshan wrote:
Why is it high in India but not in Srilanka (not even mentioning Pakistan and Bangladesh with the assumption that they are lying) ?
I'm as clueless as most on this.
Why is it low in Ontario but high in NY across the border ?
Are you talking of right now? Because right now it's the other way round. NY is still basically flat, close to zero, though showing some signs of rising in the past week or so. Many other US states are flat too. And it's definitely flu season in those states. So - no real correlation with flu season, like I said.
Why is it near 0 in Vietnam despite being next door to China ?
Again, no clue.
In the first wave, NY state had around 12 times higher number of cases/100k people than the neighboring Ontario. Again, not Trump or his administration but the bizzare nature of this virus and to some extent fundamental social economic disparities play a role. The low number of cases in Srilanka or Vietnam or even some rich sheikhdoms in Gulf shows how uneven the pandemic has been.
For those who have the luxury of working from homes, use that option, use masks, maintain distance, but for billions in this world that's not an option.
sudarshan wrote:
Yeah, this is what we're talking about, really. Good that you agree - use masks, maintain distance. Which is what Trump has been actively discouraging. And his followers have been taking that to heart. It might be a state subject, but if a large fraction of the subjects of the state are bent on defying the principle, what should the state do? Fines, arrests? In public, maybe. If those subjects are going to have private gatherings, in the privacy of their homes, where they discard those principles - what then? How about summer barbeques? Remember the covid parties? And what to do when the entire White House is indifferent or hostile to those principles? Which state is supposed to enforce the rules then? How about presidential rallies?
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Trump never said "don't wear a mask". Are you seriously blaming Trump for those "covid parties" in college towns or the "covid challenge" dumbness on tiktok ? It was young people (the core demographic of the woke liberals) who were doing dumb things as they usually do. How hard a state enforces its laws is again a state subject. They can fine, deny entry or even arrest, that is not something the federal govt controls. It is not upto the whitehouse to dictate how a state should form its laws and how it should enforce them. CDC routinely shares recommendations to the states, it is upto the state how to use those recommendations to their advantage. If the Presidential rallies were super-spreader events as were the "committment marches", the George Floyd protests, the BLM marches and riots and the womens march, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander no ?
Speaking of arbitrariness there is the curious case of Sweden which never imposed a single day of lockdown nor masks. No one can accuse the Swedes as being primitive, unscientific or religious given that Sweden like much of Scandinavia has one of the highest HDI value. Yet their cases/100k or CFR is neither the worst nor the best in Europe.
Donald Trump wrote:
“It’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military or from law enforcement. And they come over to you, and they want to hug you and they want to kiss you, because we really have done a good job for ’em. And you get close, and things happen,” Trump told Fox News.
sudarshan wrote:
So again, washing Trump's hands off (no pun) for him saying "rest of the world is even worse" doesn't cut it. The known mitigation strategies have been laughed off and even mocked, and this is after the guy got it himself. So what exactly are you defending here?
I'll leave it at this
" “I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus,” " - NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
Or in a symbol of racial solidarity Lt Gov of NY marched in NYC's Chinatown on the day of Lunar New Year. "Don't have an overly anxious reaction" - Andrew Cuomo. "The Young invincibles" said Gov Gavin Newsom when asked increasing number of young people getting infected by covid in CA, this when California opened beaches in summer.
"Excuse our arrogance but we have the best healthcare system here in NY. So we don't think it will be bad here (in NYC) as in other countries" - Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 3/2/2020.