Objectively intelligent.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In the New York Times, Ross Douthat says that until sometime in February, "liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of “it’s just the flu” reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks don’t work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how 'the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.'”

I don't remember this *at* *all." Is my head screwed on wrong? I have been a little more obsessive about this story than most people, but this is crazy. The news sources that liberals turn to -- NPR, the New York Times -- were reporting from Wuhan and the rest of China on a story that most people were not paying attention to. I don't remember anyone playing down the threat.

I also do not remember a reported bias but there clearly was NOT enough focus on taking it seriously.

Anything public after March 1 in NYC should have been canceled. I mean my office "encouraged work in the office" until it was shut down on March 22.

I can't tell you how many symptomatic people I have talked to, who never wore a mask and were never tested.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In the New York Times, Ross Douthat says that until sometime in February, "liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of “it’s just the flu” reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks don’t work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how 'the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.'”

I don't remember this *at* *all." Is my head screwed on wrong? I have been a little more obsessive about this story than most people, but this is crazy. The news sources that liberals turn to -- NPR, the New York Times -- were reporting from Wuhan and the rest of China on a story that most people were not paying attention to. I don't remember anyone playing down the threat.

I don't recall any "liberal" playing down the threat. I do recall pushback against racist half-measures, because they were racist half-measures, but that's different.

But he's right about the mask thing. I get why they wanted to say masks don't help, because we don't have enough masks and things would be worse still with a rush on them, but they shouldn't have said they don't help when they do.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

I also do not remember a reported bias but there clearly was NOT enough focus on taking it seriously.

Anything public after March 1 in NYC should have been canceled. I mean my office "encouraged work in the office" until it was shut down on March 22.

I can't tell you how many symptomatic people I have talked to, who never wore a mask and were never tested.

Maybe it's because we have a lot of health care clients, but I'm thankful my employer (for how long??) went to "please work from home home if you can" even before our prudent state government.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

do any of you see a problem with this guy's take? i want to post but wondering if there is some problem?

I don't have an hour to watch that, but the parts I heard were pretty consistent with what I hear from my wife (including the fact that you can't tell (from the part I heard) that other people like nurses are ever there in the hospital doing stuff alongside the doctors).

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

But he's right about the mask thing. I get why they wanted to say masks don't help, because we don't have enough masks and things would be worse still with a rush on them, but they shouldn't have said they don't help when they do.

On the mask thing, I'll forward you a really good email from Ben Thompson about that, but the key point is that any "propaganda" (Douthat's word) about masks was not coming from liberals, it was coming from the WHO, which was trying to keep the Chinese government happy. And if people have treated the WHO as a credible official source, that has been because of the absence of the CDC. None of that has anything to do with liberals, whom Douthat is using as a straw man.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In the New York Times, Ross Douthat says that until sometime in February, "liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of “it’s just the flu” reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks don’t work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how 'the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.'”

I don't remember this *at* *all." Is my head screwed on wrong? I have been a little more obsessive about this story than most people, but this is crazy. The news sources that liberals turn to -- NPR, the New York Times -- were reporting from Wuhan and the rest of China on a story that most people were not paying attention to. I don't remember anyone playing down the threat.

Douthat's out of his mind. The only people playing it down, as I recall it, were Fox News types.

There may have been some liberals criticizing efforts to blame China for it to the extent this created anti-Chinese sentiment among some Americans, but that's a super small niche issue to which no one was paying attention. Except maybe Douthat?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Always check the date. New information on tests, antibodies, etc., comes out every day. Anything more than a day old, I don't even look at.

Totally anecdotal, but a head and neck cancer doc I know told me that immunosupressed people with the disease, whom they assumed would do quite badly, seem to have very mild cases.

He believes its possible healthy adults' immune systems go berzerk in response to the virus, severely inflaming the lungs, while the systems of kids, which are not as developed, and the immunosuppressed, have less severe reactions to it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Douthat's out of his mind. The only people playing it down, as I recall it, were Fox News types.

There may have been some liberals criticizing efforts to blame China for it to the extent this created anti-Chinese sentiment among some Americans, but that's a super small niche issue to which no one was paying attention. Except maybe Douthat?

It was pretty obvious early on that the Chinese government was initially slow to react because it's instinct was to squelch bad news instead of deal with it. Once that turned, the story was then that the Chinese government was taking sweeping, crude measures to stop the thing.

My recollection is that when Trump banned travel with China, it seemed like an effort in scapegoating because it didn't go far enough -- he did not ban travel with Korea or Japan when there clearly was community spread in both places, which suggested he was looking for an excuse to take action specifically against China rather than trying to stop contagious people from flying to this country. There were plenty of reports, too, of people flying back to the country and getting no screening or attention from the border officials. My family flew from London on February 20 (?). My in-laws flew from Rome two weeks later (!). None of us got any attention or even instructions about symptoms to look for. There is this failure of memory, by Douthat and others, that the criticism of Trump was that he did something by banning travel from China, rather than not doing enough by failing to take a number of other very obvious steps to avoid contagion.

Probably the problem is that Douthat isn't paying attention to what smart people who disagree with him are thinking and saying.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It was pretty obvious early on that the Chinese government was initially slow to react because it's instinct was to squelch bad news instead of deal with it. Once that turned, the story was then that the Chinese government was taking sweeping, crude measures to stop the thing.

My recollection is that when Trump banned travel with China, it seemed like an effort in scapegoating because it didn't go far enough -- he did not ban travel with Korea or Japan when there clearly was community spread in both places, which suggested he was looking for an excuse to take action specifically against China rather than trying to stop contagious people from flying to this country. There were plenty of reports, too, of people flying back to the country and getting no screening or attention from the border officials. My family flew from London on February 20 (?). My in-laws flew from Rome two weeks later (!). None of us got any attention or even instructions about symptoms to look for. There is this failure of memory, by Douthat and others, that the criticism of Trump was that he did something by banning travel from China, rather than not doing enough by failing to take a number of other very obvious steps to avoid contagion.

Probably the problem is that Douthat isn't paying attention to what smart people who disagree with him are thinking and saying.

My take is that he is engaging in false equivalence. We know the Fox News people and MAGA hat crowd were shrugging this thing off as mere flu. There's tons of recorded media out there in which they brazenly did so. And many of them continue to do so today. Douthat seems to be trying to make an argument that the Left was engaged in similar behavior -- covering up stories about the virus in a fit of political correctness.

But that simply did not happen. I'm as contrarian as contrarian gets, but even the ultimate contrarian, Michael Kinsley, could not repackage recent history to credibly argue the false equivalence suggested by Douthat. It just ain't there.

ETA: Jerry Falwell Jr. is going kill hundreds of people on the campus of Liberty University and thousands beyond its borders. Douthat should perhaps write about that.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It was pretty obvious early on that the Chinese government was initially slow to react because it's instinct was to squelch bad news instead of deal with it. Once that turned, the story was then that the Chinese government was taking sweeping, crude measures to stop the thing.

My recollection is that when Trump banned travel with China, it seemed like an effort in scapegoating because it didn't go far enough -- he did not ban travel with Korea or Japan when there clearly was community spread in both places, which suggested he was looking for an excuse to take action specifically against China rather than trying to stop contagious people from flying to this country. There were plenty of reports, too, of people flying back to the country and getting no screening or attention from the border officials. My family flew from London on February 20 (?). My in-laws flew from Rome two weeks later (!). None of us got any attention or even instructions about symptoms to look for. There is this failure of memory, by Douthat and others, that the criticism of Trump was that he did something by banning travel from China, rather than not doing enough by failing to take a number of other very obvious steps to avoid contagion.

Probably the problem is that Douthat isn't paying attention to what smart people who disagree with him are thinking and saying.

Right, and banning travel wasn't the right tool. We should have been screening all passengers, isolating the sick and tracing their contacts. I don't think there was even an active outbreak when we went to China (maybe 7 years ago) and there was someone with a temperature gun both in the airport in Hong Kong and crossing the bordering into mainland China.

But that would have required actually organizing something, which is not a capability that government by Kushner, Miller and Trump can actually do.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

My take is that he is engaging in false equivalence. We know the Fox News people and MAGA hat crowd were shrugging this thing off as mere flu. There's tons of recorded media out there in which they brazenly did so. And many of them continue to do so today. Douthat seems to be trying to make an argument that the Left was engaged in similar behavior -- covering up stories about the virus in a fit of political correctness.

But that simply did not happen. I'm as contrarian as contrarian gets, but even the ultimate contrarian, Michael Kinsley, could not repackage recent history to credibly argue the false equivalence suggested by Douthat. It just ain't there.

ETA: Jerry Falwell Jr. is going kill hundreds of people on the campus of Liberty University and thousands beyond its borders. Douthat should perhaps write about that.

His column is actually better than that. I was just interested in the specific point he was making about early reactions to the virus.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Right, and banning travel wasn't the right tool. We should have been screening all passengers, isolating the sick and tracing their contacts. I don't think there was even an active outbreak when we went to China (maybe 7 years ago) and there was someone with a temperature gun both in the airport in Hong Kong and crossing the bordering into mainland China.

But that would have required actually organizing something, which is not a capability that government by Kushner, Miller and Trump can actually do.

Banning travel by anyone who had been in China made sense at some point, but by that token so did banning travel by anyone who had been in Korea, Japan or Italy, something Trump never did. The singling out of China certainly leads one to believe that he was moved by reasons unrelated to public health. I wouldn't say racism, since he failed to ban travel from other East Asian countries.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

In the New York Times, Ross Douthat says that until sometime in February, "liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of “it’s just the flu” reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trump’s travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks don’t work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how 'the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other.'”

I don't remember this *at* *all." Is my head screwed on wrong? I have been a little more obsessive about this story than most people, but this is crazy. The news sources that liberals turn to -- NPR, the New York Times -- were reporting from Wuhan and the rest of China on a story that most people were not paying attention to. I don't remember anyone playing down the threat.

Gaslighting and blame shifting is their bread and butter. That's not what happened at all.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Adder

Right, and banning travel wasn't the right tool. We should have been screening all passengers, isolating the sick and tracing their contacts.

I have increasingly become convinced that the best approach would have been "hammer and dance."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Life imitates art:

Scoop: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu shared with his cabinet a video he claimed was evidence of Iran concealing coronavirus deaths by dropping bodies in garbage dumps. Hours later, his office realized it was actually a clip from a 2007 Hallmark mini-series.

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