America's Bipartisan COVID Illiteracy

[donquixote99]

Other have messed up, not just Trump, though he has made things here way worse than they would have been. The article, by way of pointing out lots of bad policy, mentions what good policy would be: science and good leadership would work, money and bad politics are problems.

American Elites Still Don’t Understand How COVID-19 Works (excerpt)

Nine months into the pandemic, government leaders can’t comprehend—or refuse to clearly say—what this virus is or how it spreads.

By Derek Thompson
The Atlantic, December 11, 2020
...
- If viral aerosols from talking are the most common vector of COVID-19 transmission … we should encourage universal mask wearing, social distancing among people from different households, and quiet in public spaces.

- If these aerosolized particles spread easily in unventilated indoor spaces … we should shut down and bail out indoor businesses that naturally invite crowding and talking, such as bars.

- If symptomatic individuals don’t just talk but also often cough and sneeze … we should create a national quarantine system to separate them from their families and a contact-tracing system to identify potentially infected individuals and ask them to isolate.

- If a large number of infected people will be asymptomatic … we should invest early in a mass-testing apparatus to quickly identify silent carriers.

- If, no matter how well we respond, this pandemic is going to last for a while … we should encourage people to reclaim normalcy by spending as much time outside as possible, while still stressing the importance of mask usage and social distancing when gathering with those outside of one’s household.

This sort of straightforward, rules-and-reasons approach would treat citizens like they’re intelligent people who care about the motivations of public-health laws. Instead, we’ve gotten a lot of bad rules with equally bad or nonexistent justifications.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...teracy/617368/

[nailer]

My apoltical soul is thinking that Trump has indeed made our infection rate somewhat higher than if Clinton was POTUS. And with a vaccine now available, the sense of danger drops and the use of masks will follow.

[Pio1980]

"Trumpism" encompasses present day politics, but is really beyond politics as a kakitocracy of narcissistic cult of personality in the worst context.

[Mark B]

Originally Posted by nailer

My apoltical soul is thinking that Trump has indeed made our infection rate somewhat higher than if Clinton was POTUS. And with a vaccine now available, the sense of danger drops and the use of masks will follow.

Somewhat higher?