rickair7777

Here, here. Covid really jacklighted the nature of those socialist states. I was surprised that CA and AU regressed as far as they did, especially AU.

I actually talked to an old RAN acquitance about it, he explained that since the vast majority of aussies live in only a few big cities they've evolved similar politics to our big cities with only a tiny rural population to counter-balance. So basically California without any federal red state influence or constitutional protections (or at least nobody to enforce those protections).

Lowslung

Your point is well taken & as someone who witnessed firsthand how draconian the Aussie response was, I’m inclined to agree…to a point. Seems like all we heard from were the loudest voices on all sides, which also tended to be the most extreme. I was generally inclined to give a lot of grace to public health officials who were faced with a novel virus & no modern example of how to handle such a thing. The lockdowns, while unpleasant, were understandable. And they really didn’t last too long in the US or even Europe. Asia, Australia & New Zealand however? Yeah, absolutely entered the realm of stupidity. Still doesn’t explain the dip$&it’s that still claim “it was just a cold” or advocate sending public health officials (whose primary concern is public health above all else…duh) to jail. Some policymakers did ok, some were a bit conservative

Excargodog

Except it is a central principle of Public Health to consider the TOTALITY of the effect of their action on public health, not merely one aspect. They were SUPPOSED to take into consideration the OTHER side of the issues as well, like the effect of the curtailment of schools, Pap smears, mammography, screening sigmoidoscopy, routine childhood immunizations, social isolation on mental health, etc..., you know, the BIG picture. They generally did not.

Thereis Arnold joke in epidemiology that an epidemiologist is someone that studies other people "broken down by age and sex." One of the most basic tenets of epidemiology is that you actually DO a risk analysis based on age and in the case of COVID the risk analysis curve was extreme. Fifty percent of those dying in those early hard hit countries (Italy and Spain) were over 85. That was an easy to define population that constituted a huge part of those that were really at risk that could have been far easier to isolate and support with far less draconian measures although even that woukdn't have totally mitigated their risk. A fully immunized 75 year old was still at higher risk than a 40 year old. Which brings up another point.

I have nothing against 85 year olds, in fact I aspire to be one, although only about 6% of people are currently making it that far. But AT 85, the further life expectancy only averages another six years for males, seven years for females. That's just from actuarial tables prior to COVID. Historically the public health community considered YPLL, that is Years of Potential Life Lost, in the risk management of public health policy, not raw deaths because sad to say, EVERYBODY DIES EVENTUALLY. Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect politicians from departing from the use of raw death rates of a group that as a whole (I'm speaking everyone over 85 now, not just those AT 85, had a life expectancy of only two or three years (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html) but the public health community knew better. They advised those politicians poorly. Moreover, they permitted and often promoted the censoring as "antivax conspiracy theorists" those people who simply wanted to educate the public about the traditional ways public health had been taught and practiced prior to COVID-19 and how the risk coukd have been as effectively mitigated without the dogmatism, divisiveness, and ultimately collateral damage that we all experienced.

The COVID-19 epidemic will be taught in public health graduate school courses for the next century as the way to NOT handle an epidemic. We knew better. We should have done better.

rickair7777

Problem is 50 Govtards apparently have unfettered leeway to commit random acts of governance, up to and including shutting down the economy and most of society indefinitely.

How do you prevent THAT in the future? Constitutional ammendment would do it, reserve that authority to POTUS (for 72 hours only) and then congress if they see fit. But hard to get an amendment through, for anything, these days.

I assume some states have or will place restrictions on this sort of behavior but those are probably the states where it wasn't a problem to begin with.

Excargodog

God willing, by actually going to school on this fiasco, after it is made clear just how much division this has caused in our society, how much respect for government institutions was lost, how many of those kids never did come back to school and will be forever less well educated than they might have been if this situation had been handled more rationally.

of course God works in mysterious ways. Some of the areas that took the most Draconian steps have seen their big cities hollowed out as people fled to less population dense areas, commercial occupancy levels plunge as nobody wanted to give up work from home, and already marginal schools lose funding as the pupils went elsewhere. Government can't actually ignore the market in the long run and so-called doom-loops appear to be forming in the venues of the worst offending governments.

https://youtu.be/pdB79PKftm8?si=jSzRo0AgOAVzzGNF

Even Washington DC government buildings are largely empty.

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-...ch%20of%202023.

I don't think anyone can say that mismanaging the COVID epidemic actually caused that, but I believe it's certainly accelerating that trend.

There is an old Greek proverb dating from preChristian days - The mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. Too slowly to get many of the actual culprits perhaps in this case but fast enough and small enough to get their philosophical successors.

CoefficientX

I honestly don’t think this will be the case. I feel the vast majority of people were quick to acquiesce and fall in line with mask mandates, vaccine mandates etc. Very few people are giving it a second thought today and very few are upset about the way it was handled. most people have put Covid in the rear view mirror and aren’t giving it a second thought.

I have always felt, no matter which side of the vax argument you fall on, that we should all have been extremely concerned at how quickly and easily the government trampled individual rights and did things like vaccine mandates.

I agree 100% the reaction to COVID was throroughly bungled. But no one is being held accountable, another pandemic type event and based on the way citizens folded last time they’d fold just as quickly this time. Fear seems to always win.

Lowslung

If you believe the public health people are thinking about anything other than public health, I've got a bridge to sell you. Also, expect them to err on the extreme side of caution as they're generally concerned with covering their own asses. You know, like most humans tend to do. The people who should be taking the wholistic view are the politicians & policymakers at all levels, from grassroots up. Some did ok, some were mediocre, and some bungled things from the get go. Again, we're dealing with humans here. Don't like it? Simple answer: elect different officials. You do have a say in the process. Stomping up and down and wishing for prosecutions that don't stand a snoball's chance in hell of ever happening is not going to push your wishes forward.

Excargodog

When did I suggest prosecutions? What I suggested was that some of the political entities that took the most egregious actions have their tax bases hurting now because many of the students never returned and many of the workers are now demanding to work at home.


https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/offices-around-america-hit-a-new-vacancy-record-166d98a5

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2312249121

Call it karma, call it people voting with their feet, call it whatever you want, but bad decisions lead to bad consequences that affect the general public but particularly affect the locales that made the bad decisions to begin with.

rickair7777

Yes I was screaming this from rooftops four years ago. LEADERS not technocrats need to actually LEAD society. They should naturally be informed by a wide variety of experts, and hopefully not be dumb. But they cannot abdicate their responsibility to make the hard choices.

TransWorld

Hard choices...listen to engineers, quality control people, pilots, technicians. Do not be overwritten by accountants and sales people. Do not let attornies overwrite these either.

Like if a CA says it is not safe to fly a plane, a bean counter should not overwrite that decision. Accountants, sales staff, and attornies are valuable. But they should not cause bad decisions to be made. Managment needs to have a backbone. They need to be wise.