12 votes

Trump faces his 'Chernobyl moment' after slashing pandemic defences to the bone

8 comments

  1. [4]
    Death
    (edited )
    Link
    I don't know what I expected from the Telegraph but this is a really disjointed article that makes maybe one or two good points from the facts interspersed with weird asides. You'd think a much...

    I don't know what I expected from the Telegraph but this is a really disjointed article that makes maybe one or two good points from the facts interspersed with weird asides. You'd think a much better, and more recent, example would be the Australian Bushfires. In both situations the government cut spending to vital services and ignored scientific evidence of issues and risks until it was too late and the problem became too hard to ignore. The author doesn't even mention Chernobyl outside of the title and probably for the best because Chernobyl was an entirely different kind of issue in an entirely different kind of context.

    And let's not forget:

    The coming backlash may sweep Bernie Sanders into power on a socialist manifesto of Piketty wealth taxes, the partial closure of the US oil and gas industry, and vast increases in the size and role of the US government, all with an implicit budget deficit of $3 trillion. Try feeding that into your models for GDP growth, equity prices, or bond yields.

    I get that the Business column is going to talk about the economic future but this is some heavy levels of presumptuousness. What even is the point of this paragraph other than feeding into readers' anxieties? Isn't talking about the chance of an economy-crashing pandemic enough?

    16 votes
    1. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. Death
        Link Parent
        It makes sense when you consider how much of the discourse now is almost by necessity a firehose of partisan framing and selection bias.

        It makes sense when you consider how much of the discourse now is almost by necessity a firehose of partisan framing and selection bias.

        6 votes
    2. vorotato
      Link Parent
      You may be afraid of this virus, but they're nothing compared to what our political opponents will do! Propaganda is what it is.

      You may be afraid of this virus, but they're nothing compared to what our political opponents will do!

      Propaganda is what it is.

      8 votes
    3. onyxleopard
      Link Parent
      That part you quoted is such a red flag. Not sure if I could come up with a better example of fear, uncertainty, and doubt if I tried.

      That part you quoted is such a red flag. Not sure if I could come up with a better example of fear, uncertainty, and doubt if I tried.

      7 votes
  2. Deimos
    Link
    Judd Legum's "Popular Information" newsletter has been focused on this subject for the last 3 days, and have all been a good (and scary) read: Unprepared Political Infection Conspiracy Rush

    Judd Legum's "Popular Information" newsletter has been focused on this subject for the last 3 days, and have all been a good (and scary) read:

    11 votes
  3. moocow1452
    Link
    https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233023582202101761 There's this very perverse part of my brain that wants to see Trump fake news his way out of a pandemic, but then we would have to deal with...

    https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1233023582202101761

    There's this very perverse part of my brain that wants to see Trump fake news his way out of a pandemic, but then we would have to deal with Trump wanting to push war crimes on Pelosi for engineering the Coronavirus in order to spike the election or something nuts.

    5 votes
  4. moonbathers
    Link
    It would be one thing if the administration was downplaying it while also doing everything they can to fix it, but they're doing the opposite. If coronavirus ends up being a huge thing people are...

    It would be one thing if the administration was downplaying it while also doing everything they can to fix it, but they're doing the opposite. If coronavirus ends up being a huge thing people are going to know about it regardless of how much the administration downplays it. It's not good strategy even if you are a sociopath.

    1 vote
  5. envy
    Link
    Wow.

    Don’t be fooled by the seemingly low numbers of infections in the US (57 as I write): the country has tested just 426 people. Only three of the 100 public health labs even have working test kits.

    Wow.

    5 votes