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Daily thread - United States 2021 transition of power - January 21
This thread is posted daily - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
Pelosi: "The president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection. I don't think it's very unifying to say, 'Oh, let's just forget it and move on.'"
‘Worse Than We Imagined’: Team Trump Left Biden a COVID Nightmare
There was apparently no federal plan to tackle COVID. Absolutely bonkers.
There was a plan, called Operation Warp Speed
It seems that the plan was just incredibly bad, and states did better on average if each figured it out on their own.
Listened to an episode of The Journal that would seem to bear out that assertion.
Summary:
To some extent that was the CDC's fault - the federal guidelines for vaccinations were superbly overcomplicated, with subcategories for subcategories, and if the country were a computer, it would be an effective way to triage limited resources to the people that need it the most. Unfortunately, the actual result is that there's so much FUD around who can get a vaccine and where, that it leads to vaccines not being used, vaccines not being distributed, and more. A simple plan that everyone can understand, even if it has holes and leaves some groups which "deserve" the vaccine behind, is better, because it can actually be executed.
To be fair, I think it's an effective argument that the CDC should focus on science and the federal administration should focus on distilling that down to public policy that works, and the previous administration completely and utterly failed at that, so full blame on them is probably fine.
I think this depends on what you mean by "plan" and "distribution." It might help to be more specific about what's missing that should be fixed.
Pfizer has a plan on how to distribute vaccines in the US that includes such details as designing custom containers to ship the vaccine in via UPS and FedEx. They are executing on it. Moderna has their own plan which relies on a distributor, McKesson.
It seems they aren't deciding where the vaccines will go, though? The US government prepaid for the vaccines and they are telling them where to ship it. How that happens is a bit murky, but they're doing it, so someone somewhere must have been telling them what to do?
There are two vaccines that work, are being shipped, and millions of people are getting vaccinated. It needs to be a lot faster but this is clearly not having to "build everything from scratch." I assume that hyperbolic statement is out of frustration but it's not clear what CNN's source meant by it other than to sound alarming.
Granted, CNN loves its sensational headlines. I interpreted the "from scratch" as more of a description of a lack of any central planning. Sounds like a lot of different people (CDC, Pfizer, etc) all did their best to coordinate and get things going, without any cohesive central planning by the Trump admin. I imagine some sycophant Trump appointee walking into meetings to do "planning" and it basically being them saying "you guys got this right? good? ok cool, you do that then".
The contrasting of different leadership approaches is really quite astounding.
Meta: given the transition of power is now complete, and this thread seems to contain mostly Biden-related policy enactments and such now, is it worth discontinuing this thread, or dropping it back to once a week for the month of Jan/Feb? It might also help with disincentivizing further political discussion.
Some things like Axios' Off the Rails story probably deserve their own submissions too.
I'm ok keeping this around a little longer. I'm interested in the things Biden's doing in his first days, but I don't think they each warrant an individual post. There's also the pending impeachment trial, which will generate it's own collection of links and may or may not be slotted in here.
The Axios stories have been great, once the series is complete they probably deserve a whole post to themselves.
Nearly 1 In 5 Defendants In Capitol Riot Cases Served In The Military
That’s one of the most worrisome things for me. Extremist veterans can provide tactical training to others, have knowledge in critical areas (not just combat; think comms, logistics, etc), and have a similar mindset to those they oppose. Remember that McVeigh was an Army vet.
Not surprised. The kind of work is extreme, depending on MOS and hence tends to attract higher-than-average extreme mentalities. I've seen it when I was in also, even recruited into it to some extent in a galaxy long ago and far away only to realize my faults later in life. But it should be a caution to liberals that you can't always count on the pen protecting you. The hard powers you also have to practice just like your opponents or else it can leave you blind-sided should the militant crazies gain too much power.