[Donald]

Part of this is terrible communication on the part of the US government, specifically the CDC.

* Watching their press conferences I have no idea how the average American comes away with concrete steps for preparation. The pressers seem mostly focused on laying out everything the HHS / CDC doesn't know and describing that the CDC "is assessing its own preparation" - suggesting they're still not prepared even though the situation has been building for weeks.

* The COVID-19 section on their website is still focused on China even though the virus has obviously spread at this point to several countries.

I suspect the virus itself is unavoidable at this point unless you're willing to walk around with eye protection, rubber gloves, an N95 respirator, etc. But it's critically important to suggest what counter measures (if any) the US can expect to employ, like imposed travel restrictions and curfews in affected areas, so Americans can adequately prepare supplies.

[smt88]

One of my close friends works at the CDC and volunteered to join the Covid-19 response, which requires her to work 100 hrs/wk.

I know HN is not supposed to be a political place, but you can't talk about Covid-19 without talking about politics. Elected officials in the US have an enormous amount of power over how an outbreak spreads here. They control budgets, budget allocations, and all the preparedness/response bureaucracies that are supposed to be ready for situations like this[1].

Per my friend, the Trump administration has been replacing mid-level appointees with political donors who have absolutely no idea what they're doing -- at best. In some cases, they're actively anti-government, so they're both malicious and incompetent. The CDC's response has been crippled by many of these appointees.

This is most evident at the State Department. Despite CDC employees screaming at them not to let the Japanese cruise ship passengers into the country, they did it anyway[2].

And then you have the usual propaganda and denialism, such as Larry Kudlow claiming today that Covid-19 is contained[3].

There are a thousand ways Trumpism has fueled this crisis, and I can't summarize them all here, but there is a bipartisan outcry[4] over this issue that has had mixed success.

I apologize again for the baldly politics-related post, but I think this issue highlights the limitations of HN's anti-politics moderation. It's very difficult to divorce issues of science, business, or (especially) society when politicians are major forces in all of them.

1. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/483320-wo...

2. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-cruise-ship-us-passe...

3. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3545343-kudlow-says-u-s-contai...

4. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump...

[downerending]

> enormous amount of power over how an outbreak spreads

Given what we're seeing in other countries, that seems doubtful.

And based on the science we're hearing, it sounds like the most that can be hoped for is spreading the epidemic out over time some, which might allow resources like hospital beds to be better utilized.

[smt88]

> Given what we're seeing in other countries, that seems doubtful.

Do you have a source for this? You're waving away the work of hundreds of thousands of people in public health. Do you know something about epidemiology (and interventions) that epidemiologists don't?

You can't understand a complex scientific field by reading headlines as a layperson. You don't know what people are doing to prevent the spread and you don't know what they could be doing if elected officials were cooperating with scientists.

Here are some obvious things that reduce the spread of viruses, some of which were mentioned in the articles I linked, which you seem not to have read.

- Free health care. In countries where primary care, patients will submit themselves for testing sooner, allowing precautions to be taken before they infect anyone else.

- Not allowing the Japanese cruise ship passengers into the US, as the CDC recommended.

- Discouraging hoarding of masks, especially by healthy people. Cloth masks are most useful when worn by people who are already infected, not by healthy people.

- Deploying testing kits quickly and providing support for the clinics getting them up and running.

- Quarantines, which also need human administration.

Nothing you've written contradicts my original thesis, which is supported by actual experts and bipartisan officials in the US: that this illness will kill more people and have greater economic impact because the Trump administration (and Xi regime, for that matter) mishandled the preparation and early response.

[downerending]

The awful truth is that there's not that much professionals can do about this. Singapore is reputed to have one of the best systems in the world, and they're suffering like everyone else.

(And for what it's worth, Trump was apparently outraged that those passengers were allowed into the US.)