[arel]

> Bill Gates knew (see ted talk), the rest of us didn't.

This assertion is false.

Generally speaking competent governments routinely do threat level risk assessments.

For example previous UK governments produced comprehensive pandemic response plans:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus

In the US the Obama administration produced a pandemic playbook.

Obama gave speeches highlighting the threat of pandemics and left a fully staffed pandemic response team:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-pandemic-preparednes...

However:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n...

I hope this is not seen as a political attack but presentation of facts.

Some governments are simply more competent than others.

[koonsolo]

Sure, but let's be honest here: nobody cared. I know I didn't care, and my neighbors and friends didn't care. And we are the ones voting for people to govern our country.

Nobody cares until shit hits the fan.

And the above theory complies with practice. If you look at the countries that were able to properly handle Covid19, they had similar cases before. The people over there were already wearing masks. Not because they are smarter, but they were just always closes to the action.

I know myself (=male ;)): I don't learn from somebody telling me something. I learn by hitting my head against the wall, and then say "hey this person was right, let's avoid doing that". The rest of the world seems to have the same strategy.

Just my observation.

But you are right that other people looked into it, but I just have the impression that most of us really didn't care (including myself)

[vharuck]

>But you are right that other people looked into it, but I just have the impression that most of us really didn't care (including myself)

I'm with you about not caring enough about pandemics before. But this is where bureaucracy can shine: hire somebody whose entire job is to care about a niche thing. They usually don't need a huge budget to get a good foundational plan set up: one person, a computer, a phone, and proper security clearance.

One of the problems with the current administration isn't that they value some things less, but they have a drive to undo their predecessors' work.

[pbhjpbhj]

In the case of Trump, my impression is he purposefully set out to undo anything Obama had done as some sort of weird, childish, vendetta. That aside, in general though I think these things happen because rulers are looking to reduce taxation for the rich, and things like "pandemic response team" are pretty well hidden from public view, and can usually blagged ("we kept 10 million face masks as an emergency reserve" fading to mention that's a day's worth, say, or that they were out of date, or not the right type of mask).