[hn_throwaway_99]

I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really do anything anymore in the US.

I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look how many heavy military vehicles the US managed to build during WWII, and then consider we can't even build masks of sufficient quantity.

And this just follows an ever growing set of problems that the US has just oddly accepted without the political will to do anything, things like our totally f'd healthcare system, mass shootings, climate change, etc.

I disagree, though, with the sibling comment that says "Don't give up! Don't withdraw!" It's not like there aren't other functioning societies in the world that are way less broken than the US. Staying behind in some mythical "fight" is just misplaced patriotism IMO. There are other countries that live the ideals that I used to associate with America (real freedom, upward mobility, democracy, rule of law, etc.) much better than the US does these days.

[not2b]

All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time manufacturing is more efficient. Accepting a reasonable profit at a time of crisis is considered stupid when a business can make windfall profits by pitting states against each other or signing a sweetheart deal in exchange for a no-bid contract. We're looking a lot like Russia under Yeltsin when the place was collapsing and people were stealing everything that wasn't nailed down.

Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who is committed to division, who's willing to undermine the efforts of those who work for him, who, even at this time of crisis thinks that nothing other than personal loyalty to him and that he should never make a mistake.

[jorblumesea]

While it's easy to blame Trump (and he deserves a heaping pile of blame), the corruption and destruction of a functional US government has long been the goal of those on the right. Since the 80s there has been a concerted movement to defund and destroy the effective ability of our government for ideological and personal reasons.

Then, when the water treatment plants break down or the education system is a mess they can privatize it and reap the profits. Or they can establish charter schools that teach creationism, segregate classrooms again, or reduce education to minorities.

This is just one chess move in a long game that has been playing out since the 50s. Within this context, the moves here are not surprising, especially with Betsy DeVos in charge.

Read her bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy_DeVos#School_vouchers

[s5300]

Dear HN users:

I plea that you refrain down voting any comment that advises you to take a look at DeVos's Wikipedia page. I HIGHLY advise reading Betsy DeVos's Wikipedia page.

With no offense intended (truly) I've got the idea that quite a portion of HN users probably don't know just how much of an absolute shitshow the head of U.S. Education is. DeVos is certifiably insane

[morelisp]

I will third this. Please, just look. You'll need to go through decades of multi-level marketing scams, private military contracting, torturous approach to treating autism and other behavioral therapies, and multi-generational Charismatic Christian hate groups before you can even dig into her atrocious educational policies.

[DuskStar]

> multi-level marketing scams

As far as I can tell, not mentioned on that page.

> private military contracting

Only mention is this sentence: "Betsy DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, is the founder of Blackwater USA, a private military services contractor."

> torturous approach to treating autism and other behavorial therapies

"Betsy and her husband Dick are chief investors in and board members of Neurocore, a group of brain performance centers offering biofeedback therapy for disorders such as depression, attention deficit disorder, autism, and anxiety. The therapy consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when they become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains." Reading that, and the following paragraph, it seems like the efficacy of the treatment is dubious... But torture?

> multi-generational Charismatic Christian hate groups

The wikipedia page mentions a number of christian groups associated with the DeVos family. As far as I can tell, these all seem like bog-standard conservative causes. But, judging by the hyperbole in the rest of your comment, those probably do qualify as hate groups to you.

Overall, not impressed.

[sv123]

It's the GOP motto: Government doesn't work, here let me show you.

[DuskStar]

As opposed to the DNC motto of "Government works, you're just not giving us enough money".

Both parties are dysfunctional.

[jorblumesea]

The government would function more efficiently if the GOP wasn't so dead set on blocking any form of reform or efficiency. It's not a coincidence that once any Dem gets into office the GOP becomes the party of No.

Try to reform healthcare? Nope. Try to cut military spending? No. Establish oversight over federal slush funds? Nope.

Having the government burn tons of money is absolutely playing into the hands of those arguing to weaken government for personal profit. The GOP are completely fine burning cash because they can just blame the Dems and use that as an argument to privatize core government functions.

So once again, much of it comes back to GOP obstructionism.

[panzagl]

So the thing is, since WWII we've switched pretty evenly between the 'left' party and the 'right' party at the national level. All administrations/Congresses have been quick to sell us out to foreign and corporate interests, whether it's Bush going to war for oil or Obama forcing everyone to buy health insurance.

[thirdsun]

Do you really think that sane health care, a problem the rest of the world has figured out long ago, is nothing more than a scheme to serve corporate interests? Or on the same level as intentionally going to war based on misleading, if not downright incorrect, justifications. I can't believe what I'm reading here.

[mistermann]

I'd describe it as roughly, both parties have been Neoliberals since the 80's or so (the Political Overton Window changed), but then within that there's the part that people only see: left vs right, but they're far less different than they seem.

[maerF0x0]

> A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable.

Personally speaking I'm all good with wearing a mask if they let me out of my house. The Shelter in place thing has been such an overreaction that I'm kind of primed to rebel just because I'm so incensed by the violation of rights...

Wearing a mask is like requiring wearing a seatbelt. Shelter in place is like saying no one can drive except a few exceptionals.

[mynameisvlad]

I don't believe there are any states currently issuing stay at home (which is different than SIP) orders.

It also has 100% not been an overreaction. It saved countless lives by preventing spread. That whole flattening the curve thing and how well countries that have actually followed through and did not open early should show you how effective it has been.

[maerF0x0]

It would be interesting to see the data of which is more effective. I'm currently biased towards believing that masks were highly effective and SIP orders mostly are not (because people still leave for groceries, for example) .

If we create the false dichotomy of Masks vs SIP I would recommend Masks

[mynameisvlad]

Stay at home orders work because they minimize contact someone has with others.

Sure, people might still go to the groceries or other essential tasks. Once or twice a week. But if they're otherwise obeying the order and staying at home then just by not travelling to and from the office, going on recreational walks/drives/etc, and in general being isolated with a few people is obviously going to drastically limit the spread. It's not going to cut it down to 0, but it's still far less than the other extreme of living life normally and interacting with random people and surfaces daily.

Why are you even trying to create a false dichotomy? Just stay at home and wear a mask, ffs. It's really not that hard.

Saving lives should not be this grand political issue it's become in the US. It's objectively very simple. Limit contact and limit spread, and you'll have fewer cases. You limit contact by having people stay at home, and you limit spread by having people wear masks. This isn't rocket science or anything.

[maerF0x0]

> Saving lives should not be this grand political issue it's become in the US.

It is politicized whenever there is a strong disparity of benefits and costs... It's primarily the old who benefit and primarily the young who suffer by closing down the economy

[watwut]

Shelter in place works everywhere except in America, which is always special.

And if people go to buy food, that totally negates lack of contact everywhere else, including restaurants, concerts, offices, schools, sport clubs and so on.

[Avicebron]

I'm curious of your claim that SIP works everywhere except in America?

Can you elaborate?

[base698]

The median death rate is 80: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-da...

At best it saved a few people who would have died in a couple of years.

[jkhaui]

It's a fallacy to think that the only outcome of COVID is binary (i.e. death or perfect recovery).

Just browse r/covidpositive. There are so many "survivors" who say they still have so much internal organ pain 4 months after being diagnosed, and now they feel hopeless, have suicidal ideation, etc.

And from the sounds of it, a lot of these people are in their 20s-40s and could run a marathon pre-COVID.

[shreyansj]

Which right is being violated in your opinion? And why is that more important than others' right to stay alive?

[Pinguinsan]

Because I am selfish and, by and large, don't care about others. Selfish? Yes. Just being honest.

[mnm1]

Thanks for showing us an example of exactly the kind of stupidity the parent is talking about. The government is well within its rights to require shelter in place. If you don't like it, get your case heard by the Supreme Court and win, but until then, stop pretending you have a right to not be quarantined. You don't. This is exactly the kind of thought and culture that prevents America from doing even the simplest things, like protecting people in a pandemic. A grass roots anti-intellectual culture of stupidity.

[Pinguinsan]

You are part of the problem. Stop while you're behind.

[rayiner]

We’re not a “country.” We’re 50 different states with a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles.

This isn’t an ideological point, it’s a bare recitation of fact. Somehow, other federal republics like Germany managed to engage in an effective pandemic response while leaving most of the work to the states. For example, while Germany eventually had a mask order everywhere, the states all implemented them at different times. School reopening was all done on different schedules with different procedures. Merkel didn’t issue a national mask order, for the same reason Trump didn’t: she wasn’t legally allowed to.

This was not a surprise. Nobody thought pandemic response was mainly a federal responsibility. States, particularly New York, were just completely unprepared for a job they knew was theirs.

So I agree ideologies are the problem, but this is a problematic ideology too. Why would people use a pandemic to try and relitigate the basic structure of our government? Why can’t we just work within the system to solve problems?

[jennasys]

While the states may be responsible for what happens on the ground, it is certainly the role of the federal government to provide coordination in the case of a nationwide public health issue. Clearly, that was not done in this case. The CDC, NIH, FEMA, and the surgeon general should have all been playing a role in this pandemic. The states shouldn't have had to ultimately go about creating their own regional coalitions of their own accord out of desperation.

[rayiner]

The CDC issued guidelines, and Trump had regular calls with the governors to coordinate. It’s more or less the same thing Merkel’s government did. They delivered what federal stockpiles they had. What else were they supposed to do? It’s the states fault that there weren’t any test kits, tracing and isolation infrastructure, etc. Obviously it would have helped if Trump wasn’t a counterproductive buffoon that contradicted the guidelines his own administration was issuing, but I’m not really talking about Trump’s failings as a leader. My post is about the division of labor.

[mynameisvlad]

> It’s the states fault that there weren’t any test kits, tracing and isolation infrastructure, etc.

Why exactly is this the states' fault? This seems like something that would be far more effective at the federal level. It's the exact same argument as the parent comment, it shouldn't be up to states to create tracing and isolation infrastructure, test kits, etc.

Putting that burden on the states is exactly how we got to the place we are in. Without effective federal support and direction, no solution will be effective since inter-state travel exists and there's 50 different states that will come up with 50 different solutions, some more effective than others.

It makes zero sense to force states to individually do all this when a single entity would be far more effective.

[rayiner]

> Why exactly is this the states' fault?

Because it was their responsibility. The CDC, as well as about 235 years of law, was absolutely clear about this: https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/phl101/PHL101-Unit-5-16Jan09-S... (slides 8, 10).

> This seems like something that would be far more effective at the federal level.

Maybe that’s a discussion we can have for next time. But the point is that we had a very long-standing division of labor that states knew about, but they didn’t prepare. You can’t have a debate about changing the division of responsibility during a pandemic. The idea that someone else should have been in charge isn’t an excuse when the responsibility had been assigned to you. Put differently, the CDC presentation I linked to, which says the CDC is just there to provide “expert assistance” wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

> It's the exact same argument as the parent comment, it shouldn't be up to states to create tracing and isolation infrastructure, test kits, etc.

But it was. Just like it was up to France or Germany to do those things, and not some EU agency. Italy isn’t blaming the eCDC for its own lack of preparation.

> Putting that burden on the states is exactly how we got to the place we are in.

No, we got into the place we’re in because states shirked a responsibility that had plainly been assigned to them. (And in fact, was inherently theirs as a matter of the very structure of our federation).

> Without effective federal support and direction, no solution will be effective since inter-state travel exists and there's 50 different states that will come up with 50 different solutions, some more effective than others.

Canada, Australia, Germany, etc. all managed to do this just fine.

[monkeyfacebag]

wait, what is the CDC then? I am not trying to argue with you. I haven't heard the take that the US government doesn't have a public health role and am looking to learn.

[rayiner]

So there is theory and practice. In theory, public health is a purely state issue. In practice, it’s a mostly state issue. But there is a real legal limit here: the federal government has no general police power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_power_(United_States_co...

> In United States constitutional law, police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of their inhabitants.

This is not an unusual principle. Germany has a similar principle, which is why Angela Merkel didn’t issue a mask order either.

The federal agencies are best understood as having a coordinating role for when inter-state issues are involved. This CDC PowerPoint (which predates Covid) explains: https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/phl101/PHL101-Unit-5-16Jan09-S...

See the first bullet on Slide 8: “State and local governments carry out most communicable disease surveillance and control under the police power.”

See Slide 10: “Most powers for public health surveillance, investigations, and interventions derive from state and local law.”

The federal government provides “expert public health assistance” and regulates “disease carriers who cross state lines.”

So when we talk about things like tracing protocols, where does that fit? The CDC can provide expert advice about what sorts of testing protocols are effective. But the state governments must actually develop and execute the surveillance and intervention: testing patients, quarantining them, etc. The federal government is supposed to assist insofar as patients might move between states.

This is how everyone has always understood the division of labor in public health to be set up. Countries like Germany have similar legal structures, and have managed just fine. Even countries like Japan, where the central government does have a general police power, still delegates things like testing because the local governments are more nimble.

Only in America would be ignore the clear division of labor that’s in place during a pandemic.

[dragonwriter]

> In theory, public health is a purely state issue

No, it's not. The federal government is, in theory, fully empowered to use any of it's enumerated powers for any purpose not expressly prohibited, which public health is not, and has quite emphatically adopted policy around exercising its power for that purpose, starting at least as far back as the establishment of the marine hospitals in 1798, later, in many steps, reorganized into the modern US Public Health Service.

[rayiner]

The Marine Hospital Service wasn’t a “public health” service. It was for taking care of disabled and ill federal beneficiaries. Until 1878, it was concerned with treating members of the military. The first exercise of general public health powers seems to be in the Quarantine Act of 1878, but that was directed specifically at preventing vessels with infected people from entering US ports or informing relevant state and local officials if they did: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/45th-congress.... This was focused on infectious disease screening of Ellis Island immigrants. Maybe by this point you can say that public health is within the federal government’s jurisdiction insofar as it’s an adjunct to the government’s power over the border, which is fair. But because the government’s power over the border is plenary, you can shoehorn many things that would otherwise be purely state issues into that.

The reorganization into the US Public Health Service was in 1912, and that’s when it picked up general authority to study infectious diseases. But that era isn’t really relevant to what’s constitutional.

[GeneralMayhem]

You haven't heard it before because it's patently not true. The CDC, the FDA, the NIH, FEMA, not to mention the droves of smaller groups you and I have never heard of that are embedded in other agencies - the federal government has a massive public health role. It's so clear that I have to seriously question the motives of anyone saying that it doesn't.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Given their new "4-6 weeks and its done" schedule it's now just a political mouthpiece neutered to prevent any negative messaging near November.

[timsally]

> We’re 50 different states with a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles.

COVID is clearly a national security issue, which is squarely a matter for the federal government. The prior administration made pandemic response part of the national security apparatus (i.e. the NSC). According to public testimony, this continues in the current administration despite a reorganization.

You claim a bare recitation of fact, but in my view that is completely inaccurate. There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. One of the first iterations of our government under the Articles of Confederation didn't have a strong enough government to respond to national security threats and we could have lost the war for it. Having a strong federal government that can accomplish things the states cannot is literally the reason for our government as it exists today.

As I mentioned, by our own government's admission pandemic response is a national security issue. There are two additional reasons why this is clear. First, what if the pandemic was started by a biological weapon? Would we still leave it to the states then? Certainly not, yet it would be the same exact pandemic whether started by terrorists or by accident. Second, COVID is going to cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On and don't forget it literally took a nuclear powered aircraft carrier off the battlefield. It is then by definition a national security issue because of how weak it makes our country.

I generally enjoy your writing on these issues but I think you have the basic structure of our government completely reversed. We threw out the Articles of Confederation and created a stronger federal government because disjoint states did not have the ability to respond to massive threats at the scale of COVID.

One you throw out your designation of COVID as a public health matter and recognize it is an issue of national security (again by our government's own admission) I think a lot of your other arguments do not hold up. Some things that you mention as a matter of law are clearly correct with respect to masks. But the idea that "nobody thought pandemic response was mainly a federal responsibility" is completely false and counter to the ideals of our government after the Confederation Period.

[GeneralMayhem]

>a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles

Yes, it does. It may not be explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, but the federal government is absolutely tasked with responding to national disasters, of which pandemics are one example. What is the CDC? What is FEMA? What is the NIH?

>Merkel didn’t issue a national mask order, for the same reason Trump didn’t: she wasn’t legally allowed to.

Even if it were true, that would make this the very first time in his life that legal limitations ever stopped Trump from doing something.

[rayiner]

Even to the extent that we’ve long ignored the constitution on these issues, we still haven’t put the federal government in a primary role for public health. The federal government is not supposed to be the front-line response to a pandemic. CDC’s own documents make clear, for example, that it is supposed to provide expert advice and deal with patients that cross state lines, while states are supposed to handle actual testing and intervention: https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/phl101/PHL101-Unit-5-16Jan09-S....

Same thing with FEMA. It’s not supposed to be front-line disaster response. It’s supposed to be a backstop for when a particular state is overwhelmed. That’s why FEMA is legally not allowed to act until a governor declares a state of emergency and asks for assistance. But every state is supposed to be prepared to handle their own disasters. FEMA is a backstop—it’s not supposed to have the resources to help every state at the same time.

The NIH is a research agency. It doesn’t have an operational role in public health.

Even if we overlook what’s “explicitly enumerated” and we look at the structure that exists today by historical accident, the federal government is still relegated to an advisory role, and dealing with travel. But those aren’t the things that went wrong with the pandemic response. Lockdowns are an operational role, and entrusted to the states. PPE, testing kits, having people in place to do tracing and isolation? All of that is operational, and was assigned to the state governments. Mask orders are an exercise of the general police power, and entrusted to the states.

Again, this is not an ideological point about how things should be. (Although, they are this way because that’s how the constitution sets things up.) It’s a point about whose job it was to be prepared. The states were supposed to be prepared for this, and they weren’t. By the time the pandemic hit, there wasn’t much the federal government could do. It could advise states about tracing and isolation protocols, but it has no boots on the ground to actually do any of those things. The states were supposed to be prepared to do all that.

[ghufran_syed]

So you think it would be better under a different political leader? I think it’s great that you’re still such an optimist

[scarface74]

On the state level, no sane governor would sue mayors for requiring face masks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/16/georgia-mayors-bria...

On the federal level, no sane President would go out of his way to force states to give the CDC less information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-cor...

[sfteus]

If you're trying to tell me that you think we wouldn't be better off with a leader that said this was a present and real threat and put out a mandatory mask order back in Feb/March, shut down travel and enforced travel quarantines, used the Defense Production Act to create and deliver PPE where needed, didn't confiscate PPE from states and re-sell it to the highest bidder, didn't publicly contradict the pandemic response team and CDC, implemented an effective national testing and contact tracing strategy, etc, then I'd say you're not here for an honest dialogue.

[shreyansj]

Different political leader - we don't know. A different political leader who was not divisive and dismissive of science - yes, it would have been better.

[chosenbreed37]

That's true. A counterpoint is Japan or Sweden where citizens changed their behaviour prior to any government action. Social distancing, avoiding bars, public transport, staying away from elderly relatives, face masks, etc etc. I think it's a sad state of affairs if people only take action under the instruction from a government.

[bjustin]

I do think more or less any other leader likely would have done at least a little better. But if the same events in late 2019/early 2020 had happened under President Obama in 2015/2016 instead, I think it likely that many people in the opposing party would have ended up taking the same anti-science positions we see now. Federal action would have made the pandemic less bad but individuals and other levels of government could still have caused problems.

[scarface74]

Only Nixon could go to China. Imagine how much different things would have been if Trump had embraced the CDC and science like the other nations did. His followers would have gone along with it.

[s5300]

Well, the last administration literally made something called

“Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”

AKA how to handle a pandemic for dummies

What did our current administration do? Claim it at first did not exist, and then definitely didn't look at it when they were informed it did exist.

Really, you're not putting any effort in your trolling/cynicism

[harimau777]

I think there would probably still be systemic problems, but I don't see how anyone could think that it wouldn't be better under another leader. Trump is overtly incompetent.

[jimbokun]

> So you think it would be better under a different political leader?

No US President in my living memory would have screwed this up as badly as Donald Trump has.

[mistermann]

> Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who...

Were all of these issues nonexistent under prior administrations?

Or, as for turning it around, are you asserting that Clinton both could have and would have done so? If so, how do you know this?

[greesil]

Interdimensional cable. You can't prove that I don't have it.

Ask yourself this, could the current administration's response have been better given what was known at the time? If the answer is emphatically yes, then perhaps another person is better suited for the job.

[mynameisvlad]

Why is this even a discussion we're having? Yes, literally anybody would have had a better response than what we got. Just looking at the current state of the US vs practically any other country in the world shows how cripplingly bad the response has been from the current administration.

Sometimes, I really hate the people in this country.

[erik_seaberg]

The US was never going to win a contest that calls for unity and obedience. I’ve usually found it admirable, though not right now.

[greesil]

I can take a guess. People consume different information sources, and have different ideologies. So, they may arrive at different conclusions than you. I suspect this is more heavily on the ideology side because it's hard to deny the body count.

[mynameisvlad]

It was more of a rhetorical question. I know why it's happening, it's just ridiculous and infuriating that it is happening.

Anyone who comes in with good faith and actually objectively looks at the statistics and response can't possibly come to a different conclusion. The problem comes down to the "good faith" and "objective" parts of that sentence.

[neverartful]

I can't help but wonder if the nature of the US being a 'melting pot' doesn't result in more difficulty in achieving agreement on national policy decisions. I'm not saying that diversity is bad. In most cases, we benefit enormously from being a melting pot. However, on some national policy topics it makes me wonder.

[mistermann]

> Interdimensional cable. You can't prove that I don't have it.

@not2b pointed out a number of very valid issues in the United States. No disagreement from me, these are obvious and very important problems.

But then followed it up with:

>> Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who is committed to division...

"Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership" on its own could be interpreted as an abstract philosophical statement, but not when it is accompanied by "...but we chose someone..." implies a specific context (the last election), does it not?

In the last election, there were two choices: Trump and Clinton.

Trump was elected, leaving Clinton as the only other choice of a person who could have "turned this situation around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause".

Is: "are you asserting that Clinton both could have and would have done so? If so, how do you know this?", requesting clarification and evidence of the claim, inappropriate in this context?

Is: "Were all of these issues nonexistent under prior administrations?" not appropriate, considering the claim was that a different choice could "turn this situation around quickly"? Is past performance of Presidents not relevant to the epistemic soundness of a claim that something is not just possible, but quick?

I'm thinking: perhaps turning things around in a country of 300 million people of vastly different cultures and ideologies is a bit more complicated than is appreciated by some forum commentators. Just an idea.

> Ask yourself this, could the current administration's response have been better given what was known at the time? If the answer is emphatically yes, then perhaps another person is better suited for the job.

Of course, just look around at other countries. There are surely thousands of people in the Unites States that could have handled this situation better, but we are only allowed to vote for the candidates that are undemocratically offered. And let's not forget, an election isn't about on issue, like "who would handle a pandemic best?". The reality is, each voter is (or should be) considering many thousands of variables, many of which have unknown values and all sorts of messy stuff.

The notion that ~"because President<A> is handling individual issue <x> poorly, therefore it logically follows that Candidate<Y> was the better choice for President" is not strongly logical. The answers to questions like this (or, what the hell is even going on, at any level of significant complexity) are actually not known - it just doesn't seem like it. I happen to believe that this phenomenon may actually play a major role in the underlying cause of the problems themselves.

[electriclove]

You are getting downvoted for your political statement. I really wish the parent comment kept out the last bit because the conversation then devolves to red/blue, left/right, white/black.

We, as a country, screwed the handling of this. It isn't just one person. It is the way our entire system works. How do we fix it?

[mynameisvlad]

Yes, the country screwed up, but ultimately, the country is represented by a single leader, and said single leader is responsible for the response of the country as a whole.

With great power (like presidency), comes great responsibility (like properly leading the country through a global pandemic) and with great responsibility comes great criticism where said responsibility isn't followed through.

They're not getting downvoted for a political statement. They're getting downvoted by implying that someone else wouldn't do a better job than probably the worst possible response to Covid.

Objectively, the response we've had from the leadership of the country has been terrible, and the effects are evident when you look at # of cases. Also objectively, any other response would have been better. Obviously, I can't tell with absolute certainty what other leaders would have done, but I can assure you it'd have been better than what we have now.

To say otherwise is ignoring the current state of the country and the response that has resulted in said state.

[mistermann]

> You are getting downvoted for your political statement.

Technically, I'm being downvoted for asking two questions that challenge someone else's political statement (that aligns quite nicely with the general politics of HN).

> I really wish the parent comment kept out the last bit because the conversation then devolves to red/blue, left/right, white/black.

Me too, I completely agreed with the first part. I have this thing about about people dropping dimensions of reality and pretending they are irrelevant, or predicting the outcome of events on parallel dimensions of our universe, and stating those predictions as if they are facts. I consider this sort of rhetoric as part of the problem, but most people seem to overwhelmingly prefer it nowadays, provided the proper claims are made of course.

> How do we fix it?

This seems like the important question to me as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a very popular topic of discussion.

[rorykoehler]

Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name. I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

[mistermann]

> Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name.

This is subjective and necessarily highly speculative.

> I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

Predicting or thinking (about) that is perfectly fine and reasonable. Mistaking subsequent predictions for conclusive facts is what is actually delusional. There are many examples of such delusional behavior on HN every day: mind reading, future predicting (and stating the results as facts), you name it. I think it is fairly true to say that conspiracy theorists (for example) and "smart" people differ more in degree than in kind, although we do not have the means (or ambition, or epistemic skills) to determine the degree to which this is true.

Most of the time, what we consider to be true, is actually unknown.

[fsociety]

Right but you didn’t write anything about this particular situation. Instead you created doubt in the conversation because we don’t have 100% of the facts.

In leadership not making a decision until you have 100% of the facts, and truly know something to be a fact, will kill your ability to be effective.

Trump didn’t make a decision, instead he called the virus a hoax and prevented experts from providing insight to a situation where we didn’t have all the facts.

On the next sentence I’m going to write, no I don’t have 100% of the facts but I can certainly make an informed statement.

Trump fucked this country up and Clinton would’ve had a better response to this pandemic - regardless of who you identify as how could you not accept this.

[RestlessMind]

> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable.

Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

> ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ...

I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#Issues_during_l...

[GeneralMayhem]

Performance is in fact divergent by party; see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_.... Blue counties are doing worse than red in both state cohorts due to population density, but counties of either party are doing worse in R states. Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

Healthcare.gov was a shitshow, but referring to it here is a very silly false equivalency. It was not time-sensitive in the same way that COVID-19 response is. It involved getting the federal government to exercise new competencies that it hadn't done at scale before; responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government, and PPE acquisition, distribution, and even manufacturing are not new. It failed for reasons having to do with mismanagement of timelines, not outright fraud; COVID PPE shipments have been hijacked and sold off to the president's cronies.

But sure, both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

[jdminhbg]

> Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

The relevant metric is not "amount of time doing relatively better or worse." You can get all over with quickly like NY did, but they ended up with 8x the deaths of FL. NJ has 3x FL's. AFAICT, "leading responsibly" here means simply having (D) after their names, as these governors' policies were catastrophically bad.

[RestlessMind]

> responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government

I responded to your sibling comment about other examples about how D-dominated governments have failed spectacularly in areas which are supposed to be the core jobs of governments - public infrastructure. (ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875739).

> both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

I actually don't see much difference in the incompetence of the two sides. Presidents (or Governors) are simply impotent to get anything done in the US systems. At best (in terms of their powers), they can only stop something from happening.

[jimbokun]

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

Maybe if it were also possible to lock down borders between states, making them truly separate sovereign nations.

A lot of states had a declining infection rate and looked to be getting things under control, then people traveled to other states and brought back the virus with them.

There are still things only the federal government can do or coordinate.

[panzagl]

You mean when all the New Yorkers left for Florida?

[divbzero]

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no?

It’s not so simple in that many states are miniature versions of our polarized country. For example, you have a Democratic governor facing Republican opposition in rural counties in Washington, and a Republican governor suing a Democratic mayor in Georgia.

[perl4ever]

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

It's very frustrating seeing people continually arguing that because some people screw up, learn from experience, and fix things, that it justifies others going in the opposite direction, ignoring experience, and breaking things.

Even before your metrics show that the destruction has reached a crossover point, the latter is fundamentally different because it's unnecessary. The former is fundamentally sound because there will always be mistakes.

It doesn't matter how bad you think government is, it's not an argument for making it worse.

[bshoemaker]

This is not true; a) more rural states have a much easier time with covid and b) blue states started off being hit the hardest, but red states are now catching up because their governors are incompetent

[gpapilion]

I think this is a misrepresentation. Texas has 85% of the infections as California and 74% of the population. California has had steady growth while Texas has been very quick with several days over 10k.

I think the reason the outcome is largely the same is this is a situation where we rely on our federal government to lead the response, and so far they haven’t.

[jimbokun]

> I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

This strikes me as a pretty passive-aggressive argument style.

Who, in your opinion, is the better leader? Which of Obama or Trump do you think would handle this pandemic better?

You are picking out one mistake, and kind-of-sort-of implying that makes them both the same, except you don't have the courage to directly state that. If you have a point to make, make it.

[RestlessMind]

> If you have a point to make, make it.

My point - a solo good leader is insufficient in the US because the systemic rot is deeper and bipartisan. (FWIW, Obama was an okay leader, though vastly better than Trump).

> You are picking out one mistake

Here are a few more: California High-Speed railway, which was being implemented when CA had D-dominated government under a very competent governor (Brown). Did that leadership or unified government control help? Absolutely not.

Another: 2-mile stretch of Second Avenue subway in NYC, which took almost a 100 years and $4-5B. Why? Were all the NYC leaders incompetent for a century? I don't think so.

[Proziam]

The problem is that people think the D's and R's are dramatically different. They both have similar statist agendas just marketing themselves towards different demographics. Neither party has many any substantial effort to rebuild our infrastructure, develop genuine disaster preparedness, reduce tax burdens on the middle class, and so on.

All of those things lead to what we're seeing now where the average person can't even afford to live on savings for a few months. If the average person can't keep themselves above water, how can they realistically contribute to their community efforts like we did in WW2? And if they're all going broke and risking losing their houses and livelihoods you end up with a massive backlash to anything keeping people away from work.

We need leadership that pushes serious reform initiatives to reduce government bloat and reach goals that actually benefit the people.

[RestlessMind]

I see that you are being downvoted, but I do agree with some of your points.

> people think the D's and R's are dramatically different

This is so true. Let's ignore fringe topics like Green New Deal or White Supremacy and look at what the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

But what are the key differences between tax policy or curtailing corporate powers or entanglements in various wars? You will have to squint hard. And please don't cite Warren or Sanders when it comes to corporations and D's - those two lost the primary handily and when D's controlled all the levers of the powers in D.C., they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008.

[Avicebron]

Yeah it's pretty obvious by reading by what is NOT being discussed and talked about that there is some serious disconnect from both the Ds and the Rs and the people that make up the US that is behind a lot of the current problems.

Sometimes the silence says more than the noise.

[Proziam]

The upvotes/downvotes I get are weird to watch because there's so much apparent disagreement and very little dialogue. This is the case on anything I post that takes a more 'conservative' stance.

> the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

I sometimes call these the clickbait issues. They get the most public attention but affect people's daily lives the least. Of course, that statement is going to upset some people because they will not immediately consider the net effect of trans rights legislation in comparison to taxes / corporate lawmaking / warfare / international trade.

Worse, some people take statements like the above and think that I don't want all humans to have truly equal rights, which I do.

> they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008

Very true. I've seen many people (including on this forum, which is better educated than average) make statements to the effect of 'democrats are better for the economy' without considering the fact that both parties have been complicit in creating and maintaining the systems that have led to massive government debt and economic collapses.

[spideymans]

The United States government is completely and utterly dysfunctional when it comes to serving the needs of its citizens. The government rarely goes out of its way to help its citizens, and the rare times it does something to help, it does so incredibly begrudgingly, intentionally making the process as painful as possible.

The pandemic payouts are a wonderful example of the government going out of its way to make helping its citizens as painful as possible. Millions of people still haven’t received their one-time payment of $1,200. Meanwhile in Canada, it took their government only two weeks to develop the infrastructure to send monthly payments of $2,000 to every Canadian.

The incompetence displayed by the American government isn’t because they can’t do better - it’s because they don’t want to do better. The same government was able to send massive financial assistance to huge corporations with very little delay.

It’s become totally evident that the United States government exists solely to serve its corporations, not its citizens. Anything it does to actively help it’s citizens is, at best, incidental.

[dhosek]

This is entirely at the feet of the Republican party. They're the ones who have declared states are on their own and have suggested (and this is not a joke) that the next round of "relief" must include a capital gains holiday. There have been missteps from the left, but the Democrats overall approach has been to serve the needs of citizens in general while the Republicans have been eager to continue their program of concentrating wealth.

[Avicebron]

This isn't quite true, yes the Republican party has some pretty clear pro-business idealogy that hurts the citizens. No doubt. But it was a Democratic party that pushed for the hollowing out of american businesses to overseas locations and bailed out a morally bankrupt wall street with no public consequences other than a federal reserve patch job

[tremon]

As long as you keep framing your country's problems in terms of D vs R, things will not improve.

[chosenbreed37]

It is true that the pandemic has brought to the fore some things that could be improved. I'm not based in the US but I think it has a lot going for it. We may argue about some of the drawbacks associated with the status quo but this is the country that landed people on the moon. It has brought us Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Starbucks, Hollywood, Disney, etc. In spite of the retoric from some quarters it still welcomes people from all over the world. And what is more they almost immediately identify themselves as American and embrace the values and start making working towards the American dream. I think you'd struggle to find a better place in terms of upward mobility. Certainly not in Europe. I think we have to see it in terms of trade offs. The things that some admire in other nations come at a cost. And in some cases can't really happen in the US because the policies don't scale as well. There may be other nations catching up in some areas. But I think America is still a great nation.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> I think you'd struggle to find a better place in terms of upward mobility.

Just going to respond to this. The US used to be a paragon of upward mobility. That is no longer the case: https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s... . That is just one article, but you can search "US upward mobility ranking" and find lots of articles and evidence how many other countries now do much, much better than the US in this regard.

[mnm1]

Upward mobility is much lower in the US than most of Western Europe and likely most of Europe period.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brookings.edu/wp-co...

[nickff]

If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks. Given the (very popular) laws against price gauging, it seems like the only viable option is to force some companies to manufacture more masks. Production capacity is available, but at a higher cost than is currently economical.

All that being said, your second point seems correct to me, and I doubt anything will be done (as a result of the political quagmire).

[thephyber]

> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks.

Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...

[chosenbreed37]

Curious. Is there anything stopping individual states from doing this? Surely a federal system should enable individual states to act independently to some extent. They must have their own budgets and are to determine how resources are allocated. No?

[ihumanable]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/

There were three major disincentives for states to do this.

First, without a coordinated response there were dozens of high demand buyers and low supply. The market did its thing and State Governments were being forced to pay very high prices for PPE. States were bidding against each other and bidding against the Federal Government, this drove the price even higher.

Second, even when States could secure PPE, the Federal Government was seizing PPE and testing supplies to send it to Coronavirus Taskforce approved vendors who would then sell the seized goods back to the States at inflated prices. This got so bad that Maryland's Governor, after using his South Korean wife's connections to secure testing supplies from South Korea, placed them under the protection of the National Guard to prevent the Federal Government from absconding with them. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/maryla...

Third, the State budgets are shot to hell. When the public health crisis started it was easy to say, let's do what it takes to keep people safe. Now a sizable chunk of the citizenry is refusing to wear masks or social distance, and the State coffers are running empty. State leaders are faced with deciding if they want to use the limited funds left at their disposal to try purchasing PPE in the face of a constituency that is going to spread and worsen the public health crisis regardless. It's lose-lose for the decision makers, so they are disincentivized to follow this path. They can spend the last of the treasury on PPE just to watch it evaporate as cases soar.

[evan_]

In many cases states have tried to obtain supplies directly from manufacturers and suppliers only to have the Federal Government step in and prevent them from actually taking possession of the needed materials.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-whi...

[msluyter]

IIRC, states are mandated against running deficits, and their budgets are set 1-2 years in advance (eg, Texas, whose legislature sets the budget every 2 years), which limits their maneuverability in this regard. Also, states don't have the equivalent resources and bargaining power of the federal government.

[dhosek]

States are resource constrained in ways that the federal government is not. Most, if not all, local governments are required to balance their budgets on an annual basis. Conservative politicians insist on tax cuts during economic boom times that prevent these governments from being able to withstand downturns without dramatic cuts in services (which is the real end goal of the conservatives).

[1123581321]

That’s the removing price gouging solution, just at the wholesale level. Unless the plan is for the government to tell the manufacturers what kind of pay they should find acceptable.

[mistermann]

> The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.

The claim is "dubious", so (therefore) there was exactly no reason for this to happen?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dubious - "questionable or suspect as to true nature or quality"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exactly - "in a manner or measure or to a degree or number that strictly conforms to a fact or condition"

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/08/donald-tru...

> One thing the stockpile clearly doesn’t have enough of is face masks. News reports found that the N95 face masks were not substantially replenished after H1N1 in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. (continues)

https://www.dailywire.com/news/obama-admin-allegedly-deplete...

> “The national stockpile used to be somewhat more robust. In 2006, Congress provided supplemental funds to add 104 million N95 masks and 52 million surgical masks in an effort to prepare for a flu pandemic,” Bloomberg News continued. “But after the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/828303817/surgical-mask-manuf...

> KELLY: I mean, I have read that since that experience, you have been sounding the alarm. I know you wrote to President Trump. I know you wrote President Obama before him, warning that it wasn't going to be if but when that there would be another...

> BOWEN: I'm not. No. No, no, no. You know, I have been off and on. Of course, I've been selling this message for 14 years, but I'm really not angry. I'm puzzled. And I think what I've been fighting is not the government, not President Obama, not President Trump. I think it's human nature. I think since everybody ignored it - I mean, reporters ignored it. Pandemic experts ignored it. Our government ignored it. Hospitals ignored it. Everybody ignored it. So to me, it's a human nature problem. So I'm over my anger.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XMOzAY...

> “Prestige Ameritech is presently the lone voice warning of the insecure U.S. mask supply,” Bowen wrote to President Barack Obama in June 2010. “Apathy and inertia are our biggest hurdles.”

(Note that this is from The Washington Post)

I don't disagree that there's no GOOD reason for this to happen, other than the unfortunate reality that human beings are not very good at thinking, at least compared to how well we perceive ourselves to think. As far as I can tell, almost all humans are living in some sort of a severe state of delusion at all times, our minds and societies haven't had nearly enough time to evolve to accommodate the massive increase in complexity in the last few hundred years, let alone the last 20.

[thephyber]

The "dubious" claim (I was imprecise and meant to credit it to the president's quote, not the "without replenishing it") was basically affirmed by your Politifact link.

More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2020/04/02/trump...

[mistermann]

> More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.

Obama behaved no differently.

[thephyber]

There's no point in further engaging with you if that's your take on the presidential responses to 2009 H1N1 versus 2020 SARS-CoV-2.

The presidents could not differ more in:

  - lead time between inauguration and first epidemic reaching the USA (6 weeks versus 3 years)
  - seriousness with which the presidential transition team took pandemic response
  - the authority given to pandemic response (Obama made NSC responsible while Trump made HHS responsible)
  - speed and intensity of initial response once the outbreak was identified
  - empowerment medical professionals
  - use of Defense Production Act
  - treatment of WHO, CDC, and FDA as institutions

[not2b]

That's why we have mechanisms like the Defense Production Act. Under normal circumstances the free market works well, but sometimes in a crisis it isn't enough. We are in a crisis.

[vb6sp6]

> seems like the only viable option is to force some companies to manufacture more masks

This doesn't have to be complicated: We can subsidize masks.

[nickff]

The manufacturer prices would be higher, thus triggering price gouging laws.

[sfteus]

Price gouging is based on a reasonable price and is subjective. If the present situation results in inflated prices due to lack of materials or needing to run at a higher capacity, that's still reasonable. California, for example, has this written into their penal code, limiting it to a 10% increase in price of the total cost of manufacturing, which includes the increased cost of production, transportation or storage.

If those companies decided that they were going to stop selling their current stock of masks completely until they sold for a higher price, that would be price gouging.

[nickff]

Would you take on the cost and risk of additional machines and employees for an ephemeral market and small margins?

[sfteus]

For the public good? Absolutely. Even more so if the government subsidized part of it to help ensure those goods were available to their citizens.

[mynameisvlad]

But you wouldn't be taking on that cost and risk. That's the whole point of subsidizing manufacturing. To alleviate said cost and risk in desperate times.

You know, like a global pandemic. That's a pretty desperate time, IMO.

[pantaloony]

You’re missing a whole world of how governments can get market actors to do things, unless you’re putting “incentives and guarantees” under “force people”. In fact that approach of using market actors to the benefit of the country used to fall under the umbrella of conservatism, in the distant past of 3ish decades ago.

[thaumaturgy]

HN really needs to be more aggressively critical of comments like these, that try to construct arguments on ideological foundations without any deeper investigation of the relevant facts.

First, production capacity is not available, as the VP of Prestige Ameritech tried to explain to everyone months ago [1]. The equipment required to manufacture suitable PPE is big and expensive and there isn't enough demand to offset the capital or the maintenance costs for the equipment, except when there's suddenly a pandemic and everyone wants PPE yesterday.

Despite this, Prestige Ameritech -- having foreseen this scenario a long time ago and spent over a decade begging different administrations to prepare for it -- offered to ramp up production early this year. The Trump administration said no [2]. The issue has now been made even worse with everything reopening nationally, which has not only caused a huge spike in hospital demand for PPE, but has also caused a huge spike in demand for masks specifically [same article].

And these are just the immediate, short-term, direct issues that should be easy for outsiders to grasp. There are many other related, harder-to-solve problems:

> The blame, experts agreed, goes beyond any single person or agency but is the culmination of decades of change in the nation’s manufacturing capabilities, a worldwide shift in how goods are delivered and the country’s long battle with medical costs. Warnings about how these factors set the stage for shortages during a worst-case scenario went unheeded, leaving the country unprepared for a pandemic.

> By the time the coronavirus arrived, it was too late. The nation was left with massive shortages and a ruptured supply chain that won’t be an easy fix. [3]

Furthermore, prices did rise dramatically, and -- gasp! -- this did not magically fix the supply chain [4].

Allowing unregulated price gouging would not (and did not) change the supply shortage. It would have just been a pinata party in the shape of the US, and would have left front line medical workers without necessary PPE while wealthy people hoarded supplies.

An effective, less corrupt federal government could have dramatically increased PPE supply just by taking the pandemic seriously at the start and putting competent people with relevant expertise in charge of oversight and response. There still would have been shortages, but they would have been far less severe and they would largely have been resolved by now.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/10/21319960/n95-masks-shor...

[3]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/07/01/coronavirus-u...

[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/21/why-dont-h...

[jackcosgrove]

I would argue that the high salaries in the software industry have siphoned technologists from other industries that make physical products. Some of that is intrinsic, since making stuff has smaller margins than pushing bytes. But a lot of it is hidebound business practices. For example, should a manager always make more money than their reports? In many industries the answer is yes, which is a rejection of supply and demand in favor of a social hierarchy. There is also incredible bloat in supervisory roles, again because of the artificial money and prestige. Some companies would seemingly prefer to slowly die than pay needed employees a market rate, market being a national market spanning industries (some skillsets are fungible like that).

[jdbernard]

Personally I think it's more likely that the low salaries in other areas of technology (particularly physical products) has pushed people to software, rather than high salaries in software pulling them. Same effect in the end but I think the race-to-the-bottom in manufacturing, machining, and physical product development began the cycle. Soaring software salaries followed.

[partyboat1586]

Which countries are you thinking of?

[tzs]

I have no idea about N95 masks, but surgical style masks (which are what most people need) seem to be readily available.

I bought 50 for $30 at Newegg in mid May. I just ordered another 200 from there at $15 per 50. There are similar offerings immediately available on Amazon.

Same for face shields.

[electriclove]

Please share what countries you are referring to. This is not meant as a challenge, I genuinely feel the same way and want to evaluate things.

[eaandkw]

Honestly I think the government is too big and centralized. At this point is isn't much different that Soviet Russia back in the 80s and 90s. I think the reason the government can't do a good job is because it wasn't designed to operate the way it is now. We were supposed to be 50 states all doing what is best for them and not dictated by the federal government. The right decision for New York will probably not be the right decision for Wyoming and so forth.

To your comment about WWII. We had a common enemy and a common effort. This "wartime" economy pretty much envolved the entire economy and I would argue wasn't much different than what communism would be. Meaning that the central government pretty much controlled the means of production.

[int_19h]

As somebody who actually lived in the USSR in 1980s (a reminder that it ceased to exist in 1991), that's not even wrong.

[eaandkw]

I’m not being sarcastic here but do you mean that my comment was correct? At least mostly.

[int_19h]

I mean the opposite. The degree of government centralization and intrusiveness in US today is nowhere even close to what it was in USSR circa 1980s. And it's still one of the most decentralized countries in the world in general.

[Fargren]

I think you are bringing your own biases to this problem. The US is not as decentralized as it once was, it's true. And that has pros and cons. But many countries that are more centralized than the US have handled this crisis better, and the same is true for countries that are less centralized. It's not clear at all that the reason for the US failure had been the level of centralization.