[crooked-v]

There was an obvious optimal solution at the start of all of this, which is the same thing many other countries did: have a national lockdown for 1-2 months or so with everyone paid to stay home so that total number of new cases drops very low, then remove the lockdown and use comprehensive contact tracing and testing to quickly respond to new outbreaks.

Instead the federal executive branch acted in a worse than useless manner by being actively counterproductive, while various state governors refused to do anything because acting sensibly contradicted their political beliefs.

[DuskStar]

> while various state governors refused to do anything because acting sensibly contradicted their political beliefs.

Aaand yet all the worst outbreaks early on were in the bluest parts of blue-or-purple states, and were under the control of Democrat mayors and governors. Who are also the ones with real authority, incidentally.

Now, the red parts of the map aren't exactly doing well right now either - but let's not pretend that only the Republicans fucked up on this one.

> have a national lockdown for 1-2 months or so with everyone paid to stay home so that total number of new cases drops very low, then remove the lockdown and use comprehensive contact tracing and testing to quickly respond to new outbreaks.

I honestly think that Trump could not have done this. If he had tried - which would have taken a large expansion of executive power - at a time that this would have helped, I wouldn't be surprised if he was impeached. You might remember what happened when Trump banned (a lot of) travel from China - it wasn't people saying that this was insufficient, it was people saying that it was racist and unconstitutional. Do you really think that a response a thousand times as intense would have gotten a positive response?

[foogazi]

Why do you come here to peddle that BS? What is the point?

Here is a clear example of the federal government siding against state’s lockdown mandates

https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/2...

“ The Justice Department is pressuring state and local officials over lockdown orders The DOJ is questioning the legal authority of top officials in California and Illinois to extend stay-at-home orders.”

[DuskStar]

Well, when someone seems to be claiming that "everything would be fine if Trump wasn't a fuckup", I try to push back with "even if Trump wasn't a fuckup, there's enough other breakage in the way to prevent things from going perfectly". Trump messed up - that's kind of what he does. But with current US politics, there genuinely may not have been any set of actions Trump could have taken that would have both limited US cases to the levels Taiwan or South Korea encountered and not be impeached for it. (Because it would have meant doing things like "somehow convincing NYC to implement a no-seriously-you-stay-home order" and "implement a travel ban from everywhere", both of which would become a partisan issue and thus gridlocked)

A vox article about how the feds fucked up has no bearing on a counterfactual where the feds treated COVID like an existential threat back in February or early March. In that situation, you'd instead have an article saying that this was a major infringement on the rights of Americans, or that it disproportionately impacted a minority group. Which would have been true! But everything is a trade-off.

And as we can all see, it's not like the American Left has any real commitment to fighting COVID. Just look at how fast "stay the fuck home" turned into "protests are fine".

EDIT: you said "Why do you come here to peddle that BS?". I responded as if you thought my "I'm not sure anything Trump could have done would have turned out well" statement was BS, but you might have meant something else. Let me know!

[foogazi]

To your edit: yes that’s what I meant

You keep bringing politics into this - I think it’s ridiculous that you consider impeachment a threat while Republicans control the Senate

The federal government has taken unscientific actions during a pandemic risking people’s lives

[DuskStar]

And I continue to not deny that the federal government has continually failed. Instead, I've been saying that they're not the only ones to have failed, and that they're not always the ones with the most control. (Federalism is still a thing)

Further, impeachment only requires the House - conviction takes the Senate. And honestly, if Trump was enacting martial law, or anything similar, I don't think it would be too hard to get a few Republican senators to flip.

Really though, I brought up "what could he do without being impeached again" as a decent metric for "how much could he do before some cities and states told him to fuck off and stopped enforcing things". Incidentally, this would have almost certainly have gotten him reelected. Can you imagine the optics of "the states that followed Trump's lockdown orders were fine, while the ones that told him to fuck off have hundreds of thousands of dead"? (But this still wouldn't satisfy the hypothetical of "as good as Taiwan/SK", despite being better for the country and better for Trump personally)

[scarface74]

And in GA where the governor sued the Atlanta mayor among others for trying to implement stricter policies.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/georgia-mask-mandate-lawsuit-k...

[DuskStar]

Yeah, that's a fuckup! But that's also not relevant for NYC.

Look, some Republican governors fucked up (and continue to fuck up) for political reasons. But some Democrat governors, including Andrew Cuomo (governor of NY) have also fucked up, and it's hard to blame that entirely on the Republicans.

As far as I can tell, only Washington state and California really did well at the beginning of the pandemic in the US. (And even then, California's not doing fantastic now)

[scarface74]

A fuck up implies a mistake. Suing a mayor who is trying to take action to protect her city is malicious.

[RickJWagner]

And the political opposition said "Walls don't stop a virus" and called the federal executive branch xenophobic for a travel ban.

Nobody has hit 1000. It's a long game, and we don't even know if Sweden's approach is the right one or not. There is not much room for political mud-slinging, unless one backs a candidate that has not yet spoken.