[richrichardsson]

> didn't believe me that this was looking real bad

I think the problem was the world also didn't believe it. Perhaps if every other country had had the balls to just shut down travel in/out of China for a month or so back at the very start it might never have been so bad. I remember when the very first reports of a novel Coronavirus in Wuhan were making the news that it had the potential to be really bad, but also had some wishful thinking that it was probably just a storm in a teacup.

[rorykoehler]

China should have shut down international flights. Instead they shut down internal travel and happily exported the virus to the world. They have lost the last bit of good will I had for them and I suspect this is a sentiment shared the world over. The WHO are also complicit.

[lugu]

I share your feeling and this concerns me most: China's leadership don't care anymore what the world think of China. China gave up the PR war because their next big move might be ugly.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Hang on a second, remember Trump was called racist and xenophobic for shutting down travel to China?

And how weird that Zuckerburg sent an email to Fauci about vaccine funding and offers of help exactly the same time Nancy’s Pelosi was literally saying come to Chinatown and hug and Asian person. How were they talking about a vaccine at that point?

There seems to have been a lot of public and private statements going on, and everyone wants to memoryhole it.

[vkou]

I remember when he shut down travel from China... On January 31st. There were ~2k new cases every day, and internal travel was heavily restricted.

Meanwhile, it took until March 11th to ban travel from Europe, which at the time was seeing ~10k new cases a day, with full freedom of movement from affected areas to unaffected ones.

The problem wasn't that he banned travel from China. The problem is that he didn't ban travel from Europe, until it got way worse than China.

[SV_BubbleTime]

You: The problem wasn't that he banned travel from China. The problem is that he didn't ban travel from Europe, until it got way worse than China.

Okay. Yes, you're a very pro-lockdown Seattlite with access to almost every comfort you could want without leaving your home. I believe that you were probably not mad at Trump for stopping flights, and wanted more to be stopped. That is within your character as read by your comments. I'm skeptical you understand what lockdowns actually meant for other people, but that's besides the point.

Me: [Democrats and the media called Trump racist for shutting down travel from China]

Okay, so we agree then? I don't think I said anything about Europe or if Trump Admin had gone far enough and when.

[vkou]

I could both have preferred a harder lockdown, and also be cognizant of the hypocrisy of banning travel from one country, but not from another region, when the other region is worse off by nearly every metric.

Was accusing him of racism for that particular thing on February 1st a bit early? Maybe.

Did history prove the critics right? Yeah. It did. It only took six weeks.

Addendum: I appreciate that you have gone to some length to research the context of my character and my previous posts, in order to best form a context in which to interpret my current ones. I suggest that perhaps Trump's critics on this subject may have done something similar. The man has given them a few years of material to work with by that point, after all.