Politics – the process that controls government – is the single least effective way of allocating resources of any kind.
Case in point: remember when a “shortage of ventilators“ was going to be the crisis that led to carnage? If memory serves, that was sometime before “lack of tests“ was the crisis du jour.
And so politicians posture for the cameras, and ordered – ordered! – the economy to produce more of them.
And then, we learned that once a person went on a ventilator, they almost never came off, and other therapies were much more effective.
But that doesn’t mean the politicians’ priorities didn’t continue to hold sway
“In the fog of war against the virus, we were trying to do our best to protect the health and safety of the American people,” said Peter Navarro, White House trade adviser and Defense Production Act policy coordinator. “In this particular chess game, the best move was to make sure we had too many ventilators rather than too few.” Navarro said that excess ventilators will be used to help other countries fighting the novel coronavirus, either as revenue-generating exports or as donations.
The misalignment between the availability and need for ventilators shows that the medical understanding of and response to the coronavirus has moved faster than companies can adapt. And for Ford, which got the order to supply the largest quantity of ventilators to the federal stockpile, production and delivery were delayed, further throwing it out of sync with the pandemic needs.
Government is the things we do together – stupidly and hamfistedly.
And now, in many states, the unobtanium is the willingness of the people to bow to the state’s increasing arbitrary and insane commands for mask wearing and social distancing.
Wear masks at home, with your family, and if you have more than ten people in your family, break it up into smaller families. You can’t just put out a towel on the beach, you must only use the beach as a pathway to the water.
No one follows these rules, no one will follow them. Our leaders are literally insane. They are crazy people.
And craziest of all are in WI where goobernment employees are required to wear masks for Zoomba meetings. Even dumber than wearing a mask in the car.
Actually, this is indeed all planned. And as usual, follow the money. Lightfoot spent $66,000,000 (that’s a lot of zeros for simple folk like me) with Walsh to convert McCormick to treat the expected deluge of Wuhan flu patients… all 38 of them. And no, I did not omit any zeros. And there were other developers who had other options they were going to comp to help out the city. But the contract and 66 mil went to Walsh. You still say this is all about flattening the curve? Reducing cases? Savings lives? BULLSHIT!
damn tag
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Of course we can beat this virus. As ol’ Slow Joe reminded us last night, “‘There’s Never Been Anything We’ve Been Able to Accomplish When We’ve Done it Together’”
Woolly commented: “And now, in many states, the unobtanium is the willingness of the people to bow to the state’s increasing arbitrary and insane commands for mask wearing and social distancing.”
The Trump administration’s CDC says we need to wear masks to stop the spread of a deadly virus. So why do we have to deal with bozos like you?
Wearing a mask when home alone, on or not on the internet, is just good sense. Even when driving in your car alone with the top down (don’t forget your gloves!). You need to look like you care about others.
No one is asking you deal with anything, Emery.
I believe in science, not folklore, and I will call out folklore being passed off as science. First amendment & all that.
And WHO exactly ordered GM to produce those “vents”, Mitch.. Yes, you guessed it, Trumpinator in Cheeto-(hair).
At the start of the crisis, the thought was these were needed, Trump offered up 90 (yes, 9 zero) to NY, which was estimating a need for 1000. He patted himself on the back for it (as he always does). So, NY was then competing with other states for vents. Nice national plan that. No, wait, not so nice..
So, later, GM and others ramp up, and treatment changes.. was it wrong to ask? No, it was not, but nice 20-20 hindsight. Had the treatments proven most effective with vents, I’m sure you’d have been lauding praise on Trump for acting “decisively” (he didn’t do that in time, let’s be clear). Nice of you to eat your cake and want it too.
The Big Island of Hawaii, despite a strict quarantine and social distancing & mask wearing decrees, has a record number of covid cases.
Our leaders are flailing. They have no frikkin’ clue what to do, the fables they call ‘science’ have failed them.
But they will never, ever, admit that.
Take common sense precautions, stay home if you are sick, and protect at risk populations. It ain’t rocket science but it does require admitting that the cult of experts is a sham.
It has been noted by MANY that California, Georgia, Florida, Nevada & Texas, despite their different population densities, lockdown regimes, and mask wearing rules, all began to see their positive covid test rates rise and eventually peak at virtually the same time.
How do the epidemiologists and public health officials explain this?
They don’t.
They are flailing, desperate to convince you that their expertise and their actions can save you from the virus, if you just give them power over your day to day activities.
Worst. Elites. Ever.
It sure doesn’t seem that most businesses I have been going to have had any issue with the mask mandate.
The virus has only been studied in humans since January. As our understanding changes, so do the recommendations. If the CDC waited until it was all settled science, the pandemic would be far worse than even Trump could make it.
Welcome to the world of real science, where professionals been working for at it for years.
As opposed to the weekend amateur epidemiologists (bozos) posting here…
Hey, Dr Woolly, how many folks died of COVID today?
Interesting anecdote passed to me by my bro-in-law. Two of his friends attended a wedding, decided after to get Covid testing. They waited 2 hours at the site then left without being tested. Two weeks later they were notified their tests were positive. Is this a great country, or what?
“Emery on August 22, 2020 at 10:22 am said:
Hey, Dr Woolly, how many folks died of COVID today?”
Wrong question. ow should I know? I am not an epidemiologist, I am just a person guided by reason (which many epidemiologists are not).
A better question is “how many folks died of covid today that wore a cloth covering over their face & followed the government’s social distancing guidelines?”
When 3/4 of your covid dead in Minnesota caught the disease while in a care facility, that doesn’t speak well for the prescriptions of Mad Doctor Walz.