I think this has a lot to do with social norms in different parts of the country. For instance, until I finally got fed up enough to delete FB (I know, I know), any time I would respond to someone’s racist bullshit, the inevitable pile-on from my “friends” back home was basically something like “this is Republican country”, “that’s not how we do things around here” or shaming me for making people uncomfortable. That attitude is incomprehensible to 42 year old me, but 18 year old me remembers it vividly. I think that the average person in Oklahoma, where my mom’s side of the family resides, would be happy to follow reasonable restrictions, but the social pressure to keep their heads in the sand as directed by dear leader is outsized compared to the actual population of regressive idiots. I was shocked that, in March, both they and my family in Missouri were self-isolating long before state leadership gave any directives whatsoever.
Many European countries had a coordinated response. The US federal response was basically, “
, not our problem, we’ll leave it up to the states to figure it out”.
Some states were really on top of things – especially those that were hit early by the crisis, like Washington, California, and New York. But many states, especially red states took an attitude of, “this isn’t our problem.” Once their COVID count started rising, these same states instituted very loose or unenforced measures.
In some cases, local municipalities tried to get ahead of the crisis by instituting stricter measures and were overridden by the state governments. Austin, TX was one such place where this happened. In other cases such, governor tried to institute stricter measures and were overruled by their legislative branches, like in Wisconsin.
This was all entirely preventable. We have a president that doesn’t understand or care how government is supposed to work. He has turned a very real and apolitical public health crisis into a stupid culture war. Rather than taking action, he has passed the buck at every opportunity – first denying that the US will be affected, to saying it’s under control, to blaming China and Democrats, to famously saying, “I take no responsibility”, to being more concerned about “opening the economy” than the citizenry. This has all led to a patchwork of inconsistent responses, ridiculous political battles and posturing, and needless suffering and death for millions.
So, to summarize the US response on paper is nothing like the European response on paper – unless you’re reading a completely different book.
Brother, I have echoed those words sooo many times it boggles the mind. But all we can do is keep pushing on. That or curl up and die, which is not my style at all.
and the vulnerable young - a percentage of who have gotten sick and died already.
(waves from P.G.)
In the wake of the Iraq invasion, followed by the revelation of the NSA wiretaps, my faith in government was pretty much dashed, not just about gross abuses like those but also questioning whether they could reliably collect the garbage etc. and I was leaning more and more libertarian (if not feeling much affinity with Libertarians).
More and more as I watch the intentional hamstringing if not dismantling of our various institutions, I’m reversing my views. 31 years ago, I remember reading a SPUSA pamphlet that broke things down something like this (not their exact words, nor examples, but the general comparison is theirs):
The state executes criminals, wages war, criminalizes {sexual congress, immigration status, drugs, peaceably assembling etc.}, enables/rewards abusive LEOs [etc.]. The government OTOH, runs the schools, operates transit, paves the streets, picks up the garbage, assists substance abusers, delivers the mail [etc.]
I can’t find this kind of phrasing in their current platform but anyway, in that sense, yes I could trust a government and, in contrast to 15-16 years ago my political view is “Hey, I know! Let’s have a government!” 
People are generally speaking less stupid than most give them credit for.
Look at Trump’s recent rally. Or how restaurant and bar attendance stayed 80%+ below average when Georgia and the Carolinas reopened them. You have a small percentage of strident true believers. Other than that there’s enough bullshit floating around that plenty of people may not believe masks are worth it, and 125k deaths is hard to contextualize when you aren’t seeing it first hand. But most people aren’t about to start licking subway poles during rush hour.
The whole poor rubes in fly over country thing is very much a judgy myth. For one thing the mean income of GOP voters is way higher than the national numbers, and more than double that of DNC voters. College educated voters have long been a GOP block, driven by a huge (and over represented) proportion of college educated white men.
For another no one has been fooled into believing Trump is something he’s not. For the most part people even seem to know when he’s lying and they think it’s great. They believe in this shit. It’s not misinformed people voting against their own interest. The core are people who genuinely believe this shit is good, even when it harms them too.
This whole thing is just not being driven by white working class voters in tiny rural counties. The whole the economy is more important than lives, don’t let the virus win, open it up push came out of the financial class. As stock market falls triggered panic.
A big part of why NY got hit so bad was it took Cuomo too long to issue a stay at home order, and he avoiding mask requirements as long as it could be justified. Public health officials had recommended quarantine measures for several weeks before it happened. And even as the order came down Bill Di Blasio was pushing back against it.
Estimates have shown if they had shut down just 2 weeks earlier the epidemic in NY might have been cut in half.
Only on paper.
Consider that, in the US:
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The bulk of the agricultural and food processing industry is staffed by undocumented immigrants with no access to any form of state support;
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Much of the non-immigrant working class hold multiple casual jobs and yet still live on the edge of total poverty.
Quarantine and isolation only works if the bulk of the population can actually stay at home for a sufficient time. This requires adequate universal income support, which does not exist anywhere in the US.
And, of course, the piecemeal regional variability in the US response.
I appreciate it! You always come correct with better context.
Because national borders are the primary (but not only) location of movement restrictions and discontinuities in government response, creating a relevant index for comparison.
And there are many places where the cities and counties tried to implement strict controls, mandate masks, and issue fines for violations only to have the republican governors step in and say the local governments are not allowed to do those things.
I’m looking at you, Abbott. You and your pal Paxton are why Texas is hip deep in Corona virus and drowning more every day.
I live at the border of two counties. One is liberal and left leaning, the other is conservative and right leaning. We’ve stopped patronizing any businesses in the conservative county. Too many people there don’t wear masks and the county isnt using the loophole Bexar Co found to force businesses to require masks.
Yes. Abbott took away the ability to mandate masks and issue fines on individuals. Then things got bad, like we knew it would, and Bexar County found a loophole in the state orders. The county expected it to be shut down but abbott was all like “oh yeah, i totally intended that to be there!” Now that things are getting out of control. So now, local governments can fine businesses if they don’t require customers and staff wear masks but can’t mandate individuals wear masks.
We are so fucked.
If only they could have predicted that Trump would come in and try to undo every one of those things as well. I mean at this point it’s not “ask not what your country can do for you”, it’s “ask can your country not do anything?”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not rushing out to pat anybody on the back with a hearty attaboy or anything. I can give credit for once the collective thumb was pulled out of the collective ass in NY at least things began to move quickly. This is a lot more than I can say for most other states where the response wasn’t just late, but token at best to completely non-existent. Pretty much every state did a terrible job. (I’m still rankled by the Alabama governor’s pleas toward “personal responsibility” rather than taking a hard line – come the fuck on, you just know that’s not going to work.) Even Washington and California that were pretty on the ball in the beginning have been way too quick to start reducing restrictions and are being rewarded with spiking cases once again.
I mean, I live in Washington, I get it. Much of the state has been shut down since the beginning of March. It sucks. But what it comes down to is I would much rather live with the minor inconveniences of not being able to get a haircut or my favorite restaurants being closed than have our healthcare system overrun with sick and dying people from this virus. Maybe instead of rushing to jumpstart the economic death cult the government could step in and do things to actually help people, like suspend rent payments and really help the people who need it.
A lot of things are reopening around here. Traffic is getting shitty again. Places are getting crowded. Meanwhile COVID-19 case rates are rising quickly again after being really low for weeks. Clearly this reopening plan is not working to contain anything but I don’t think there’s the political will to put a stop to this madness and shut things back down.
This is exactly the kind of thing where we should have had a coordinated and consistent response at the federal level. Get the National Guard activated in every state. Get FEMA camps set up in every major city to handle the influx of sick people. Get standardized testing rolled out immediately. Hire tens of thousands of contact tracers. Deploy additional medical staff to rural counties. Immediately activate the DPA and get essentials produced. Damn the lawsuits and political fallout – millions of lives are at stake. These are things a competent president would have done. Instead we have “not my responsibility” Trump at the helm and look at where it’s left us.
Hard for me to parse this. First, the USA is allowing people to fly in from anywhere, especially Europe. Second, people are going touristing in the middle of a pandemic.
I am speechless.
Now that would be an interesting map - overlaying % mask wearing with tracking the virus/clusters.
I’m in Maine, and we’ve noticed differences in % at various businesses. Gas station (counting from outside) was about 25-33% compliance with mask wearing, counting only the people going into the store. Grocery store is typically closer to 60 - 75%. Hardware stores sadly below 25% the times we’ve had to go in.
Quick correction, England ended lockdown. Wales, Scotland and NI have not.
In force. I’m about to break a beer sales record for June/4th of July weekend. This week has been crazy work wise and the seasonal traffic is worse than usual.
And @ficuswhisperer this goes to what you’re saying as well.
NY officials have been promoting this. Early on Cuomo kept stressing that it was a great idea to go to parks and beaches. He kept state parks open against protest by Parks employees. Leading towns and counties to either shutter their beaches in the lead up to Memorial Day or operate them on a resident’s only basis. In an attempt to make seasonal tourist areas leas attractive. Forcing Cuomo to do the same at state beaches.
Di Blasio responded by describing this as discriminatory against NYC residents (the biggest source of tourism here). Even as he kept NYC’s beaches closed, making seasonal tourism areas more attractive.
Early on a large number of well off NYC residents off booted to these same seasonal areas in an attempt to avoid population dense areas. Every available rental place, air bnb, and operating was full within weeks. And rates and seasonal rents had purportedly tripled.
Cuomo downplayed it, variously saying it wasn’t happening or wasn’t spreading Covid to new areas until Eastern Long Island had the highest per capita infection rate in the nation. Once he switched to telling people not to do that, Di Blasio began decrying how the governor was blaming city residents for Covid.
Since talk of opening up began it’s almost exclusively been about summer tourism, which is a massive, massive industry in NY. Most areas outside the city survive almost exclusively on tourism and NYC itself is one of the worlds biggest tourism destinations.
Most recently the spikes around the country had led Cuomo to back off the “phase 3” opening scheduled for tomorrow. Which is what you should do given what’s going in. Di Blasio and leaders from upstate, who’ve been loudest about opening and tourism as they were hit pretty lightly suddenly began loudly pushing for my phase 3 as if it was already set in stone.
So even as yes Cuomo, and some of our local people did a good job getting a handle on it once they pulled the trigger.
Everyone always left an opening for tourism. And we’re actually accelerating the opening process as other parts of the country rocket off. Which is exactly how those states got where they are now.
I’m fully expecting NY to be closing down again by the end of August. If not the middle of July. The national spike should be driving us to tighten things up. Not to act as if we’re special and seperate so people can golf.
yes, for sure this is a logical extension of republican thought ( so would have a wildly libertarian government been ) – but it is not simply a failure.
the current administration has actively underminded the response in a way that no other administration republican or democratic would.
this is not some economic crisis in which people believe that more capitalism will solve the problem, and can rollout economic experts to concur.
this is a healthcare crisis with no experts at all saying that what trump is doing is good.
does this further undermine trust in government in general? sure, definitely. probably we will have to see what happens if/when biden gets elected.
but again the failure here isn’t in the people. it’s not our lack of trust that’s killing us.
it’s that he’s actively harmful. we don’t, in fact, want people to trust in this government because that’d get even more people killed.
if this were any other administration in the modern era, they might not have taken it seriously initially, they might have made some mistakes, but i cannot imagine any administration which would have shown this level of malice.
at this point you can pretty much guarantee that the opposite of what trump recommends is best. even bush jr, heck of a job brownie, and all his warmongering buddies weren’t this counterfactual.
while we can’t restrict movement by law, we do largely by cost and distance.
and to look at governmental responses here – especially because the federal response has been so actively harmful – you’d have to look at the state response, and each state is very different.
my point is just that per-capita country numbers are going to be just as meaningless as per-country absolute numbers for comparison’s sake if you don’t take into account geographic, political, and population differences within each country.
example: you can learn a lot more about the us response by subtracting the greater nyc area. it has a unique regional pattern and enough people to obscure the bigger picture.
anyway, im simply discounting that raw population numbers are any more useless or useful than per-capita rates.
they’re both equally fine and equally useless for meaningful comparative policy analysis.
a real analysis of different responses is going to be a long term matter for research. in the meantime, either or both can give good food for thought.
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. It’s easy enough to blame this on one particularly awful administration, but that regime of ignorance and incompetence and malice is in power in significant part because a large portion of the citizenry (much larger than in other prosperous Western countries) have been convinced that government is never the solution. The effects just get worse and worse, from Quayle to Prince Bush to Palin to this orange dumpster fire.
That’s not victim-blaming, because I’m not assigning just desserts to those who end up dying or getting sick just because they were ignorant, stupid, gullible or hateful enough to vote for politicians who deny reality or eschew the “reality based community” of experts. Red state voters get what they deserve in other ways (basket-case economies and financial losses, mainly), but a pandemic doesn’t allow for the same political distinctions.
