”A long list of nations in fact banned all incoming travelers from China—that is, they did what Trump claims to have done—well before Trump’s announcement. ”
No true. Neither the US government nor the President ever claimed to ”ban all incoming travelers”, as stated above, nor ever claimed to ban all “flights”. The US order on the CDC site is clear: “Foreign nationals who have visited one of these countries in the past 14 days may not enter the United States: China...”. Important exceptions to this order include i) US nationals who were allowed to return from China, subject to a 14 day quarantine, and ii) trade cargo. Both would involve flights or marine vessels, the former with small crew numbers who no doubt are similarly restrained in movement before leaving the US.
The change to US-China human travel from the order does not require speculation, as the US State Dept posts it’s VISA stats. In Dec 2019 for instance, Non-immigrant VISAs granted to Chinese nationals were about 85 thousand for the month. In Feb 2020, the same VISA metric fell almost 20x to some four thousand, which likely covers cargo crews for the month.
The argument that the travel order was ineffective because Chinese nationals had already traveled to the US is odd, so too notion the pre-existence of US cases makes travel orders moot. Even casual attention to mitigation of the virus shows it is numbers game, not some kind of spacecraft air-lock. For instance, we don’t see claims that stay-at-home guidance is made moot because of the weekly grocery store, pharmacy, and exercise outings.
Last, Fauci’s opinion must win over amateur speculation on travel:
“One of the things that we did very early and very aggressively, the president put the travel restriction coming from China to the United States and most recently from Europe to the United States because Europe is really the new China. Again I don’t know why this is happening there [Italy] to such an extent, but it is conceivable that once you get so many of these spreads out they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with the tsunami.” -March 21
Today is my first day off in many weeks, and I suspect the lack of adrenaline is why I am feeling the depression so deeply today.
I may have found you due to a mutual friend, Toomas Hendrik Ilves? He likes “smart people.” Smart includes having good insight into our lack of omniscience
Dear Claire: only a trustworthy person makes such a completely honest admission that they were wrong. How refreshing. I am angry and depressed because all day I take care of the elderly sick and dying. I have no medicine that works. People expect me to have medicine that works, I’m a doctor and we can always save everyone on TV! No one expects you to have the insight of an epidemiologist. Just continue to be a careful observer. Best regards, Alicia Skarimbas
Thank you for what you're doing, Alicia. It must be not only infuriating and depressing, but frightening, too. I hope you have the equipment you need to stay safe. I admire the people who are treating us now with all my heart.
Dear Claire, you should follow my tweeter feed more closely. You would have known on Jan 24. Or Feb 5 or Feb 15. By Feb 28, I had bought extra food and toilet paper (video circulating of toilet paper run in Hong Kong and Singapore had me moving a week ahead of the cascade). When Trump said it was a hoax, I knew we were screwed. I think we are lucky that state governors acted when they did.
I do disagree with the idea that Clinton would have been equally bad. I don't think she would have been totally awesome, but I also don't think she would have spent weeks telling people it was a hoax. Nor would she have hesitated to use the DPA. Probably would have had the Republicans playing harder ball on any stimulus just to have screwed Hillary. It is likely the only benefit of having Trump right now are the number of Republicans desparate to get elected again in November and hoping to avoid blame for the economy not surviving.
Highly unlikely Clinton issues the travel order as soon given i) much larger Chinese without tariffs, ii) over sensitivity to xenophobia charges, and Biden is on record in opposition at the time. Fauci credits the travel order-time with avoiding Italy like fatalities per population size.
You do follow me. Kat_Missouri. You were just off in the Sahara. I'm just noting if you had been on there during that time you would have seen it. But don't kick yourself too hard. I didn't exactly go screaming to everyone I knew the sky was falling. Because we are programmed to be wary of our own instincts and there is a subculture of crazy out their screaming that exact thing. Can lull you as your rightly pointed out. And it isn't always good to be always on hyper alert. Turns you into the crazy.
Claire, I don’t know how you got into it with the Marines, but I know why you didn’t see it coming. Who besides a bunch of technosciencecrats actually thought it was a good idea to teach the bird flu thing to go all human to human? And it’s not like every lab where this was done knew how to keep it bottled up. You’re forgiven as overthinking things is part of Panic 101.
Paraphrasing Patton to a Marine? Are you trying to make this disagreement personal?
Seriously, though, I only glommed onto the coronavirus because I’m a pessimistic and a Cassandra. Two years ago, John Barry, the Spanish Flu historian, and a pair of Medical College of Virginia epidemiologists held a symposium at the Virginia Historical Society about the flu and how terribly unprepared we were for another respiratory pandemic. (I blame today’s poor response to the crisis on the insurance companies and the ACA for pushing the Toyota “just in time” inventory model on healthcare. I don’t think Hillary Clinton would have done much better than Trump, considering her own track record of narcissism and incompetence.) My wife, who had worked with the epidemiologists on the panel has the utmost respect for their work, but even she, an experienced nurse with advanced specialties, pooh-poohed my gloomy prognostications. When the gravity of the situation was made manifest, I got the only, “You were right, dear” of our entire fourteen years of marriage. So don’t beat yourself up. Even very astute medical professionals got the initial calls wrong. The bigger failure was not having proper stockpiles of predictable resources, such as PPE, beds, ventilators, etc. That and the foul-ups in getting proper levels of testing in place.
”A long list of nations in fact banned all incoming travelers from China—that is, they did what Trump claims to have done—well before Trump’s announcement. ”
No true. Neither the US government nor the President ever claimed to ”ban all incoming travelers”, as stated above, nor ever claimed to ban all “flights”. The US order on the CDC site is clear: “Foreign nationals who have visited one of these countries in the past 14 days may not enter the United States: China...”. Important exceptions to this order include i) US nationals who were allowed to return from China, subject to a 14 day quarantine, and ii) trade cargo. Both would involve flights or marine vessels, the former with small crew numbers who no doubt are similarly restrained in movement before leaving the US.
The change to US-China human travel from the order does not require speculation, as the US State Dept posts it’s VISA stats. In Dec 2019 for instance, Non-immigrant VISAs granted to Chinese nationals were about 85 thousand for the month. In Feb 2020, the same VISA metric fell almost 20x to some four thousand, which likely covers cargo crews for the month.
The argument that the travel order was ineffective because Chinese nationals had already traveled to the US is odd, so too notion the pre-existence of US cases makes travel orders moot. Even casual attention to mitigation of the virus shows it is numbers game, not some kind of spacecraft air-lock. For instance, we don’t see claims that stay-at-home guidance is made moot because of the weekly grocery store, pharmacy, and exercise outings.
Last, Fauci’s opinion must win over amateur speculation on travel:
“One of the things that we did very early and very aggressively, the president put the travel restriction coming from China to the United States and most recently from Europe to the United States because Europe is really the new China. Again I don’t know why this is happening there [Italy] to such an extent, but it is conceivable that once you get so many of these spreads out they spread exponentially and you can never keep up with the tsunami.” -March 21
BTW - Very much enjoyed your Thatcher book.
Today is my first day off in many weeks, and I suspect the lack of adrenaline is why I am feeling the depression so deeply today.
I may have found you due to a mutual friend, Toomas Hendrik Ilves? He likes “smart people.” Smart includes having good insight into our lack of omniscience
Toomas is wonderful. And yes, of course it's the lack of adrenaline. You know that's what it is--the normal, expected, and predictable reaction.
Dear Claire: only a trustworthy person makes such a completely honest admission that they were wrong. How refreshing. I am angry and depressed because all day I take care of the elderly sick and dying. I have no medicine that works. People expect me to have medicine that works, I’m a doctor and we can always save everyone on TV! No one expects you to have the insight of an epidemiologist. Just continue to be a careful observer. Best regards, Alicia Skarimbas
Thank you for what you're doing, Alicia. It must be not only infuriating and depressing, but frightening, too. I hope you have the equipment you need to stay safe. I admire the people who are treating us now with all my heart.
Dear Claire, you should follow my tweeter feed more closely. You would have known on Jan 24. Or Feb 5 or Feb 15. By Feb 28, I had bought extra food and toilet paper (video circulating of toilet paper run in Hong Kong and Singapore had me moving a week ahead of the cascade). When Trump said it was a hoax, I knew we were screwed. I think we are lucky that state governors acted when they did.
I do disagree with the idea that Clinton would have been equally bad. I don't think she would have been totally awesome, but I also don't think she would have spent weeks telling people it was a hoax. Nor would she have hesitated to use the DPA. Probably would have had the Republicans playing harder ball on any stimulus just to have screwed Hillary. It is likely the only benefit of having Trump right now are the number of Republicans desparate to get elected again in November and hoping to avoid blame for the economy not surviving.
Kat
Highly unlikely Clinton issues the travel order as soon given i) much larger Chinese without tariffs, ii) over sensitivity to xenophobia charges, and Biden is on record in opposition at the time. Fauci credits the travel order-time with avoiding Italy like fatalities per population size.
Kat, are you the Kat on Tweeter I usually follow closely? Or another Kat?
You do follow me. Kat_Missouri. You were just off in the Sahara. I'm just noting if you had been on there during that time you would have seen it. But don't kick yourself too hard. I didn't exactly go screaming to everyone I knew the sky was falling. Because we are programmed to be wary of our own instincts and there is a subculture of crazy out their screaming that exact thing. Can lull you as your rightly pointed out. And it isn't always good to be always on hyper alert. Turns you into the crazy.
Claire, I don’t know how you got into it with the Marines, but I know why you didn’t see it coming. Who besides a bunch of technosciencecrats actually thought it was a good idea to teach the bird flu thing to go all human to human? And it’s not like every lab where this was done knew how to keep it bottled up. You’re forgiven as overthinking things is part of Panic 101.
Paraphrasing Patton to a Marine? Are you trying to make this disagreement personal?
Seriously, though, I only glommed onto the coronavirus because I’m a pessimistic and a Cassandra. Two years ago, John Barry, the Spanish Flu historian, and a pair of Medical College of Virginia epidemiologists held a symposium at the Virginia Historical Society about the flu and how terribly unprepared we were for another respiratory pandemic. (I blame today’s poor response to the crisis on the insurance companies and the ACA for pushing the Toyota “just in time” inventory model on healthcare. I don’t think Hillary Clinton would have done much better than Trump, considering her own track record of narcissism and incompetence.) My wife, who had worked with the epidemiologists on the panel has the utmost respect for their work, but even she, an experienced nurse with advanced specialties, pooh-poohed my gloomy prognostications. When the gravity of the situation was made manifest, I got the only, “You were right, dear” of our entire fourteen years of marriage. So don’t beat yourself up. Even very astute medical professionals got the initial calls wrong. The bigger failure was not having proper stockpiles of predictable resources, such as PPE, beds, ventilators, etc. That and the foul-ups in getting proper levels of testing in place.
I'd suggest you read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, except you probably already have. She is the world's best, to me.