re: That one thing I simply cannot get past in all of this Coronavirus Mess

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This is what frustrates me the most as well. The United States had MONTHS for prepare for this. I'm not very happy with Uncle Trump either. Hes on record at the beginning of this mess saying they've got it contained. this is not a big deal. They'll have it eradicated in two weeks, etc... He took that stand for weeks. Then suddenly changed his tune. It became " This is a pandemic. I've been calling it a pandemic since before everyone called it a pandemic"

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A lot of exaggeration and intellectual dishonesty in this post. But that’s cool, be irrationally emotional about all of this, that’ll fix the problems.

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Plenty of incompetency in a lot of these government agencies that extends before Trump even took office.

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My previous post is a glaring example of this.

But for most people it's just easier to fall back to partisan politics.

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How can you expect the Govt to anticipate every conceivable pandemic?

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Because we’ve been talking about the inevitability of this for decades, and because not once did anyone think to actually buy basic shite to combat it.

This isn’t new or not planned for. We’ve had fire drills to prepare for this, and still nothing.

The return on the investment we’ve gotten out of our own government is laughable, and there’s simply no excuse for it.

It all starts at the top. An Administration that didn't care to heed the warnings from China for 3 months.

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The return on the investment we’ve gotten out of our own government is laughable, and there’s simply no excuse for it.

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Yes there is. We, the people, voted them in to office. Or voted in to office the people that allow government bureaucracies to focus more on defending their little fiefdoms over doing the job they were created for.

I’ll be honest. You can whine, cry, and throw a fit about all you like, but regardless of next year, 5 years, 10, 20, 30 years from now. 8 “fire drills” later. Or whether it’s a (R) or (D) in charge.


.....that’s not going to change the fact we won’t ever be fully prepared for this type of situation. That’s a fact.

I'm going to disagree a bit. No nation other than maybe South Korea has handled this in a way that I would describe in super positive terms, and with that, the US is only rivals SK's per capita infection rate. Even then, we are in the middle of this thing and we won't really be able to judge the effective response for a couple of years.

It is extremely difficult to coordinate a response that has to be global, when the epicenter of that response, China, initially downplayed the seriousness of the virus, and its relative novelty. Given that, a wait and see approach makes sense until experts could agree on what measures to take.

The lack of preparedness with regards to gear is worthy of criticism though. There is no reason to think that there shouldn't be a national reserve of PPE, given that epidemics are relatively common in human history, and will be a major threat due to the globalized nature of virtually everyone's economies.

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fully prepared for this type of situation

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I'll just add that "fully prepared" doesn't necessarily mean having the needed supplies readily on hand. It can mean having the people and infrastructure in place to quickly access those needed supplies. It can mean having competent people in place to made quick decisions. It can mean empowering and trusting those people to make those decisions. It should be fairly clear we didn't have those things at the level we needed, and the reason should also be abundantly clear. Those years of braying about a deep state and bureaucratic inefficiency have come home to roost.

But we also have to blame the citizens. They didn't, and still aren't, heeding the warnings from health experts about social distancing.

It’s not “right” so I’m not justifying it, but I will try to explain IMO.

What we are talking about with failure is N95 masks and proper droplet and airborne PPE equipment. This is all “perishable” expensive equipment. For a hospital to stockpile enough is a lot of $$$ sitting and not making money. N95 especially. You basically broke this stuff out for TB patients only. Or if somebody was just nasty as a proper fitting N95 can cloak some stench. Then Ebola. Had Ebola not happened our PPE problem would be even worse. Now everybody still has an Ebola cart. Those were raided clean early on with this.

Basically no hospitals or government agencies wanted to pay for and sit on a stockpile of these resources just to watch them expire, and get thrown out or sent to Liberia etc for their humanitarian aid. Hospitals must have an expiration date on EVERYTHING. Is that necessary? I honestly do not know. Is that just a product of regulation? These same pieces of equipment are destroyed or donated. When they get donated they are good enough to protect workers from the most horrific of illnesses.

My $0.02 on the OP question of why. You can blame every POTUS since LBJ probably.

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Non CNN link?

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MSNBC