(07-28-2020 06:08 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: It wasn’t a deflection, but an honest question.
If you say so. I don't believe it was, since my entire point has been that the primary reason why you have the opinion you do is because it's a Republican, especially one you so clearly have no respect for.... and you, seemingly from out of nowhere, try and turn it around on me.
I gave a very rational explanation for my use of Obama and the ACA as a potential counter-point. You may not have imagined this, but that says more about where your head is than where mine is.
Quote:In emergencies, we want clear lines of communication with officials all on the same page. Internal conflict and discerning opinions is needed, but if it spills outward it can create more harm than good. Also, you don’t want to sugar coat facts and be overly optimistic. Be realistic and make sure constituents understand the hard truths.
In a political issue, while you want clear lines of communication, politicians are more likely to go their own route and clash with officials. Same to focusing on the positives and ignoring the negatives.
In a perfect world, this makes some sense.... because in a perfect world, there is ONE correct answer for everyone. In the real world involving a disease that we're still learning about and many questions still remain, this is not (imo) a reasonable request. As for 'being on the same page'... I don't want people who honestly disagree on things to pretend that they do... and of course, what Fauci thinks doesn't put the same emphasis on 'people's need to pay their bills' nor even on child abuse in the home or the potential for kids to be 'latch key kids' as perhaps an economists or a child advocate might... and I wouldn't expect someone in BFE to have the same concerns as someone in NYC.
What you keep bypassing is that the current CDC advice, which is not meaningfully different from the same advice in 2009.... is that the benefits of schooling often outweighs the risk of children contracting this disease... which is what Trump has said... So where is the disconnect in anything current?
Quote:I’ve demonstrated numerous examples of Trump not consulting with experts, and you don’t provide hard evidence to refute, only similarly formed personal opinions. I can also point to some of Trumps recent tweets, his continual return to hydroxylchloroquine, the multiple comments of the virus just disappearing, the continued focus on reopening the economy without regard to case loads, and on and on.
You have a pretty good history of poor interpretations of Trump's tweets. Hydroxychloroquine is a perfect example... Thanks for bringing it up.
Here is exactly what he said about hydroxychloroquine...
Quote:Trump: We bought a tremendous amount of … hydroxychloroquine, which I think is, you know, it’s a great malaria drug. It’s worked unbelievably, it’s a powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on [coronavirus], some very strong signs. And in the meantime, it’s been around a long time, and also works very powerfully on lupus. So there are some very strong, powerful signs, and we’ll have to see. Because again, it’s being tested now, this is a new thing that just happened to us, the invisible enemy, we call it.
… It’s a very strong, powerful medicine, but it doesn’t kill people. We have some very good results and some very good tests. You’ve seen the same test that I have. In France, they had a very good test. But we don’t have time to go and say, gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out. And let’s go and test with the test tubes and the laboratories. We don’t have time. I’d love to do that.
The FDA usually takes years to approve drugs, by design for our safety... which is a big part of why this was so 'exciting'. It turns out that those 'very strong, powerful signs' were misleading... You know, like those early WHO tweets that it didn't transmit human to human, that it wasn't airborne etc etc etc. Trump also clearly said 'we'll have to see'... I see no 'this is the cure' promise there and if Trump wants to take it himself, just in case? So the eff what? All you have to do is turn on the TV and see all of the 'sue your drug company' ads to know that the FDA makes mistakes as well.
Now let's look at the 'disappearing virus'...
"I think we're going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that's going to sort of just disappear, I hope,"
So your biggest pieces of evidence of 'failed leadership' are quite literally that you think he was overly optimistic in two instances that I personally consider to be meaningless? Okay.
I'll say it differently.
If I were to describe the ideal President, only two in my lifetime would meet half of my criteria.... one from each party. It was probably under Clinton where, perhaps somewhat based on my age, but certainly based on his personal moral character... I learned not to expect perfection out of Presidents and to take the good with the bad... and to know the difference and react appropriately. I might take Bill's advice on where to get a good burger, but I wouldn't follow his advice on women.
Trump isn't 'your guy'... so you 'claim' to have these expectations, when the reality is that he could spit enough gold to eliminate the debt and you would find fault with him bragging about having done so. A GOOD leader after all would give the credit to the 'workers' who brought him the water so that he could generate the spit... and deflect credit from himself, right?
(07-28-2020 07:52 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: (07-28-2020 05:38 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: I'm still waiting for you to stop with the deflections and to demonstrate your claim that this demonstrates that he's not consulting experts in the fields.
Hell yes, he consulted the experts. The problem is that the experts have been wrong. Not because they are stupid people, but IMO because of two things:
1) This was new and largely unknown, so even an expert couldn't really be expert about it, and
2) The experts that we have are public health bureaucrats, and they take a bureaucratic approach rather than a emergency responder approach.
A lot was made of the so-called "Pandemic Response Roadmap." Have you read it? I have. It's nothing but a bureaucratic manual, with really nothing about actual response. It's all about how to get the bureaucratic power struggles right, not how to get the response right.
Look at the whose testing fiasco. CDC insisted on developing its own test, instead of using the WHO test or even Dr. Chu's test (they sent Dr. Chu a "cease and desist" letter). And FDA insisted on dotting every I and crossing every T before approving it. An emergency responder response would have been to say, "Look, we've got people who are going to die. We need something NOW. And if that's not enough time to dot all your I's and cross all your T's, then you need to change your approach." When folks are dying, you do the best you can with what you have. Perfection is the number one enemy of good enough. So you take the best test you have (which was probably the WHO test, then maybe later Dr. Chu's or the CDC's or whoever's), you get as many labs as possible working on making tests and interpreting results, and you go after it totally differently and more aggressively. There were three key questions about testing--who does the tests? where? and with what tests? The "Roadmap" didn't answer--or even suggest an answer--to any of those.
Fauci is a good bureaucrat. He hasn't seen a patient in years. But even a good bureaucrat is still a bureaucrat, and that's not what we needed.
This. My only caveat would be that 'what we need' isn't his job description. It's merely one that some have assigned to him. He represents 'one' perspective... and unlike a President, bears no responsibility for any other.
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Coronoavirus Covid-19 thread
