We're one Pandemic away from America's total collapse

[Gordy327]

Yeah, well education isn't really a focus in this country.

Indeed. If anything, the current administration made it worse and the dumbing down in this country continues.

 

[aociswundumho]

You're not fooling anyone by feigning ignorance about Curtis Yarvin. You know exactly who he is, as he's the end-point of your ideology. End Times Fascism.

So you think I want a dictatorship?

 

[Fledermaus]

The left wing hysteria around COVID was more dangerous than the virus itself. But it did expose a lot of problems that nobody has the appetite to address.

Left wing hysteria caused the deaths of millions world wide?

Interesting.

(End Sarcasm)

 

[multivita-man]

Civilization is hanging on by its fingernails. America will be less prepared, less willing to mitigate the pandemic through government action, more prone to believing disinformation, and overall the perfect candidate to be in post-apocalyptic state should another COVID level (or worse) pandemic hits. It will take tens of millions of deaths for MAGAmerica to even begin to take it seriously.

The real reason there was a backlash to COVID is that it showed that government was actually capable of good things, such as cutting childhood poverty in half overnight and bolstering the social safety net.

It also showed the government was actually quite capable of sinking ourselves deeper into debt with even more fiscal irresponsibility and less oversight of where the money goes.

And the blame for that falls primarily on the MAGA party.

 

[multivita-man]

So you think I want a dictatorship?

No, you want anarchy, which never works.

 

[bythoughts]

There were undeniable positives in the Covid response. Relatively fast vaccine development (the Chinese got there first, but their vaccine wasn't as effective). Sensible measures to keep sick people out of the workplace. The effective development of remote work and study. A degree of basic income to make up for unnecessary jobs. Environmental benefits.

There were also clear negatives, mostly focusing on arbitrary, heavy-handed actions by officials. Churches were not treated as "essential", in defiance of the constitution and the obvious needs of the mourners of a million deaths. Curfews were straight-out idiotic, authority grabs, deliberately intended to pack more people into spaces by making them all go out in a narrower time window. Vaccination requirements did not allow for people who had caught the virus to prove they had developed natural antibodies, and set off an anti-vax frenzy. One of the most disruptive measures was that landlords were treated like ATMs, expected to maintain apartments without collecting rent for a very long period of time, rather than being provided with fair subsidies. And then there was the purely corrupt institution of the PPP giveaway.

The U.S. failed greatly early on, at best allowing the virus to flood into the country when every case would be multiplied by a million. Then they came up with a completely worthless scheme to blockade the Canadian border when the virus was the same risk on both sides! There was never any sensible explanation for that - I defy you to try. I am even open to the Chinese theory that Covid was in the U.S. before China, because I knew someone who was completely wiped out by a "bad flu" in the fall of 2019. But I won't go all in on that - I think it's plausible it escaped in Wuhan, or on the third hand maybe the whole world was infected by then, and the Chinese only noticed it because they happened to have a research institute working on it, people suspicious of their government, and above all the singular heroic figure of Li Wenliang.