Covid-19 Politics

[Stavros]

Is it the case that his staff are terrified of telling him the truth, telling him how to add up, because they don't want to be fired, because they fear his volcanic temper? Or is it the case that they do tell him, but he is so utterly convinced of his own -superior- intelligence that he just ignores them, as he ignores -and then insults Drs Fauci and Birx? Kushner might be intellectually ill-equipped for his ghostling of the Presidency -I believe he is now co-ordinating and directing the re-election campaign- but then when you read the tweets of Junior and Skittles, you reach the conclusion there is a circle of dimwits in the White House who can't actually see what the rest of the world is seeing.

The key point is this: he doesn't care. And more worryingly, the men who can do someting -McConnell, Barr -don't care either. They seem to me have boxed themselves into an ideological vice in which you are either with the President and the USA, or against them. All those years in Congress and the Department of Justice, and they can't see the incompetence in front of them? You have to wonder if the Republicans looking defeat in the face have decided to go down with the ship rather than save it.

Covid 19 has become too difficult for the most egocentric leaders to handle, because they are are not used to delegating, or to collegiate decision making based on non-political, in this case medical, advice. They have been revealed to be too timid, or indifferent to the stark reality of the virus, to make the very tough decisions that are supposed to be emblems of the tough-guy persona they project: your President, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolosonaro, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The myth of the strong leader, exposed by the kind of public health crisis that ought to show them at their finest -and a fascinatng study by Archie Brown. Note that for Brown

"...Truman is something of a hero. In contrast to self-styled "strong" leaders, seeking to achieve their aims through dominance and diktat, Truman was an instinctively collegiate president, delegating significant authority to his colleagues – especially his two secretaries of state, George Marshall and Dean Acheson. As Brown writes: "It was characteristic of Truman's style that the most outstanding foreign policy achievement of his presidency is known as the Marshall Plan, not the Truman Plan."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...e-brown-review

[blackchubby38]

This probably should go into the thread about NYC, but since we are talking about ineffective leaders.

Apparently the New York city Health commissioner has resigned over Mayor Deblasio's handling of the Corona Virus. While there are no details yet as to what the problem was, I wish he was one the resigning and not her.

[broncofan]

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...il-in-primates

I highly recommend this article for those who are interested in treatments. It interprets Regeneron's animal studies, talks about how effective each animal model is at predicting human response, and discusses the pros and cons of prophylactic v therapeutic use of antibodies.

The federal government has given Regeneron a paltry 450 million dollars and I don't think has had much involvement in the funding of other antibody candidates.

The big problem with antibody treatments is that in the first round only 100,000 doses might be produced as capacity is limited. This limits its usefulness for prophylactic use except in high risk groups. It also will limit its usefulness if it is only effective if administered early. We have millions of cases in this country. We really need to see this show effects when administered to people who are already in serious condition in order for current capacity to meet demand and make a big difference. That's tougher. Regeneron's ebola cocktail was much more effective when administered early but still showed modest improvement in survival when administered a bit later. Of course, covid is not as deadly per case as ebola and there is a chance this still improve survival rate in already hospitalized patients.

[blackchubby38]

Is it the case that his staff are terrified of telling him the truth, telling him how to add up, because they don't want to be fired, because they fear his volcanic temper? Or is it the case that they do tell him, but he is so utterly convinced of his own -superior- intelligence that he just ignores them, as he ignores -and then insults Drs Fauci and Birx? Kushner might be intellectually ill-equipped for his ghostling of the Presidency -I believe he is now co-ordinating and directing the re-election campaign- but then when you read the tweets of Junior and Skittles, you reach the conclusion there is a circle of dimwits in the White House who can't actually see what the rest of the world is seeing.

The key point is this: he doesn't care. And more worryingly, the men who can do someting -McConnell, Barr -don't care either. They seem to me have boxed themselves into an ideological vice in which you are either with the President and the USA, or against them. All those years in Congress and the Department of Justice, and they can't see the incompetence in front of them? You have to wonder if the Republicans looking defeat in the face have decided to go down with the ship rather than save it.

Covid 19 has become too difficult for the most egocentric leaders to handle, because they are are not used to delegating, or to collegiate decision making based on non-political, in this case medical, advice. They have been revealed to be too timid, or indifferent to the stark reality of the virus, to make the very tough decisions that are supposed to be emblems of the tough-guy persona they project: your President, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolosonaro, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The myth of the strong leader, exposed by the kind of public health crisis that ought to show them at their finest -and a fascinatng study by Archie Brown. Note that for Brown

"...Truman is something of a hero. In contrast to self-styled "strong" leaders, seeking to achieve their aims through dominance and diktat, Truman was an instinctively collegiate president, delegating significant authority to his colleagues – especially his two secretaries of state, George Marshall and Dean Acheson. As Brown writes: "It was characteristic of Truman's style that the most outstanding foreign policy achievement of his presidency is known as the Marshall Plan, not the Truman Plan."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...e-brown-review

The issue with authoritarian figures or in the case of President Trump figures with those traits, is that they don't like to hear bad news. So Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci and the rest of the Corona Virus task force have had to walk the fine line of doing what's the best for the county, all the while keeping the person they work for happy. I think both Birx and Fauci realize/ed the worst thing that could have happened/still happen is if one or the both of them got/gets fired.

So I think they make sure to tell him things that he wants to hear, all the while making sure the public knows what's going on. That's why Fauci is always giving interviews with various media outlets. While this hasn't saved them from getting insulted by Trump, it has kept the task force intact for the whole time the pandemic has been going on.

Its not an easy position to be in because it looks like they're signing off on whatever the President is saying. Over the weekend it was reported that Nancy Pelosi doesn't think too highly of Dr. Birx because she didn't push back forcibly when Trump made the comment about injecting disinfectants. But like Dr. Facui said earlier this year, "What are we supposed to do, grab the microphone out of his hands as he is speaking".

That's an interesting point you make about Truman delegating significant authority to his colleagues. While that maybe true, he also said "The buck stops here". Meaning that final decision will always be made by the person in charge and that a leader will always take the responsibility for when things go wrong.

[Stavros]

All good points, but not good for governance in a democracy.

I was surprised at Nancy Pelosi's comments on Dr Birx, it seemed like a cheap shot from someone in her position, I don't know enough about her to know if this is how she is, or if it was a lapse of judgment.

Truman is a difficult one to assess- the use of the Atom Bomb in Japan -about which the pro-and-contra arguments continue to batter each other (see the link below); the alleged manipulation of the UN to embark on war in Korea...perhaps it was his style that appeals to Archie Brown.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...lear-atom-bomb

[Stavros]

A brief (14 pages) but interesting view of the political and economic challenges of Covid 19, including proposals for a one-off wealth tax, has been produced by the London School of Econoics, and is here-

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-004.pdf

[Stavros]

Those of you interested in the vaccine against Covif 19 may know of this website tracking more than 40 experiments currently taking place. Not sure how often it is updated, the link is from 4 days ago-

https://www.raps.org/news-and-articl...accine-tracker

[jaminfan]

africa says no to the vaccine

[filghy2]

A puzzling question at present is why Republicans are uninterested in reaching agreement on a further stimulus package - or indeed any strategy for dealing with the effects of the virus - when they are the ones likely to suffer if things are not improving by November. In other words, why are they behaving like an opposition party when they are the incumbent?

This article suggests four possible explanations: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...stimulus-polls
- they are afraid to do anything independently of Trump's say-so
- anti-government ideology cannot deal with any crisis requiring government intervention
- they are afraid of a Tea Party 2.0 internal backlash
- they have given up on November and just want to make things as hard as possible for a Biden administration

This fits in with the point made in Robert Reich's article posted in the other thread: because Republican's have succeeded politically through negative strategies these seem now to be the only skills they have and that are valued within the party.

How can such a party deal with any problem requiring carefully-considered government responses? Presumably by trying to deny the seriousness of the problem or by finding scapegoats to divert attention from the real issues. And how long can this approach succeed - particularly if (as seems plausible) we are entering a period where we are more exposed to crises that require some kind of government action?

[Stavros]

How can such a party deal with any problem requiring carefully-considered government responses? Presumably by trying to deny the seriousness of the problem or by finding scapegoats to divert attention from the real issues. And how long can this approach succeed - particularly if (as seems plausible) we are entering a period where we are more exposed to crises that require some kind of government action?

We have reached a stage, not just in the US, when failure and a refusal to accept responsibility for failure has become 'normal', because those within the parties concerned -Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives and Labour (ie, in the US and UK)- are terrified of the reality that change must mean if we are to move on from Covid 19, colossal government debt, and the long term but nevertheless urgent problems that have been set aside -climate change, the meaning and practice of work, to which we now add its challenged location, and the dismal prospect that our youth, under the age of 20, are being condemned to a decade of idleness and despair.

Perhaps nothing encapsulates the indifference to facts, than the President's attempt to ridicule New Zealand because it has recorded nine new cases of Covid 19-

"“The places they were using to hold up now they’re having a big surge … they were holding up names of countries and now they’re saying ‘whoops!.
“Do you see what’s happening in New Zealand? They beat it, they beat it, it was like front-page news because they wanted to show me something,” the US president said at a campaign rally in Mankato, Minnesota.
...On Monday Auckland recorded nine new cases of the virus, and 13 on Tuesday, while the US’s Monday figure was just under 42,000."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ne-covid-cases

The fact is everyone who can read or turn on their tv or radio, can see this nonsense fo themselves, just as few people can believe the grandiose rubbish that the President talks about when everything is 'the worst in history', 'the greatest in history' and when he can claim Obama is guilty of Treason without a shred of evidence -indeed, this is media madness at its 'best' of the kind Murdoch has been pumping out since he was so slimy an operator in Australia they called him 'the dirty digger'. Truth is irrelevant, using all means possible to repeatedly sneer and jeer at others using 'street smart' lingo to 'connect' with Blokes and Mums -the whole point is that every day Obama must be cast as a villain, any achievements of his administration claimed by the succeeding one. There is no this and that, only either/or.

Covid 19 is not important because the people dying from it are not important, and because Dr Fauci talks too much about medicine and society, he is replaced by a jobsworth whose primary aim will be to praise the President.

But the self-harm filghy2 refers to is now evident in the atttack on the UPS, a contraction of whosse services damages the lives of rural voters most likely to vote Republican, just as Republican governors indifferent to Covid 19 are seeing their voters hit by the very same virus they dismiss, as if it were just something they must bear. It remains to be seen, that if votes are not counted, they will include enough Republican voters to deny him a second term in office.

He cannot perpetually condemn the Democrats for stealing an election, when he has alienated, and may deny the vote from his own base. But the US is set for five-to-six months of chaos, whereas in the UK, where the fiasco of school exam results has crystallized so much of what has gone wrong with the overall campaign against Covid 19, we are four months away from the reality of Brexit, with the sense that nobody is in charge, or that those in office don't want to take charge, thus Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson, widely regarded as the least competent minister in a Cabinet of misfits, takes no responsibility for the failure of his department, because at fault is an algorithm.

If it were not for the strength and diversity of our civil society, our inherited freedoms, the vitality of social media and multi-party democracies, we would resemble Belarus. And to think that Lukashenko is the kind of politician the President aspires to be, that Boris Johnson most resembles....well, with rumours of a split in the Communist Party of China over Xi's not-so-briliant thought, and even more inept action, which major power is going to be the first to be clobbered by Covid?