The main thing that went wrong, I believe, was a failure to understand that hospitals would become the vectors for COVID, the epicentres for the infection. We – the hospitals, the decisions taken by the NHS managers with their clipboards – spread the disease, especially among the elderly vulnerable in care homes. A disease that we were trying to stop… killing the elderly and vulnerable.
The thing I think needs to be addressed is why the people in charge did not consider the flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968 (the second worst in the century). The media must have behaved much better then. I certainly don’t remember any panic. And in 1968 Woodstock went on as planned. It’s hard not to conclude that this time the media stoked the fear and that a lot of people today are wusses.
Hi Frank -- Looking around at my neighbors walking, encountering people as I go, talking to them on the phone, seeing people with masks in supermarkets, I do not see fear in faces. Surely there are some. Surely there is concern over health. But fear? If I go to the store and buy toilet paper, we call that "panic" buying. But, I am not panicking, just thinking that with the state of toilet paper as it is, one should stock up when it is available. Early on, there was a prevalence in "panic" buying from people wanting to buy up stock, in order to sell it at a higher price, panic buying without the panic emotion, fear without the fear.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, the topic of fear has come up in the news, probably more than the effects that isolation would have on people, maybe not -- and we are ill prepare to deal with that too. We are getting reports about it, but then throwing our hands up as if there is nothing we can do about it -- just blame the pandemic.
There is also the idea that people who want to be careful must be in a state of fear. Closer to the truth, is that people who do not want to be careful are the fearful ones, backed up into a state of denial. Why else would so many insist in a false state that they see through their rose colored glasses? Even in the article, the author was saying that he did not give the pandemic much credence even in March. March? Europe in March? Did he think he was immortal or that we lived in a fairy land where pandemics would not longer exist or everyone in Scotland would be automatically immune? And here's a doctor, no less, who is possibly otherwise competent, but whose job it is to deal with mortality and illness when it comes to him, wellness and prevention of death. Why would he be in denial that it was really really coming? That's what he wrote.
In the Civil War, we lost hundreds of thousands of lives. So . . . if we complain today that we are in wars in which we are losing far less, are we wusses? Covid-19 will take at least over 100,000 of us. Isn't a wuss someone who does not fight against such a virus? I cannot get the vision out of my head, of the militia monkeys, mercenaries enlisted by a brainless virus, entering the Michigan Capitol, to fight for the freedom of viruses everywhere.
The fact remains, no matter what else China did to screw things up, they reported to WHO in December about an out-of-control virus. The world did nothing. And many countries, like the USA and here we see the UK too, were unprepared. The shame is that, not only do we have to look in the mirror, realizing that we were among the countries that mishandled it to the point of hundreds of thousands of us dead, but we could not take pride in helping the world. We were too many wounded steps behind in order to lead anything.
Under normal times, in 2019 say, it was cause for firing if a nurse was not wearing proper protective equipment, or not following sanitation procedures. Part of my training in the health care field was to never put myself into mortal danger, that that was not part of my job.
The USA was so unprepared -- and hopefully we will never be in such a state of unpreparedness again, and hopefully we will never act for 2 months or more as if a pandemic could never harm us -- we were so unprepared in so many ways, that we asked our nurses, doctors, CNA's and others, to go on the "front lines" and die for the "cause". Suddenly, our health care workers were conscripted. What a tragic failure.
A servile population is rarely afraid, since it has placed its trust in authority. That look on your neighbors' faces may just be the look of obedient self-satisfaction. Were we better prepared in 1957 and 1968? I don't think so. We were just a good deal more level-headed.
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ReplyDeleteFrank, I disagree with your view that a servile population is rarely afraid. It seems more likely that they are servile precisely because they are afraid. Why else do you think dictators large and small (yes, I include the very small wannabe dictators) whip up fear as well as anger in their followers? Anger is often an expression of fear and insecurity. (None of which is meant to dismiss fear as a failing.)
ReplyDeleteAs to self-satisfaction, it seems to me that there is a certain amount of it in your claim that people were once a good deal more level-headed, the implication being that you are one of the level-headed minority remaining.
There are all kinds of ways of being servile. As Ortega y Gasset pointed out, "[T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State." As for experts, as Richard Feynman pointed out, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Too bad the British government didn't take that into consideration before swallowing hook, line, and sinker the recommendations of Niall Ferguson, whose track record for prognostication was certainly bad enough.
DeleteAnd yes, I do think that fear is unbecoming and that panic is downright deplorable. Had I panicked a few weeks ago, my wife would probably be dead. By keeping cool, I had her breathing again before the rescue squad arrived (they told me I had saved her life).
From the start the coverage of SARS-CoV-19 has been all over the place. We already know that mortality rates may be wrong, but even taking them as they are, there have been 80, 684 deaths in U.S.. half of those in the New York City metropolitan area. The toll in Western Europe (excluding Scandinavia) is 141, 327). Fortunately, there are still a lot of people in this country who are not about to let third-rate politicians indulge their inner despot (this would include the simpleton governor of my state). The rational approach to all this is a healthy skepticism. I'll give the last word to Richard Feynman: "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."
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