> Now a global pandemic had hit. He couldn’t foresee that. No one did.
Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible consequences but it would be better to say that not everyone has the capacity to account for all possible tail risks.
I think plenty of people said that a global pandemic is just a matter of time. Countries had made preparations with varying degrees of success. E.g. Switzerland back in like 2014 did a nationwide preparedness test, identified numerous problems (e.g. insufficient stock of PPE) and created a pandemic strategy. We still ended up in 2020 with doctors having to go to home depot to buy protective glasses because the states, responsible for implementing parts of the strategy did absolutely nothing.
Few like to prepare for something that might happen, but nobody can tell you when. But as a private citizen or small to medium business, what you can do to prepare for an event of this scale and duration is also fairly limited. It has to happen at broader societal level.
to the dead comment, i agree! except i don't really see bernie being an ultra-borderline commie. but i guess that's how you would view someone when the entire "right" calls joe biden a socialist. man if only those labels were actually true of those people.
the entire us system is broken because there are basically only two parties, and the democrats have decided to keep pushing further right because they assume actual leftists will have to vote for them. so i don't really give a shit that you bag on them. they suck.
trump probably would have had the election in the bag if he didn't muck up the pandemic so badly. and that's not my opinion. the polls show it happening. now will trump get a big enough bounce coming back the other way come november? i don't see it, and neither does trump and the gop considering the ways they're trying to basically suppress the general vote. the democrats suck, but the gop are straight up using fascist tactics. he already tried to "suspend" the election so can't wait to see what happens when he loses and he decides that, no, he actually didn't lose. (again assuming polling is right, i guess we'll find out in 2.5 months)
I agree that the pandemic was not a "black swan" - there were enough warnings that it's occurrence was more a "when" than an "if" question.
I wonder though if the events in the second half of march could be considered a black swan. Starting from mid-march, we saw first Europe, then a significant part of the world shut down most travel, large parts of its economy and almost all of its public life.
I remember the shift in the overton window to be particularly salient (from my pov in Germany):
Before March 15, the pandemic was one news story among many, even if a particularly worrying one. There were spirited public debates about whether travelers should go through temperature checks at airports and whether or not a city should take the unprecedenced step to chancel one particular trade fair. Some experts were proposing to close schools for a week or two and to conduct soccer games without audience - but those ideas seemed mostly academic and without any hope of becoming real policy.
Fast forward one week later and all trade fairs are canceled, as are any other kind of mass event; schools are closed indefinitely, borders are closed, global air travel comes to a full stop and the discussion of the day is whether or not to expect a nationwide, permanent curfew in the coming days.
The measures were clearly justified, but I have my doubts if anyone could have expected that countries actually pull through with this extreme kind of reaction.
People have also been warning about the next market crash for many years. Finally, one happened because of pandemic, and it's over in a blink of an eye.
I'm still expecting an even bigger crash, but I've learned my lesson against timing the future.
"We don't know when the next pandemic will come, but it will come, and we should be prepared for it" is a perfectly reasonable statement. Any pandemic is likely going to require PPE, PCR testing reagents, BSL labs, etc.
Same thing for recessions; predicting the specific timing of one is difficult. Advocating preparations for one - economic, fiscal, social policies etc. to mitigate, for example - is not a bad idea even if we don't know the timing.
Prepare? Absolutely. I can't speak to the state of California's earthquake preparedness, but there should absolutely be supplies and equipment stationed throughout the state in preparation for it. It is my understanding that San Francisco, for example, has water cisterns throughout the city for fighting fires in such a scenario.
It is dumb not to prepare for disasters we know will happen.
California absolutely can and should prepare for the eventuality of a large earthquake in the area (and they are, as another replier pointed out). Permanently evacuating the whole area maybe not.
Why is disaster preparedness at all controversial?
It wasn't at all clear in advance that all of those things were going to be needed. Mass PCR testing is not part of the standard pandemic response. Neither is the amount and kind of PPE used in this pandemic. I know the UK, for example, had trouble with there being no full-body disposable suits in the pandemic stockpile because they're not usually used for one. Whilst all half-competent countries have systems in place to PCR test, trace, and isolate, they're aimed at high-death-rate diseases like SARS which can't spread undetected because the infected rapidly start showing up at hospitals and which need to be immediately contained once they do. None of this is part of the normal response to a respiratory infection with infectivity and death rate in the same ballpark as a flu pandemic.
That's the whole point. The thought process "what would we need to combat a 1918 style pandemic if it happened today" does not in fact lead to stocking up on the things you're suggesting every country should have because they're supposedly required for any pandemic, since in reality those things weren't part of the plan for a 1918 style pandemic. If the political landscape was different it's entirely possible that (for example) mass PCR testing wouldn't be part of the plan for this pandemic. Most Western countries have the ability to use it for surveillance and estimation of disease spread during a pandemic, but trying to test everyone and use that to stop the spread is not a normal part of the plan for a disease like this.
If you play Russian Roulette, you'll eventually kill yourself. You might not be able to predict exactly which trigger pull will do it, but one of them will.
Don't try to time the market. Do try to prepare for a crisis.
I don't think they suggested people were able to predict the timing, just that some countries chose to have preparedness strategies and some didn't.
In all fairness, the US did actually think to create a preparedness strategy, it was just ignored when the time came.
In your market comparison, it would be like having a safety net of cash stashed in case of a market crash, and when the market crashes you spend it all immediately on a new car.
"When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why."
-Stephen Schwartz, on Twitter, May 2018
People knew. Also, Americans don't really have the habit of factoring in major events outside of their control into their long term strategy. It will be ok. The danger is "over there". The oceans will protect us.
Alternatively, this was Trump's 9/11 -- the threat the President+Cabinet knew was coming and intentionally unprotected the nation from, in order to manufacture an excuse to retaliate against a tangentially connected enemy.
Why was information suppressed by congress concerning Bandar sending $130,000 to the two 9/11 hijackers? Why has the Bush family never been questioned about their close friendship with Bandar?
They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic and prepared for one happening eventually. Just like we know there's a low risk of an entire server room going up in flames/water damage/lightning/getting hit by a truck driving into a building and that's why we have offsite backups even though we won't know when something is going to happen.
> They knew that there was a continuous risk of a pandemic
But I think so did every country.
Wasn't global pandemic at the top of almost every country's national security risk register? They knew it was likely, and they knew it was high-risk. I know for a fact it was at the top of the UK's public national security risk register.
You're perpetuating a silly myth that major western countries didn't know this was coming and didn't know it was a big risk.
There basically wasn't a proper "modern day" pandemic before this. The previous one was the spanish flu in 1918 which was very quickly forgotten due to a much larger pointless massacre (world wars)
Air travel increase is a big factor why it got so bad so quickly, even in the past two decades basically everything has changed. We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day.
There have been 3 flu pandemics since 1918: 1957, 1968, 2009. In addition, cholera and AIDS have had non-influenza pandemics in the same timeframe, and there's a clutch of infectious diseases with little spread that qualify as pandemics by the definition of sustained spread in two countries in different regions of the world (e.g., mumps). MERS might also qualify by the definition.
> We have hundreds millions of people basically teleporting between continents every day
That's hyperbole. In 2019 there were 4.5 billion passengers boarding a flight[1]. Divide by 365 days and you get on the order of 10 million per day, most of which will not be intercontinental.
I don't disagree about the amount of air travel nowadays facilitating pandemics, just wanted to get the numbers straight.
I appreciate the feedback, it feels better than getting only downvotes. I thought it was an important point because the number was off by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two. But I can see how my response might have been seen as pedantic.
They (or someone within the government at least) may have known, but they did not act on it. On the contrary, for example California defunded its emergency stockpile.
Yes you're right - misinterprering by responding to part of a thread is rude.
Which is what you're doing - because the context of the thread is more specifically that anyone foresaw it - 'He couldn’t foresee that. No one did.' and the person I'm replied to that saying that they thought just some like Taiwan foresaw it.
Both are demonstrably false claims - you can look at public national security risk registers to confirm to yourself that many other countries foresaw it.
Why are you wording this like you're suspicious? Disaster preparedness is not some big conspiracy. Just because America is doing a shit job at this doesn't mean other countries are out to get them.
I believe the 2009 swine flu is responsible for this times weak response. I remember last time a lot of fear was stoked up in the media and a huge amount of tamiflu bought by the government, and almost nothing happened in the end, apart from public scepticism and unhappiness about the squandering of funds. I think politics didnt want to repeat the mistake
Some people did. Taiwan prepared after SARS. Of course nobody forsaw all possible consequences but it would be better to say that not everyone has the capacity to account for all possible tail risks.