Northeast Stinger
Helluva Engineer
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I’m just not seeing the same thing as you.
The way I found out about an outbreak up the road from me was that people infected there caused an outbreak four hours away where 20+ students who came down with covid happened to be students in a school where my daughter is the principal. Privacy concerns were not the main inhibitor of tracing these contacts. It was difficulty getting timely access to testing and results that took over a week to get back.
We have talked about the success other countries have had and in almost every case a major factor has been widespread testing, contact tracing and isolation. I’m hearing that our slow response to do this may mean we have to go back to shut downs just to slow the virus enough that we can track it.
What can “authorities” do? Think about what was done during previous national crises. Whether WW II, 1918 flu outbreak, the Cold War missile crisis or after 9/11. We could argue about what was effective or not, what was propaganda or not, or the compliance level, but all of that would completely miss the point.
I knew as a very young child how to stock a fallout shelter or how far away I would need to be from an air detonated thermonuclear device. Right after 9/11 I knew what color code we were in for the terrorism alert.
Again, I hope no one will sidetrack on these examples and whether the information was valuable or silly. My point is that a sense of national unity was communicated. If we had had coordinated unified message saturation from the beginning, like we have had with other crises, we would not have lost precious time arguing over whether it was better to let grandma die for the economy, whether masks should be worn, whether we should be dispensing untested drug regimens, if we should shoot for herd immunity, or whether we should just let all young people get exposed as quickly as possible.
From where I sit we have not had a coordinated unified message. That means we are still behind in the quest to get people to trust the science. And we have yet to get out of our political bubbles and all get on the same page.
Historians and anthropologists who look at the collapse of complex civilizations seem to agree that it is not the final crisis that does in a society but a series of cascading events (Toynbee). The final stage is signaled by one of three things, self induced environmental disaster, inability to hold off foreign intervention in domestic politics, or a disease epidemic that sweeps the country (Glube). But what makes these fatal, (Tainter), is an inability to work together to solve problems. This inability, with the resulting blame placing and scapegoating, lowers the bar on expectations for success to the point that the population gives up on following any kind of protocol or unified effort. I don’t know if we can our fellow citizens all on the same page at this point. I try to be hopeful but I see no evidence for it yet.
