I once thought we had reached the point where societal or cultural fitness would be self-enforced, with collective introspection, our system of justice, etc., keeping us on a path of decency. But nope, turns out we're still just monkeys that require bouts of crises to right the course. Watching Trump still continue to insert himself in front of the experts is so pathetic. Local news outlets reliably parrot his false statements. This statement alone... (source): ...should enrage each and every American. It isn't up for debate whether or not this administration missed a great opportunity to massively impede the spread of covid-19 early on. What I'm most worried about is that Trump is guaranteed to be working behind the scenes to find a way to leverage all this in favor of even more consolidated executive power. Feels like Jar-Jar Binks is about to make an announcement on the floor of the Senate any minute now.From the beginning, the Trump administration’s attempts to forestall an outbreak of a virus now spreading rapidly across the globe was marked by a raging internal debate about how far to go in telling Americans the truth.
Individual states are demonstrating themselves to be vastly more agile than the CDC (probably because they haven't been hollowed out by 3 years of toadyism). That tilts the balance in favor of local control. Republicans are definitely the principle advocates of States Rights but every local official out there is looking at their own community, their own infrastructure, their own resources and their own chain of culpability and recognizing that regardless of what happens in Washington, the people they're dealing with locally are going to be the people they're going to continue to deal with locally so long as nobody screws up. The general state response to the Feds on this one has been on a spectrum between "quit fucking up" and "fuck up less". I can think of no examples where anyone's situation would be improved by inviting the Feds to run things. As a consequence, any attempt by the Feds to run things is going to continue to be met with scorn and derision.
Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily mean Trump won't try. You're right though, the self-interest of businesses and local communities/governments can drive some good decisions. This would've been in my backyard if I hadn't moved away (exactly zero regrets, to date). But there's been a very well-coordinated response by the university, frequent updates, additional quarantining, intense sterilization procedures, etc.... any attempt by the Feds to run things is going to continue to be met with scorn and derision.
Not just disease, but natural disaster in general? Isn't that the argument for better state funds for response over federal, for like hurricanes and floods and all? Just for familiarity of the area and people and all alone, I'm more confident in my local disaster response team than any team the federal government would send over. Edit: And I can imagine, in general, smaller teams and organizations and specialized are more agile and responsive than larger teams.Individual states are demonstrating themselves to be vastly more agile than the CDC (probably because they haven't been hollowed out by 3 years of toadyism).