Thanks for a meaningful response, i appreciate it.

I watched some of the video. Around the 3 minute mark, after aids death have gone from 800 to around 2500 in a few years, it seems HIV research was given high priority and funding was allocated and that was what 1982-83? So within two years Reagan gave it high priority for research and gave money towards it once deaths reached 4 figures. This is historical objective reality.

Now one can make an argument that it wasn't enough but that still leaves me scratching my head where exactly is the connection being made that it's because of discrimination based on who the disease was affecting that the funding was light.

Currently around 700,000 people die of Alzheimers in the US. Funding for this disease has increase 5 fold in the last 10 years even though Alhzhimers isn't a new disease. Do you think this funding going up is a function of some discrimination being corrected or the fact that as we have more understanding and more technological ability to impact the disease money naturally flows into that sector of research? Alzheimers was a problem in the 1980s as well, why did we not allocate more money to this back then or is one disease not getting enough allocation based on discrimination while another is based on...?

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 30 2020 05:02pm

another privileged lefty hack msnbc #fakenews merchant ‘ali velshi’ offers chaos, criticism, and overall cowardice when others are offering massive help during this virus situation

I agree the lion's share of blame should be placed on the federal government. The WashingtonPost article detailed a lot of intelligence the Trump administration ignored, and the Reuters article you linked reported that the federal government axed a key CDC figure embedded in China would could served as a warning beacon to our government as the COVID-19 outbreak started.

My expectations for the states are probably too high. I just think it's easy for a state like New York and Cuomo to place all the blame on Trump. In reality, they had a lot of resources at their disposal to prepare and mobilize that they used way after the fact, like almost every other state in the union and every other country in the world and the west.

They had less info and intelligence than the federal government, but they at least had the public info that was available to us as private citizens in at least December of 2019, which was 2 months the before all this really blew up. And the bare bones of that information available to everyone with internet access was more than enough for public health officials to do something. But alas, hindsight is 20/20.

Hu, ofc for this graph only taking in account the free world countries, China is getting completely debunked with the incineration urns videos/pictures.
Chinese french expert said at national TV that chinese official numbers were "scooter accidents". Real number is probably 10-20 times bigger.

I think there was a time when moments like these would galvanize a country and pretty much everyone would put aside their differences because it's the right thing to do. WW2, 9/11, etc. During those times no one was looking internally and blaming a politician or a party because of consequences that were outside our control. Trump minimized the issue, so did many of us. Trump changed his mind eventually and acted. I think it's very easy to cast blame in hindsight and say he should of done x or y. I remember when he banned flights from China the media called him a racist, now the criticism is he didn't do enough initially (as if we are a dictatorship and all power and action literally rests on one person to direct and control).

Imo Trump and all government is partially to blame but personally i don't fault any of them too much because i realize they aren't God and can't control all things. There's only so much Trump can do or say to increase production or prevent spread. I live in NYS and don't blame Cuomo nor Trump, at the end of the day the moaning won't change a thing.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 30 2020 06:04pm

sadly those days of banding together as a country during hard times are long gone.

This post was edited by excellence on Mar 30 2020 06:15pm

Agreed. Though cutting that CDC employee in China was probably pretty stupid on the federal government's part, Cuomo could have done more to prepare his state with even just the info/intelligence we were receiving as regular American citizens back in December 2019. I think we put too much onus on the federal government for most things.

The shelter-in-place orders and majority of ventilator purchases have occurred on the state-level. These are just two of items states could have prepared for with the same info we were getting as average Joes on our couch from CNN.

Major funding wasn't appropriated until after Rock Hudson died in 1985 from AIDS-related complications, and then again when Ryan White died.

Reagan gets criticized for his response, which I think is both fair and unfair. Reagan didn't embody anything terribly unique or unlike the commonly held response at the time. Early on HIV was referred to as "gay plague", "GRID (gay-related immune disease) or 4H disease, for the 4 groups it was primarily found within: homosexuals, heroin injection users, Haitians, and hemophiliacs. The general public and a majority of the government weren't concerned with this because it affected populations that they didn't belong to, and was (according to the argument) exacerbated by prejudicial views held by many people with regards to those groups.

It wasn't until Rock Hudson died, and then later Ryan White died that major funding started happening. The Ryan White CARE Act still remains the largest AIDS funding legislation in the country, but even then it didn't first come into law until 1990.

The issue, historically, has been less about just the specific amount of money, but the conversation that surrounds this whole era and the timing of the funding. Preventing your Surgeon General from addressing and reporting on it is concerning. Having your Deputy Press Secretary say that you don't have an opinion on it while so many people are dying is concerning. To not even be able to say the word or have a speech dedicated to your response until several years later is what was concerning.

I do want to note that while although the Federal Government has had a pretty bad response to covid-19, that I do view the circumstances between covid-19 and HIV to be vastly different.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Mar 30 2020 07:06pm

confirmed cases in the US surpassed china recently. deaths are quickly following suit

but i am starting to come around to the idea that china may be fibbing the numbers.. even though things here in chengdu are basically back to normal: schools, gyms, restaurants are reopening, etc

This post was edited by KungPeriodFu on Mar 30 2020 07:55pm