Trump is definitely to blame for having turned mask-wearing into a partisan issue, another battlefront of the culture wars.


I do not, however, believe in the idea that mask-usage is the lone factor that would have made the difference between the United States' current case numbers (~50k) and numbers similar to those in the EU (~5k for a country of the size of the U.S.).
I mean... less than 4 months ago, the WHO, the CDC and most health experts around the Western world were explicitly telling people NOT to use masks because they "are rather ineffectual and would encourage more risky behavior by giving a false sense of security".

Yes, experts always knew that mask wearing would have some mitigating effect on transmission via droplets. But back then, there was still an ongoing debate among health experts whether masks would be a net positive at all, and if yes, it was expected that the effect would only be small-ish. And now, masks are suddenly supposed to be the golden bullet that makes aaaall the difference? Come on! The more convincing explanation is that liberals and the media are playing up the mask issue right now because it is the shortcoming that they can most directly and undeniably blame on Trump.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 8 2020 11:55am

IQ of about 60 for real.




He cups those orange balls too lol. He might as well be pimped out by epstein.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 8 2020 11:57am

Nobody is saying it's the sole issue, but it's also not the only issue Trump politicized. He also encouraged people to protest during the height of the spread.

Experts did not say masks were ineffectual at preventing spread. They were concerned about the limited supply for healthcare workers and supported rationing for those healthcare workers. The only thing that might have been debated about was the likelihood that it prevents you from getting it, and to be clear wearing a mask doesn't stop you from getting it from somebody else. Once it became clear that asymptomatic spread was significant they started recommending the usage of any grade mask to prevent even people without symptoms from spreading it.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 8 2020 11:58am

It's morbidly amusing to me this sort of Trump defense.

The concession is there. Trump failed at doing the very basic aspect of leadership that any other person running in 2016, be it Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, or Rubio, would've done as president. We could've elected a teenager and they would've been able to do the obvious thing of encouraging Americans to wear masks.

Trump fails at these very basic things... we can't even get to larger issues because we're left debating the insanity of a president not promoting safe procedures during a once in a 100 year pandemic. We're stuck looking at Trump retweet stuff about firing one of his experts on pandemics.

Then we move on to how Trump's complete failure actually doesn't matter that much, because *reasons*.

It's insanity.

... as did the Democrats and the media in the wake of George Floyd.




They were concerned about the lmiited supply, and that's why health officials in various countries, among them both the U.S. and Germany, blatantly and deliberately lied to the public and downplayed the importance of masks, so that there would be no panic buying and hoarding.

I'm well aware that masks were always about preventing you from spreading it to others (and not the other way round). And no, mask wearing was not recommended as soon as experts became aware of asymptomatic spread - the global health community knew about asymptomatic spread by late March (if not earlier), while masks werent officially recommended until late April or sometime in May.

Tl;dr youre right black xistens, but ORANGE MAN is BAD 😡 🍊

The American people are also to blame. We really have a bunch of selfish fucking idiots in this country. At this point, I think we need to have some sort of societal expectation that you serve your country in some capacity (military, state/federal government, etc.) for two years minimum.

The democrats and the media didn't encourage protest. They were pretty organic, and those organizations just rode the wave. It also wasn't at the height of infectivity.

I didn't say "as soon as they knew about asymptomatic spread" I said "Once it became clear that asymptomatic spread was significant". Having asymptomatic spread doesn't automatically mean it's a large part of the overall spread.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jul 8 2020 12:15pm

Of course Trump's behavior matters a lot. And yet he's not the only person responsible for how the country handled the crisis. Governors, mayors, CDC officials, journalists and the common people - they all play a role too. This disaster is not exclusively on Trump. And just to reiterate: yes, I do think that Trump has failed horribly at playing his part in the coronavirus response, it imho is by far the biggest blemish on his record.

Their failings are part of Trump's failing. Trump is supposed to be the head of the executive, and in times of crisis provide leadership and guidance to the other members of the executive on how to handle the situation. Governors, Mayors, CDC officials all turn to the head executive and Trump utterly failed them. It's hard to do your job when your boss is kneecapping you at every turn.