Quote (Black XistenZ @ 5 Mar 2021 23:48)
"Listen to the experts" has to be the most tired and misleading slogan of the past 10 years, if not longer. Experts are not a monolithic block, they actually do not agree on even the general strategy (elimination vs suppression) nor on some of the most consequential detail questions (e.g. how much open schools contribute to the spread). Just because there is consensus that masks should be worn (a consensus which btw did not exist yet at the onset of the pandemic), people should socially distance and the vulnerable should be protected does not mean that there is a singular, unified "expert opinion" that hands politicians a manual on how to get through the pandemic in optimal fashion.
Also, the "listen to the experts" slogan conveniently ignores that most experts can only tell politicians the "optimal" approach from the narrow perspective of their own field, while politicians have to keep the bigger picture and a host of complex tradeoffs in mind. If you ask epidemiologists about the optimal approach, they will tell you how to keep infection numbers as low as possible, because that's what "optimal" means in their field. What they cannot provide to decision-makers is the approach which minimizes the combined long-term total damage from covid and its effects plus the countermeasures and their side effects. In fact, this is such a complex question that no single expert in the world can give a comprehensive answer.
We can all agree that Trump's strategy was far from optimal, but opinions will already diverge a lot when it comes to exactly how bad it was. On a scale from 0 (Tanzania) to 100 (Taiwan), I think everyone can agree that Trump is below 60. But was his performance a 10, a 20 or perhaps a 40?
what a load of dishonest bullcrap. predictably, you once again chose a narrative that downplays trumps failings. the idiotic talking point that "eXPeRtS ArE nO mONoLitHiC bLoCk" is NOT a good argument for defying virtually EVERY expert and scientist on common sense measures like masks and distancing. just because no single person could possibly have had THE golden solution that would have definitively minimised the total impact of covid, just because that indeed takes political considerations and a degree of personal judgement, trying to weigh different opinions against each other, does NOT mean that any approach is therefore equally justified.
you just can't do it, can you? you simply can't acknowledge that
trump's decision to politicise the pandemic, undermine the scientists, and defy common sense measures was a deliberate move, motivated by (shitty) political calculations, and caused the preventable death of tens of thousands of innocent people. you have to create some kind of narrative that makes it suboptimal but forgivable, worthy of criticism but not damnation. that's pathetic.
This post was edited by fender on Mar 5 2021 05:19pm