COVID - Six Months In: There's no reason we should still be experiencing this crisis in the US

[kpete]

COVID Update July 21: There’s no reason we should still be experiencing this crisis in the US. 1/
Six months in, we should still not be here. The crisis should not be going on this long.

This doesn’t mean we should have eradicated the virus by now. It does mean we should have contained it. 2/

..............

Without daily testing, but masks, we would be able to carry on with 90% of our life. With daily testing & masks, that would be 98%. And after a short time, as the virus dies it could be 100%. 10/

Yet we sit here, with some of us leading 10% of our lives in terms of fulfillment. Not hugging our family. Not running our small business. Not going to school.

None of this is because we are over-reacting to COVID. It is because we DIDN’T react to COVID. 11/
Proof of this is on every continent in the world. I can’t accept people telling me it’s too hard.

China can test 11 million people in a weekend. European countries have more than adequate contact tracing. Dozens of countries have no problem with masks. 12/

Why is it that we haven’t done what we should have? Which of these?
1-Letting tens of thousands into the country from China & Europe despite contrary claims?
2-Disbanding our task force in May?
3-Pretending this was a hoax until March?
4-Reducing & defunding testing 13/

5-The president encouraging & failing to quash the “truthers”
6-Unwillingness to call for & encourage mask mandate
7-Not taking 3-4 week hard shut down
8-Defunding testing/testing sites
9-Not funding contact tracing
10-Eliminating pandemic response teams
11-Leaving bars open 14/

11-Mixed messaging/inconsistent leadership
12-No coordinated national approach
13-Elimination of nursing home safety fines
14-Congressional stalling
15-Leaving meatpacking plants open
16-Not caring about jails & prisons
17-CDC mistakes
18-No stockpiles
19-Anti-science
20-FDA

15/

I got asked on TV how we stop more than 140,000 people from dying?

The answer is caring about the 140,001st. 16/

That list of 20 things was too easy to arrive at. And any of the 20 could have been accomplished. Most of them should have. With diligence, all of them would have. 17/

There’s no reason to be here now. 18/

The very day the schools closed was the day to start making them safe again.

Americans stayed home & expected the government to be hard at work. 19/
In a pandemic wasting time is wasting lives.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285699066865819652.html

Link to tweet

?s=20

[sop]

1. There's no reason Trump should still be president.

He should have been removed by the Senate. That alone would have saved tens of thousands of lives.

[tanyev]

2. K & R

[Johnny2X2X]

3. The non travel ban...

When I debate this, the other side brings up the China travel ban that wasn't a ban. They'll admit it wasn't a ban but then say something like, "well, what could have been done then?"

What we needed to do, what I and others were calling for is to have a massive response at the airports to screen travelers thoroughly. Would have taken leadership and a real resource commitment, but we could have had teams of health care professionals talking to all arrivals. They could have instituted contact tracing then, they could have made quarantines "mandatory" (ish). It would have inconvenienced travelers, but this would have been much less severe here.

And don't ever forget what happened, Trump was unwilling to do anything because all he cared about back then was protecting the stock market.

[tanyev]

4. And then a few weeks later President Very Stable Genius created this clusterf**k:

Massive lines of travelers crowded into US airports Saturday evening, not long after President Donald Trump issued coronavirus-related travel restrictions on passengers arriving from Europe.

News outlets and passengers shared photos and videos of packed airport terminals at O'Hare airport in Chicago, Washington-Dulles in Virginia, and Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Texas as travelers awaited customs screening.

Public health experts bemoaned the scenes, noting that the dense crowds presented a perfect opportunity for coronavirus transmission.

"Good God. You could hardly invent a better scenario for superspreading events," tweeted Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. "Any cases of COVID in these crowds will have a far higher chance of spreading to others in these lines than if they were just allowed in unchecked."

https://www.insider.com/crowds-travelers-pack-us-airports-trump-coronavirus-travel-ban-2020-3