It's funny when you see your thoughts echoed perfectly in the posts of others, but Doktor Zoom and Scott Lemieux perfectly echoed my sentiments regarding Mike Pence's appointment as Coronavirus Czar... this is a guy who allowed an HIV epidemic to hit rural Indiana on his watch. While there is no stigma attached to COVID 19 like there is to HIV, the fact remains that an anti-science bigot is going to be heading up the anti-pandemic efforts when we need for someone to be serious for a second.
The sad, sick fact of our current dilemma is that, amid other CDC budget cuts, Trump disbanded the US Pandemic Response Team in 2018, ostensibly as a cost-cutting measure, though Trump's self-dealing golf cart rentals have cost taxpayers over a half-million dollars. The CDC response to the outbreak is incoherent at best.
The creepiest thing about this potential calamity is that Trump has long been skeptical about vaccines. An anti-science fanatic who has gutted the non-partisan governmental agencies which respond to emergencies is the last person we need to respond to a medical crisis such as we're facing.
FUN FACT: Viruses do not watch TV or respond to PR.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Richard Feynman who, in the Challenger investigation, pointed out:
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Regarding the comment above quoting that "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled":
ReplyDeleteWe should also note, as the margarine commercials used to say, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." But what's interesting about this caper is, instead of just going and spreading a pandemic, Ma Nature first goes and crashes the stock market, which has been the Trumpster's indicator of how brilliantly well he's doing with the economy. A while down the road, with the economy enfeebled, the Dow in the toilet, and Trump off the meds, she's really going to whack us.
Be prepared. Nature is a hanging judge, and we are all doomed.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank