Your President and my Prime Minister are just not anywhere near robust enough to be able to cope...

[Soph0571]

One thing we can say about Covid-19, it is helping to expose the shallow thinking of quite a number of world leaders, with Trump and Johnson leading the charge. Your President and my Prime Minister are just not anywhere near robust enough to be able to cope with the job in a time of national crisis. They lack substance and leadership capability. It's easy enough to bluff and bullshit your way through when things are on an even keel, but it is (another) dreadful mishap of this history we are living through, that we have these two fuckwits in charge, when the world is facing such a huge period of instability, both in public health terms and the economy. The two of them are walking, talking proof that meritocracy is unequivocal ginormous nonsense: wealth and privilege gets you access to more wealth and privilege and power no matter how evidently, belligerently thick as shit you are.

Sometimes an idiot that has been over promoted, is at least canny enough to surround themselves with intelligent, well-educated advisers. Luckily, in the UK BoJo is being led by actual experts (just on this though) and for once we are actually getting data driven, fact-based decision making out of the government. Rather novel I must say, even though they seem to have taken a rather relaxed approach to containing the virus. What do you do, though, when the chap in charge, who is allergic to facts, when they opt to surround themselves with people as inherently stupid and ignorant as they themselves are? Trump can’t bullshit his way out of what is coming down the line. He is horribly exposed and shockingly out of his depth and this is going to be felt in every community. The more visible his incompetence becomes, the more he will unravel, leading to ever increasing exposure of his ineptitude. While this is not reassuring with how the country will cope during this crisis – what it means for November is another story entirely. Hopefully.

[Baitball Blogger]

1. Can you imagine how easy it is to lead when you're convinced that you can

be dismissive about human life? When you think that there is an upside to a clean out in the human population?

[Amaryllis]

2. Hey Soph,

I really like having people from other countries on DU for their perspective and also the solidarity factor - people who know we are all in this together - most welcome in the time of leaders who don't get that and are isolationists.

Just curious about what draws you to an American discussion forum? Is there anything like this in the UK?

[Soph0571]

3. Couple of things

Firstly I developed an interest in American politics because there is such clear water between the parties. This was always interesting to me when the UK has been since the 1990's (until 2016) pretty much middle of the road. You may be centre left or centre right but about 90% of the people agreed on 90% of the policies 90% of the time. The other 10% were viewed as outliers, far right and far left, chuntering on the side lines and being ignored by the rest of us. This changed gradually after 2010 and reached full division over Brexit. Now centre left and centre right are demonised and the outliers have taken over the asylum. The juxtaposition between right and left in America provides lessons for the rest of us as authoritarianism is growing across the west.
Also I have property in America and have spent significant time there since the early 1990's. Have not been over since Trump became president, my own personal boycott, but what happens there matters to me - apart from everything else, taxes and property values...
When America sneezes the world catches cold and I like to be in the know when shit is about to come down the line.
And finally, I am just a big old political nerd, who loves writing about politics, hunting out interesting things to share with others and doing so in a space that conducive to supporting progressives and in an environment that is not hostile.

[Amaryllis]

4. Thanks for the reply. VERy interesting. I'm glad you're here!

[pat_k]

5. Only testing the severely ill is insane.

Even if all they want to do is track how well they are doing on reaching levels of infection that impart "herd immunity" they should at least be testing random samples of people within a wide range of geographic regions.

Right now, Boris is basing incredibly consequential policy on speculation. There are more questions than answers -- questions that would be answered with more widespread testing.

You don't know infection rates. Don't know how many asymptotic people are incubating (and spreading) the virus. Don't know the actual mortality rate because of that. Don't know a ton of things that we can answer with some concrete data.

Even if the NHS must "ration" a limited numbers of tests, they could still get a ton of information by selecting small, random sample populations, test everybody who agrees in the sample, and see what they come up with.

We should be doing the same here. As should every nation with any sort of testing capability.

Statistical analysis is not rocket science. There are many, many, companies equipped to ID relatively small, random samples in specified geographic areas. They are set up with phone banks. Get them into the game. Get infection rates in different regions. Get data on asymptotic positives. Keep track of how many go on to develop symptoms.

Unlike all the other pollsters who call every month or so, I'd be thrilled to get a call to participate in a "testing" pool.