American Death Cult Why has the Republican response to the pandemic been so...disastrous?

[Nevilledog]

American Death Cult Why has the Republican response to the pandemic been so mind-bogglingly disastrous?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/republican-response-coronavirus.html

Last October, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security compiled a ranking system to assess the preparedness of 195 countries for the next global pandemic. Twenty-one panel experts across the globe graded each country in 34 categories composed of 140 subindices. At the top of the rankings, peering down at 194 countries supposedly less equipped to withstand a pandemic, stood the United States of America.

It has since become horrifyingly clear that the experts missed something. The supposed world leader is in fact a viral petri dish of uncontained infection. By June, after most of the world had beaten back the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S., with 4 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 25 percent of its cases. Florida alone was seeing more new infections a week than China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, and the European Union combined.

During its long period of decline, the Ottoman Empire was called “the sick man of Europe.” The United States is now the sick man of the world, pitied by the same countries that once envied its pandemic preparedness — and, as recently as the 2014 Ebola outbreak, relied on its expertise to organize the global response.

Our former peer nations are now operating in a political context Americans would find unfathomable. Every other wealthy nation in the world has successfully beaten back the disease, at least significantly, and at least for now. New Zealand’s health minister was forced to resign after allowing two people who had tested positive for COVID-19 to attend a funeral. The Italian Parliament heckled Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte when he briefly attempted to remove his mask to deliver a speech. In May — around the time Trump cheered demonstrators into the streets to protest stay-at-home orders — Boris Johnson’s top adviser set off a massive national scandal, complete with multiple calls for his resignation, because he’d been caught driving to visit his parents during lockdown. If a Trump official had done the same, would any newspaper even have bothered to publish the story?

*snip*

[Thomas Hurt]

1. Peasants are expendable?

[RKP5637]

4. It appears that is the plan ... n/t

[raccoon]

2. Link? Nt

[Nevilledog]

6. I blame my lack of coffee.

Link added.

[RKP5637]

3. I truly think that some in the GOP see this as an opportunity to kill off millions

of people that they find objectionable.

[Blues Heron]

5. extreme hate from the pukes

hate radio, internet has caused these cretins to lose their damn minds

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Link, please?

[Nevilledog]

8. Added.

[EarlG]

9. Because Republicans are poseurs and grifters

who have absolutely no interest in governing and only want to hold public office so they can scam people?

[Nevilledog]

10. Same as it ever was.

[Solly Mack]

11. Their response is a market driven response more or less.

I'm not saying it makes sense. Not suggesting such a response works.

Clearly, it doesn't. Neither making sense nor being effective.

But that's what they're doing and have done.

No real shut down. Open up now demands. Open up too early. Back to work. Back to school is a back to work ploy. Schools as childcare to get parents back on the job. Wanting to punish people and states for bucking the open now/back to work/school push.

Look at who benefited with the big bucks. Those getting the biggest loan amounts through the PPP. While the majority of the loans went to small businesses, the majority of the money (in the billions) went to select businesses and corporations.

Profits instead of people.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. So strange.

Post-World War II, the universal sentiment to Russia having The Bomb, the Rosenbergs, bomb shelters, Duck-and-Cover, etc. was hysteria about the potential of dying an instantaneous death by heat and pulverization. Worse than atom bombs in Japan. It was opposite of a death cult. It was an affirmation of wanting to live no matter what. If Eisenhower had capitulated to Khrushchev, the public would have hated him more than the Russia leader. They believed Joseph McCarthy would save their lives.

Fast forward to 2020: Trump and the Republicans telling the American public that death is inevitable. Some may die. It could be you. It could be your family. It could be someone you love. And it's okay. Wear a mask, don't wear a mask. It's all right. God will take care of everything. Don't get hysterical. It's getting sick and maybe you'll be okay. Maybe not. And just because it's Donald Trump and his representatives saying this, it's automatically credible and reliable. Not to mention antagonism towards those who value life and health. To Trump's base, those folks are un-American, not patriotic. And a danger towards thwarting God's will.

Totally Alice In Wonderland but nonfiction.