05-29-2020, 05:08 PM
GR, What exactly did you watch in February?
By late February my local OC youth soccer league was actively discussing how we would need to eliminate post-game hand shakes for the kids. Perhaps we are a bit more aware of health trends than your average USA Fox viewer, but I have to believe most health officials understood a global pandemic was coming to the world.
At that same time several parents were very, very concerned about safety for the season, and several were already seeking refunds. Now, admittedly some of the most vocal families were of Korean and east Asian decent, but it was possible to live in the USA in February and know something dangerous was lurking in the world. News outlets with even a few international correspondents were covering how quickly and easily this virus was spreading throughout Asia and into other places in February.
But the biggest clue would have been the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was unable to return to port on February 3 2020. At that point, for those paid and/or elected to pay attention, that incident should have been a big red flag. Of course, in most of Asia officials and politicians were already paying attention to COVID, but the cruise ship was the global wake-up call out POTUS missed.
It was critical because that suggested that there must have been people who were healthy enough to board a cruise ship in January that were already carrying the virus. Given that the passengers were not together prior to the cruise human-to-human transmission must be possible. That all happened on February 3, with American citizens on board. And as often happens, if a few USA citizens are on board and impacted it becomes news in the USA.
Then by the mid month the cases on that ship exploded to several hundred cases.
I understand how busy US citizens could miss those clues and the coverage that vessel got on the BBC, CNN, etc. etc.
I also understand why FoxNews would have opted to cover the latest MAGA rally instead.
However, let's not pretend like it was not possible to know that COVID was out and about. And our POTUS certain got more than a few briefings to clue him into the pandemic beyond the cruise ship industry. He missed all of them.
Maybe he was watching the same things you watched that month.
By late February my local OC youth soccer league was actively discussing how we would need to eliminate post-game hand shakes for the kids. Perhaps we are a bit more aware of health trends than your average USA Fox viewer, but I have to believe most health officials understood a global pandemic was coming to the world.
At that same time several parents were very, very concerned about safety for the season, and several were already seeking refunds. Now, admittedly some of the most vocal families were of Korean and east Asian decent, but it was possible to live in the USA in February and know something dangerous was lurking in the world. News outlets with even a few international correspondents were covering how quickly and easily this virus was spreading throughout Asia and into other places in February.
But the biggest clue would have been the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was unable to return to port on February 3 2020. At that point, for those paid and/or elected to pay attention, that incident should have been a big red flag. Of course, in most of Asia officials and politicians were already paying attention to COVID, but the cruise ship was the global wake-up call out POTUS missed.
It was critical because that suggested that there must have been people who were healthy enough to board a cruise ship in January that were already carrying the virus. Given that the passengers were not together prior to the cruise human-to-human transmission must be possible. That all happened on February 3, with American citizens on board. And as often happens, if a few USA citizens are on board and impacted it becomes news in the USA.
Then by the mid month the cases on that ship exploded to several hundred cases.
I understand how busy US citizens could miss those clues and the coverage that vessel got on the BBC, CNN, etc. etc.
I also understand why FoxNews would have opted to cover the latest MAGA rally instead.
However, let's not pretend like it was not possible to know that COVID was out and about. And our POTUS certain got more than a few briefings to clue him into the pandemic beyond the cruise ship industry. He missed all of them.
Maybe he was watching the same things you watched that month.