[Genuine Realist]

[Tweet]https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1327437357797130241?s=20[/tweet]

This entire thread by the Trevor Bedford, the geneticist responsible for helping identify the earliest transmission chains in Washington, and currently mapping the WH superspreader event, is well worth reading. The comparison to pandemic flu in 1918/19 is very apt. 

Essentially the choice we face is either making societal changes that will bring Rt back to 1 and ending exponential growth, or we wait until the virus brings us there through community immunity. The vaccine won't come soon enough to head that off. The second route means many many more deaths and long term sequelae of course.

I hope the lockdown comes soon in California, but at least leave the beaches and parks and forests open please!

I agree with the societal changes, and I think they are happening. BUT .   .

Almost the worst political mistake you can make as an American politician is to attempt to impose on the American people a moral order with which they don't agree. I do believe more than a few governors - by coincidence or not, all Democrats - Cuomo, Newsom, Whitmer, Kate Brown, etc. - have done exactly that. With he Great Satan disappearing from center stage, they are now wide open. 

Biden is destined to have an extremely short honeymoon, because these are intractable problems for which there is no good solution.  The election was anything but a referendum for the Democrats - quite the contrary. The more alert of them are already scared to death for 2022, when the convenient target of Trump will be gone. (They will still run against him.)

For my two cents, the worst thing they can do is insist on draconian SIP orders, particularly when they are unwilling to abide by them themselves. Some sensible occupancy regulations will pass muster, but the full fledged lockdown just will not work politically. (It didn't work all that well in Europe.) I believed in that stuff last March, when some breathing space was necessary to figure out what was appropriate social response. But we have pretty much done that now, and I think you are going to have to show some basic trust in the public to understand what is going on.  The public reads the same headlines the politicians do - I notice a lot more masks in open aire this last week than I did a few weeks ago. 

Attempting, however to make the people do what you think is required on a we-know-what's-best-for-you basis is to play with fire, and almost certainly get burned.

You should withhold judgment until you see what real leadership in government looks like. You haven't seen it for so long it doesn't even seem possible it actually can exist. I'm no Presidential historian, but for my money, LBJ was the last one we had.  We've had POTUSs with good character or that wanted to do the right thing for the country, but we haven't had anyone who could truly rally the country and get them bought into doing much together for each other since him, while pushing Congress to bend to his will. Biden could be that leader. He has been flawless since Election Day in the face of less than ideal circumstances. I am more optimistic about him now and think he has the potential to be much more effective than I thought possible.

Excuse me, but I am 74 and have lived long enough to have witnessed real Presidential leadership. There is no question that Trump was a terrible example.

But you also have to have solutions. In these pre-vaccine days, I don't think there is an optimum. 'magic' solution. I also don't think that drastic, across-the-board SIP orders are politically tolerable.They were in the first months, but we have had close to nine months to develop nuance. In particular, the continued school closures are beyond exasperating.

If the pressure on health systems becomes so severe that drastic SIP is required, you had better demonstrate it to the public. You had also better demonstrate why it has to be imposed on the public as a whole, rather than those segments that are particularly vulnerable. That's what I mean by nuance. 

Biden is going to be infinitely more Presidential than Trump, but he has certainly not demonstrated the kind of charismatic leadership of an FDR or Kennedy. I hope he is going to be a 'lucky' President (such as Clinton was) and that effective vaccines become widely available ASAP. I don't think that the change of regimen is going to save him if he has to fall back to measures that the public perceives as too drastic, or thoughtlessly imposed - particularly when party figureheads demonstrate their unwillingness to live with the discipline they expect from others.

[Genuine Realist]

[Tweet]https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1327437357797130241?s=20[/tweet]

This entire thread by the Trevor Bedford, the geneticist responsible for helping identify the earliest transmission chains in Washington, and currently mapping the WH superspreader event, is well worth reading. The comparison to pandemic flu in 1918/19 is very apt. 

Essentially the choice we face is either making societal changes that will bring Rt back to 1 and ending exponential growth, or we wait until the virus brings us there through community immunity. The vaccine won't come soon enough to head that off. The second route means many many more deaths and long term sequelae of course.

I hope the lockdown comes soon in California, but at least leave the beaches and parks and forests open please!

I agree with the societal changes, and I think they are happening. BUT .   .

Almost the worst political mistake you can make as an American politician is to attempt to impose on the American people a moral order with which they don't agree. I do believe more than a few governors - by coincidence or not, all Democrats - Cuomo, Newsom, Whitmer, Kate Brown, etc. - have done exactly that. With he Great Satan disappearing from center stage, they are now wide open. 

Biden is destined to have an extremely short honeymoon, because these are intractable problems for which there is no good solution.  The election was anything but a referendum for the Democrats - quite the contrary. The more alert of them are already scared to death for 2022, when the convenient target of Trump will be gone. (They will still run against him.)

For my two cents, the worst thing they can do is insist on draconian SIP orders, particularly when they are unwilling to abide by them themselves. Some sensible occupancy regulations will pass muster, but the full fledged lockdown just will not work politically. (It didn't work all that well in Europe.) I believed in that stuff last March, when some breathing space was necessary to figure out what was appropriate social response. But we have pretty much done that now, and I think you are going to have to show some basic trust in the public to understand what is going on.  The public reads the same headlines the politicians do - I notice a lot more masks in open aire this last week than I did a few weeks ago. 

Attempting, however to make the people do what you think is required on a we-know-what's-best-for-you basis is to play with fire, and almost certainly get burned.

You should withhold judgment until you see what real leadership in government looks like. You haven't seen it for so long it doesn't even seem possible it actually can exist. I'm no Presidential historian, but for my money, LBJ was the last one we had.  We've had POTUSs with good character or that wanted to do the right thing for the country, but we haven't had anyone who could truly rally the country and get them bought into doing much together for each other since him, while pushing Congress to bend to his will. Biden could be that leader. He has been flawless since Election Day in the face of less than ideal circumstances. I am more optimistic about him now and think he has the potential to be much more effective than I thought possible.

Excuse me, but I am 74 and have lived long enough to have witnessed real Presidential leadership. There is no question that Trump was a terrible example.

But you also have to have solutions. In these pre-vaccine days, I don't think there is an optimum. 'magic' solution. I also don't think that drastic, across-the-board SIP orders are politically tolerable.They were in the first months, but we have had close to nine months to develop nuance. In particular, the continued school closures are beyond exasperating.

If the pressure on health systems becomes so severe that drastic SIP is required, you had better demonstrate it to the public. You had also better demonstrate why it has to be imposed on the public as a whole, rather than those segments that are particularly vulnerable. That's what I mean by nuance. 

Biden is going to be infinitely more Presidential than Trump, but he has certainly not demonstrated the kind of charismatic leadership of an FDR or Kennedy. I hope he is going to be a 'lucky' President (such as Clinton was) and that effective vaccines become widely available ASAP. I don't think that the change of regimen is going to save him if he has to fall back to measures that the public perceives as too drastic, or thoughtlessly imposed - particularly when party figureheads demonstrate their unwillingness to live with the discipline they expect from others.