I don't think the public at large needs to be spending bandwidth at this moment talking about this.
What I think they need to be doing is seeing Trump Lied People Died bumperstickers on cars.
1: Is there such a bumper sticker? My state is going to go blue anyway, but I'd love to get one of those. Preferably a magnet style one (if my car's not all plastic) so that I can remove it easily.
I drive badly enough that I'm unwilling to get a sticker for a cause I support.
https://www.teepublic.com/magnets/trump-lied-people-died
But my car is mostly parked so I don't drive often enough to warrant getting one for causes I don't support.
1: I don't know, I'd bet that Woodward is a lot more susceptible to shame than Trump, and I think he behaved horribly in order to sell more books.
What are the chances it ever occurred to him to behave any other way?
This criticism of Woodward is entirely besides the point. This story contributes almost nothing to our understanding of coronavirus or Trump. Did anyone -- Trump supporters or detractors -- fail to understand the president's relationship with factuality? No.
What this does, though, is it gives the media a hook to blame their own malfeasance on Trump. When Trump was lying about the virus, the correct information was nonetheless readily available. The media chose not to provide it, on the grounds that they are required to present the president as a credible source of fact. Only now, when the president himself has acknowledged that he is not such a source, can the media admit it too -- but only because the president said it, and his statements must be treated as credible.
Woodward did resolve a tertiary issue. Regarding coronavirus, was Trump senile or dishonest? Now we know it's mostly dishonest. But those were always the only two choices, and the media's collaboration with Trump to mislead the public was always the scandal here.
8: I did kind of wonder how much he knew and how much he was deluding himself. The consequences are no different, but he does seem more culpable when he is able to articulate his understanding so well. Is Trump criminally stupid or evil? These tapes make me think he's actively evil as opposed to negligently self absorbed in a way that I didn't before.
I don't think it's obvious that Woodward should have released the audio at the time -- it seems like a genuinely difficult question.
Knowing how things turned out (that masks and restrictions on businesses turned into culture war issues, that almost all Republicans* ended up consolidating around the position of, "everything the liberals say is wrong.") but I don't know if that was inevitable in March/April, and I don't know that having the Trump audio released would have made him more careful or if he would have doubled down.
But, there is a chance that it would have made a difference, and it's worth asking the question.
* I think of Mike DeWine as an exception. A conservative Republican Governor who took early action to respond to the pandemic. I'm sure there are others.
Did anyone -- Trump supporters or detractors -- fail to understand the president's relationship with factuality? No.
YES! I am genuinely surprised by this:
"You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed," Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. "And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus."
"This is deadly stuff," the president repeated for emphasis.
At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than a seasonal flu, predicting it would soon disappear and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control. It would be several weeks before he would publicly acknowledge that the virus was no ordinary flu and that it could be transmitted through the air.
I've been saying for the past four years that he's only got one modality, and if he's lying then he's never admitting a different reality. Ie that he's always pandering to himself/his base, and has no other mode, regardless of who is present. This is literally duplicity that I didn't think he had the capacity for.
"Don't cause a panic" was definitely advice public figures were getting with respect to providing information Covid-19 at that around that time period. As someone who was doing the work of trying to get people to understand they needed to panic a bit more, it was very frustrating to bump up against that.
So I don't think "we don't want to cause panic" shows Trump was particularly lucid with respect to his reasoning in making a choice to downplay the virus, just that he'd latched on to it as a justification for why he shouldn't have to do things he didn't want to do. His instinct would have been to downplay it regardless, so if "not causing panic" hadn't been an available reason he would have picked another one.
Spike- Yes that is right. I don't understand why it hasn't sunk in with basically anyone that thinking of Trump as a highly skilled professional predicts his statement pretty well. Once you understand he is always on as a con-artist, and that anyone listening is a mark, things make much more sense.
11 is correct. I am also surprised. In plenty of discussions with people I pointed out that we had to use intelligence in the early stages rather than what China was actually saying to discern the seriousness of the disease, and we had the luxury of an established epidemic intelligence program and experts who could judge based on past outbreaks instead of taking the China (and WHO, which was limited to taking China at face value) at face value. Apparently we also had straightforward information from our leader's friend, Xi Jinping, which was also ignored.
Knowing how things turned out (that masks and restrictions on businesses turned into culture war issues, that almost all Republicans* ended up consolidating around the position of, "everything the liberals say is wrong.") but I don't know if that was inevitable in March/April, and I don't know that having the Trump audio released would have made him more careful or if he would have doubled down.
Democrats have also consolidated around the position of "everything the Trump administration says is wrong". I keep wanting to post this on Facebook, but not being a parent or teacher it's not really my place -- but the idea of going back to school, particularly elementary school, is NOT crazy, the results are not all doom and gloom from places that have done it, and I think with even a normal Republican president people would be getting this message. As it is, whether children are in school is pretty much 1:1 correlated to whether their parents are Republicans, not with anything related to disease prevalence. Just because the people ordering us to go back to school are notorious liars who don't care if we live or die as long as the stock market goes up, doesn't mean the opposite of everything they say is the truth. They would be pushing the same message no matter what the conditions are. Their BS CAN be ignored, not treated like a calculated campaign to trick people into getting sick.
14: I think it depends on the prevalence where you are. Obviously, I'm not an epidemiologist or particularly numerate, but Sanjay Gupta in Georgia was keeping his kids home whereas Ashish Jha in MA was sending his back.
I think elementary schools should be open in more places. Probably high schools too.
And closed in some of the places they're open now.
14: I don't think it's crazy to go back to elementary school, on the assumption that community transmission is low, testing is regular, and there are procedures in place for informing parents if an outbreak has happened. I live in a place where community transmission might be low, but we don't know because our testing is not great, our positivity rate is about 10%, and the school's plan for informing parents is that if a child has a positive test, the health department will notify the parents of the children who are known to be within six feet of the child (presumably by pulling seating charts.) There is no plan for distancing at our local elementary school.
But all that aside - under what circumstances would you take an asymptomatic child to get a COVID test?
Oh, you wouldn't?
So... we'll know if its spreading in schools when faculty or staff get sick, or when the odd kid gets sick enough to warrant a test. If it turns out that little kids spread the virus, then it will be everywhere by the time we know its spreading. And that's the point where we said, fuck it, we have flexible jobs, we can enroll him in the district's online option and re-evaluate in nine weeks; they can run the natural experiment without our kid.
You're right that my decision does track "not trusting Republicans" but here's the thing, they run the state and they're doing a bad job at testing.
11 & 12 are both correct.
I was surprised that there would be this large a disconnect between what Trump was saying in private and saying in public -- though it is consistent with the fact that Trump is a germaphobe (which, oddly, hasn't come up much during the pandemic).
Is it more surprising than the Vanity Fair story that there was almost a plan for a serious testing program which got killed (in part) because most of the early outbreaks were in blue states? That also felt like "the new normal of 2020" when the story broke, but I'd argue that should be more shocking.
Never live in a state controlled by Republicans is one of the lessons I learned this plague. My experience and that of my siblings is very different.
Kids do spread the virus.
We can, and should, responsibly open schools when community transmission is low, mask compliance is high, ventilation is excellent, and the capacity for testing, tracing, and isolation is available.
Let me know when you find literally anywhere in the continental United States that qualifies.
Posts like 22 need to weigh these risks against problems caused by schools not being open, and look at what happens in places where schools are open. The capacity for testing, tracing and isolation is not available anywhere because only the federal government can pay for it and they don't care. The other things are possible. Given that, weigh the risks.
18 and 24 are trying to cover all the bases. (Barry had it first in a different thread, I think.)
Democrats have also consolidated around the position of "everything the Trump administration says is wrong". I keep wanting to post this on Facebook, but not being a parent or teacher it's not really my place -- but the idea of going back to school, particularly elementary school, is NOT crazy, the results are not all doom and gloom from places that have done it, and I think with even a normal Republican president people would be getting this message.
I'm very confused by this. For starters, the phrase "normal Republican President" is baffling. Normal like GWB, like McConnell, or like the Republican governors of VT, WY, or AK, three of the four states with the lowest death rates per capita? A normal Republican is deeply abnormal. But beyond that, if we imagine a current Republican president significantly different from Trump, are we imagining the coronavirus being so pervasive to begin with? Most countries have handled it much better than ours. With which of these assumptions would you expect Democrats to oppose absolutely everything the administration does?
It's not just that Trump knew the truth, but decided to lie to the public. It's that Trump knew the truth, lied to the public, and told Bob Woodward the truth that he was lying to the public.
That's a tangled web!
25 Yup, in the latest check in thread. But can't be said enough. *deep sigh*
23 isn't unfair, exactly, but we're talking about a world in which school administrations in multiple municipalities think an adequate way to comply with public health recommendations to avoid being with 6' of other people for more than 15 minutes (both specific values that are unsubstantiated by research, as it turns out) is for the children to move around every 14 minutes. Checkmate, virus.
This sophistry is replicated at every level of governance. Not in all places, of course; there are reasonable and responsible places making good choices in the face of bad circumstances, but by and large.... oof.
I'm not even sure what my point is, other than the inchoate frustration that we have the resources and the tools to rise to this acute challenge and we are shitting the bed.
8 was intended to be responsive to an argument that probably isn't being made here. I just saw that argument stated succinctly on Twitter:
Woodward didn't just sit on the news that Trump knew better than what he was telling the public. Woodward watched Trump peddle damaging, deliberate disinformation to the American people--disinformation that has resulted in a large part of the public making lethal health choices.
Substitute "The media" for "Woodward" and "bullshit" for "disinformation," and it's equally true. Woodward's culpability -- separate from the media's culpability -- is microscopic. And the distinction here between "bullshitting" and "deliberate disinformation" is, for all practical purposes, nonexistent.
I do think (and said in 8.3 and agree with 9) that we learned something here about Trump that has some relevance at the margins.
18. I wonder what Rigg made of the fact that everybody identified her with a low budget TV series made over fifty years ago when she was in her twenties.
Her 1995 Mother Courage at the National Theatre was universally acclaimed, and her Medea the previous year was also highly thought of...
31: Yes, just read the NYT obituary and she had an amazing career.
She suggested in the 1970s that "it would have been death to have been labeled forever by that one TV series,"
She was a lot of fun on Game of Thrones.
No spoilers. I haven't seen it yet and I'm hoping Dany does well.
32.last:
Ms. Rigg fought back at critics in general by compiling similarly unkind criticism in a 1983 book, "No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews." Its reassuring examples included a comparison, by the Australian broadcaster Clive James, of Laurence Olivier's Shylock to the cartoon character Scrooge McDuck.
Tell me there's an entire Donald Duck production of "The Merchant of Venice" out there... you may lie if needed.
If 34 were someone else, I'd be worried.
35: There is! Huey, Dewey and Louie are awesome as Portia.
35: The quote that struck me was
John Simon of New York magazine, who was notorious for criticizing actors' looks and described her as "built like a brick mausoleum with insufficient flying buttresses."
Can someone illustrate that for me?
I would interpret that as Simon saying that her breasts were large but insufficiently perky for his tastes, and I think it could probably have been left out of her obituary.
Woodward has been a piece of shit for my adult lifetime, but it's not like he was withholding anything we didn't already know about Trump, and it's probably more politically damaging now than it would have been in the spring.
Morticians face a standard series of questions to help with the drafting.
39: It certainly didn't need to be there, but someone thought it was important that people remember what a shithead John Simon was.
Yeah, if I were writing the obituary of an actress with a long and distinguished career, I wouldn't think including the time someone had made an unpleasantly derogatory joke about her imperfect body was worth it, even if the idea was to show that the guy who made the joke was a twerp.
it's probably more politically damaging now
I think that's right. It's the media's opportunity to point a finger for a fuckup that they collaborated in, and they are all over it.
My guess is that if this had come out in February, it would have been forgotten in February, and nothing would have changed, policy-wise. In the moment, Trump would have, in so many words, conveyed that he was lying to Woodward. Or softened the message by saying that he didn't want people to panic because there was nothing to panic about. And the media would have reported both sides.
It is almost certainly true that it wouldn't have changed anything back in February, other than the shape of the messaging. Maybe on the margin a few people would have made different choices and not been infected?
It is also surely true that politically it is more damaging now. If absolutely nothing else, it keeps them on the defensive.
Woodward is of course still a piece of crap - sharing warnings about danger is about the lowest bar you can set for existing as a moral being, and he fails. But I'm not sure it makes any material difference.
I suppose you all are right. Still - going out on a limb here - I don't think Trump should have lied in the first place.
46: It was either that or silence and he can't do silence any better than he can do truth.
I can't even describe how angry I am at Woodward and his ilk. The number of people who were trying to make life-altering decisions under enormous pressure last spring, and the ways in which those decisions might have been shifted if they had known what the President -- theoretically the person with the best access to information in the entire world knew, or at least said -- is so gigantic as to dwarf understanding.
I have always loathed access journalism and this situation is the cherry on top of the sundae of reasons why.
Here's a disability advocate I respect deeply explaining why the delay mattered for his work.
Here's a Latina journalist pointing out that Woodward's decision disproportionately cost Black and Brown people their lives.
And here is a blistering thread from a public health advocate (who survived the AIDS era) on why Woodward and the media surrounding him would have made a different decision if it had been a foreign terrorist group rather than the President of the United States.
I don't give a hoot what kind of difference releasing this info in March would have made to Trump's reelection changes. Probably not a whit. Who cares. I care DEEPLY about how it might have helped save the lives of 190,000 people and counting. More if you count the global leaders who (still!!) take their cues from the US.
My rage toward elite journalists, let me show you it.
Entirely endorse 48. Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. Not that I have anything against harlots, because most of them aren't actually interested in power. But irresponsible journalism isn't one of those things where you can just shrug and move on. As Witt says, it kills people.
OK, yes, I think an earlier revelation of the tape probably would have had an impact -- the flap of a butterfly's wings, at least -- on how the other access journalists would have related to Trump in the various press availabilities. I have no idea whether those subtle shifts would have changed his actual behavior, or that of Kushner. I doubt it: Trump would have said what he's saying now, which I don't think is going to save any lives, and his message of not wanting to spread panic would have worked better before he spent the summer trying to spread panic of a different sort. Woodward says he didn't learn that Trump had gotten actual information from a classified briefing -- so his musings weren't just bullshit -- until May. I don't think that excuses him.
I'm no fan of the NYT, but Greenhouse today on Al Hela was as good a use of the platform as I've seen in a long time. I've never bought the line that judges crave her approval and rule in ways designed to get it, but I think it's fair to say that her views reflect those of a decent elite. And when you're dealing with an electorate of 13 (I think?), elites all, it's a useful means of communicating.
Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
Oh, so unfair to harlots. It's aristocrats who have power and impunity. We just aren't allowed to criticize them, so all the anger gets directed at the occasional hanger-on who uses aristocratic power by proxy.
[It's 12. Griffith didn't just take senior status, but is fully retired.]
I have no idea whether those subtle shifts would have changed his actual behavior, or that of Kushner. I doubt it
Just to be clear, I'm not in any way arguing that releasing the info sooner would have changed Trump's behavior or frankly anyone in the WH. I'm arguing that it would have changed the behavior of (some of) a few thousand crucially-placed state and local public health officials, governors, mayors, education officials, healthcare advocates, and philanthropists.
We don't know how exactly it would have changed their behavior. We can't predict the all of the ways in which their different behavior might have triggered different outcomes, whether good or bad, in the pandemic.
We can -- at least, I can -- say with confidence that if the most powerful person in the world were known to have said that to a journalist, SOME people would have acted more cautiously as a result. And some of that increased caution would have saved lives.
Once we finally get the analogy thing under control around here, the next step needs to be a ban on counterfactuals.
The same guy who said, at one point, that he knew it was a pandemic before WHO said it was a pandemic? Who was a war president until he decided to surrender? He's all over the map. All of the people who get a frisson from his insouciance would have done the same when he walked this back.
OK, I'll take the counterfactual ban, and drop out of this one.
It's all hands on deck to defeat fascism. IMO, we can look to find ways to deal with the collaborators after defeating the main enemy.
The counterfactual ban is honored in the breach -- just like the analogy ban.
That is to say, that's exactly what the counterfactual ban would have been like, had we enacted it.
55: So, I'm really terrible at the kinds of things you need to do to help with that, and I live in a blue state. What can I do? Massholes going to NH isn't necessarily helpful to Biden.
57 I don't know these people, but have heard good things: https://sisterdistrict.com/volunteer-activities/
I think Trump's bragging at having protected the Saudis from consequences for the murder of Khashoggi is worse than the Covid thing.
It's all hands on deck to defeat fascism. IMO, we can look to find ways to deal with the collaborators after defeating the main enemy.
No argument here!
Written with a sharpie, perhaps?
Like the Time man of the year award.
Endorse Witt's 48 and 53. Utterly craven and mercenary behavior by Woodward here.
I have no idea why I'm blocked by that disability advocate.
Posts like 22 need to weigh these risks against problems caused by schools not being open
Not that those risks aren't real, but I am friends with *lots* of teachers here, and something close to 1/3 of them would have quit. There is not a ready pool of replacement teachers.
Schools don't need to reopen. Childcare pods, paid for by the federal government, need to open up and be free and widely available.
Teachers provide content and instruction online. Pairs of 20-somethings help 4-8 kids from 2-3 families navigate their online classes. Locations held at all malls, conference halls, activity centers, office parks, etc that are sitting empty right now.
The thing is, a country capable of pulling off that shift to pods would also be capable of keeping COVID rates low enough to safely open elementary schools. Unfortunately, the country we live in (non-New England division) is capable of neither.
I've had this very weird thought:
Mostly it is conservative people attending schools, putting their kids in dance class and gymnastics, going to the restaurants. Everything must be pleasantly at half-capacity for them, the tragedy-of-the-commons-assholes that they are.
Eventually when there's a vaccine, they're going to be so annoyed at all the liberal people who come out of hiding and repopulate the business and restaurants that have been empty for so long. The conservatives are going to be so miffed and feel so put out and aggrieved.
This isn't giving me any schaudenfreude. It just makes me angrier at them. But I do think they'll be put out and butthurt when everyone comes out of hiding, in the future.
From what I see, mostly from a distance, it's young adults who are out. The local case numbers bear this out. I don't think it's mostly the conservative ones.
68: I bet you're right -- and they'll claim that only their steady patronage kept things alive. They won't see or acknowledge all of the people who got take out.
There's a related thing going on with my wife's store. Because so many of our favorite customers are also science-believing, she doesn't see them much anymore. They don't come in to hang out and discuss recent releases, or browse the shelves seeking something new-- but the people who don't take Covid seriously do. They still act like it's a year ago, and too often have to be corrected about masks -- despite the last 5 solid months of experience.
Seeing only the deniers, while not getting to see friends and favorites, is a challenge to motivation.
Most of the restaurants here are still only take out and some are just closed still. The only open ones that I know about have outdoor seating. I suspect it's different in the suburbs, but I really don't go anywhere.
66 and 67: In England the government was advising against children wearing masks, saying that it was harmful to the educational experience, although many head teachers were revolting. But in Scotland they were going to be required for high school students as of 8/31. Scotland looks like a more civilized place. If I were Scottish and faced with an independence referendum in a post Brexit, post COVID world, I think I'd be inclined to leave the UK. At the last referendum, I was glad to see the Referendum fail. It really feels like a different world now.
I follow SNP political twitter, because it's the only political twitter that's not totally depressing. Independence has been leading in the polls this year for the first time in a long time. If independence had passed and not been a disaster there's a non-zero chance I would have tried to move there last year.