here comes the next round of pandemic scare story

because it's the low energy political path

in case any of you were operating under the assumption that our politicians had learned anything at all about epidemiology from the outlandish debacle of the last 3 years, please allow me to assure you: they have not.

they sill believe in campfire ghost stories and superstitious absurdities as solutions.

but they may have learned some potent lessons on politics, and that should worry you. deeply.

anyone who actually still believes that:

1. china can be trusted on disease data

2. travel bans stop the spread of respiratory viruses

3. that even if they did, that you could impose them in time and before spread had gone wide

4. that politicians should have these sorts of powers to intrude upon and delimit our lives, livelihoods, and liberty every time the news scares them and they wet their pants or they want to play “scare story” for some political end or other

should be excluded from serious discussion about epidemiology and/or and sort of leadership role.

they are, at best, fools, and at worst, sociopaths.

fool is always possible, but this is one of those awful political gotchas too. consider the game from the rubio and co angle: it’s a no lose powerplay for political gain.

• if biden does nothing and nothing happens, this all gets forgotten.

• if he does something and nothing happens, you take credit and say you saved us.

• if he does something and bad things happen, you claim he should have listened sooner acted more assertively.

• but if he does nothing and bad things happen, it’s political dynamite and you attack him savagely.

the fact that this travel ban policy is worthless and can and will have zero effect is incidental. politicians don’t care. they do not inhabit reality, they inhabit the gotchaball universe of “seeming” so this is a potent powerplay.

it’s no lose and high potential gain. it’s a clear dominating strategy and a great way to carry water for team trump who loves this stuff. i wonder if donnie will add his support. worse, i wonder if joe will see the game matrix here and realize that “doing nothing” has a really high risk problem for him and feel forced to act to protect himself?

this is a bad place to be.

it’s nasty, needless risk and fear piled on we the people.

and that’s what’s going to be done to us, over and over.

it will remain the dominant strategy until we change the game and (until we can take away this power altogether) there is only one way to do that: we need to call it out, loudly.

we need to start making chicken little pay for claiming the sky is falling and being wrong.

we need little boys who cry wolf to get in trouble and lose position and power and trust for suggesting absurd precautions for problems that never emerge.

there needs to be a MASSIVE price for fear mongering.

it needs to ruin reputations and careers.

do not forget the names of those who do this.

do not forgive partisan politics and wet pants terror masquerading as “safety” or “leadership.”

the precautionary principle warns first and foremost against itself.

do NOT get fooled again.

foreground the fools and pin to them their foolishness instead.

“how does it feel to have harmed so many people for you own political gain, mr little?” “why should anyone ever listen to you again?”