They actually do make sense if you have a truly novel and contained outbreak.
But that never happens as you are already months behind the curve by the time you identify cases outside the outbreak zone.... as was clear with the plandemic when the stopped China flights in March 2020, despite the fact that convid was already in the US and Canada in October/November 2019...
I worked with health public policymakers for nearly two decades. In open and closed-door meeting rooms with top hospital officials, lawyers, insurers, regulators, practitioners, elected officials. When emergency powers were invoked in early 2020, including the travel ban from China in late January, I knew enough to know everything was wrong about the response. It wasn't following the script, the plans, that had been in place for many years. Decades of commissions, planning, funded by billions of dollars of research and support staff all worked countless hundreds of thousands of hours+ to produce comprehensive responses that protected both collective public safety and the safeguards on western liberal democratic freedoms, individual liberty were tossed in an instant. Elected officials and media helplessly bemoaned that "there was no plan in place, we were caught unprepared," as a political indictment of Pres. Trump, who they loathed more than any pandemic threat. The billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours spent preparing for such a health emergency were a small sacrifice to "get Trump."
But Trump was no innocent victim in this. His China travel ban was the original sin that contradicted all prior pandemic emergency plans, led to the political science response to a medical science emergency. In fact, the original pandemic plans of the WHO and other national and global health concerns explicitly warned against imposing travel bans for pandemic influenza. Stating that they are known to be ineffective, pandemic virus outbreaks are not controlled by restricting human movement. At most they can be effective at slowing the spread in a community for a week or two if detected early enough. By January, 2020 when the travel ban was enacted it was already too late, reviews of data revealed it had already been detected in many places around the world by October, 2019.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans also stated that by imposing travel bans nations are in effect blaming other nations for spreading pandemic influenza, as if it could be controlled once it becomes a part of the environment, sufficiently widespread. It cannot; it becomes a part of the atmospheric ocean of air containing microscopic microbiology and remains that we live and breath in. Familiar with those weather reports of Saharan dust clouds crossing oceans, smoke from California fires darkening the air half a continent away. And that's just the heavy particulates that are visible, the smaller microbiology in air similarly spreads everywhere. It cannot be contained. And much of it remains viable even after crossing entire oceans.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans continued by cautioning that when nation's blame other nations for invisibly causing harms that they do not control, that nation's leaders will resort to blaming their own people for invisibly causing harms that they do not control. Sh!t rolls down hill, they say. Most in power will fear being blamed for not doing anything, resulting in preventable illness and death. So they will clamp down on the behaviors and mobility of their people, resulting in police states that don't respect western liberal democratic values of freedom and individual liberty. Authoritarian regimes emerge, totalitarianism spreads.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans said this. Said exactly this. And our shared lived experience tells us the pre-2020 pandemic plans were right to warn of what would result from issuing travel bans to control pandemic influenza. Trump was wrong. His original sin. That, sadly, he and many others still claim saved millions of lives, even his political opponents now say that's one thing he got right. Wrongly. The right lessons of the pandemic response have not yet been learned.
This is because once those in power got used to their emergency powers they liked the ability to govern by edict, bypassing the democratic processes they found cumbersome, inefficient, obstructionist. They became and many remain drunk on their power. And, sadly, tragically, large percentages of the population like it, too. They feel safer knowing (believing) that a strong hand is acting to protect us from dangers. Including the danger of wrongspeak and wrongthink.
I think you and readers will find it interesting to learn that in early 2020 following Trump's imposition of a travel ban from China that official Chinese CCP-controlled media published many editorials and op-eds pushing back on the travel bans for the same reasons contained in the pre-2020 pandemic emergency plans. That they don't work. That the world should be coming together to deal with the public health emergency together, find solutions, without disrupting normal day-to-day life. China Daily, Global Times, etc, published a steady stream of articles pressing the US to lift the travel ban, resume a cooperative posture instead of blaming them. Many of Trump's political opponents agreed at the time, politicians like Nancy Pelosi went to Chinatown in CA and NY for large events to show solidarity with them, "xenophobia" was shouted at Trump for the bans.
The reasoning in the Chinese publications echoed the WHO's and other pre-2020 pandemic plan warnings about the risk to stated western liberal democratic values of individual liberty. They added that if Washington (Trump) persisted with the travel ban and making the pandemic response political that the world would get to see a comparison of the competing systems, collective authoritarianism, vs. individual liberty responses to emergencies. Betting that a collective authoritarian response would prove to have better results than an individual liberty response. And the CCP-approved editorials and op-eds continued by saying that both systems have pluses and minuses, and that while individual liberty societies are more innovative and creative in ordinary times, that in times of emergencies the people will prefer the "firm hand" of strong leadership to guide and protect them.
And wouldn't you know it, they were right. Not only did the Chinese news sources share that accurate understanding of human psychology and governance, they also said that while they believe their collectivist authoritarian system to be superior to the west's individual liberty-centric system, that the time to change systems isn't in the middle of a crisis, even if a collectivist authoritarian system is found to be preferable that those changes to a governing system are best made over time, in a non-emergency situation. By changing systems in an emergency unnecessary harms are inflicted, division and strife results, worsening a crisis. Basically giving us counsel to "Dance with the one who brung ya" until the emergency passes. They told us the truth. Sometimes adversaries will tell you more uncomfortable truths than friends. Uncomfortable truths that you need to hear. But too few listened.
I've shared many of the Chinese editorials and op-eds on prior Substack discussions, have available if anyone is interested. You can also find them by going through the China Daily and Global Times archives from early 2020 searching keywords like ban, pandemic, authoritarian, covid, etc. And even though China resorted to restricting citizen movement and other measures we consider extreme, going against their own early advice not to, those were still political moves, asserting the authority of the state in an authoritarian society, not medically effective.
Thing is, with all of this information I share being known to officials, both in the US and western liberal democratic nations, and in China, the pandemic response that flew in the face of known epidemiological, virological, sociological and political science could only have been intentional. Which is why the notion of a "plandemic" continues to thrive, with more and more people believing it was all planned every day. Because they knew! And did it anyways.
Collectivist authoritarianism was/is their goal. Western liberal democratic values of freedom and individual liberty are being discarded across the western world. It's no accident or coincidence. And we had better wake up to that unpleasant reality. And address it, counter it, fight to protect our God-given rights that we were all endowed with by our creator.
At first I wrote a reply that got into nuance, higher reasoning. Then I realized I'm dealing with a very simple mind. And will keep it simple instead.
Fauci. Baric. They and other US officials, acting as top US health officials loaded with millions of US dollars and hordes of US research created Wuhan. You can't indict China without indicting the US. The world would be right to say a pox on both our houses if we get into the blame game. No causus belie supports retribution. The US is just as guilty under international law.
TexasBrand, I know your heart and values are in the right place. And we'd find alignment on many important issues. But I seek truth. Even unpleasant ones. If those truths implicate my 'team' then so be it. My loyalty is to truth. Not a team. Not a man. Not even someone who ordinarily allies like you thinks is the Second Coming of Christ. So bless your little heart, Sugar.
Travel bans just shift and prolong the problem - See New Zealand and Australia during Covid. Just allow it to spread and get it done and over with would be the most natural solution.....but hang on...
the modellers will come in and say: The hopitals will be overwhelmed.
Pharma will come in and say: We need time to develop medicine/vaccines.
Scientists will come in and say: We need to understand it first....
Greedy people will come in and say: We need more time and fear to exploit it.....and so on.
A critical mass of people still don't get pissed off enough and will comply, shrugging theri shoulsers. I doubt it will ever change gradually. It will build up more and more and one day it all will explode with terrible consequences for everyone. People are weak and stupid. Evolution will take care of that.
travel bans would make sense if humans were omniscient and omnipotent. and since politicians think the State is god, well, it's no wonder they think such bans make sense.
WHO flopped as well. They were in sync and for a while whatever Trump said seemed to be driving their position (i.e. the opposite of Trump). When Trump's admin expressed concern (Oct 2019) WHO and CDC said "nothing to worry about".
What changed was the 2020 US presidential election. 2017 through 2019 had been very good years for both US and European economies. Most of Asia too. US as a supplier of energy products to the world broke the OPEC+Russia lock on oil. It also cut seriously into their revenue. Especially Russia. No coincidence Putin's "reunification" of Eastern Europe ground to a standstill - he lost both revenue and leverage over W. Europe when US took over as the main supplier. OPEC too saw significant drops, which (along with the Trump admins reaction to genocide in Syria) helped "calm" many bloody conflicts.
Sounds good? Not when you're the power machine and an outsider has crimpled your game. Trump had to go and no means were to drastic. It wasn't just domestic interests - follow the money - Russia and OPEC had a lot to gain by getting rid of the Trump admin's energy and defense policies. The NATO countries that have, for decades, paid little to nothing were being pressured to start pulling some of the weight financially. Same message was sent o the UN - which had relied on the US as the "enforcement" of it's security policies since it's creation - costs covered by the generous US taxpayers. The message under the Trump banner was "pay up suckers" and not popular. And of course, China wasn't too happy with the status quo in 2019 either (despite the massive economic benefit the strong economy in the US was driving for China, incentives to invest in US capacity was looking to threaten their dominance in the future).
Peace and prosperity are not good if you're trying to defeat the incumbent. If you looked at things at the start of 2020, Trump was a lock. Not a chance to unseat The Outsider. US voters don't vote against a strong economy. Not gonna happen, wouldn't be prudent. What to do? Well....
Sometimes the most difficult decisions to make are the ones that require the exhaustive effort, in an acute crisis (under the pressure of time and scrutiny) with a lot of unknowns, to identify and feel certain that "doing nothing" is the ONLY solution....and to be confident you can "sell" it as the only solution not in search of the problem of unintended consequences
Instead he did NOTHING but sell unintended consequences as solutions, because just doing "something" doesn't require the hard work of analyzing options individually and against each other for unintended consequences.
Doing nothing is the easy way out in a situation where doing "nothing" is hard for people to accept as the best solution. It's much easier to make people do "hard" things when they're scared and know "nothing"
The people knew "nothing" because their leaders did not want doing nothing as an option. Its easier to keep them scared vs. having them question if you did the hard work of making sure doing nothing was the benchmark for measuring all other options.
This was the easiest decision all time, and yet they chose to make it incredibly hard, because they will never understand that doing nothing rarely has unintended consequences, but most "solutions" do when unintended consequences are not part of the analysis.
Makes you think the plandemic was the "solution" looking for problems. Maybe unintended consequences were the only solutions worth analyzing after all?
There's nothing to learn folks. THE SCIENCE has all the answers to intentionally create unintended consequences as "solutions" for any "problem" we feel you need. When in doubt of a problem, please consult THE ALMIGHTY CONSENSUS.
They actually do make sense if you have a truly novel and contained outbreak.
But that never happens as you are already months behind the curve by the time you identify cases outside the outbreak zone.... as was clear with the plandemic when the stopped China flights in March 2020, despite the fact that convid was already in the US and Canada in October/November 2019...
I worked with health public policymakers for nearly two decades. In open and closed-door meeting rooms with top hospital officials, lawyers, insurers, regulators, practitioners, elected officials. When emergency powers were invoked in early 2020, including the travel ban from China in late January, I knew enough to know everything was wrong about the response. It wasn't following the script, the plans, that had been in place for many years. Decades of commissions, planning, funded by billions of dollars of research and support staff all worked countless hundreds of thousands of hours+ to produce comprehensive responses that protected both collective public safety and the safeguards on western liberal democratic freedoms, individual liberty were tossed in an instant. Elected officials and media helplessly bemoaned that "there was no plan in place, we were caught unprepared," as a political indictment of Pres. Trump, who they loathed more than any pandemic threat. The billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours spent preparing for such a health emergency were a small sacrifice to "get Trump."
But Trump was no innocent victim in this. His China travel ban was the original sin that contradicted all prior pandemic emergency plans, led to the political science response to a medical science emergency. In fact, the original pandemic plans of the WHO and other national and global health concerns explicitly warned against imposing travel bans for pandemic influenza. Stating that they are known to be ineffective, pandemic virus outbreaks are not controlled by restricting human movement. At most they can be effective at slowing the spread in a community for a week or two if detected early enough. By January, 2020 when the travel ban was enacted it was already too late, reviews of data revealed it had already been detected in many places around the world by October, 2019.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans also stated that by imposing travel bans nations are in effect blaming other nations for spreading pandemic influenza, as if it could be controlled once it becomes a part of the environment, sufficiently widespread. It cannot; it becomes a part of the atmospheric ocean of air containing microscopic microbiology and remains that we live and breath in. Familiar with those weather reports of Saharan dust clouds crossing oceans, smoke from California fires darkening the air half a continent away. And that's just the heavy particulates that are visible, the smaller microbiology in air similarly spreads everywhere. It cannot be contained. And much of it remains viable even after crossing entire oceans.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans continued by cautioning that when nation's blame other nations for invisibly causing harms that they do not control, that nation's leaders will resort to blaming their own people for invisibly causing harms that they do not control. Sh!t rolls down hill, they say. Most in power will fear being blamed for not doing anything, resulting in preventable illness and death. So they will clamp down on the behaviors and mobility of their people, resulting in police states that don't respect western liberal democratic values of freedom and individual liberty. Authoritarian regimes emerge, totalitarianism spreads.
The pre-2020 pandemic plans said this. Said exactly this. And our shared lived experience tells us the pre-2020 pandemic plans were right to warn of what would result from issuing travel bans to control pandemic influenza. Trump was wrong. His original sin. That, sadly, he and many others still claim saved millions of lives, even his political opponents now say that's one thing he got right. Wrongly. The right lessons of the pandemic response have not yet been learned.
This is because once those in power got used to their emergency powers they liked the ability to govern by edict, bypassing the democratic processes they found cumbersome, inefficient, obstructionist. They became and many remain drunk on their power. And, sadly, tragically, large percentages of the population like it, too. They feel safer knowing (believing) that a strong hand is acting to protect us from dangers. Including the danger of wrongspeak and wrongthink.
I think you and readers will find it interesting to learn that in early 2020 following Trump's imposition of a travel ban from China that official Chinese CCP-controlled media published many editorials and op-eds pushing back on the travel bans for the same reasons contained in the pre-2020 pandemic emergency plans. That they don't work. That the world should be coming together to deal with the public health emergency together, find solutions, without disrupting normal day-to-day life. China Daily, Global Times, etc, published a steady stream of articles pressing the US to lift the travel ban, resume a cooperative posture instead of blaming them. Many of Trump's political opponents agreed at the time, politicians like Nancy Pelosi went to Chinatown in CA and NY for large events to show solidarity with them, "xenophobia" was shouted at Trump for the bans.
The reasoning in the Chinese publications echoed the WHO's and other pre-2020 pandemic plan warnings about the risk to stated western liberal democratic values of individual liberty. They added that if Washington (Trump) persisted with the travel ban and making the pandemic response political that the world would get to see a comparison of the competing systems, collective authoritarianism, vs. individual liberty responses to emergencies. Betting that a collective authoritarian response would prove to have better results than an individual liberty response. And the CCP-approved editorials and op-eds continued by saying that both systems have pluses and minuses, and that while individual liberty societies are more innovative and creative in ordinary times, that in times of emergencies the people will prefer the "firm hand" of strong leadership to guide and protect them.
And wouldn't you know it, they were right. Not only did the Chinese news sources share that accurate understanding of human psychology and governance, they also said that while they believe their collectivist authoritarian system to be superior to the west's individual liberty-centric system, that the time to change systems isn't in the middle of a crisis, even if a collectivist authoritarian system is found to be preferable that those changes to a governing system are best made over time, in a non-emergency situation. By changing systems in an emergency unnecessary harms are inflicted, division and strife results, worsening a crisis. Basically giving us counsel to "Dance with the one who brung ya" until the emergency passes. They told us the truth. Sometimes adversaries will tell you more uncomfortable truths than friends. Uncomfortable truths that you need to hear. But too few listened.
I've shared many of the Chinese editorials and op-eds on prior Substack discussions, have available if anyone is interested. You can also find them by going through the China Daily and Global Times archives from early 2020 searching keywords like ban, pandemic, authoritarian, covid, etc. And even though China resorted to restricting citizen movement and other measures we consider extreme, going against their own early advice not to, those were still political moves, asserting the authority of the state in an authoritarian society, not medically effective.
Thing is, with all of this information I share being known to officials, both in the US and western liberal democratic nations, and in China, the pandemic response that flew in the face of known epidemiological, virological, sociological and political science could only have been intentional. Which is why the notion of a "plandemic" continues to thrive, with more and more people believing it was all planned every day. Because they knew! And did it anyways.
Collectivist authoritarianism was/is their goal. Western liberal democratic values of freedom and individual liberty are being discarded across the western world. It's no accident or coincidence. And we had better wake up to that unpleasant reality. And address it, counter it, fight to protect our God-given rights that we were all endowed with by our creator.
Nice defense of CCP!!!
CCP is developing bio-weapons & had a chance to test one even if it was accidental.
Geniuses like you didn’t implement the fine plan to save America.
Don’t throw Trump under bus for that.
Our health experts like you gave him terrific advice . . . Not!!!
At first I wrote a reply that got into nuance, higher reasoning. Then I realized I'm dealing with a very simple mind. And will keep it simple instead.
Fauci. Baric. They and other US officials, acting as top US health officials loaded with millions of US dollars and hordes of US research created Wuhan. You can't indict China without indicting the US. The world would be right to say a pox on both our houses if we get into the blame game. No causus belie supports retribution. The US is just as guilty under international law.
TexasBrand, I know your heart and values are in the right place. And we'd find alignment on many important issues. But I seek truth. Even unpleasant ones. If those truths implicate my 'team' then so be it. My loyalty is to truth. Not a team. Not a man. Not even someone who ordinarily allies like you thinks is the Second Coming of Christ. So bless your little heart, Sugar.
Anyone with half a brain knew not to trust the "health experts." Trump is either a con or he got completely rolled. Either scenario is not good.
Travel bans just shift and prolong the problem - See New Zealand and Australia during Covid. Just allow it to spread and get it done and over with would be the most natural solution.....but hang on...
the modellers will come in and say: The hopitals will be overwhelmed.
Pharma will come in and say: We need time to develop medicine/vaccines.
Scientists will come in and say: We need to understand it first....
Greedy people will come in and say: We need more time and fear to exploit it.....and so on.
A critical mass of people still don't get pissed off enough and will comply, shrugging theri shoulsers. I doubt it will ever change gradually. It will build up more and more and one day it all will explode with terrible consequences for everyone. People are weak and stupid. Evolution will take care of that.
travel bans would make sense if humans were omniscient and omnipotent. and since politicians think the State is god, well, it's no wonder they think such bans make sense.
WHO flopped as well. They were in sync and for a while whatever Trump said seemed to be driving their position (i.e. the opposite of Trump). When Trump's admin expressed concern (Oct 2019) WHO and CDC said "nothing to worry about".
What changed was the 2020 US presidential election. 2017 through 2019 had been very good years for both US and European economies. Most of Asia too. US as a supplier of energy products to the world broke the OPEC+Russia lock on oil. It also cut seriously into their revenue. Especially Russia. No coincidence Putin's "reunification" of Eastern Europe ground to a standstill - he lost both revenue and leverage over W. Europe when US took over as the main supplier. OPEC too saw significant drops, which (along with the Trump admins reaction to genocide in Syria) helped "calm" many bloody conflicts.
Sounds good? Not when you're the power machine and an outsider has crimpled your game. Trump had to go and no means were to drastic. It wasn't just domestic interests - follow the money - Russia and OPEC had a lot to gain by getting rid of the Trump admin's energy and defense policies. The NATO countries that have, for decades, paid little to nothing were being pressured to start pulling some of the weight financially. Same message was sent o the UN - which had relied on the US as the "enforcement" of it's security policies since it's creation - costs covered by the generous US taxpayers. The message under the Trump banner was "pay up suckers" and not popular. And of course, China wasn't too happy with the status quo in 2019 either (despite the massive economic benefit the strong economy in the US was driving for China, incentives to invest in US capacity was looking to threaten their dominance in the future).
Peace and prosperity are not good if you're trying to defeat the incumbent. If you looked at things at the start of 2020, Trump was a lock. Not a chance to unseat The Outsider. US voters don't vote against a strong economy. Not gonna happen, wouldn't be prudent. What to do? Well....
Same in Canada early in 2020. Gee, you think there was a coordinated plan?
He also said it takes years to develop a vaccine, and then poof here it was!
Yes, on that topic Fauchi was speaking the truth, then he wasn’t! 🤪
That’s how he earn the name Flip-flop Fauci
Oh, that and let's see, masks don't work -- oh my, yes masks do work -- lockdowns, social distancing, blah blah blah.
😁
Sometimes the most difficult decisions to make are the ones that require the exhaustive effort, in an acute crisis (under the pressure of time and scrutiny) with a lot of unknowns, to identify and feel certain that "doing nothing" is the ONLY solution....and to be confident you can "sell" it as the only solution not in search of the problem of unintended consequences
Instead he did NOTHING but sell unintended consequences as solutions, because just doing "something" doesn't require the hard work of analyzing options individually and against each other for unintended consequences.
Doing nothing is the easy way out in a situation where doing "nothing" is hard for people to accept as the best solution. It's much easier to make people do "hard" things when they're scared and know "nothing"
The people knew "nothing" because their leaders did not want doing nothing as an option. Its easier to keep them scared vs. having them question if you did the hard work of making sure doing nothing was the benchmark for measuring all other options.
This was the easiest decision all time, and yet they chose to make it incredibly hard, because they will never understand that doing nothing rarely has unintended consequences, but most "solutions" do when unintended consequences are not part of the analysis.
Makes you think the plandemic was the "solution" looking for problems. Maybe unintended consequences were the only solutions worth analyzing after all?
There's nothing to learn folks. THE SCIENCE has all the answers to intentionally create unintended consequences as "solutions" for any "problem" we feel you need. When in doubt of a problem, please consult THE ALMIGHTY CONSENSUS.
Easy call. Hard times ahead.