I wonder how much of it is just playing the odds. Shutting everything down will very likely have a large, but fixed consequence on the economy, which has huge cost, including in lives and health. Whereas biding your time increases the relatively small risk of catastrophic consequences from coronavirus, but avoids the economic consequences. So it comes down to a choice between accepting a known downside, or taking a gamble on a path with the possibility of very little downside, but also much larger worst-case downside. Leaving the expected values of the choices aside, maybe Boris just likes to roll the dice?
There are other considerations, like how well the president/prime minister’s incentives are aligned with the countries. Donald Trump, through very little fault of his own[1], faces the possibility of a failed presidency due to the economic consequences of shutdown. If possible, a president might think it worth swinging for the fences, if he is down a couple of runs in the ninth? If he strikes out, he is no worse than before, although the country is. And Boris has kinda made himself out to be a guy who tries for home runs, at least in his public persona.
There is also the game theoretic considerations on the country level. If all the other countries are doing everything to stop the spread and paying the economic cost, than U.K. can take the benefit of that sacrifice, and not crash it’s own economy.
[1] of course he is doing his best to compound the external factors.
All of this ignores the moral aspect of sacrificing human lives at the feet of the economy. And, to be fair, it's totally plausible that said leaders are themselves ignoring the moral aspect. But it does matter when we judge them on the actions they decided to take (or not take).
Get out of here with this. We had expert teams and processes in place to combat the possibility of this exact thing and his administration fired them without any replacement.
The virus existing is not his fault, but nearly all of the national consequences rest directly at his feet.
I worded it that way because I think that even if he had done everything right, his re-election would still be in trouble because of factors outside of his control.
The job is literally to be prepared for the future on behalf of the country. If you take active steps that make us less prepared for something and we therefore suffer greater consequences when it happens, I have a really hard time describing that as being something outside of your control.
Under normal circumstances, an exigent crisis such as war would make a President significantly more likely to be re-elected. He tried to start a war with Iran not long ago for this very reason.
If you want to argue about Trump, please find someone else to do it with (or somewhere else to do it).
My comment was not about Trump's response, and I regret even including mention of him, since that one offhand comment has generated uninteresting political arguments, without anybody engaging with what I was actually writing about.
>Get out of here with this. We had expert teams and processes in place to combat the possibility of this exact thing and his administration fired them without any replacement.
Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading only that, or the Twitter thread (!) the piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired.
Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Posthttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
>No, he only proposed cutting the CDC budget. Luckily, saner minds prevailed.
Presidents do not pass the budget; Congress does, under the Constitution. The annual President-proposed budget is just that, a starting point from which to negotiate from. Both the House (currently controlled by Democrats) and Senate (Republicans) have to pass it.
If you criticize the president for starting out with a proposal for cutting the CDC budget (and for most other agencies), why not also praise him for signing the final budget that raised its budget?
There are other considerations, like how well the president/prime minister’s incentives are aligned with the countries. Donald Trump, through very little fault of his own[1], faces the possibility of a failed presidency due to the economic consequences of shutdown. If possible, a president might think it worth swinging for the fences, if he is down a couple of runs in the ninth? If he strikes out, he is no worse than before, although the country is. And Boris has kinda made himself out to be a guy who tries for home runs, at least in his public persona.
There is also the game theoretic considerations on the country level. If all the other countries are doing everything to stop the spread and paying the economic cost, than U.K. can take the benefit of that sacrifice, and not crash it’s own economy.
[1] of course he is doing his best to compound the external factors.