zlacker

Trump didn't exactly follow Fauci's advice, so it's odd that you'd blame Fauci's "method of approaching pandemics" for "this mess."

Was there some other, better, established method?

>>GavinM+(OP)
I meant Fauci at al.’s approach of proactively looking for the next pandemic via sample collection and lab engineering of new variants which predates the trump administration. By all appearances Faucis performance during the pandemic is nothing to be questioned. These are different topics.

>>ramraj+81
Thanks for clarifying

>>GavinM+(OP)
> Was there some other, better, established method?

We may learn from Taiwan*.

Quote: "Extensive public health infrastructure established in Taiwan pre-COVID-19 enabled a fast coordinated response, particularly in the domains of early screening, effective methods for isolation/quarantine, digital technologies for identifying potential cases and mass mask use."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...

>>hbosch+9b
In the US at least, given our culture of individualism/“freedom” we would never be able to replicate Taiwan. Isolation/Quarantine seem to have dubious political and legal support. Mask wearing is also seen negatively.

>>hbosch+9b
It's really obvious at this point that Taiwan got lucky and that the geographical luck of not being close to Europe or having lots of visitors from there helped a lot. The moment Covid-19 actually got a foothold in the country they really started struggling and their testing for it collapsed under the load - and this was in May 2021, when we knew a lot more about Covid and tests for it were a commodity item produced in massive numbers. Western Europe and the USA hit this point in March 2020 with much less information available about the disease, no treatment options, and far less production capacity for Covid tests. (Probably due to all the people travelling there from a country that was reporting zero cases whilst a substantial proportion of their population was infected. Something seems to have gone seriously wrong in Italy that's been almost entirely ignored by the media, maybe because it's lead by the kind of boring technocrat they like.)

Unfortunately, all the media reporting on which countries have succeeded or failed and why seems to have been incredibly inaccurate and blatantly partisan.

>>ramraj+81
Indeed, Obama created a literal "Pandemic response team" and setup some useful stockpiles of materials that would be needed.

Trump threw it all away very early on.