I have spent much of the past fifty years trying to help the United States benefit from a sound, mutually advantageous relationship with China. I wish both countries well, but I confess I remain primarily concerned about my own country and its future. The sharp deterioration in Sino-American relations is, unfortunately, part of a larger process of American estrangement from the world beyond our country’s borders. Frankly, I’m alarmed by this.

But I’ve been asked to speak about US-China relations, not self-destructive American protectionism and xenophobia directed at countries other than China.

Obviously, American frustration with China is not new, but the way in which it now expresses itself is unprecedented. It was the United States, not China that launched a trade war and sought to shut down investment and suppress technology exports and exchange. The Trump administration has carried out a vituperative campaign against Huawei and the Belt and Road Initiative. Prominent American politicians have begun a holy war to close Confucius Institutes and to stigmatize Chinese students in American universities as “spies.” Meanwhile, Washington has escalated naval patrols in China’s near seas that Chinese find disrespectful and provocative. Most ominously, the Trump administration has chipped away at the US-China understandings that have kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait. And now China has become the coronavirus scapegoat of choice for the Republican Party in this year’s election campaigns.

China’s responses to American hostility were initially restrained. But Beijing is now responding in kind. This is very unwise. China’s loss of self-restraint and self-control is costing it both prestige and respect, not just in America but elsewhere. China, like the United States, is in the process of gaining a reputation for infantile name-calling, invective, and preposterous accusations rather than skillful diplomacy, reasonableness, and the dignified conduct of relations with other countries.

President Trump’s efforts to downplay the pandemic crisis and his failure to take early protective measures like expanded testing have led to huge numbers of deaths and what looks to be a coming depression on the scale of the 1930s. China appears, for now, to have contained the virus.

Rather than look dispassionately at the reasons for each country’s response, Washington has framed the pandemic as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism. This may be ideologically satisfying to Americans, but it has inadvertently set up a contrast between America’s ineptitude in meeting the challenge and China’s relatively effective performance. This comparison misstates the causes of the performance gap and needlessly discredits democracy while exalting “authoritarianism.”

The contrast is not between ideologies but between state capacity, leadership, and citizen trust in government. The United States now scores poorly on all these factors. Americans have disinvested in government and social capacity even as societies like China, Germany, south Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have built strong human and physical infrastructure. Whether they were democratic or not, all these and some other societies planned ahead and developed surge capacity. They also taught their citizens to value government services and to expect the best of their civil servants. When the time came to do so, their public servants rose to the occasion. (...)

 haresfur wrote: 
You need to backscroll.  It was intentional.  It was to make a point about how I feel being on the receiving end of the same kind of statement from your side.  And I will continue doing so as long as your side does the same.

Thank you for helping me make my point.  

---

China mulling punitive countermeasure on US over COVID-19 lawsuits: sources

In Oklahoma:

Date	Screenshots (EDT)	New Tests	Positive	Negative	Pending	Hospitalized	Deaths	Total
Tue May 12 2020	5:40 am 11:40 am 5:40 pm 11:40 pm	119	4,732	91,379	N/A	828	278	96,111
Mon May 11 2020	5:16 am 11:17 am 5:47 pm 11:40 pm	24	4,613	91,379	N/A	828	274	95,992
Sun May 10 2020	5:17 am 11:17 am 5:17 pm 11:18 pm	99	4,589	91,379	N/A	826	272	95,968
Sat May 9 2020	5:18 am 11:18 am 5:18 pm 11:18 pm	6,012	4,490	91,379	N/A	822	270	95,869
Fri May 8 2020	5:17 am 11:18 am 5:15 pm 11:19 pm	2,970	4,424	85,433	N/A	805	266	89,857

some important antibody data coming out later today   

edit: hope so - i need it

 sirdroseph wrote:
 
To your point, 36% of people now approve of Trump's handling of the crisis, while he has a ~45% approval rating.  Rough math... 20%-25% of his base doesn't like his handling of COVID when asked.  Logic tells you it's likely higher than that.

I don't think anyone is happy to see more people die.  I do think that there is definitely a sense of "I told you so...." with regard to how high the numbers are, and a certain enjoyment in watching Trump attempt to spin his failure into positive messaging.  He is fighting an enemy that keeps score, and for the first time in his life, he can't change the facts with his ever-changing assessment of the situation.

There would be fewer discussions like this if the White House had a plan, communicated it clearly, and was honest about progress.  

 haresfur wrote:
 

I don't disagree, I just think the problem is a bit more systemic than that.  It is yet another symptom of the insanity levels the fierce partisan divide have reached. This divide has always been an undercurrent of our political system,  but has spun out of control in the past 30 years or so.   Trump has ripped the band aid off and poked the stick into the wound, but the hope is that the overwhelming and transcendent nature of a crisis of this proportion will pull enough people's perspective outward to see this, reject and change the way we engage each other politically and most importantly the way that we vote because the 2 party duopoly ain't cuttin' it anymore.

 sirdroseph wrote:
 

The wording "democrats" was with no qualifier and that's why I called it out. Kurt said democrats hope for death and that's bullshit. I am willing to accept that maybe there is some wacko democrat somewhere who might think that. With enough people you are bound to find someone with almost any opinion.

 haresfur wrote:
 

I don't think so, to simply say no would be a blanket statement regarding all Democrats and I don't think this is so.  I sincerely believe that there are some fierce partisan Democrats who if honest with themselves  would realize that they really are rooting for more deaths for political and personal reasons just as there are members of the media who wish the same for purely monetary reasons.   And yes there are plenty of right wing Republicans  who are just as offensive depending on the circumstances.   Sad but true.

 

 kurtster wrote:
 
WTF kurt? That sort of "is it true..." rhetoric is just a way to throw out some innuendo and pretend it is real. 

And the answer to your question is, "no."

 steeler wrote: 
So who else is a Trump supporter around here, that has been here all along ? 

I am talking about here, not everywhere else.  I have been very careful to say many or some, not all or every when I comment.  Those days are coming to an end.  It gets me nothing.

It is condoned and approved because y'all agree not to disagree amongst yourselves.  Just with the token Trump supporter.  And the other two recent arrivals y'all have dubbed Boris and Natasha.  Seems like Boris is rising to the challenge y'all have thrown at him though.

So is it true democrats are rooting for more CV 19 deaths to make sure that Trump doesn't get re elected ?  I'm sure that I can find something to back that up if I look hard enough.  If that's the way y'all want to roll here ...

 miamizsun wrote:
 

I've been reading posts from a person in Madagascar. Sounds like the situation is pretty precarious. 

 steeler wrote:
 

I’ve said before:

If everyone is pointing at you and yelling as you go down a one-way street, perhaps you are indeed going down it the wrong way.

 kurtster wrote:
 

And I am getting real tired of all the talk that all the critics of Trump are libtards suffering from an acute form of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Tired of hearing that Democrats and liberals are opposed to opening up all parts of the country because they are politically motivated and want to undermine Trump’s reelection chances.  Tired of hearing that these Democrats and liberals are Trump haters who are exaggerating the death totals and other statistics regarding Covid-19 to unnecessarily frighten the American people for political and otherwise nefarious purposes.


Mostly, I am tired of hearing the refrain that critics of Trump and his administration are elitists who do not listen to or respect the opinions of those who voted for him in 2016 and are likely to vote for him in November. As I have said here on numerous occasions, that listening to and respecting the opinions of others is a 2-way street, not a 1-way. There are just as many — if not more — Trump supporters who paint Trump detractors with a broad brush. Talking by — or down to â€” someone in these political debates is not the sole province of the liberals and Trump critics. Far from it.   The onus of understanding opposing viewpoints is equally upon both sides of this political and cultural divide. The failings in this regard continue to mount, which bodes ill for this country. Seeking to blame one side for that failing underscores the point.

In case you're wondering if anyone is flying....

TSA checkpoint travel numbers for 2020 and 2019

Found this in an article suggesting it'll 5 years to never before air travel recovers.

WHO says concept of herd immunity is a "dangerous calculation"

Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO) health emergencies program, said the concept of herd immunity is “dangerous.”

“This idea that maybe countries that had lax measures and haven’t done anything will all of a sudden magically reach some herd immunity – and so what if we lose a few old people along the way? This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation," Ryan said at a news briefing on Monday.

The term herd immunity is taken from veterinary epidemiology, where people are “concerned with the overall health of the herd, and individual animals in that sense, doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “Humans are not herds.”

Ryan said the world needs to be careful using the term, as it “can lead to a very brutal arithmetic which does not put people and life and suffering at the center of that equation.”

(...)

“What is interesting from the studies that are coming out is that many of them, across a number of countries in Europe, the United States and Asia have found a very low proportion of the people that have been tested have evidence of antibodies,” Van Kerkhove said.

The range is between 1% and 10%, she said, and that a large number of people remain “susceptible” to the coronavirus.

 kurtster wrote:
 
L.O.L.

 islander wrote: 
Don't make him turn this car around, because he will.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
 
Dude, you've been warned.