Back then, too, we had two unproductive reactions. Trump (not president then!) and the ethnonationalist wave presented it as a foreign threat (in stark, racist terms.) Obviously terrible. BUT, also, like now, some chunk of liberal media/establishment lectured people not to panic.
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I tried to explain that there is wrong panic, and there is what I call constructive panic. A potential tsunami is coming, and people are mingling at the beach. Even if you avert that one (so many near-misses, including SARS), you just learned something about the next time.pic.twitter.com/2fShXupITM
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Unfortunately, many of our national institutions are now controlled by the same people who responded to Ebola with ravaging racism. That is terrible, as we're seeing play out. How catastrophic remains to be seen as the country is now mounting an impressive decentralized response.
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But, old elites too have failed again. We got told that panic was uncalled for. We got lectured about the flu. There was an insinuation that the people who were alarmed shared the racism. Now this point is subtle. That kind of conflation makes the job of racists easier.
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If there is a real problem, and if there is an ethnonationalist response to it, minimizing the problem or telling people that if they're concerned, they must also share that ideology *empowers* the ethnonationalism. The number of historical examples is staggering. Also, duh!
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After 2016, we simply did not have enough accountability among the old elite about how we got where we got, and their own role in it. 2016 was a symptom. Blame tech, sure! New tech has a part in the problem. But the failure is across the board. Curing symptom doesn't cure cause.
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I will eventually try to write this longer. Many subtle points here, and hard to express well. Just putting it out there. Without accountability and soul-searching, a catastrophe averted for the moment isn't a catastrophe averted in the future. Political debt always comes due.
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There's been amazing journalism lately. But we desperately need accountability in the *punditry* about the initial dismissals, lectures about not panicking, flu comparisons, the innumeracy, and orienting themselves as responding to the racism but it in a way that empowers it./fin
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One add. Anyone who calls this pandemic "a black swan" event isn't just wrong, they are so off-base that they aren't even wrong. Problem isn't people are occasionally wrong (we all are) but that some people are wrong in ways that are destructive to the intellectual tools we need.
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As we've seen, even without the Federal government leading, we are capable of springing to action. We had every reason and all evidence needed to spring into action by mid-to-late February. We would have been so much better off now. This isn't just the Trump/gov't failing.
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