Thread by @HardFastAndFree

What has changed from the past? Let me elaborate.

1. The WHO wasn't headed by a total fuckwit like @DrTedros who was too busy covering up for the Chinese regime's lapses instead of monitoring the disease. Taiwan warned him in December 2019 itself.

https://twitter.com/gandabherunda/status/1248526454733721606

But he dismissed it and misled the world a lot of times since then which has led us to this.

2. Personally I consider this as a direct fallout of the Syrian war but the victory of Bashar al-Assad has made Arab dictators more paranoid since the mid-2010s.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have gone bonkers. Qatar is also increasingly repressive. In general, the Middle East is far more repressive and dangerous today compared to a decade ago. The dictators of the region now believe in Assad's model.

A direct consequence of the Syrian civil war is the rise of right wing populism in the West due to the refugee crisis.

What's the significance of this claim? Governments worldwide now believe in grabbing more and more power and suffocating people.

The COVID-19 pandemic wouldn't be such a crisis if governments weren't intent on expanding their own powers. See Hungary.

3. Governments back then while taking inputs from "experts" didn't completely rely on them and took to practicality instead.

The SARS-CoV-2 is a "perfect" virus in the sense, it didn't have the defects that SARS-CoV-1, Ebola and Henipavirus had. This made COVID-19 more deadly.

See this video for more. It has all the information you need.

But it wasn't unmanageable as Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have shown. New Zealand and Iceland deserve a mention too.

P.S: Never have I been more proud of my Icelandic heritage by way of my grandma. Þakka þér, amma.

4. As for your country India:

a. During the swine flu and Ebola pandemics, there was no widespread demonization and dehumanization of Muslims during those disease outbreaks. Instead, the focus was on eliminating the virus.

b. Nipah broke out in Kerala.

But the govt there handled the crisis masterfully. They took the Henipavirus head on and emerged victorious with minimal losses. Had it broken out in a BJP state under an idiot like Narendra Modi, by now it would've become a humanitarian disaster.

And Sanghis would've been blaming Muslims for it.

c. While Sanghis blame Tablighi Jamaat's New Delhi conference in mid-March, there are at least 3 (proverbial) fingers pointing back at them.
-> Maharashtra didn't allow the conference. Why did Delhi do so?

(By Delhi, I mean the center and state governments both, and the Delhi Police).
-> Why was New Delhi complacent until it was too late in March vis-à-vis screening airports, developing/procuring test kits, developing a policy for the pandemic, etc.?

Why were they instead topping elected governments (Madhya Pradesh), harassing students (JNU, JMI, etc.) and enabling riots (Delhi)? They had 2-3 months before COVID-19 started its impact in India.
-> Why did the Indian middle class go completely bonkers?

They've made the crisis in India more acute than it otherwise could've been. In fact, in more ways than one. Not cooperating with authorities, not appealing to commonsense, demonizing Muslims through fakery and lies, etc. The list is rather long.

-> When India is in dire need of PPEs, medical supplies/stockpiles, etc., why are they exporting it all to Serbia, the US and Brazil?
-> Why is India throwing HIV/TB/Malaria patients under the bus?
-> Why are people in India harassing/stigmatizing doctors and airline staff?

-> Why are Indians not treating returning NRIs the same way they do doctors and airline staff?

I said 3 fingers and showed 6 fingers pointing back instead.

5. The US was also slow in its response. This is apart from the ugly partisan politics making matters considerably worse.

They had 70 days from January to March to formulate a response to the COVID-19 crisis but instead chose to delay time. Worse, flights from China (including Wuhan) continued unabated even in January.

This would've contributed significantly to the crisis there.

While the Democrats were trying to push their own agendas (like the phony climate change) thereby delaying the President's coronavirus response bill, President Trump also engaged in partisan politics by overtly favoring Republican states over Democratic ones. An epic fuck up.

In other words, while COVID-19 is a black swan event, i.e., whose full impact we're yet to know, it could be terrible or we might bounce back stronger than ever, it's just too early to tell, the world, especially India and the US, fucked up big time.

Of course, let's never forget the basics:
1. China is the reason the world is in dire straits today.
2. India could've managed COVID-19 in many ways. Instead, the BJP regime resorted to all manner of fuckery.
3. The United States wasted precious time.

In black swan events like COVID-19, there are no "best" solutions with no deaths, only least worst solutions with minimum deaths.

But again, this too shall pass. The most basic law of epidemiology is the Farr's Law. Most "models" followed worldwide ignore this very basic law.

In 1840, British epidemiologist William Farr applied mathematics to the records of deaths during a smallpox epidemic in Britain. He wrote it in a letter and sent it to the Annual Report of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in England.

What is Farr's Law?

"If the latent cause of epidemics cannot be discovered, the mode in which it operates may be investigated. The laws of its action may be determined by observation, as well as the circumstances in which epidemics arise, or by which they may be controlled."

This most basic law has been ignored by most "models" worldwide. Epidemics peak and decline on their own. This is as true for COVID-19 today as it was for smallpox back in the day.

Time for all of us to go back to sensibility. We threw it under the bus for what exactly?

End.

P.S: All said and done, I can't help but wonder....

Apart from capitalism and small govt (obviously), how is it that women leaders have done a far better job than their male counterparts?

Norway's PM @erna_solberg may have slowed it down but she took a sledgehammer approach.

Iceland's @katrinjak. Taiwan's @iingwen. New Zealand's @jacindaardern. Finland's @MarinSanna. Germany's Angela Merkel.

East/Southeast Asia were alert. I suppose being closer to China made them more wary whenever anything happens in China. The rest of us must learn from them.

In case you missed Iceland, read these articles:
#1 nytimes.com/2020/04/09/wor…
#2 eu.usatoday.com/story/news/wor…

Katrin Jakobsdóttir has adopted a very sensible policy without shutting Iceland down. Sometimes I wonder whether I should give up my Norwegian passport for an Icelandic one.

Estonia's President @KerstiKaljulaid also deserves a special mention for handling the COVID-19 crisis very well.

newyorker.com/news/our-colum…

Estonia has come a long way post the fall of the USSR.

I apologize to @zainabsikander for ridiculing something she wrote a month or two ago re: the failure of male leaders.

I also apologize to @toyzberty for calling her PM's action unbelievably stupid.