1. Unless there's a vaccine very soon, I fear that Joe Biden will not handle the pandemic much better than Trump did. I really hope I'm wrong. It just seems to me that a lot of dealing with the pandemic means convincing people to sacrifice...
https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1327668525889105920
2. ... Americans aren't going to sacrifice very important cultural rituals and family time when they see their elites living by a separate set of rules. It just doesn't work that way. They have to see their leaders sacrificing first. Will even that work? I don't know. But...
3. That isn't how Dems think of themselves. One thing that's really clear about the boomer and up elite Dems is they really believe they are beloved and trusted. They don't understand you have to *earn* popular trust, Harvard doesn't grant it to you with your law degree.
4. I really hope that Joe Biden does all the stuff good scientists suggest he does, but even there, hospital executives are often arrogant and dismissive. Early on they ignored advice from competent Chinese doctors with experience in Wuhan.
5. This pandemic experience has been deeply humbling for America, and I hope we draw the right lessons. Joe Biden's political team, like @RonaldKlain, were able to ignore bad arrogant advice throughout the campaign and set their own course. I hope they do that with the pandemic.
6. But there is a really sick culture of entitlement among elite Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom, a 'rules are for thee and not for me' attitude. They justify this by pointing to the goon Trump. Trump won't be in office much longer.
7. I really hope that the new Biden team has @zeynep involved in their pandemic response work. She's been the clearest thinker about how to understand the dynamics of this pandemic as it interacts with social and political systems.
8. Covid is a hard problem, and no one is handling it well. 
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