I have a feeling we are going to agree to disagree on everything in this discussion save for this, so in the spirit of good discussion I will focus on that.
Are you sure he wasnât âinterestedâ? I say he was more concerned about what he perceived as the greater threat. And he hasnât been proven wrong yet. Do I need to report my human nature post?
OK I agree- he was focusing on what he perceived to be a greater threat. The question becomes how to get his attention by pointing out the threat of pandemic couldnât be wished away, and actually INCREASED the threat he was likely worried about?
Actually thereâs one more area of agreement.
That is an economic result. Driven by business decisions. The government does not make PPE nor does it have the logistics to handle it. You would have had warehouses full of unusable materials rats had been in. And a lot of that stuff has a shelf life.
I also agreed with this- I pointed it out- it was an economic decision to have much of this capability offshored. I wasnât talking about warehouses stocked to the gills with PPE like N95 masks.
I was talking about making sure that being able to rapidly make stuff like this should be prioritized as being in country. What types of capabilities could be decided by upgrading our surveillance capabilities as wellâŚto better predict what types of disease threats we might be facing. PPE would likely be the same no matter what infectious agent existed or what disease it was.
I supposeâŚsame reason why if global warming is a threat we wonât do anything about itâŚeven those that think it is wonât do anythingâŚbecause the human mind massively discounts the future in favor of the present.
Made sense when we were scrawny primates with no natural defenses against predators. The slow changes in the background didnât matter anywhere near as much as the tiger sneaking up on you to eat you.
Somehow we have to find the way to make the future important enough to pay attention to when itâs important to pay attention to it.