Read on Twitter
Thread: I spent a good portion of Sunday going through my mid-January to mid-March timeline, and boy was it a beating. Lots of smart people screaming into the void. 1/
My first tweet mentioning COVID was on January 22 about the issues of firefighting during a pandemic. 2/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1220055088338628608
But mostly, I stayed quiet for the first six weeks and retweeted knowledgeable people like @JeremyKonyndyk and @SamLMontano, who have both been nails on this from the very beginning. If you're not following them, you should. 3/
Many of the tweets during that period were already concerned with the time we were wasting. Here's one from February 28. 4/ https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1233447968814092288
From the beginning, there was an appreciation that this had potential to be bad and the sense of urgency in preparing for it was less than desired. By late February, I too, was getting radicalized. 5/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1231441275716395008
Still, I thought we had a strong enough public health infrastructure for it to not get too bad and never considered that the CDC could be grievously corrupted.
I was wrong on both counts. 6/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1232870021749035009
I was wrong on both counts. 6/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1232870021749035009
On February 22, the president bragged about there being no deaths in the United States. That was a cardinal sin for any crisis communicator and especially a president. 7/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1233625767273095170
Here's my crappy wildfire-specific flat-voiced addition to the lack of planning chorus. 8/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1235963195967209472
By early March, I had reached acceptance, but anger had not left. 9/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1236543595911368705
When it was clear we were in it for the long haul, I wrote a thread on what we in wildland fire know about the stresses of long-term incidents. 10/ https://twitter.com/JimWhittington/status/1236783065029947393
It's infuriating that we are in the same place as we were in February and March and April. As @JeremyKonyndyk says, we've run out of ways to say the things that need to be said and all that is left is expletives. 11/
It's also infuriating that we are months into this without a better plan for testing and tracing, for taking care of our essential workers, for taking care of our responders and medical personnel, for getting back to school, etc. We're still wasting time. 12/
If you can, I think it would be worthwhile to go back and look at those first few months in your timeline. Seeing how you and those you trust evolved is interesting and seeing the constant & intentional diminishment of the obvious crisis by our elected leaders is horrifying. 13/
Thanks to all the folks I follow and learn from for helping me put my thoughts in order and allowing me to contribute a little to the discussion. I wish the end were in sight, but nope. Nothing to do but keep after it. 14/14
