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Very weird feature of the discussion of the Woodward book: has everyone memoryholed that in Feb being extremely concerned about the virus was a rightwing thing and being all infect-what-may fatalistic about it was left?
This flipped in March. But this is why it makes no sense to assert Woodward like “alerting” people beck then would have called forth some big policy or cultural response. At the time the just the flu and anti-mask stuff was or had recently been coming from the expert orgs
And it’s not likebthere werent people who saw through the traps early. I wrote about one here https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/word-of-the-week-technical%3F_amp%3Dtrue
Moreover, if you’re wondering why Bob Woodward keeps inexplicably getting access. Consider that it isn’t inexplicable. All of these things have simple answers https://www.salon.com/1996/07/01/woodward960701/
Just don’t tell yourself some much stricter lockdown or closing the borders in Jan was possible way earlier if magazines you admire were talking “microbial xenophobia” in March and calling travel restrictions proof of fascism in Feb.
Politics is the art of the possible. In Trump’s case, the art is like a kindergartner crayon stencil of his own hand. But the relationship between politics and the possible is the same as it always was
If you think this is just my memory playing cognitive bias tricks on me, go back and listen to the bravery with which @michaelbd overcomes fear of being called crazy for saying the virus is real and scary at the very beginning of March https://mobile.twitter.com/JerryCallo6/status/1303772884897234946
This was just one moment in a long and still-changing social response to something many people didn’t get right, and that has few clear scientific answers yet and never will have clear moral or political ones. I didn’t get it right. But this is just a fact about the crux moment
