This audio only but I watched the beginning with the CC on and I thought it followed very well during the intro that I had it on.
Michael Lewis on why U.S. COVID response was so…crappy. (My word)
This audio only but I watched the beginning with the CC on and I thought it followed very well during the intro that I had it on.
Scottie's Playtime 
Scottie, his well-researched book on the pandemic response called “The Premonition” is well worth the read. It speaks of an informal group that used to be part of pandemic planning dating back to the George W. Bush White House who were out of government by the time the Trump White House was in charge. The leader of this informal group noted by the time we closed our doors to travel from China, the virus was already here, yet they were being ignored by those in charge.
A month later when the then president said it was going away after the first death, this group was saying the one reported death masked that there were 200 others and it was beginning to escalate even faster. This group noted 45 days before the former president said those words, using a back of the envelope calculation and other disease exponentiation rates, that 300,000 Americans would die. The sad truth is the exponentiation rate was higher and the US botched the response early on thanks to an former president who would not listen. We are at 1 million deaths. Keith
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Hello Keith. I wrote a reply to you but lost it. I think of the response to the 9/11 deaths and how the country came together behind the president to do whatever he wanted. We as a country were willing to give up our privacy for security. We went to war. We were united to stand against the enemy, even though we did not really know who the enemy was. That was over nearly 3,000 deaths.
1 million deaths from a virus. But we had a major political party fight the president, we had a segment of the population fight tooth and nail to prevent the government from doing anything to protect the people and prevent death. We had right wing media band together to push false information and to mook the educated medical people who were able to understand the data to guide the country. Total disfunction. What happened?
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Scottie, even though on most days I have nowhere to be at a certain time, I really get frustrated at videos/newscasts/podcasts where they spend the first several minutes introducing and/or talking about the guest. (Or in this particular case, apparently discussing some sports event!)
I guess that’s why I prefer reading. I can skip over the non-essentials and get to the meat of the story, whereas with audio/video one has to “wait” until all the chit-chat is done before the actual presentation starts. But of course, that’s me. Others, like yourself, obviously enjoy the chit-chat.
I actually think that’s another reason why I prefer Brian over the “good ole boy.” Brian doesn’t waste time in getting to the core of his presentation … and he SURE doesn’t hem-haw around!
Oh well. To each his/her own. Just sounding off.
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Hello Nan. The thing with the Al Franken podcast is the jokes he tells at the beginning. It is his thing. He gives a jokey introduction, tells some news with jokes, and then does the interview. Might I suggest the time bar at the bottom of YouTube videos to move forward to skip things you do not want to hear?
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Oh, I often “skip” through pretty much every video to get past the chit-chat. But it’s frustrating to have to do this when I can easily skim an article and go directly to the meat of the story. But … like I said … to each his own.
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