Brain Trust

And herein lies the rub…the huge difference between progressive leadership and regressive conservative “leadership”.

In 1932 Roosevelt had his famous 100 Days. He streamlined decision making, bringing in a “brain trust” that included the brightest economic minds of the day.

And yes there were dead ends, but there ultimately was Social Security, the TVA, and the WPA.

And the ravages of the depression were blunted.

People stopped going hungry.

Now in the historical perspective it took a long time to get completely out of the Depression.

But that historically analysis lacks one thing, its writers were not there, not caught in the paradigm of fear.

And that is what we miss today. We are caught in a paradigm of fear and a conservative decision process that devalues science and was elected on the premise to not trust intellectuals.

Hitler must be smiling…remember HE BURNED THE BOOKS!

We have a very conservative administration, some of whom still are denying the reality of the virus crisis to this day, actually encouraging its followers to deny still!

We have conservative areas who are ignoring the warnings. We have red states who still are not shut down.

And the most tragic we have an administration that is “going by the. gut” of Trump, who knows absolutely nothing about diseases (save mental disease).

He had hired yes men, and one blond woman, who first have to praise Trump’s stupidity, then try to get science to enact policies that will save lives.

How many scientists would want to work under Trump, whose ego leads. his every move?

And we have a disaster.

Right now we should have a task force, of the best medical minds in the world, who are meeting to strategize and develop: 1. Treatments we have now that can be modified to save lives. 2. New approaches to quarantine and other mitigating approaches to level and lower the curve of new cases. 3. Developments of medical interventions to save the most sick. 4. A vaccine now, not in a year and a half!

But what do we get, more press conferences that are being staged, rehearsed, to make Trump look like he is the mind behind it all.

The problem is the administration does not know how. to manage public policy. They all are following a leader whose ego is everything.

Franklin Roosevelt famously told the story of how he laid in a bed for a YEAR, trying to move his big toe after he had polio. He learned that he couldn’t do it by himself. He learned teamwork and he learned science (that at the time he ramped up the. research to cure polio).

Without Roosevelt’s March of Dines and government research, polio would still be with us today!

And the rightful public criticism of Trump’s ineptitude, drives the administration to be every more insular, less open to inventive ideas to save us.

He is a genius remember?

This is absolute nonsense. It is so political and self serving it makes a sick nation even sicker.

We need a 100 days plan, we need inventive and FAST results that can be used now.

To rely on the hope that a vaccine can be developed after “testing for months” is nuts.

Think about it, we now have super computers that can accelerate the scientific process at lightning speed. We should not have to wait a year for a vaccine.

And at the least, we should right NOW be using diagnostic tools (test everybody) and other interventions using current medications to mitigate symptoms that are killing people.

Remember this virus has the habit in about 80% of infections that show. no symptoms or mild symptoms.

So waiting to quarantine until serious illness occurs misses a large number of potential spreaders of the disease. This approach is like arresting the arsonist, then letting him go after the house burns down.

That fact seems to be totally lost on Trump’s yes man administration.

I mean he was actively considering pulling restrictions on travel etc, by EASTER! He finally “changed his mind”. Note, changed his mind…it should have been changed the committee’s consensus that never would have advised such a stupid move.

It’s called administration! So his “advisors” are always working to change his mind? They should be spending all their time trying to administer the crises, and finding ways out of this mess!

A Kindergartener could have told you that this kind of administration is. NUTS!

Too fast you say?

Bullshit. We live an era of Super Computers…we can analyze data at millions of times faster speeds and accuracy than in the the cure polio scientific effort. With current technology, polio could have been cured in a year, not the forty of so years it took using the technology of the 30s and 40s.

The research industry spends a lot of time on dead ends, a lot of time on grants that actually encourage the grant writers to take time, because it is money…current research is slow and lucrative research based on a model that creates careers for researchers. In fact, the research industry is slow to create work for people.

The old fashioned research system we now have disregards the nature of the crisis we in. If we followed this model in WWII we would have lost!

There is a historical example of one man rule and how it fails…it’s called Nazi Germany, Emperor led Japan and the train wreck of Mussolini!

No, I didn’t leave out Stalin. He had enough brains to stop killing his advisors and. listened to them! That led to Stalingrad and the disaster of Hitler’s “going by the gut”.

Hitler hung those who disagreed with him…he was a “genus” right? If Hitler would have listened to his advisors he probably would have knocked Russia out of the war.

Do what Roosevelt did: get the brain trust together, lock them in a room (a virtual reality room if you will ) and tolerate no “testing” foot dragging. Actually you could have several rooms working on various aspects of the pandemic (and the rooms should be open to the best minds in the WORLD, including especially CHINA).

What does Trump do? He cannot resist calling it the “China Virus” an obvious racist and xenophobic statement that is produced for his “political base” that makes up abut 30% of the population.

How ready would you be to help, if you were blamed for the problem?

He needs to listen to the 100% of the population. And the only way is to adopt the Roosevelt system of crisis management: Brain Trusts with the brightest minds in the world that can figure a fast way and effective way. out of this mess.

If we had adopted the Trump model of administrating a crisis, we would have emerged form the Great Depression in 1970!

IT IS PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ONE!

And one more thing. If anybody does not obey the law about distance and not having groups of over 10; arrest them (even if it is a right wing Governor, several have blatantly ignored rules to reduce exposure to the virus).

This includes the preacher who refused to cancel services, the Florida Governor who allows group activities, a President who promises to lift restrictions to save the economy.

The economy? What kind of economy do you have if everyone is dead?

A conservative think tank just did a cost analysis of not mitigating grouping behaviors and the impacts it would have producing more deaths….I shuddered as I started to read it.

A cost analysis of death?

But at the end, the economical cost analysis, had the higher death toll as more costly to the economy as the lower death tool that would come from more aggressive shut downs of communities.

That’s right, killing the elders is actually not cost effective.

The fact that we have to have that kind of debate, when you compare it to WWII, when ending the war with two Atomic Bombs is still being defended (and rightfully so) as the most cost effective, because millions would have been killed in the invasion of Japan without the Bomb.

That was cold blooded, but scientifically and statistically researched fast with a positive, though brutal, result.

And that decision by the way was made with Japanese lives being considered as well; Japanese citizens were being brainwashed to fight to the death and commit mass suicides during an American invasion. Millions were saved by the brain trust that created bomb.

And remember, Hitler was trying to develop one also. By destroying Germany, we kept the Bomb out of Hitler’s hands.

Hindsight is twenty twenty of course. But the present “do nothing” administration, the lack of leadership, the lack of science, is killing people.