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Mitch Daniels gets it

CO. Hoosier

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Aug 29, 2001
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A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.
 
A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.
Australia is jumping headfirst into idiotic populism.

 
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A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.
yeah what the hell are a couple million more people really worth? if you owned a functioning small business and lost it last year due to the pandemic you probably weren't going to survive anyway, the govt basically paid your expenses . Biden has done more in 4 months than the dumbass did the year before as far as getting us back to normal, so I guess your right leadership does matter .
 
Australia is such a small population country and extremely rich. Just vaccinate your people! I don’t get just how terrible the EU, AUS, and CAN has been at vaccination.
 
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Ironically, had the entire nation followed what Purdue did with regard to in-person classes (very, very few), strict mask requirements even when walking outside across a deserted campus, limited seating in dining halls, massive random testing, punishment for being caught without masks even at off-campus gatherings, etc., our death toll would have been significantly lower. I believe less than half of my son's classes were in-person even in the second semester (first semester the only in-person class he had was a chemistry lab).

Granted, it would not have been feasible to do all of the above on a nationwide scale. But can you imagine the howls of protest had anyone tried?

And by no means am I criticizing Daniels. Far from it, as he did an amazing job leading the university through the pandemic. Just putting a perspective on what measures they took at Purdue to keep students on campus, but largely sitting in their dorm rooms or apartments attending class remotely.
 
A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.

The survival rate of Covid started at 99% and went up in the US.
Even worldwide, with the latest problems in the third world that can’t even feed their people, it is still 98%.


We fought the wrong battles all the way through for ugly partisan politics.
As usual, the things the loudmouths thought were important ... weren’t.

But know this - leadership was INTENTIONALLY jettisoned in exchange for the political fight. Vote whores gonna whore.

History will judge this harshly.

Even today, the folks who said/say that the exceptions to the 99% survival rate should control the decison-making, still deny the science and the math of Covid. It is an airborne respiratory virus that we treated like The Andromeda Strain. It is not unique. It was politicized.
 
yeah what the hell are a couple million more people really worth? if you owned a functioning small business and lost it last year due to the pandemic you probably weren't going to survive anyway, the govt basically paid your expenses . Biden has done more in 4 months than the dumbass did the year before as far as getting us back to normal, so I guess your right leadership does matter .
People like you politicizing this thing CAUSED DEATHS.

Thanks, dumbass.
 
The survival rate of Covid started at 99% and went up in the US.
Even worldwide, with the latest problems in the third world that can’t even feed their people, it is still 98%.


We fought the wrong battles all the way through for ugly partisan politics.
As usual, the things the loudmouths thought were important ... weren’t.

But know this - leadership was INTENTIONALLY jettisoned in exchange for the political fight. Vote whores gonna whore.

History will judge this harshly.

Even today, the folks who said/say that the exceptions to the 99% survival rate should control the decison-making, still deny the science and the math of Covid. It is an airborne respiratory virus that we treated like The Andromeda Strain. It is not unique. It was politicized.
1% death rate x 340 million Americans is 3.4 million dead. So what should we have done or is 3.4 million a fair cost of doing business as normal?
 
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1% death rate x 340 million Americans is 3.4 million dead. So what should we have done or is 3.4 million a fair cost of doing business as normal?
A health campaign. Vit D and zinc. Figure out how to isolate certain pops. Put fauci in a cubicle. Implement some of igw’s stuff.

We weren’t prepared and imo trump was the worst possible prez to have for such a thing
 
A health campaign. Vit D and zinc. Figure out how to isolate certain pops. Put fauci in a cubicle. Implement some of igw’s stuff.

We weren’t prepared and imo trump was the worst possible prez to have for such a thing
Good leadership would at least involve an honest presentation of relevant information. We never really had that at any level except in a few states. The pundits and politicians quickly turned the whole thing into a means to affect the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump played his part, but he was by no means the only one.
 
Good leadership would at least involve an honest presentation of relevant information. We never really had that at any level except in a few states. The pundits and politicians quickly turned the whole thing into a means to affect the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump played his part, but he was by no means the only one.
Yep. The second I heard follow the science coupled with the politicizing of everything I knew we’d be a disaster.
 
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That’s not good math Marv, for obvious reasons.
At the same point fare more people went into critical care than died, and even more required hospital stays. That 1% number does not take into account the death rate was higher in places where medical capacity was exceeded. Had more places exceeded capacity, more would have died.

Early on they did not have a clear picture of the death rate because we had no real idea how many were sick. Even last month the IU expert was saying the antibody test was virtually worthless in determining who had the disease.

Our testing program sucked for months. Once we got it working, we had better ideas. But if you read Lewis' book the big secret in infection control is once a disease is rampant it is almost impossible to stop. That's why they wanted mitigation before people in ICUs were sleeping in tents in city parks because there was no where else.

I think with the schools we were overcautious. Not at the beginning, I think for most diseases schools are a major infector. But we started getting evidence this was not the case. There we were slow to respond.

Had we done nothing, nothing at all, our numbers would have been much worse. After that is excluded the debate is how much can we mitigate at what cost. The economy is doing well. The vast majority of people who want jobs have them. Many sectors are booming enough inflation is getting to be a more serious concern. Aside from schools we have not suffered irreparable harm from the mitigation. I think schools may be the exception but I have always thought kids are far more resilient than we give them credit for. It may well turn out education levels bounce back next year.
 
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A health campaign. Vit D and zinc. Figure out how to isolate certain pops. Put fauci in a cubicle. Implement some of igw’s stuff.

We weren’t prepared and imo trump was the worst possible prez to have for such a thing
Vitamin D was a fairly late discovery. Isolation would have worked, except for a couple points.

1) who pays. I have no problems paying people with risks full wages to stay home. I guarantee the people that would have blocked that are on your side of the aisle. It is why I criticized Winners idea, the idea was fine but Trump and the GOP would never, ever sign off.

2) caregivers create a bigger issue. If someone works and cares for someone, do we pay them to also stay home? I think even fewer back that, and who knew what sort of job market they would face.

3) medical staff. Do we assign some doctors and nurses to only treating people quarantined and some only to the rest? Otherwise we run risks of the disease spreading through the medical community. In some small towns, and in some free clinics, that is going to create big issues. But if you caught COVID on Monday at a crowded bar, went to the doc on Friday, and a high risk person went on Tuesday, what was their risk?
 
Vitamin D was a fairly late discovery. Isolation would have worked, except for a couple points.

1) who pays. I have no problems paying people with risks full wages to stay home. I guarantee the people that would have blocked that are on your side of the aisle. It is why I criticized Winners idea, the idea was fine but Trump and the GOP would never, ever sign off.

2) caregivers create a bigger issue. If someone works and cares for someone, do we pay them to also stay home? I think even fewer back that, and who knew what sort of job market they would face.

3) medical staff. Do we assign some doctors and nurses to only treating people quarantined and some only to the rest? Otherwise we run risks of the disease spreading through the medical community. In some small towns, and in some free clinics, that is going to create big issues. But if you caught COVID on Monday at a crowded bar, went to the doc on Friday, and a high risk person went on Tuesday, what was their risk?
All fair points. My argument was a fantasyland better approach. One devoid of politics. Like most things these days the parties polar positions either inhibited or exacerbated. I hold most contempt for the agencies who do this as their mission
 
At the same point fare more people went into critical care than died, and even more required hospital stays. That 1% number does not take into account the death rate was higher in places where medical capacity was exceeded. Had more places exceeded capacity, more would have died.

Early on they did not have a clear picture of the death rate because we had no real idea how many were sick. Even last month the IU expert was saying the antibody test was virtually worthless in determining who had the disease.

Our testing program sucked for months. Once we got it working, we had better ideas. But if you read Lewis' book the big secret in infection control is once a disease is rampant it is almost impossible to stop. That's why they wanted mitigation before people in ICUs were sleeping in tents in city parks because there was no where else.

I think with the schools we were overcautious. Not at the beginning, I think for most diseases schools are a major infector. But we started getting evidence this was not the case. There we were slow to respond.

Had we done nothing, nothing at all, our numbers would have been much worse. After that is excluded the debate is how much can we mitigate at what cost. The economy is doing well. The vast majority of people who want jobs have them. Many sectors are booming enough inflation is getting to be a more serious concern. Aside from schools we have not suffered irreparable harm from the mitigation. I think schools may be the exception but I have always thought kids are far more resilient than we give them credit for. It may well turn out education levels bounce back next year.
It’s bad math because we don’t know the true fatality rate against the whole population - including children. Children have a virtual death asymptotic to zero. So take all youths out of your 340M number. Healthy adults also have very little to worry about it. The math is way off.

I didn’t have a problem with shutdowns early because it was big, scary, and new. But as the science became more clear especially with respect to being outdoors we should’ve opened much earlier. Neutral task forces for investigations and commissions will likely find the same. But something tells me Democrats will refuse to admit that, looking back, knowing what we now know we went overboard.
 
All fair points. My argument was a fantasyland better approach. One devoid of politics. Like most things these days the parties polar positions either inhibited or exacerbated.
Fair enough. I think we need a commission to look into our response. We clearly made mistakes. We were way to slow to begin a response. We had mixed messaging. We did not follow the science. I know CO hates that term, but I suspect when I mention in regards to schools he will not object.

One thing Lewis' book really left me with, time is not an ally. A disease will be here and infecting people before we have a good idea what it's death rate is. We have to guess. What if we learn the lesson nothing is better at the next disease has a 33% mortality. What if we do something and it has .01. we will have to decide before we know. It really is a tough position.
 
Fair enough. I think we need a commission to look into our response. We clearly made mistakes. We were way to slow to begin a response. We had mixed messaging. We did not follow the science. I know CO hates that term, but I suspect when I mention in regards to schools he will not object.

One thing Lewis' book really left me with, time is not an ally. A disease will be here and infecting people before we have a good idea what it's death rate is. We have to guess. What if we learn the lesson nothing is better at the next disease has a 33% mortality. What if we do something and it has .01. we will have to decide before we know. It really is a tough position.
Yes. I need to get that book. I hated follow the science too. It implies to the exclusion of broader policy. The failure of the agencies bothers me most. There are no political points to gain through a commission so I doubt we wyll see one
 
It’s bad math because we don’t know the true fatality rate against the whole population - including children. Children have a virtual death asymptotic to zero. So take all youths out of your 340M number. Healthy adults also have very little to worry about it. The math is way off.

I didn’t have a problem with shutdowns early because it was big, scary, and new. But as the science became more clear especially with respect to being outdoors we should’ve opened much earlier. Neutral task forces for investigations and commissions will likely find the same. But something tells me Democrats will refuse to admit that, looking back, knowing what we now know we went overboard.

Outdoors grew to be a mistake, though the White House Rose Garden event was outdoors. I really do not know why that was such an exception but many people were infected and I think it's visibility made outdoors seem worse.

But again there were costs beyond death. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127623/covid-19-patients-share-admitted-to-icu-us/

Easily over 1% were in ICUs. Under 9 was at .7% which is not far off. 340 million times 1.whatever in the ICU is a fair number, a huge burden on our medical teams, and a huge cost as ICUs are not cheap.

If Democrats oppose a commission I will say they are wrong.

Things were pretty bad in America from Dec to Feb. Were lockdowns justified then?
 
It’s bad math because we don’t know the true fatality rate against the whole population - including children. Children have a virtual death asymptotic to zero. So take all youths out of your 340M number. Healthy adults also have very little to worry about it. The math is way off.

I didn’t have a problem with shutdowns early because it was big, scary, and new. But as the science became more clear especially with respect to being outdoors we should’ve opened much earlier. Neutral task forces for investigations and commissions will likely find the same. But something tells me Democrats will refuse to admit that, looking back, knowing what we now know we went overboard.

I agree with you but my only complaint would be I believe you are too aggressive with the stuff we think we know now.

At the time the only thing we knew was it was an airborne virus that was more contagious than normal that there was no cure for. Only comfort. You just had to hope that you could fight it off.

That's a pretty scary concept.

I wish we could have two do overs. One time line where we did nothing and one where we were all on the same page in trying to contain this thing.

We were at war and we spent a lot of time fighting amongst ourselves instead of uniting in the war on covid.

When I had the covid precautions discussion I almost always went to a betting proposition.

If I'm wrong and this is nothing than I'll have some embarrassing pics of me wearing a mask that we can laugh at over a beer.

If you are wrong, that leads to a higher level of death and suffering.

What bet do you want to take?

Ultimately it's hard for me not to believe our infighting led to death and suffering which I'll admit burns me because I consider us complete failures that couldn't rise and unite to the challenge on the war on covid.

Let's teach that lesson in these proposed American Exceptionalism courses.
 
Test and trace and masks ought to be priority one for a new pandemic. We resist those as an infringement on our liberty. We're f**k*d when a REALLY deadly virus hits us (and lots of folks now know this about us). Hopefully there is 3x times the focus on learning the lessons of COVID as there is going to be on Trump's riot.
 
A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.
Too bad Bitch Mitch wasn't so wise when he forced a Daylight Savings Time system on the state that (1) is tied illogically to Wash. D.C. (Mitch's dream employment location) instead of Chicago, and (2) has 4? 5? 6? more? distinct geographical areas with different time rules (just like the previous system) contradicting his promise that he was giving a one-zone Daylight Savings Time system that would universally apply to the entire state.

Mitch belongs at a pretender's place like Purdue. I'm a little surprised a Colorado lawyer would get taken in by him.
 
Too bad Bitch Mitch wasn't so wise when he forced a Daylight Savings Time system on the state that (1) is tied illogically to Wash. D.C. (Mitch's dream employment location) instead of Chicago, and (2) has 4? 5? 6? more? distinct geographical areas with different time rules (just like the previous system) contradicting his promise that he was giving a one-zone Daylight Savings Time system that would universally apply to the entire state.

Mitch belongs at a pretender's place like Purdue. I'm a little surprised a Colorado lawyer would get taken in by him.
If you want to look for a Republican hero in Indiana, you have to go to Mitch. Pence is a traitor to His Majesty, and Holcomb is a RINO.
 
A comment about ”leaders” from his address to PU grads

Sometimes they let what might be termed the mad pursuit of zero, in this case zero risk of anyone contracting the virus, block out other competing concerns, like the protection of mental health, the educational needs of small children, or the survival of small businesses. Pursuing one goal to the utter exclusion of all others is not to make a choice but to run from it. It’s not leadership; it’s abdication. I feel confident your Purdue preparation won’t let you fall prey to it.​

But there’s a companion quality you’ll need to be the leaders you can be. That’s the willingness to take risks. Not reckless ones, but the risks that still remain after all the evidence has been considered.​
The COVID Derangement Syndrome and Covidocracy that sprung up last year shows not only how fragile effective leadership is, but how bad we are at producing leaders. This is an asymmetrical issue. Bad leadership hit us from all quarters, including government, business, media, and entertainment. I’ll grant that in the beginning we were justifiably concerned about unknowns, but as the year wore on, when we knew more about the virus, our leaders continued with their “emergency” orders and did enormous damage to the country. kids still aren’t in school. The politicizing of it piled on. I’d like to think we learned important lessons about risks and effective leadership. But I don’t think so.

Mitch Daniels appointed himself president of PU while walking out the door of the gov mansion for the last time, after being term limited.

and you can't have good leadership in a govt that's openly for sale.

"for sale" and "good leadership" don't coexist together, and Daniels' left a trail of shaky dealings everywhere he went pre PU.
 
If you want to look for a Republican hero in Indiana, you have to go to Mitch. Pence is a traitor to His Majesty, and Holcomb is a RINO.
Trey Hollingsworth had an interesting vote this week.


Baby steps maybe, but I recall that he wasn't really from Indiana when he ran for Congress.
 
I agree with you but my only complaint would be I believe you are too aggressive with the stuff we think we know now.

At the time the only thing we knew was it was an airborne virus that was more contagious than normal that there was no cure for. Only comfort. You just had to hope that you could fight it off.

That's a pretty scary concept.

I wish we could have two do overs. One time line where we did nothing and one where we were all on the same page in trying to contain this thing.

We were at war and we spent a lot of time fighting amongst ourselves instead of uniting in the war on covid.

When I had the covid precautions discussion I almost always went to a betting proposition.

If I'm wrong and this is nothing than I'll have some embarrassing pics of me wearing a mask that we can laugh at over a beer.

If you are wrong, that leads to a higher level of death and suffering.

What bet do you want to take?

Ultimately it's hard for me not to believe our infighting led to death and suffering which I'll admit burns me because I consider us complete failures that couldn't rise and unite to the challenge on the war on covid.

Let's teach that lesson in these proposed American Exceptionalism courses.
If you’re wrong, it cost millions of people their jobs. That’s not something to laugh at over a beer.

Again I’m not playing armchair QB. Trump should’ve responded more quickly. Fauci should’ve been more consistent at the beginning. But once it became clear it wasn’t the Black Death, we should’ve snapped to our senses. And we didn’t. So that Trump would lose.
 
Outdoors grew to be a mistake, though the White House Rose Garden event was outdoors. I really do not know why that was such an exception but many people were infected and I think it's visibility made outdoors seem worse.

But again there were costs beyond death. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127623/covid-19-patients-share-admitted-to-icu-us/

Easily over 1% were in ICUs. Under 9 was at .7% which is not far off. 340 million times 1.whatever in the ICU is a fair number, a huge burden on our medical teams, and a huge cost as ICUs are not cheap.

If Democrats oppose a commission I will say they are wrong.

Things were pretty bad in America from Dec to Feb. Were lockdowns justified then?
We don’t know the Rose Garden was the source of the outbreak.
 
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