Bringing in the NTSB
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Bringing in the NTSB
<div id="1593572690"><i>From a private pilot</i><br><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... </a></p><p class="BN">The 3 Weeks That Changed Everything</p><p class="BN">Imagine if the National Transportation Safety Board investigated America's response to the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p class="BN">"Consider a thought experiment: What if the NTSB were brought in to look at the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic? What would its investigation conclude? I'll jump to the answer before laying out the background: This was a journey straight into a mountainside, with countless missed opportunities to turn away. A system was in place to save lives and contain disaster. The people in charge of the system could not be bothered to avoid the doomed course.</p><p class="BN">"The organization below differs from that of a standard NTSB report, but it covers the key points. Timelines of aviation disasters typically start long before the passengers or even the flight crew knew anything was wrong, with problems in the design of the airplane, the procedures of the maintenance crew, the route, or the conditions into which the captain decided to fly. In the worst cases, those decisions doomed the flight even before it took off. My focus here is similarly on conditions and decisions that may have doomed the country even before the first COVID-19 death had been recorded on U.S. soil.</p><p class="BN">"What happened once the disease began spreading in this country was a federal disaster in its own right: Katrina on a national scale, Chernobyl minus the radiation. It involved the failure to test; the failure to trace; the shortage of equipment; the dismissal of masks; the silencing or sidelining of professional scientists; the stream of conflicting, misleading, callous, and recklessly ignorant statements by those who did speak on the national government's behalf. As late as February 26, Donald Trump notoriously said of the infection rate, “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero.” What happened after that—when those 15 cases became 15,000, and then more than 2 million, en route to a total no one can foretell—will be a central part of the history of our times."</p></div>
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Can we stick to hang gliding, please?
If I want to read political news and opinions, there are a million places to go. Can we keep this forum for hang gliding, please?
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Re: Can we stick to hang gliding, please?
Hiflier wrote:If I want to read political news and opinions, there are a million places to go. Can we keep this forum for hang gliding, please?
I totally agree! If I want to look at politics there are many places this is not one of them so please keep it to flying. Thank You!
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Re: Can we stick to hang gliding, please?
Ah yes, I totally forgot that Covid-19 can discern whether a person is a republican, democrat, or independent. It has the ability to determine whether one is liberal or conservative, thus it only attacks one political party.April wrote:Hiflier wrote:If I want to read political news and opinions, there are a million places to go. Can we keep this forum for hang gliding, please?
I totally agree! If I want to look at politics there are many places this is not one of them so please keep it to flying. Thank You!
Are you so dense to not realize that taking a look at the national public health approach through a methodology that is applied to our own sport and pasttimes might be a worthy undertaking?
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It is my hope that hang glider pilots can look at what a noted aviation writer is doing without looking at it through the lens of partisan politics. It is irrelevant which party the pilot belongs to. We are all going to die if the plane hits the mountain. If you can't see that both parties provided the blueprint to fight this virus and that they were ignored, then this is something far beyond partisan politics.
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The fact that COVID - 19 = Politics for millions is the narrative that will define this pandemic for all of history. Of course, it shouldn't be this way. Controlling this virus only requires a few simple behaviors, but here we are with the highest number of new daily cases yet.
And this thread does apply to flying. After being mocked for taking coronavirus seriously and asking others to do the same, and realizing that many don't see a need to keep their distance from other pilots, I made the difficult decision to scrap the flying season. I know of at least two other pilots who are immunocompromised, really worried, and obviously not flying. I feel for them because they have the "underlying conditions" that make them especially vulnerable. Imagine how they feel having to forfeit flying because other pilots brush off coronavirus as being about as dangerous as the common cold or a paper cut. Someone who is that cavalier about coronavirus just isn't going to wear a mask or be diligent about keeping their distance.
We probably will get to the point where the human and economic cost is so great that we decide to unite to do the three things that are necessary to defeat coronavirus (masks, distance, sanitizing). But please know that those of us who are trying to get everyone to listen now are not doing so for political reasons.
And this thread does apply to flying. After being mocked for taking coronavirus seriously and asking others to do the same, and realizing that many don't see a need to keep their distance from other pilots, I made the difficult decision to scrap the flying season. I know of at least two other pilots who are immunocompromised, really worried, and obviously not flying. I feel for them because they have the "underlying conditions" that make them especially vulnerable. Imagine how they feel having to forfeit flying because other pilots brush off coronavirus as being about as dangerous as the common cold or a paper cut. Someone who is that cavalier about coronavirus just isn't going to wear a mask or be diligent about keeping their distance.
We probably will get to the point where the human and economic cost is so great that we decide to unite to do the three things that are necessary to defeat coronavirus (masks, distance, sanitizing). But please know that those of us who are trying to get everyone to listen now are not doing so for political reasons.
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