Business as usual for now in Orlando theme parks amid coronavirus concerns

"Over the weekend, Pence stressed it is safe for healthy Americans to travel, noting “one of our favorite places to go when my children were young and even before my children came was in Orlando.”

“Whether it be Disney World, whether it be other destination, whether it be cruise ships … those most at risk are seniors with serious or chronic underlying health conditions. Otherwise Americans can confidently travel in this country,” Pence said at a meeting with cruise industry officials in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday."

4 days later Disney announced WDW's closure.
Can you imagine how much better shape we would be in now if we had different leadership in place a year ago? How many lives would have been saved?

That was some weird time whiplash.

Imagine how many lives could have been saved if the WHO had not said there was no evidence of human to human transmission in early January despite the fact that we now know the virus was already in the US at that time but we just didn't know it. The ball was dropped before the US had any clue that there was a ball to be dropped.

I'm not familiar with the exact incident or release, but "no evidence" is a completely different thing from "evidence to the contrary." Also, shifting any blame away from "hydrocholoroquine" "it will all go away like a miracle" "it's a hoax" "masks are for the weak" and friends is not supported by the evidence given that we had one of the worst outcomes (especially given how we're supposed to lead the world), even though we all have the same WHO.

Why are we supposed to lead the world?

Okay. Maybe "supposed" to is the wrong word. Maybe "pretend" is better. You don't see the prime minister/president of any other country calling himself/herself "the leader of the free world."

For a long time, whether it should have been the case of not, lots of countries around the world looked to us for leadership and we integrated that American exceptionalism into our own self understanding and identity. Now, nobody looks to us for leadership and we still think we're exceptional. Although, in this case it's exceptionally bad.

TheMillenniumRider said:

Why are we supposed to lead the world?

For real? Exceptionalism seems to be a core American value. We're supposed to be number one at everything. At least, we think we are.

I have often wondered where that sense of exceptionalism came from. Look at our country compared to others, we have subpar workplace policies, subpar healthcare, etc.

There was a time we were innovators and we seem to have just ridden that momentum to the point of crashing. We are like the Sears of the world.

Does the rest of the country see this? We are not necessarily well like by others, why do some of us, probably a large part, still have this idea that we are best and the rest of the world should look up to us?

Ever met someone from NE Ohio who has never left NE Ohio and claims Cedar Point is hands-down no-argument the best amusement park in the world with the BEST RIDES EVER!%$#! and yet their only knowledge of any other park comes from their own "research" done by talking about it with other locals?

It's kind've like that.

That’s certainly one way of putting it. :)

Reminds me of a guy I met at a fair in south Florida. Was from Ohio not far from Geauga Lake. Got to taking about cedar point. He wouldn’t visit there anymore because they bought Geauga to close it. Sigh…

Oh, there’s an entire legion of those folks. Some show up here occasionally, but most use Facebook as their vehicle. And to this day it’s pretty funny.
Not that we wouldn’t like to have Geauga back. (Would we?)

TheMillenniumRider said:

I have often wondered where that sense of exceptionalism came from.

We don't border other countries of approximately equal power so we've never had exposure to and negotiations with another way of doing things. Also, we entered both World Wars (II in particular) and were one of the only countries that didn't have massive damage to infrastructure and psyche. In the 50's and 60's we were absolutely the lone world super power (and the boomers who grew up in that period still have that understanding). During the Cold War and nuclear arms race, the USSR challenged that, but when communism fell apart, we again were the lone world super power. Now that innovation and economics are the race that matters, we're still strutting around with our giant military while the technologies of the future and markets of the present are dominated by others.

(History was my least favorite class forever, so I may be way off base on this. Just throwing some stuff out there that makes sense to me.)

I agree with your comment about innovation and economics being super important. However, your timeline is off a bit in regards to the USSR. I think it can be safely argued that the Soviets became a super power when they detonated their first nuclear device in 1949.

Russia never gets the credit for their role in World War II. Hitler was undefeated until he tried to conquer Russia. That was the turning point in the war, not when the US entered.

RCMAC said:

Not that we wouldn’t like to have Geauga back. (Would we?)

A few pick up trucks and a volunteer group and we'll have it back open by summer!

Mulfinator said:

Russia never gets the credit for their role in World War II. Hitler was undefeated until he tried to conquer Russia. That was the turning point in the war, not when the US entered.

I don't doubt this for a second, but it's certainly not how WW2 is taught in American schools. I learned "With Hitler having conquered western Europe and failing in his attempts to invade the USSR, but still a massive threat, the US led invasion of Normandy saved all of Europe and possibly the world." I mean, I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a movie about the brave soldiers of Moscow or Stalingrad who repelled the German war machine against all odds. But we've got Saving Private Ryan, Overlord, The Longest Day, and non-historical derivatives like Edge of Tomorrow.

Russia moved the slider (can that be said in other threads) way towards guns on the guns/butter economic scale. Military superpower that was pretty much a mess in everything else.

During the cold war, the US had a lot of "support" and "agreement" simply because we were the check against the Soviets. Often tough to distinguish between support/agreement and politics. US doesn't support the various human rights violations in Saudi Arabia but the world needs their oil.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the check against was no longer needed. Changes the support/agreement analysis. And to a certain extent there is a need to check the un-checked.

Not clear if that changes as it becomes more US v China. But the world depends a lot more on China than it did Russia during the cold war which makes for a different the dynamic. The US can't go to war with China; what would we wear?

As to the virus, there is a 13+ month thread discussing that.

ApolloAndy said:

I don't doubt this for a second, but it's certainly not how WW2 is taught in American schools. I learned "With Hitler having conquered western Europe and failing in his attempts to invade the USSR, but still a massive threat, the US led invasion of Normandy saved all of Europe and possibly the world."

That's what I learned about World War II in school as well. I also learned that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good things. With more time and information the past has become murkier.

Public education in the US has been abysmal when it comes to history. It also varied greatly based on where you lived. In the 80's in Cleveland schools, Black History Month was a big deal, and the stuff about Ohio history specifically was robust even in elementary school. When I got to high school in the suburbs, history was a joke. We weren't challenged in any way to evaluate history, just recite it.

Remember when the College Board tried to reframe US History and actual address the implications of race in the story of our country? Remember when the conservatives threw a massive fit and eventually got their way?