Hi, person from a part of "most of the world" here. We don't think the U.S. response to Covid-19 has been particularly bad or good, but perhaps a bit above average in the western world.

We did raise a collective eyebrow when Joe Biden (or rather, his campaign) tweeted criticism at Trump when he started closing the borders. If anything, it would probably have been a good idea to be even stricter with travelers from Asia and Europe.

Let's be honest: No-one had reliable information in the beginning, and we all had to do as best we could under the circumstances. In retrospect, some were quite lucky (Sweden), some managed to postpone the inevitable (Germany, France, Norway, South Korea), some were hit early and hard where it hurt the most (Italy), and some went completely overboard with totalitarianism and continues to do so (Victoria in Australia, Scotland, England to a slightly lesser extent), but none of the strategies have resulted in anything you could call a resounding success.

Now we have a lot more information, but it seems panic has set in and we keep ignoring the science.

Oh, but everyone who's heard about the pandemic in the U.S. agree on one thing: that the New York response was just awful. Who thought releasing infected nursing home patients from hospital quarantine and sending them back to their respective nursing homes would not cause a massive spread of the infection? I don't have the exact numbers handy, but I believe the resulting deaths were in the thousands.
I guess you could turn it around and say "people are mostly content with the government's COVID-19 response, except for those who listen to leftist media." It all depends on the framing.

And yet, beyond some relatively minor gerrymander issues, that doesn't seem to be a problem in other parts of the world.

I don't know about that.

In my country, mechanisms do exist to insure somewhat fair representation in government of the various parts of the country, but it is still routinely an issue that the concerns of the capitol and the largest cities are given priority.

Since my country is not a federation of independent states, the rural counties have no other choice than to suck it up.

Global views of U.S. plunge to new lows amid pandemic, poll finds
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...irus-pew-poll/

Global Opinions
Trump’s performance on covid-19 looks especially bad compared with the rest of the world
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...th-rest-world/

World looks on in horror as Trump flails over pandemic despite claims US leads way
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-world-leaders

From Abroad, Image of the U.S. Plummets
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-cou...virus-response

U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2...navirus-badly/

Americans give the U.S. low marks for its handling of COVID-19, and so do people in other countries
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...her-countries/

Need I go on? That was just the top few hits on the search page.
Thanks for proving my point, which was not addressed in your response and I invite you to. How can we agree on solutions if we can't agree on the problems?

8bit

Let me be clear: most of the world is rooting against Trump. We are not saying Biden will fix the USA. We are not fooled to believe that he is a model of integrity and high morals. Or Kamala Harris. They're just run-of-the-mill "normal" politicians.
Which Trump clearly isn't.
I have never seen a person in such a responsible position misbehaving, making The Wrong Decisions and a fool out of themselves in such spectacular ways, repeatedly, ad nauseum. Being divisive and emotional when they should have spoken in a calm and unifying manner. Praising himself in superlatives when he clearly messed up. Throwing egomaniac temper tantrums and resorting to plain lying when things aren't going his way. It would be very funny in a sick and weird way, if evidently a significant proportion of the US population wouldn't actually believe him. Which makes my jaw drop a second time, and that really hurts.
Somebody just said "what he's doing right now (saying he won although he didn't, then blaming the democrats for cheating) is the sadly apt conclusion to a 4 year ego trip". Well, I hope they're right.

If it is possible to separate the politics from this sick personality - I personally believe it's not, because he flouts his personality and confuses it with what he thinks is politics - but just for the sake of argument, let's pretend D. Trump was your run-of-the-mill average republican POTUS:

1. America first. Granted, that's a meaty slogan, and he did (try to) follow that slogan. He did not "deliver on all his promises", and where he did he delivered in a much smaller, more realistic manner than his attitude would suggest, with slightly less than average results. Or flashy but ineffective attempts to fix some problem. But he sure knew how to sell that to the unwashed masses of rural America!
2. Foreign policy. A f*cking disaster in every respect. I can elaborate if someone wants to go there, but for 1 post there's just too much.

And this is why we non-Americans are so keen on seeing this clown removed from public view: we fear that this behaviour might set a new bar to measure politicians, a precedent. Because it seems to have "inspired" a few in the past 4 years. Not only Bolsonaro.
We also like to look at global problems, and deal with them. Maybe not very effectively, maybe it's hardly more than a token effort, but still. Kicking all that to the curb for "America First" - and getting the support of so many people who suffer from great economical fears so much that the environment becomes a distant third, even though the effects are affecting life in the USA on a grand scale... would be not just one but many steps backwards.

But judging from the news coming in hourly, common sense, sanity and checks'n'balances seem to prevail in the Land of Crazy Businessmen. Anybody seriously suggesting the Democrats cheated in a meaningful way, if they win, will have to take it outside with me.

Since we have gone astray...

Hindsight is always 20/20. I don't know when exactly the administration first found out about COVID but between the time it was detected in late Dec and when the travel ban was first implemented 300,000 people traveled to and from China from the US plus the initial ban was only for non US citizens. The horse was already out of the barn even though there were only a few cases in the US. I agree non one had reliable information but if no one outside of the administration knew how contagious COVID is you can not necessarily blame Biden for his initial criticism. The VP was assigned to lead the task force late Feb but a month was lost with him getting up to speed and figuring out the coordination between the task force and the states. Coordination between the National Guard and civil institutions took time too. According to Azar it was a uniform recommendation of all the experts to restrict travel and not just Trump's idea. The President uses the China ban as the one single event to say thousands of lives were saved but in reality it is difficult to quantify. The Governors and the President were always at odds and it was obvious the Republican run states received aide faster than Democratic run states. The President never had a unifying message, no unifying federal mandate like other countries. In the end local communities created their own lock down procedures with fights between cities and county administration.

I agree we keep ignoring the science but as I posted in other threads it is just part of the US culture. Just like the Spanish Flu 100 years ago trying to get people to wear masks and social distance was just as difficult.

Iceland is one of the leading countries in its COVID response. It did not close down but has tested more people then any other country and also had good contact tracing. On the other side, New Zealand also had a good response but did have a complete lock down. 103 days later declared it was free of the virus.

Doesn't seem a problem here, I see about an equal amount of "favouritism" towards both urban and rural areas. Although many do only see one side.

We are a federation of six states and two territories. The lower house is made up of representatives and the senate is made up of twelve senators from each state and two from each territory (to protect states' rights). The problem here is that the representatives do not represent their constituents and the senators do not represent their states or territories - they almost invariably toe their party lines instead.

Going even further off topic, I think we (Australia) should admit the system's broken and:

- make the number of senators from each state and territory proportional to the population of that state/territory (since states' rights aren't a senate priority);

- scrap the representational system (since it isn't representative) and elect the lower house the same way as the senate;

- go to fixed three year terms for both houses and stagger the lower and upper house elections by eighteen months;

- and, while I'm fixing Australia's electoral problems, severely limit electoral advertising and similarly limit allowable political donations to stamp out lobbying.

At the state level, we have the same problem of representatives not representing.

Washington Post is behind a paywall, so I can't really comment. It was a Pew poll, right? Pew is U.S. based, with marginal representation in London and Brussels. Since I can't read the article, I don't know (yet!) how the poll was conducted.
This is sort of an opinion piece, quoting Fauci saying the U.S. isn't doing great. Well, it isn't. No-one is.

They then interestingly proceed to quote what is basically invalid data in this context, comparing the number of cases in countries with widely different testing regimes. This is the main problem with COVID-19 data; even to this day, we don't really have them. Testing in the U.K. is rubbish. Testing in Germany was rubbish but is improving. Testing in Scandinavia is laughable, and the official stance from the health authorities is that the Nordic countries probably have at least 10 times more cases than have been reported.

If you look at the current data from Germany, France, Denmark etc., the U.S. starts to look much better. You guys are a bit ahead of the curve over there, but I assure you the rest of us are getting there. We'll all be infected by SARS-COV2 sooner or later.
Do we now? The Guardian is a leftist publication with plenty of "Orange Man Bad" opinion pieces on their resume, but they're not usually dishonest regarding the facts.

It's interesting that the article makes this (unsourced) claim:...considering that many African countries have had very limited means to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, I doubt they spend much of their time worrying about the U.S. But then again perhaps they do, as despite using the same simple measures as Europe (albeit less effectively) and having what can be generously described as substandard healthcare, Africa in general is doing pretty great.

They then refer to polls in several (left-leaning) nations, where the populations were asked about their trust in U.S. leadership in the world. Nothing in the questions about COVID-19, but The Guardian concludes that reduced confidence in U.S. leadership must somehow be related to the pandemic. Why it would not be related to troop withdrawal from Germany, or daily images of racial riots being shown on the news, or the constant barrage of translated "Orange Man Bad" articles from U.S. media, I don't know.

The article reads mostly like an opinion piece, but it does link to Trumps nonsensical musings on coronavirus treatments with UV light and somesuch, where he says these things "should be checked". Well, I'm sure they were (in a medical textbook) and were found to be just silly, and everybody moved on. This rubbish doesn't help his image one bit, but it also doesn't affect the U.S. COVID-19 strategy. Trump created the Coronavirus Task Force back in January, and I don't think they pay much attention to the Trump press briefings.
Ah, they refer to the same Pew Research poll as the earlier article from The Washington Post! Perhaps they can provide some more information? Let's see:That's not exactly a massive poll, it is? And interestingly:Yes, the WHO was just great. I'm sure most people in Europe and Asia would agree wholeheartedly.
Dude, these links are ALL referring to the SAME Pew Research poll, which polled a small number of people in a wide range of countries, some of which have a huge population.

And the various publications are all emphasizing how horrible Trump is, while in fact the respondents are saying that they have no confidence in the U.S.. And even though the articles made claims like "all-time low", the actual data says that they have a slightly better image of the U.S. than they did under GWB. That's not really a high bar, for sure, but it means that saying "an all-time low" is just plain wrong.
To identify the problem(s), you absolutely need accurate information. COVID-19 is a brilliant example of this. We're still acting on feelings and nonsense.

How about:

• Use multiple sources.
• Don't go to U.S.-centric media for information outside the U.S.
• Realize that scientific information doesn't come from Trump, CNN, MSNBC or Fox. They come from scientific publications.
• Know that polls and science news being reported by media will say what that media outlet wants it to say, because they will emphasize the parts that support their view, or simplify to the point where the facts are distorted beyond recognition.
• Take news from partisan media with a grain of salt. For instance, The Guardian and CNN is very left and Orange Man Bad. Fox News is center-right (somewhat like Trump himself) and "Trump is much better than <whatever the alternative, whatever the topic>".

Believe it or not, but here in Europe the news is mostly not about the U.S. at all. Sure, the U.S. was in all the headlines in the days immediately preceding and following the election, but even though it hasn't been settled yet, there are already hourly news reports where the U.S. isn't mentioned at all.

And when we Europeans talk about the U.S., which we don't really do in everyday conversation, it's generally not about COVID-19. Why would it be? It doesn't affect us one bit! We get the infection and mortality rates reported in the news occasionally, and if there's news about a vaccine or a treatment, it's mentioned in passing, but otherwise any mention of the U.S. is mostly regarding foreign policy.

Exception: We did get some coverage of the recent riots, because violence and mayhem sells. And we learned that Americans are horribly racist and black people are poor, oppressed, and violent. I'm sure that's entirely correct.

Search was - "world opinion of trump's covid response"

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=world+opin...covid+response

Looking through page after page I found a couple of positive responses, by Jared Kushner, and Greg Norman. Two out of 79(approx) hits I looked through. Let's say three in case I missed one, or maybe even 4 to to be safe. I stand by my original comment. "By in large, most of the world believes Trump's response to Covid was poor at best". No amount of spin can make my statement untrue.

8bit

First time I read a term like "left-leaning nation" applied to a democratic country - uttered from a US American point of view, of course.
Understandable; most conservative governments around here would comfortably fit inside the US democratic party.

You have no basis for this assertion.

I speak to people in my country daily, obviously. Unlike basically everyone I know, I pay attention to U.S. news. I have to be careful not to bore people to tears in conversations, because news from the U.S. is not something most people would care to hear about, let alone discuss.

Most of my acquaintances are either in the 25-35 age range, or 50+. U.S. politics is not a popular topic of conversation in either group. I also know a few people in their late teens/early twenties, and they know absolutely nothing about U.S. politics (and make a point of telling me in no uncertain terms that they do not care in the slightest).

Nevertheless, they all know that Donald Trump is president.

They all know there's just been an election "over there".

Many have registered that a guy called Joe Biden is the opposing candidate. Few know that he was VP under Obama.

Practically no-one knows who Kamala Harris is (the younger crowd would probably guess she's an artist of some kind).

Almost no-one can say anything at all about how the U.S. has handled and is currently handling the COVID-19 pandemic. They just don't know, because they simply do not care. It hasn't been reported in the media, because why would it? "Orange Man Bad"-articles wouldn't sell papers or clicks in this nation.

That's why the notion that anyone in my country, or indeed in any of the neighbouring countries (which I visit and have family members in), would have a more or less positive view of the U.S. based on the U.S.' COVID-19 response, is so absurd I can't even begin to articulate it.

It's like if I were to tell you this:

A poll shows that U.S. citizens now have a significantly more negative view of Australia than they did last year, due to the way the prime minister has handled bush fire prevention. 17,890 people were polled over the phone, in 21 different states.

Would you believe this to be a valid representation of U.S. citizens opinion of Australia?

Hey, how about a post that's 100% on topic in this thread!

Something went wrong in Michigan, it seems. An election worker claims to have discovered a flaw in the tabulating software, causing 6,000 votes to be erroneously switched from Trump to Biden.

The article headline uses the wording "GOP Claims ...", but it was in fact a (GOP) election worker that reported the error. The software is used in 47 counties in Michigan. Votes will probably have to be recounted manually.

Also, when Tim Pool covered this, he claimed the software vendor is already involved and is looking into the matter. I haven't checked the source of that information, but Mr. Pool tends to be a quite reliable source of news.

The Epoch Times article also mentions several other cases of error and inaccuracies in other states, both in the presidential election and various local elections. For instance, a seat in Oakland County almost went to a Democrat, but a "computer error" (really?) was discovered and the Republican candidate was then declared the winner.

These "errors" are disturbingly common, and the way they are discovered (by people questioning the result and performing a manual re-check) doesn't really inspire confidence. Who knows how many undiscovered "computer errors" might have occurred?

It is strange because the American Constitution was negotiated by 13 independent countries and the Electoral College was one of several compromises between the states that wanted an organization similar to the United Nations and states that wanted something like a European parliamentary system. The electoral system incorporates state sovereignty and democratic voting. The issue of state sovereignty was settled in the states' disfavor by the American Civil War but the electoral college system lives on.

It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college system. One of the compromises in the Constitution is that an amendment to the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote in the House of Representatives, a 2/3 vote in the Senate, and approval by 3/4 of the state legislatures. Note that 49 of the 50 states have 2 house legislatures. The states that benefit from the skew in voting power provided by the electoral college system probably make up a majority of the states. The chances of a constitutional amendment passing which abolishes the electoral college are nil.

The election rules for voting in Federal elections are set by the states, not the Federal government. Traditionally the presidential candidate that receives the most votes in a state gets all of the electoral votes in that state. In the last few presidential elections two states, Maine and Nebraska, have changed their rules so that each congressional district, which represent an approximately equal population, selects an elector and the candidate who gets the most votes in the state receives 2 additional electoral votes, which represent state sovereignty. Any state that wants to can change to the Maine/Nebraska rules without any participation by the Federal government or any amendment to the Constitution. If any or all of the states change to the Maine/Nebraska system then the electoral college would more closely represent the popular vote. I think that reform is politically possible.

-----------------------
Steve Stites

Nothing is perfect.

https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,...4676--,00.html

Almost all of the rules for Federal elections are set by the individual states. One Federal rule is that the results of who the electors are must by submitted by a certain date (I think the date is December 10 but I did not look it up.) In 2000 there was a close presidential election in Florida and the Florida results would decide the national presidential election. The resulting legal squabble went to the American Supreme Court twice. The Supreme Court ruled that the various recounts were ruled by Florida law, not federal law, and whatever the official Florida count was on December 10 was what Florida was to report to the Federal government. Basically the several Florida recounts proved that the Florida vote count was not reproducible. Since then Florida has cleaned up their voting system.

In the current election Trump has entered law suites in several states. These lawsuits are all decided on the basis of the law of the state involved. In one case a state was ruled remiss because local election workers did not allow Republican observers to watch the vote count which act contravened the state's election law. In the rest of the cases the courts ruled that the state involved was following the state's election law or in one case the person bringing the suite did not have legal standing in the case they brought.

Trump has far fewer legitimate legal complaints than he has made and will make in the near future. Also the charge that judges have and will make judgments based on political loyalties rather than the law just isn't true.

I live in the rural southern United States. Unfortunately I can personally testify that your statement about fanaticism is all too true. More specifically the Trump supporters fervently believe that the Democrats will ban firearms, interfere with freedom of religion, establish a socialist economic system thus impoverishing the country, and raise taxes.

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Steve Stites