Yes People are dumb and think Chinatowns in all cities are China so their businesses dropped This happened in Houston and all over the country In feb and March before they started shutting down restaurants
Sure it is political and dishonest. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say Pelosi encouraging people to come out to any store or restaurant in urban California on Feb 24 was actually bad advice given the spike they experienced soon thereafter. But that's not their criticism. I just don't want us to lose sight of the history. Its a bit of whataboutism for the Trump camp to stave off criticism that Trump should have taken the virus more seriously in February. I think the problem with this defense (aside from the logical fallacy of whataboutism) is that (a) Trump had access to more information than Senators, (b) Trump has more responsibility for the government response than do Senators, (c) the things that Trump is accused of neglecting revolve more around strategy and longterm planning -- building a test and trace capability, pursuing a vaccine, providing effective guidelines to states, regulating international and interstate travel to mitigate spread, slowing the virus abroad, providing information and education about the virus for the citizenry, and providing leadership to unify the people to tackle the problem together -- while Pelosi was in general taking the longterm problem more seriously but erred only in underestimating how quickly the virus would hit California. Anyway, this thread is about Fern t***. Glad my interest in the NBA had dried up before he bought the Rockets because a younger me would be pretty demoralized having this dude as the owner.
Keep in mind that Pelosi was merely saying that Chinese Americans were not a threat - she was trying to fight discrimination and was not talking about the virus as the virus wasn't to be known to be in SF at the time.
She could have been more poignant. Her messaging made it seem that she was encouraging people to go out which isn't the smart advice to give. She could have just addressed the racism part without encouraging people to go out.
At the time there was no lockdown or advisory on avoiding going out - people were going about their normal lives all across the country.
Sure, I get it. And she stressed on that trip that people need to be cautious and that the businesses in Chinatown were taking precautions to make it safe. Far from parties and dancing in the street. And they didn't know they had community spread on that day -- but they did have community spread on that day. The first confirmed case was between San Fran and Sacramento. And more recently two deaths in February (2/6 and 2/17) in the San Jose area were confirmed Covid deaths that they think were also community spread. So -- again in hindsight -- staying away from Chinatown and every other retail hub was probably the smart move on Feb 24. We just didn't know it back then.
