• JustAnotherPodunk@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    As a farmer, dairyman, and rancher with way too many cattle in Texas. I have this to say:

    I was on the front lines of the bird flu cross species fiasco. Literally ground zero. Me and my cohorts were the boots on the ground and knew what was going on weeks before the state and fed acknowledged it. The acknowledgement of the problem was purely political and self serving. The government as a whole (state and fed) were refusing to test and confirm what we already knew. I have evidence and correspondence with officials and veterinarians to back it up.

    My take away: it’s a god damn miracle we survived Covid as well as we did. That should have been so much worse.

    When it comes to the screwfly situation: I had little faith under previous administrations this would be handled properly. In Texas, sid miller was talking about woke agendas and playing partisan hack instead of prioritizing resources. We’ve had almost two god damn years! They all figured the people they were firing and defunding would handle it properly. With what resources?. Systematically dismantling our safety nets caused this.

    This problem is one hundred percent political incompetence. Any IT professional that has been laid off because " your department doesn’t do anything" will tell you that a successful job done is literally twiddling your thumbs because you did it right. Y2k was a victory lap that the general public and politicians laugh at because it wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t a problem because we fixed it before the world ended. This screw fly trainwreck is what happens when you don’t listen to IT and fire them all for being lazy.

    Detection in mexico was non existent. The screw fly hits the states and what is left of our protection finds it. Great job. Too late.

    Tldr, your hamburger and steak prices will continue to be more expensive, but not from this. But the suffering of both domestic animals and wildlife will be greatly increased because these dipshits wanted to play politics instead of giving a shit about the bigger picture.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Y2k was a victory lap that the general public and politicians laugh at because it wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t a problem because we fixed it before the world ended.

      This is something people should well remember about IT for certain and while I don’t have much authority outside of that field, I bet it extrapolates.

      In IT, though, the people that get rewarded and noticed the most are often the people that metaphorically set their own fires and then play the superhero in putting them out. All because they tend not to listen to others or take the initiative themselves to prepare. People that are not running around like their hair on fire are seen as “lazy”.

      • TheGreatRapsBeat@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        But… it could have been worse. Losing only 0.25% of a population during a world wide pandemic is, by all accounts in the scientific/medical field, considered a success.

        • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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          10 days ago

          The US had the highest deaths per capita from Covid. It was bad because so many people angry at covid would listen to anyone who made them angrier, by first denying it actually existed, then later, that vaccines were an attempt to murder them.

          In top 50 worst things Trump has ever done, make covid worse in blue states/cities to claim that democrats are incompetent.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          9 days ago

          Well, we were lucky in that the virus had a relatively low fatality rate for a vast majority of Americans.