
American Passports Are Worthless Now (Map) - guptaneil
https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b20678a80e
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verylittlemeat
These kind of articles are the worst kind of sensationalist clickbait. Calling
the United States the "plague states." Citing past data as predictive when it
just links to the author's own opinion articles with titles like
"Reorientalism: How White Passports Became Worthless."

It's like someone tried to take the worst aspects of twitter and turn them
into an article. It's perfectly balanced with some grains of truth to breed
the kind of viral flamewars across the internet which I'm sure your average
medium blogger salivates over. Really disappointing link.

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jmclnx
Sadly, I can see many people in the US saying "Good, who wants to go to those
Countries anyway". I know a few already who believe that.

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asadkn
No paywall link: [http://archive.is/YGqjl](http://archive.is/YGqjl)

Someone had to speak out. But I am not sure if the list is entirely accurate.
There was this news about EU travel info that's relevant:
[https://www.nytimes.com/article/eu-travel-ban-explained-
usa....](https://www.nytimes.com/article/eu-travel-ban-explained-usa.html)

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html5web
All Passports are Worthless Now!

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sam_lowry_
Hm... As a European on vacation in France right now, I wholeheartedly
disagree. Argh... the tide goes up. Gotta hurry to move the towel. Would you
excuse me?

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html5web
What I mean is COVID-19 is affecting all countries. It’s not only US. The
title of the article is confusing. And I think it is temporary, hopefully we
will get out of this black hole soon.

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SpicyLemonZest
This is a good example, I think, of the kind of pandemic coverage that
actively contributes to America's inability to respond. The author is
nominally on the side of controlling the pandemic, but with such a toxic
attitude about it, I can't imagine this article swings people to his side on
average. He says "it’s too late", we're in the "Plague States of America",
"there’s nothing America can do but wait" \- why should anyone make personal
sacrifices to help control the coronavirus if it's so hopeless?

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mach5
no one reading this is gonna 'swing to his side', the people aren't already
trying to control the pandemic are already too hard-headed to even consider
swinging, at least until them or their family members start dropping dead.

the implication that america is unable to respond to the pandemic because A
Guy Was Mean in a Medium Post is ridiculous

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SpicyLemonZest
Obviously it's not this specific guy's fault. But the undercurrent of meanness
is something I've seen consistently. It seems to me that the public debate has
generally been between "it's not a problem, those guys are just exaggerating
it" and "we're doomed, those guys are too stupid to fix it", with the people
trying to plot an effective course being mostly ignored. (How likely do you
think it is that the author can point to specific proposals that should be
implemented, rather than vaguely gesturing at masks and shutdowns?)

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mach5
the latter is completely caused by the former, we are, in fact, doomed. the
effective course was already ignored by those in power, months ago. now the
outbreak is big enough in the south to be uncontrollable, contact tracing is
worthless, testing is near worthless (7 day test turnaround!), anything other
than a full extreme lockdown will not stop this, and that isn't happening.

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SpicyLemonZest
Are you saying that all the states which are still trying to control it should
stop, and reopen everything since control is impossible? I don't believe that
and I don't get the impression you do either.

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mach5
no, of course not, i'm saying that the political will to fix this isn't there,
and to a point was never there, and we are now past the point of no return,
thus this doomsaying like in the original post is bluntly and sadly correct.

