memes

I know this nerd has been banned, but for posterity I'll point out that the circumstances were completely fucking different.

COVID in America: you have a 21st century nation with internet, global trade, well-established information and logistics networks, clear understanding of the extent and nature of the threat, most of the world's top universities and biomedical research labs, you have fucking hundreds of thousands of people with lifelong specialist training in science, technology, emergency response, public messaging, and any other conceivable discipline relevant to managing a fucking pandemic, and you have all the money on earth to give them.

Soviet famine: you have a rural post-revolutionary state still racing to industrialize and prepare for war, still mostly uneducated and illiterate, no foreign trade, extremely rudimentary information and logistics networks, no way to establish any sort of responsive feedback control loop to manage the situation, and no way to fucking conjure more food out of the ground. There's no n95 to hand out, no stipend to stay home, no social distancing, no vaccine. All you can do is spread the scraps around and keep the farmers farming and workers working.