First: the difference between how Garmin handled a global outage that lasted 5 days, and how SendGrid managed one that lasted 5 hours. SendGrid handles billions of emails per day, including for Microsoft and other massive companies. So SendGrid going down didn't inconvenience a few athletes and pilots; it crippled Fortune-500 companies' marketing departments. (And it delayed a scheduled release on my own team.)
Within about an hour of their outage, SendGrid created an incident response page to which they posted updates every half-hour. They clearly stated what was going on and how they were trying to fix it, even as they were discovering for themselves what had happened:
Contrast that with Garmin, who still haven't really explained what happened or why it took so long to resolve the outage. (They finally declared their remediation "complete" yesterday, almost 6 days after the outage started.)
Second: the difference between how Germany (and other rich countries) have handled Covid-19 and how we have. Josh Marshall looked into the numbers:
The head of Germany’s equivalent of the CDC told reporters today that he’s “very concerned” about the rising case numbers in the country and accuses Germans of becoming “negligent” in their adherence to mitigation measures. He has good reason to be concerned.
Today Germany reported 638 new cases of COVID. That comes out to .76 cases per 100,000 residents. Let’s round that up to 1 new case per 100,000 for good measure. (The need for round numbers will become clear.)
Today New York State had 3 cases per 100,000. So Germany is concerned by 1/3 the number of cases as we have in New York state, a state which is probably controlling the disease as well as any other state in the country.
Florida today had 43 cases per 100,000. Florida’s outbreak is more than forty-three times the size relative to population.
To state the point baldly, Germany is very concerned about a rise in cases that would still be dramatically better than any other part of the United States. They’re ramping up border restrictions to get things back under control and chiding the population to redouble its collective efforts.
[S]eeing this as, "well, look, everyone’s having problems." Or "we’re not the only ones having new outbreaks" or "we can’t go back to shutdowns…" ... only captures how Americans are having a hard time grappling with just how many universes away we are from what is happening in other countries which are comparably affluent, industrialized and able to mount an effective response.
We’re failing that badly.
Anthony Fauci was on BBC just now, struggling not to call the president out on his criminal negligence. Only 98 days until we can vote the bastard out.