Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure!
I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source).
Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign countries we do not control might make mistakes. We should get better at responding fast to save lives.
Maybe it was a sinister bio-terrorism plot. We should get better at responding fast to save lives. Bio-terror/warfare plan looks a whole lot like a good public health plan IMO.
Maybe gasp it really was from bats or something. We should get better at responding fast to save lives. This stuff DOES happen.
Maybe s/.*/I don't care where it came from/g. We should get better at responding fast and saving lives (my opinion).
Talk about that will you?
If the whole pandemic could’ve been avoided, that’s part of getting better at this.
I think you're wrestling with a strawman here, no one's arguing the inverse. But in any investigation (arson, murder, etc.) the details do matter -- where, how, what weapon, when, and so on.
Then we shouldn't be doing _gain of function_ research on the types of viruses that can cause these outbreaks.
> Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign countries we do not control might make mistakes. We should get better at responding fast to save lives.
What's the cost-benefit analysis for running the lab in the first place? Was any of it's research used in producing the vaccine? If it's all about saving lives, can't we be mad at both the lacking response and the laboratory at the same time?
> I don't care where it came from [...] We should get better at responding fast and saving lives (my opinion).
Those two goals seem in conflict with each other. Good offense is something we should aspire too.. but that doesn't mean we should entirely ignore defense as well.
If your goal is not good governance, but getting re-elected by your base, that is not something you need to optimize for.
When China locks 35 million people in their homes, and this makes the New York Times, and we don't do anything to respond for another month, and we don't do anything meaningful for a month and half... What we have is a domestic, not a foreign problem.
These articles made the news on January 8th, January 23rd, and February 7th. The first travel ban, that only covered China was on... January 30th. The first travel ban on Europe was on March 11th (At this point, Europe had ten times the active COVID cases that China did at the end of January. Why did we wait so long to stop travel from it?)
The first state lockdown was in New York State, on March 22nd.
Exactly how much advance warning did we need to deal with this pandemic? Three months? Three years? Do you think that a president who would constantly deny reality, to the point of claiming that there would be zero cases in the US by April would have handled this crisis any better, regardless of how much lead time he was given?
I'll also eat my shoe if the CIA and/or the NSA weren't at least as aware as the NYT of the seriousness of the situation in China (It can't be hard, my co-workers with relatives in China were all aware of it from, you know, talking to folks back phone. On the phone.) And if they weren't - why on Earth are we wasting billions of dollars on their cloak-and-dagger budgets, when I can get a better take on current events by having lunch with my team?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavi...
[3] https://time.com/5779678/li-wenliang-coronavirus-china-docto....
Compensation for damage inflicted, for one thing? If a country is inept at handling deadly viruses, tries to handle them anyway and in result causes millions of deaths and trillions of dollars worth of financial loss, they should be liable for the damage they've done?
And maybe if it was a leak and the world had been warned of the dangers then they would have locked down movement to and from the origin before it began to spread internationally.
How? Following your line of reasoning, it makes the US response look even worse. No enemy of the US would have imagined that US citizens will turn wearing a mask into a political statement. Before the pandemic, the US was rated #1 in epidemic preparedness. No one had imagined that it will become societal consensus to sacrifice 500k American lives.
Yet we've just spent the last year proving that biological warfare will be potentially more deadly than chemical or even nuclear warfare.
Decades ago we banned research into those other weapons and implemented international treaties and inspection regimes.
Even the possibility that this could have been a lab leak should scare the whole world and motivate a massive reform of these labs and the experiments people are conducting.
I hope the people in power don't share your complacency.
Respectfully, this just simply isn't supported by the data and the dozens upon dozens of polls available[1]. Sure, there's a bunch of QAnon weirdos out there or staunch Alex Jones acolytes, but most regular folks have been taking it more or less seriously: social distancing and mask-wearing has been almost universally adopted. Last year in April and May, the percentage of people that "weren't worried" about Covid-19 was in the single digits. And there is some mistrust out there, but it's been well-earned: 15 days to flatten the curve has turned into 365 days of economic and social limbo.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/308222/coronavirus-pandemic.asp...
Given that the US government's response was basically to do nothing until it was too late, and then to do nothing except hinder the states' abilities to respond, it's hard to imagine that an extra six months' time would have made any difference, other than giving them six more months to downplay and dismiss the problem.
So yeah, we can care about whether the Chinese government was trying to save face, but in the end does it matter whether that's the case or not? The only thing we can change is our own countries' responses to pandemics like this.
Why not? Seriously, this is the "let's just stop developing nukes" argument... someone will and whether we're prepared or not is on us.
In particular, if true that it 'leaked' ... it's not like other nations are leaking pathogens which kill millions and cause 5 Trillion in destruction. It would literally change the geostrategic equation overnight and be seminal, defining world event certainly bigger than 9/11. On the scale of a WW.
If it was quasi-intentional (this is definitely not true, but since you speculated...) then it would be an act of war and the most damaging attack on the US (and other nations) ever. The US and the world would have to go to war with China over this. (Again this surely is not the case).
All while the US/EU/Rest of Word 'get better' at the above.
The fact is that even ignoring government response, all of our medical institutions seemed to presume that this was yet another [avian, swine, bird, ...] flu outbreak and it would be about as minimally impactful for the west as the rest have been. Which indicates that doctors and hospital administration were either not reading the literature coming out of China as early as last january 2020, or they simply disregarded it as sensationalist and/or sloppy. And, to be fair, given the state of crisis that our research institutions are in globally, I can't entirely blame them, though I still think it was irresponsible that no one seemed to make any preparations for months after the outbreak was apparent. It's as if everyone sat on their hands waiting for the government to tell them it was serious.
No! We should worry about the cause and also concern ourselves with managing the effect.
If we can prevent this, we should try. And, if our (American) politicians can be held to account for mishandling the situation, the WHO and China should be scrutinized on the international stage.
You should care about knowing where it came from if you want to save lives.
We should also remember that there were past lab leaks in China of SARS, including ones that led to smaller outbreaks and deaths: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20040423/china-sars-death
Clearly the virus is only a major issue for elderly and infirm patients, where the vast majority of people under the age of 30-40 present mildly or asymptomatically. And if that's indeed the case, then perhaps forcing the entire population to shelter in place for more than a year makes less sense than, say, recommending protective measures primarily for the vulnerable.
Before the pandemic, the US was actually rated #1 for endemic preparedness. No one had imagined that wearing a piece of cloth to protect others would become a political statement. No one was dreaming of the loss of half a million (!) American lives being remotely acceptable.
I would even go so far as to argue that from a psychological perspective the situation is similar to losing a war. US society will have to come to terms with what happened and how to prevent it in the future, and that's at the heart of parent's post.
The defense is NOT to stop the virus (unrealistic defense solution) - it's to make sure we can withstand/resist it so things like vaccines can be put into place so we can go back to some sort of normal (e.g. New Zealand)
The USA (only major western country without healthcare) was unique in how many deaths we had. 90% of those were unnecessary.
My genuine apologies if I am crossing a line. I know this is a potentially touchy subject. Hate crime is serious and has many negative externalities that other crimes and accidents don't carry. They have also been on the rise, and could continue to grow more significant. It just feels very strange to me that 70 additional crimes in a year that saw thousands of additional murders has been such a common talking point for months now.
What does an unstable person do with that info? It seems like calling it the "Chinese virus" is relatively benign by comparison.
Does censoring do anything here?
1. An increase in violence targeted specifically at Asian people that is in excess of the already-documented rise of violence in general experienced across all groups in 2020.
2. An attribution that this imaginary excess violence is "white supremacist" in nature and intent.
3. A direct causal connection between this imaginary and poorly-attributed violence stemming specifically from the origin of the virus.
It's easier to defend freedom to hypothesize when you realize that the people advocating against said freedom are, themselves, simply making shit up.
perhaps. I mean having the leader of the free world spout conspiracy theories and give credence to them certainly hurts.
in the past you'd have crackpot conspiracy theorists spouting off their "knowledge" at the bar to anyone that would listen but most would shy away from the crazy person. now you have a mainstream leader saying crazy stuff and have a huge following of people spouting that off because you can get misinformation and half truths at the speed of sound. yeah some vetting of information should be there.
a lot of the "proof" I've seen have been from being ignorant of what scientific terms mean, deliberate mis/disinformation, and wholly not understanding cause and effect. the other thing that lets these propagate is the downright innumeracy of our societies.
my brother has gone down a dark path of this shit to the point that I am very disgusted by the "truthers" poisoning the minds of people. he used to be a decently intelligent man but he's gotten hit with the gish gallop of disinformation and lies.
[1] - https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statem...
[2] - https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statem...
Human psychology deals with numbers strangely. There are many who seem to think 500,000+ deaths (many preventable) from Covid are not something to be overly concerned about. Some of these same people are deeply worried about "Extremist Muslim terrorism" that has had very few victims.
So, yeah, from what I understand about growing anti-Asian crime, I do think it makes sense to be concerned. In particular, because this increase seems to be a (predictable) response to actions by many over the past year to demonize China, which any sane person knew would create a generalized animosity toward Asian-Americans. It's not like things like this have never happened before. They have, and they're quite predictable.
I agree that the US response to the threat of terrorism was also very much an overreaction, so at least you can say I'm consistent.
From what I understand, the total number of hate crimes decreased in 2020. I haven't been able to find the data and if, for example, this is because the number of hate crimes against whites dropped, the following is false. But in my mind this fits a model where X people are going to attack minorities in a given year, and this year, for obvious and insane reasons, they typically targeted Asians.
I understand the frustration and pain and cause for pushback. I say this because the next part will come across as cold. From a utilitarian perspective, there is not any material difference between worlds where different minorities are victimized. Changing the targets doesn't solve anything.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/285644/percentage-americans-rec...