zlacker

This New York mag article [1] published eons ago already made it clear to any sane biologist that all you mentioned are important things to consider. However the issue is sane biologists or scientists in general are actually in extreme short supply, the vast majority are often under the delusion that they “understand the system” better than they actually do. They also are often knowingly and unknowingly more interested in persevering their personal agenda (for eg. Gain of function research in the general sense in this case) than the overall good of humanity or scientific rigor.

Take Fauci for example, is he a good scientist? Yes. But it’s also clear that he too subconsciously has pushed for the method of approaching pandemics that coincidentally he was good at, and now we are left with this mess. I doubt him or anyone in between is going to acknowledge it even if they realize it. I was downvoted here to oblivion for pointing this out weeks back but doesn’t matter. I threw away a decade of my life’s experience because I didn’t believe in this cult of an academic system, downvotes don’t hurt nearly as much.

1. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...

>>ramraj+(OP)
Trump didn't exactly follow Fauci's advice, so it's odd that you'd blame Fauci's "method of approaching pandemics" for "this mess."

Was there some other, better, established method?

>>GavinM+m8
I meant Fauci at al.’s approach of proactively looking for the next pandemic via sample collection and lab engineering of new variants which predates the trump administration. By all appearances Faucis performance during the pandemic is nothing to be questioned. These are different topics.

>>ramraj+u9
Thanks for clarifying

>>GavinM+m8
> Was there some other, better, established method?

We may learn from Taiwan*.

Quote: "Extensive public health infrastructure established in Taiwan pre-COVID-19 enabled a fast coordinated response, particularly in the domains of early screening, effective methods for isolation/quarantine, digital technologies for identifying potential cases and mass mask use."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6...

>>hbosch+vj
In the US at least, given our culture of individualism/“freedom” we would never be able to replicate Taiwan. Isolation/Quarantine seem to have dubious political and legal support. Mask wearing is also seen negatively.

>>hbosch+vj
It's really obvious at this point that Taiwan got lucky and that the geographical luck of not being close to Europe or having lots of visitors from there helped a lot. The moment Covid-19 actually got a foothold in the country they really started struggling and their testing for it collapsed under the load - and this was in May 2021, when we knew a lot more about Covid and tests for it were a commodity item produced in massive numbers. Western Europe and the USA hit this point in March 2020 with much less information available about the disease, no treatment options, and far less production capacity for Covid tests. (Probably due to all the people travelling there from a country that was reporting zero cases whilst a substantial proportion of their population was infected. Something seems to have gone seriously wrong in Italy that's been almost entirely ignored by the media, maybe because it's lead by the kind of boring technocrat they like.)

Unfortunately, all the media reporting on which countries have succeeded or failed and why seems to have been incredibly inaccurate and blatantly partisan.

>>ramraj+u9
Indeed, Obama created a literal "Pandemic response team" and setup some useful stockpiles of materials that would be needed.

Trump threw it all away very early on.