The reality of the situation is that people who actually pay attention, not the ones who constantly watch the TV news narrative, have been able to not only understand the true origin of covid, but also predict the entire chain of events that has occurred as a consequence.
When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy theories as imaginary tales? They have been 100% accurate so far with covid.
People who follow conspiracy theories are not stupid - that's why they are looking for what actually happened.
Is it because people don't understand that actual evil exists outside of movies? That there are extreamly powerful people in the world that will throw babies into fires because they believe in occult entities? This is not imaginary.
We live in a world where very evil people exist in high places, but also a world where many more good people exist, but usually not in as powerful positions.
Covid leaked from a lab is viable. Bill Gates injecting microchips into everyone in order to invoke a new global cabal I would argue is firmly in the imaginary tale bracket.
In fact, based on the initial footage from Wuhan, countries should have adopted more stringent protocols when they repatriated their nationals, i.e. quarantine on arrival etc... If in doubt throw everything including the kitchen sink at just to be sure. But it is what it is. I just hope we've learnt from this and are prepared for the next one.
I wouldn't have agreed with you a year ago, but having seen it for myself, it's scary how true it is. All the wild "conspiracy theories" about the vaccine passport notably came to reality 6-8 months or so after being voiced.
That alone, and doors that got closed when it came to researching the lab is suspicious.
Whatever it may be, the original sars had a solid origin within 6 months of research.
This can either mean a) all covid conspiracy theories are 100% accurate or b) some covid conspiracy theories are 100% accurate.
Many covid conspiracy theories are incompatible with one another, so they cannot each be accurate 100%. So you cannot mean a). But b) is a much weaker claim: anything can be called a conspiracy theory, and consequently the claim just ends up being that somebody was right at some point in time. Claim b) has little to no predictive power.
The 1977 H1N1 spread was never truly explained, here a possible lab incident in Russia was one of the possibilities:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.01013-15?permanent...
The Coronavirus from Wuhan, China has a similar story, only this time it is in China.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
To me a solid scientific explanation is still useful, e.g. the intimate study of the Wuhan lab into Coronavirus seems risky at best.
What did China win so far? Paranoia of the rest of the world and an acute realization of most Western nations that they need to rethink their alliances (see the recent AUKUS story) and their supply chains.
The only active malice scenario I could find plausible would be "a single person or a small cult such as Aum Shinrikyo decided to unleash horror on the world". But in the real world, accidents outnumber crimes by orders of magnitude.
If it's for some sort of behavioral tracking, it seems like a lot of effort considering everyone is already carrying a computer in their pocket.
I guess I also would like to know why Bill Gates has become such a target for conspiracy theorists lately? My impression has been that he's pretty sincerely involved in improving conditions in the underdeveloped world. I'm wondering if I missed something that caused people to believe he has some horrible intention?
I hope this is taken as an honest question. I know it's easy to bash on folks who buy into conspiracy theories, but I also happen to know (and am fond of) quite a few of them. Bringing up these topics is always delicate, and I'd be interested in getting to know what's going through their minds.
An intentional lab leak makes no sense to me at all. Its like starting a fire in your house to spite your neighbour.
Yes it matters. If China (and other orgs) are responsible they should be held criminally and civilly liable. Millions have died on account of what appears to have been reckless and dangerous gain of function research. If there's no accountability, it will happen again.
There was a lot of wishful thinking and denialism back in January/February 2020.
The only country that got the initial response right was North Korea, they shut all their borders, and were mocked for it too.
> "there are extreamly powerful people in the world that will throw babies into fires because they believe in occult entities"
What makes you believe that is in any way prevalant? Maybe I'm an optimist, but it seems hard to believe that throwing babies into fires is considered okay, even at the highest social echelons.
Very few people are arguing that it was intentional. I agree that an intentional lab leak is highly, highly unlikely, but I think an accidental lab leak is at least just as likely as the wet market hypothesis and CCP certainly acted extremely suspicious.
I can see why that might seem suspicious, but isn't it equally likely it was a sincere effort to prepare the world for a somewhat periodic event? Especially given previous disease prevention efforts by Gates.
Not to mention.. how would you even get the data off the microchips? (Or onto it for that matter, what magical microscopic sensors can detect your behaviour from your blood?) The antenna would be incredibly tiny and if my limited knowledge of wireless tech is anything to go by, that would mean you'd need a very high energy high frequency RF signal. Where's this energy being pulled out of and how is it getting through your skin and doing it without burning you?
About the only possible thing I could think of is something passively readable like an ID. But even then, I'm not convinced something that's microscopic enough to fit in the vaccine needles (which are tiny!) would be detectable through skin and muscle tissue.
https://youtu.be/IdYDL_RK--w?t=1773
But honestly, it does not matter. What matters is that there is a whole culture who allows shutting down narratives, as it pleases for whatever failed reflexes control it. That culture has to go. Right, Left and center.
So that Covid19 happened so soon after his wargame doesn't seem suspicious to me, just coincidental, and it shows that Bill knows what he's talking about and that his concerns in this area are worth listening to.
I'd love to be refuted on the above by someone with actual viral research experience because the alternative conclusion is that the Chinese govt has known the true origin of SARS-Cov-2 since early 2020 and simply won't tell anyone.
It seems like if that were true, companies must be employing some wildly amazing technology to solve energy and data issues.
I think I'm put off by quite a few conspiracy theories because they seem to assume the powers at be are amazingly competent, and I just have a hard time believing that's actually the case.
If indeed it ever existed, such would almost certainly have been destroyed by now.
Ultimately the source/origin story only matters to narrative or those who would push political narratives of good/evil guilty/innocent. We have to live in the world that exists today regardless of whether it was chance or carelessness that caused it.
All major world governments do illegal and shady acts when faced with situations that may result in the need for extreme ass-covering. (cf. "righteous strike")
If it were an accidental lab leak: so what? How does that change things? If anything, it would accelerate a {trade,cold,cyber,shooting} war with China, which is universally a bad thing, even in pursuit of justice for something that was likely accidental (if indeed it came from a lab, which is presently undefined/unknown to the public).
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Everybody knows that babies are too valuable to be thrown into fires. They need to be murdered for their tasty, tasty adrenochrome[0]!
> pursuit of justice
It has nothing to do with a pursuit of justice, at least not for me. It's about understanding where the disease came from and how it jumped to humans, so that we have a better shot at stopping something like this happening again.
>Shi instructed her group to repeat the tests and, at the same time, sent the samples to another facility to sequence the full viral genomes. Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
The closest phenomena we have in modern world is suicidal jihadism, but its practicioners generally cannot be described as extremely powerful, even if they managed to tire out Western powers in Afghanistan.
I am happy not knowing the truth if my hunch proves right.
That's a more important question about whether or not this particular virus came out of a lab or not, because, if the answer to the above is "yes", then we need to take whatever your/whoever's proposed mitigation/prevention steps even if this thing came about via natural pathways. Even banning GOF research in labs might not be sufficient, if malicious people (wooo "bioterrorism") could go about doing this outside of labs.
Also, we need to plan and prepare for the next global respiratory pandemic in any event, as we know they happen periodically regardless of origin. That's true even if we never authoritatively understand the origin of this one.
They would have acted the same regardless of what the initial case was caused by. That's just the way they roll.
While I agree with that, what this misses is that knowledge of if and how the virus escaped is valuable knowledge that helps us by showing us where the flaws in our current processes are.
Flight safety is a fitting analogy. You need to analyze exactly why a plane crashed so that you can see the gaps in current safety processes. It is that iteration (crash -> analyze -> improve -> crash -> analyze -> improve) over many generations that is why flying is so safe. Without this, it's armchair theory and you are not left with a system that is robust to the real world.
However, if we were to assume that the origins are neither natural (wet markets) nor accidental (lab leaks), but deliberate action on the part of some state that is not China, I have to wonder about the likelihood of this being a botched attempt at triggering regime change in China by parts of the US government. It was executed perfectly in Egypt and Ukraine over the last decade. The extreme measures taken by the CCP that rapidly ended transmission within the country perhaps caused the project to fail.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
[2] Tawang would have gone to China if Nehru had been left to deal with it : Sardar Patel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydguwz8lV7k)
Just playing the devil's advocate here, but, I'd argue that it makes quite a lot of sense from a biological warfare perspective in terms of intelligence gathering on how different societies and countries behave against such a threat.
In particular, the pandemic has brought to the surface the how large schism between the two parties in the US, the constant politicization of science and nearly every other topic, the vast differences in perspective of different groups of the population, and provided information on the outcomes of different measures in different cultural landscapes, the level of preparation of different countries, the time it takes to figure out the correct response, and the responses of the people in guideline changes.
It has also shown that a well prepared, authoritarian country, with mRNA vaccines in the works can incur very minimal losses in terms of population due to swift vaccine rollout, hard lock-downs and strict measures.
China's losses compared to say UK, US, India, Russia and others have been very small if the data they have actually provided are to be believed.
But all of this is pure speculation from a random netizen so take it with huge grains of salt.
The disease was already in curculation in Europe and the US when we found out about it.
Its outcome will change the way we travel for years to come just like 9/11 has.
However, sometimes i see people paint a picture where experts are categorically denying the possibility, and i don't understand the field well enough to be sure one way or another.
What would be the minimum necessary steps to create something like Covid-19?
Corollary: If i mix 100 different natural strains together with a couple dozen CRISPR cutters at random, and inject it into a human. What are the chances of a permutation to be infections/dangerous, and transmissible between humans?
Personally, I think we should just quietly let the origin research happen and all of the political fervor should be immediately leveraged towards preventing any future zoological or lab leak pandemics.
If you scroll to the bottom of it, China owned up to accidentally leaking brucellosis mere months before Covid became a thing, sourced by China Daily (CP's English website). That's why I don't get the accidental lab leak hypothesis. It's inconsistent with previous ones unless you make some 4D chess plays in reasoning.
As for suspiciousness, is that action different than in other situations, or are we they just behaving like that all the time and most of the West is only learning about it now? I'm leaning towards the latter.
1) Natural bat origin
2) Natural non-bat origin
3) Originated elsewhere (per above) and broke out in Wuhan
4) Unintentional lab leak of a natural strain
5) Unintentional lab leak from GoF research
6) Unintentional lab leak from bioweapons research
7) Intentionally released to by the CCP
8) Intentionally released by internal opponents of the CCP
9) Intentionally released by external opponents of China
10) ... and so on
I can come up with sensical (if not always likely) scenarios which fit all of those, and many more.
Most of the scenarios suggest we should be doing much more.
For example:
* If there was an unintentional lab leak of a strain in GoF research, China knows things about COVID19 we don't. They took extreme measures. It's reasonable to assume they might have had some reason.
* If this was a "test" of a bioweapon -- understand China's and the world's response -- it's worth treating as a dry run (note that this does not necessitate Chinese-run test)
* If this were a bioweapon, we should take long COVID very, very seriously, since the best bioweapons are designed to cripple rather than to kill.
What's odd to me is that, as far as I know, no one has compiled a list, evidence, or implications.
All the instances of messing up found so far were incompetence and bureaucratic bullying. This certainly obstructed the free flow of information and delayed effective investigation and action though, but there’s no real sign of a concerted cover up because there were several lines of investigation in the open from early on that were never shut down.
If it could be made in a lab and released (intentionally or accidentally), another could be made in a lab and released (intentionally), and our strategy should be exactly the same even if SARS-CoV-2 is of entirely natural origin, as the entire planet now knows the destructive value of this class of bioweapons (if constructing such artificially is within our technology).
The US ban on GOF research suggests that it is believed to be technically feasible to achieve this. This means we must proceed strategically as a species as if the lab leak hypothesis were true, because over time the probability of an intentional lab leak approaches 1. The origin of this particular pandemic remains irrelevant in that case.
edit: the Aztec empire is an example for this. The religion was politically enforced and thus the political system became part of the religion.
So the question is, isn't religion a case that refutes the parent's hypothessis.
China figured it out and unleashed a global pandemic by opening the borders to not be a victim of day the CIA.
It’s possible it’s intentionally leaked but not by China
But isn’t this precisely the strawman argument that’s effectively destroyed rational discussion about the lab-leak scenario?
As far as I know, absolutely no rational scientist has suggested the intentional ‘bio-weapon’ release of the virus on China’s own population as a realistic scenario, in any way.
But I’ve found whenever discussing an accidental leak with people who oppose it, they almost invariably use this as their main argument rejecting it: “why would the Chinese use this weapon against themselves?”
It seems just another example of the debate being clouded by a politicization that isn’t even there.
He has been warning about this pandemic and has been pushing vaccines. I don't know his motives but the conspiracy theorist narrative is that it's to control population growth, sterilize poorer people etc.
Personally I find this research quite depressing, but revealing about the current environment, since it seems to be getting worse. argumentum ad populum defines the truth since any fact is so easily 'fact-checked' in to oblivion.
> our strategy should be exactly the same even if SARS-CoV-2 is of entirely natural origin
This is still missing the point. The point is that studying the details of how it leaked (if it did leak) gives you information that you can use to refine safety processes. Without these details, you are left with mere armchair theorizing about what new procedures are necessary and what the flaws are in current procedures.
Read about the history of plane crashes, where the details of how planes crashed were used to improve flight safety.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g73/12-airplane-cras...
- United Airlines 232 "The NTSB later determined the accident was caused by a failure by mechanics to detect a crack in the fan disk ... The accident led the FAA to order modification of the DC-10's hydraulic system and to require redundant safety systems in all future aircraft."
- TWA 800 "It was everybody's nightmare: a plane that blew up in midair for no apparent reason ... most likely after a short circuit in a wire bundle ... The FAA has since mandated changes to reduce sparks from faulty wiring and other sources."
Now how could such improvements have been made without knowing how the plane crashed?
In fact YouTube just banned someone for posting self DIY COVID vaccines for this reason.
And on top of it we have social platform that aim to cause discontent harm to earn profits as their stated goal, FB in particular.
ITS not Censorship when are responsible for the things we talk about!
Do you post jest about doing a felony? No of course not. is it censorship because you exercised responsibility?
Be [precise with wording as those who want a darker future want everyone to delve down to non precision as a way to hide their own dark intentions.
Perhaps including the second part you quoted wasnt necessary for my point, but if you think that makes my post politically motivated then Im afraid its only because you choose to see it that way.
While finding out the answer to the latter is interesting, I think "a ban on GOF research" is likely closer to the answer to the former, which reduces the significance of the latter.
We're going to see more of these, whether from SARS-CoV mutations, bioterror, or future lab leaks. The large-scale changes our society needs to make are identical even if we were only facing a subset of these threats (ie if lab leaks could be completely eliminated, which is what I believe you're talking about).
The scientific community is doing the studies, all the studies, every possibility is be analyzed & tested, even the most outlandish claims are being thoroughly tested in many many scientific studies/trials. Every scientist in any related field wants to be the one to find a cure, or find the source, or find any other relevant information on this disease (for the career advancement, the citations, the bragging rights). That the scientific community is correctly trying (and unfortunately failing) is to suppress the spread of false and/or misleading information that is not supported by the science, like the following:
1. Sensationalist press releases that are not supported by the underlying scientific paper.
2. Press releases propping-up weak new papers/studies that are less statistically powerful than the current consensus and therefore don't change the consensus.
3. The general press proping up scientific pre-prints without peer review.
The reason lab leak is considered a conspiracy theory, is because it's a literal conspiracy theory. The conspiracy being the CCP and potentially U.S. covering up a virus leak from their lab. Of course all sorts of other politics and disinformation get attached.
Nobody has the evidence necessary to make evidence based theories on lab leak. All we have is hand waving and "maybe".
Even if it did happen, what do you do? Sanction china? Tell them they were naughty? What this focus on lab leak without evidence does, is riles up the public, gets psuedo intellectual personalities in on the hand waving, and politics turns it into disinformation. The end result being anti-vaccine, anti-pharma, etc. Lab leak hypotheticals have so far done an incredible disservice.
This is so true! Half the time they barely manage to get even simple things done because it’s incredibly hard to get consensus or agreement on something. Or things are brought to a standstill due to bureaucracy.
I’m not saying it proves it was a lab leak, just that I don’t trust them, so when they say it wasn’t, that’s rather meaningless. And since the WHO weren’t allowed to investigate for over a year, that they say they didn’t find any evidence is also meaningless. The fact that the lab leak hypothesis kept getting shut down early for less than scientific reasons (calling it racist for example) also doesn’t help building trust.
I did however see a bunch of comments in “mainstream” sections mocking a conspiracy I never saw support for.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto...
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-l...
I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies.
I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks interfering with bird migration patterns and meteorology, but as the fringe conspiracy crowd started spinning up crazy theories about how 5G was going to brainwash or sterilize or force-feminize people over the airwaves or whatever it was, most people I knew stopped talking about it, seemed to forget that they had ever thought it concerning. It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too.
I view the same kind of thing as happening here, as well as a lot of other places. It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence
Who cares if it came from a lab, there are zero consequences to anyone whether it did or not, and it's the least impactful detail of what has happened. "Allowing," debate on the disease origin is a cynical switcheroo.
We're living in very different worlds I guess.
1) So we can learn and mitigate the risks of something similar happening again.
and
2) In the event that the virus was leaked from a laboratory, the world would like to send the lab a small invoice for costs incurred and damages.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
It's window dressing, and I'm becoming even more suspicious that the disease origin is just another managed narrative, as everybody who believes it came from a lab believed it last year, and nobody who rejected the lab leak view last year is going to have their mind changed to where they accept institutions they believe in are culpable.
It's an issue designed to politically neutralize people, so that we will be just like people arguing about jet fuel burning temperatures on the internet instead of confronting our governments about surveillance and state overreach and the patriot act. The whole so-called "debate" is a honeypot tarpit for useful idiots.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
I am still confused how people think that it being an accidental "lab leak" is any more damning of the role China played in the initial outbreak. China made a lot of mistakes and also kept other countries in the dark for way too long no matter the origin. It can also serve as a warning against authoritarian models of rule.
My criticism doesn't mean I think we shouldn't investigate the origins either. It is in the world's public interest to err on the side of knowing too much so that maybe the chance of this happening again is reduced.
We now have documentary evidence that Fauci authorized money to be channeled through various organizations to labs in Wuhan. These documents also link people involved with this activity to the very same people who assured us through letters to a highly respected journal that the lab leak theory was completely wrong.
This brings to mind many questions, but do people act like this when they are not covering things up? This bears investigating.
It's unlikely that the people investigating will be the same ones developing new drugs or treatments for covid.
Here's but one of many cases.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/12/they-are-co...
You can't arrive at the truth of a matter by only listening to those with enough power to shut down any countervailing opinions.
Huh. I think most people find that if something "happens to you" it's less your fault than if you "made it happen". If your house burns down from a gas line explosion nearby, that's bad luck for you. If it burns down because you had a pile of paper next to your stove while operating it, that's on you.
How it was handled after the fact is probably similar (though again, if it was your own source, then it probably meant you had even earlier warning), but I believe it's mostly down to "things that happen to you versus things you cause".
While today China has the largest military with 2.8M soldiers, sailors and airmen, Mao had, at best, 50K soldiers in his Red Army.
… citation required and also an explanation of what “within 6 month of research”. Exactly when did this 6 month period start and finish?
Maybe not, but maybe they should instead be investigating how policy failed us so catastrophically around the world after it escaped its original area.
When the world obsesses over its origin, it seems to be blatant deflection over failures at home.
Until Donald Trump decided to say covid-19 is a hoax and preventative measures are unnecessary. Presumably because he‘s so contrarian that anything the Democrats supported he opposed and vice versa. It was a dumb move and many (including me) believe it cost him the election, if he decided to support lockdowns I really think he would’ve won by a long shot.
And now it’s too late, since many conservatives got so invested in the fact that covid-19 is fake, and people can’t admit when they’re wrong. I wish liberals were more sympathetic and tried to make it easier for conservatives to accept the vaccine instead of mocking and shaming. But it’s so hard to get people to admit when they’re wrong.
I have no qualms about China conducting research in this regard, other countries are doing it too and we would be naive to think otherwise. However, if it is proven to be true that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan laboratory, it highlights the sheer stupidity of the government in thinking they could build a military bio-weapons research laboratory in the heart of a major city center. Western nations that do have such facilities place them far away from high-density urban populations, precisely as a last-ditch measure to mitigate the impact of an (eventual) breach.
It's worse for the CCP if it boils down to incompetence rather than malice. Becoming a laughingstock of the world and not being taken seriously is perhaps their deepest fear.
I've long thought the best way of reaching 100% vaccination in the US was to have competing Democrat and Republican vaccines. Democrats could don a dashiki and say one thing while Republicans could put up a crack smoking pillow salesman to say another.
This is a nonsensical argument for reasons ISL pointed out in their reply (among others), and framing the issue as a question of origin OR <other important questions> is a false dichotomy - they are all important questions worth seeking answers to and will inform different aspects of how w respond to, and ideally prevent, future pandemics.
>The worldwide community is large. We can do many things all at the same time. Investigating the source is not a distraction.
The only sensible thing to do is assume that it's at least possible that it was a lab leak and reevaluate the risk-benefit tradeoff of this type of research. That is a debate worth having. The rest is just posturing.
I disagree - they both matter.
If Corbyn had won in 2019 (from a higher youth turnout and lower elder turnout), there’s no way the press or the elder demographics would be so accepting, and the country would be polarised with covid as a pivot.
Also will say the approach the conspiracy theorists and foreign policy operatives have taken with this isn't likely to garner any transparency from China going forward. That's bad because fundamentally despite differences the Chinese and the the US have common interests in this.
That, to me, is the interesting part of the lab breakout case. Are we regularly underestimating the risk of novel viruses in research laboratories?
It's interesting that you didn't say "I wish more conservatives would admit they were wrong", but instead put the onus of action on liberals.
Apparently for the past three years their vast 'fishing' fleets are also shining green lasers into the cockpits of passing planes and bridges of passing ships at night, to increase the stress and occupational risks heaped upon the shoulders of each captain/pilot of a non-Chinese boat/plane [1]
Let's also not forget their MASSIVE KNEE JERK REACTION to the Australian PM stating that we needed China to cooperate more with the W.H.O. (scientists attempted to follow the normal discovery process investigating the origins of Covid, but were denied access to dated lab samples from the Wuhan lab [2])
China was so insulted (and/or scared?) by these words that their knee-jerk reaction was to cut off billions of dollars of imports arriving from Australia, temporarily decimating some parts of our wine industry, and rock lobster export industry to China [3]
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/chinese-fishing-vesse...
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-tells-who-its-not...
[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-10/chinas-trade-war-with...
Surprising how easy it is to fracture American society then.
Also, something definitely seems to have gone seriously wrong with Italy's response - they were detecting zero cases up until way too soon before their hospitals collapsed, which suggests they were doing a worse job of testing people hospitalized with potential Covid symptoms than even the US which had screwed up so badly it had an official policy of not doing so due to test shortages. Trouble is, Italy is currently run by the kind of technocrats the media likes, so there was no incentive to drag them through the mud. Instead the press spun other countries as worse because they weren't caught by surprise like Italy and so should've done better, without asking questions about how that surprise happened exactly.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/09/10/nolte-how...
It just doesn't excuse some liberals from encouraging this left/right divide and just being nasty. Things like r/HermanCainAward, being proud when vaccine deniers get sick. At least understand that when someone is literally putting themselves in danger, they're not evil or selfish, they're delusional and misinformed.
My comment was about how, if this statement is true, you mostly skipped over it in favor of asking for action out of non-conservatives.
It's not hard. It's insanely not hard. It's so unfathomably not difficult that this comment reads like satire. Walk into any grocery store or pharmacy.
On July 5, 2021, a Correspondence was published in The Lancet called “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”. The letter recapitulates the arguments of an earlier letter (published in February, 2020) by the same authors, which claimed overwhelming support for the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic originated in wildlife. The authors associated any alternative view with conspiracy theories by stating: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. The statement has imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate, including among science journalists.
The 2/20 letter stated:
The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
These are the scientists who wanted to deny facts: Charles Calisher, Dennis Carroll, Rita Colwell, Ronald B Corley, Peter Daszak, Christian Drosten, Luis Enjuanes, Jeremy Farrar, Hume Field, Josie Golding, Alexander Gorbalenya, Bart Haagmans, James M Hughes, William B Karesh, Gerald T Keusch, Sai Kit Lam, Juan Lubroth, John S Mackenzie, Larry Madoff, Jonna Mazet, Peter Palese, Stanley Perlman, Leo Poon, Bernard Roizman, Linda Saif, Kanta Subbarao, Mike Turner
The above statement may sound mild-mannered to a lay person but it had greater import and effect, as outlined by this BMJ article, "The covid-19 lab leak hypothesis: did the media fall victim to a misinformation campaign?" [https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656]
Scientists and reporters contacted by The BMJ say that objective consideration of covid-19’s origins went awry early in the pandemic, as researchers who were funded to study viruses with pandemic potential launched a campaign labelling the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory.”
A leader in this campaign has been Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organisation given millions of dollars in grants by the US federal government to research viruses for pandemic preparedness.1 Over the years EcoHealth Alliance has subcontracted out its federally supported research to various scientists and groups, including around $600 000 (£434 000; €504 000) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Shortly after the pandemic began, Daszak effectively silenced debate over the possibility of a lab leak with a February 2020 statement in the Lancet. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” said the letter, which listed Daszak as one of 27 coauthors. Daszak did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The BMJ.
So in one sense you're right, we can only debate the likelihood of finding facts to support the theory of lab leak vs natural origin right now. The aim of this paper is to encourage that debate rather than try to silence it, the way the natural origin proponents seem to want to do.
This is a great argument when we're talking about, for example, people working on making phones vs. people working on cancer research -- their efforts aren't interchangeable.
But political capital to examine policy failures? That's a limited precious resource that is all too often redirected towards frivolous, self-interested pursuits by people who are unwilling to examine their own.
China is an easy scapegoat here. You see it all over this thread. Many many americans talking about Chinese policy while their country pretended nothing was happening for months and likely facilitated the virus' travel throughout the US and the world as one of the main epicenters of travel.
American politicians (as well as others'), as well as the beaurocracies under their control, love nothing more than people looking at anyone but them when something goes wrong and they will take advantage of it.
* Utter incompetency. Got to promote the 'working class' in positions of authority across the board regardless of actual qualifications. Got to follow ideological prescriptions to a T regardless of real-world outcomes.
* Extreme message control. The communist society is perfect, except for those horrible people that refuse to support the party 100%. And also moving every day closer to perfection. Don't you dare ask questions, because then you become the reason why perfection has not been achieved, and the Party, as the legitimate representative of the people, will be justified to act against you.
It would take some years until we properly see all the consequences, but I wouldn't be surprised if afterwards historians would note Covid-19 as a factor that benefited China in their long term competition w. "the west", not as a cost.
Like, 5k deaths is something that I wouldn't approve of for almost any reason, but looking back at documented 20th century history, planners (both in China and elsewhere) were clearly willing to pay such and even much higher costs for reasons of global politics/power play, so the mere existence of such a cost by itself certainly does not mean that it's implausible that someone would intentionally order a thing like that.
These are not military, but it doesn't matter.
The comment is calling republicans special snowflakes who can't change their minds without being coddled to do so, so they can keep an air of superiority over the liberal degenerates
Now, in this case, the fact is hidden from us. SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin or it didn't, but we don't have enough evidence to decide that question either way. In the absence of evidence, people are using prejudice to decide what is true, and trying to persuade others to adopt their prejudices. That is utter folly.
What we should do is give up on trying to establish the facts unless and until new evidence emerges. Instead, let's admit that lab leaks are possible, and regardless of whether it happened in this case, it should cause us to reexamine our assessment of the risks inherent to this type of virology. We have a demonstration of how bad we are at containing epidemics, and how damaging even a relatively benign virus is. We don't know what a more deadly virus would do, but we can safely assume it would be very bad.
Ok, I grant that I was a little harsh on the authors of this paper; they're really only saying that the lab leak is plausible, and we should examine it seriously. Fine. But I still think it's a red herring. Even if we could find patient zero and nail down the animal that infected him to conclusively prove a natural origin, we should still revisit our thinking on whether and how to conduct research with viruses. That we're a long way from that sort of conclusion makes it all the more important.
It's typical CYA stuff from corrupt institutions that cannot abide transparency. For some, the appearance of having made a mistake or having been incompetent is so uncomfortable that they will stonewall all possible investigations to avoid looking like they've made mistakes. Even when those mistakes were just that--mistakes.
I have a theory that I cannot provide verifiable evidence for, but due to the technical fluency of the readers here I believe it may be interesting to some.
I run a small marketing service that ingests new content submitted to a number of social media sites (colloquially known as “social listening”). We run text analytics on the content, primarily to find marketing opportunities for customers. That system also has very rudimentary checks for “bot” accounts.
Starting in early 2020 there was a massive, massive spike in the number of bot accounts creating and responding to content on reddit. Our system doesn’t “cross-reference” flagged accounts very well, but I manually went through the post history on a few of those accounts and found that many of them had responded with congruent comments to submissions of other flagged accounts.
Furthermore, most of the flagged accounts had a similar pattern in the timing of their posts. Posts and comments were relatively irregular and sporadic near the start of the accounts’s history, indicative of a real user. Then, submissions completely stopped for a number of months. After the pause, the account would resume submissions and comments with far more regularity. The patterns exhibited by those accounts may indicate that they were overtaken and sold in bulk accounts lists for use as bot accounts.
Every account that I checked was posting content with a clear narrative.
I believe these are very large bot networks upvoting and submitting content of a particular nature in order to sway popular discourse and give an appearance of a particular consensus among conversation participants.
The plausibility of my theory has been augmented by the fact that rudimentary software for creating reddit bot networks can be found for sale on various “botting” forums. Furthermore, I was accepted into the OpenAI GPT-3 beta a few months ago; the capabilities of that model have further convinced me of the validity of my theory.
If you have experience with bots, natural language processing, or another related field, please feel free to point out flaws in my theory!
That's not how it works. At all. Progress in every aspect of political life has come from being pushy, not from coddling.
I don't know if that's a new thing or not, but that's how it has seemed to me during this pandemic.
Quite a few people have gone without an easy, safe, miraculously effective vaccine - a marvel of the latest science, freely available at their fingertips - and literally died. As far as I can tell, their deepest motivation to do this was to express their distrust of the establishment and/or stick it to their political opponents.
In a "lol nothing matters" world, all that matters to these people is whether they get to stick it to the man. Nothing bad can really happen, so no real thought is needed to stay safe. It's fine to just believe the first entertainingly outrageous quack theory that flatters your sentiments or ideology or tribe.
It's as if they were interrupted by a gunman while watching TV, and made no motion to defend themselves, assuming the gun pointed at their heads was part of the show.
A lot of people are choosing wrong and suffering for it. They had a choice. No one can take that away from them, they always had a choice.
Propaganda only works if you choose to believe it.
The Law always provokes its opposite.
Let's make that mistake and blackout in the scale.
Let's compare China's mistake and blackout against US, the closest nation in population and economy scale.
Well, now we see that China's mistake and blackout are indeed less damaging then US' mistake and blackout...
Oh, how incompetent. They shut down a 10MM population city overnight...
If any other one can do that for a 1MM population city, we'd have a nice vacation in some random city on earth...
Minorities (POC, Latinx) have the lowest vaccination rates. Do these groups generally lean conservative?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health...
> Well, now we see that China's mistake and blackout are indeed less damaging then US' mistake and blackout...
What mistake and blackout did the US make?
I remember back in 2016, when all the Trump/Putin brouhaha first started making rounds, one staunch right-winger whom I know said something along the lines of, "if Putin helps him hang all our traitors and clean the trash out like he did in Russia, I'm all for it".
I think you'll find most "liberals" are pretty understanding that militant anti-vaxxers are delusional and misinformed. The issue is less with their delusion and more with the militancy of their delusion and the societal consequences.
If the militant anti-vaxxers instead of being anti-vax were just pro-drinking bleach then the danger of that delusion would be personal. Only idiots drinking bleach would be harmed.
What's happening though is the delusion of the militant anti-vaxxers is causing problems for everyone. They're breaking if they haven't broken hospital systems in many parts of the country, they're a breeding ground for new variants of the virus, and they're actively fighting mitigation measures to contain the spread of the virus in kids who can't be vaccinated.
People that have acted rationally and have socially distanced, worn masks, and gotten vaccinated are being negatively affected every day by delusional sociopaths. These same delusional sociopaths have made every aspect of the pandemic worse.
Why should anyone feel the need to keep coddling them? The militant anti-vaxxers are keeping the pandemic a pandemic, had they gotten fucking vaccines we could have COVID at least partially under control at endemic levels. Their words and actions advertise the fact they are sociopaths. Dealing with them is exhausting and unrewarding.
It's sad that positions on vaccines tracks so closely to political persuasion. At the same time if delusional sociopathy is part and parcel of a so-called political philosophy maybe that suggests a little self-reflection is needed for its proponents.
It might not even be something initially decided by those on top. Just as likely that the lab management decided to sweep it under the rug to avoid damage to their reputation, and then by the time it blew up, the higher-ups couldn't admit to being ignorant without damage to their reputation; and so on, all the way to the top. It happens all the time in bureaucracies.
And for what it's worth, I have some heterodox opinions on certain COVID-related topics. For example the case against ivermectin has been greatly overstated, although there is still room for reasonable doubt about its efficacy.
Not everyone with a streak of independent thought on COVID is a fool, but essentially all the vaccine haters are. Drunk on sentimental nonsense and ideological fantasy, with just enough fact mixed in to make the toxic brew superficially plausible. The 1/6 rioters were much the same.
Tuskegee was many decades ago. There are much more recent examples of the pharmaceutical industry and doctors prescribing a product to millions of Americans that was later shown to be harmful, at least for some patients. I'm of course referring to Oxycontin and other supposedly "non-addictive" opioids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a result of these drugs. Countless more lives stunted or ruined.
In my view, events like this explain a great deal of working-class (including white, who heavily lean Republican) skepticism about novel treatments. Just today, Pfizer issued a complete recall of the anti-smoking drug, Chantix, after discovering it can increase cancer risk:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2021/09/17/cha...
I hope we all can have more empathy for anyone who is skeptical after witnessing or experiencing harm after a incident like this. I'm not saying all fear or skepticism is valid or warranted. Just that I wish people would not judge the individuals involved for their (presumed) politics, and work towards greater education and understanding.
That's what sells ads. If you read an article that makes you feel superior to another group of people, like "look what these stupid people are doing," in so many words, that's a hate-monger company. There are many. Fear also sells, and it's a cousin to hate. You can't really have hate without fear. Fear of loss, fear of some unknown boogie man (George Soros, Koch brothers, etc.) It's all to sell advertisements and keep you WATCHING and READING! Pretty sad that is all it takes: money.
What I've never understood is how people can get so outraged over even minor political differences. If someone agrees with you 80% then that's an ally, not an enemy.
People in the US may well hate each other more than people in most peaceful developed countries, sure. But “this planet” is a big place.
It reminds me heavily of the Dead Internet Theory.
Whether COVID came from a lab or not is only of tangential importance. If you have a system in place, it will get breached eventually. Forever and always. It's China. Nobody else is responsible for China.
What is VASTLY more significant, and where most of the debate is centered, is how we responded to the fact that a deadly virus was spreading. The terms "Wuhan-flu," "kung-flu" and "China virus" were direct attempts by political leaders to deflect the responsibility for their lack of action and failure to mitigate the affects of the virus.
Hell, it's a lesson even a child should know: you are not always responsible for the situation you're in whether that's a kid picking on you or COVID, but you are fully responsible for your reaction. My son's favorite word right now is "well...." because as very bright 8 year old, he wants to discuss his reasoning process with me to justify why he acted the way he did. And mine is "well, nothing..." because most of the time when we have these incidents, his reaction is out of step with how we've taught him to behave in the situation.
The political arm of the Trump administration was FULL of "well..." instead of addressing the issue, and the political polarization of the US has allowed a big percentage of the population to justify their own responses to mitigation efforts in the same manner. Because most adults have gotten there by reaching a certain age, not by reaching maturity.
I remember watching in horror as the US was shutting down its borders because the virus had spread to Europe, but people were packed into our major international airports like sardines and remained there for hours. It was and is incredibly stupid and irresponsible.
Incompetence? I think the regime came out of this pretty well. They’ve completely disrupted literally every country in the world, and China itself has been only marginally affected, lacking any of the truly large waves that devastated the US and India.
Maybe because data started showing that masks aren’t reducing infections? Or Gavin Newsome and London Breed partying like rock stars without masks.
Or the Met Gala where only the servants wore masks?
Or the data (from schools,) that show the masks weren’t affecting infection rates?
Or Fauci saying “no” privately? Then yes publicly? Or the insanity of people wearing masks when driving alone in their car? Or running in the woods?
Nothing about mask policy has been sane.
Is it possible that some are not as equipped as you are to discern the signal within the noise?
Is it possible you are incorrect about one or more of your heterodox opinions?
The type of sneering you're engaging in is unbelievably counterproductive. Uncivilized, even.
The problem is that prejudice one way leads to never solving the mystery at all, and prejudice the other way leads to having a snowballs chance in hell of solving it.
One party in this saga is actively covering up all evidence. So unless we hunt down what exists now (if anything still does) we’ll never have the answer.
I do agree that the answer doesn’t particularly matter though. It’s best to act as if it were a lab leak, and natural infection both, and change procedure based on that.
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/04/lancet-retracts-contr...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...
It doesn’t.
That's right. Trump was booed the moment he suggested that his supporters get vaccinated against Covid-19.
To find out more about what an actual civil war looks like, one might explore history of civil wars in e.g. Russia, China, or even Finland.
It's not just some innocent difficulty with finding the signal in the noise. It's sentimental, ideological delusion, and it's rotten to the core. And deep down, I believe many of them do know better, even if they stopped caring years ago.
I won't pointlessly anger them by saying so to their faces, but I also won't patronize them by pretending otherwise.
(And yes, conservatives who believe Obama was the sole source of division are also out of touch. People really need to try to understand the other side).
This is misinformation. A group of prominent virologists wrote, early in the pandemic:
> The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
It's nice to _believe_ that scientists are pursuing every possible theory. But in actual reality, some scientists are demanding that other scientists not pursue certain theories. That's what's happening in the real world that we live in. Don't let your idealized mental image of "science" blind you to the facts.
To be even more clear however, the kinds of people pushing these viewpoints within their community are actually evil and doing it in bad faith for their own self gain. Even the mainstream conservative voices like Tucker Carlson, who is vaccinated and works at an institution with a vaccine requirement, is using his platform to deliberately cast doubt on its efficacy and safety. He knows better, but he is sending the message his supports want to hear. This is evil. Senators who are going out of their way to make sure nobody can be made to wear a mask in certain settings are doing it deliberately for political points and are objectively evil for this.
I don’t fully spite the average person who is listening to and hearing all these voices that align with the rest of their politics and choosing to take the position for no other reason than it’s being fed to them, but there is a limit. And maybe I’m just not aware enough but there is a ton of intentional gritting in the conservative/right-wing space now intentionally pulling on the talking points for a profit motive that I don’t see in left-wing spaces. And that might be okay even, except their also a total scam and bullshit. Selling people a “freedom phone” which is just a rebadge of a cheap Chinese phone (the irony) for a huge markup because it won’t let you be censored. This kind of behavior. Preying on their own audience that they’ve cultivated to specifically exploit them.
There is a lot of evil there.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to dunk on people dying. But it isn’t really surprising that there is that level of response among some people on the left-leaning space. It’s equivalent to the “owning the libs” on the other side. I’m not in for it personally, but I don’t think it’s any more or less popular on either side. Just the general shape of overall disgusting polarization we’re at now.
If people want to live in their own version of reality I don’t care. But when their version of reality is ruining it for the rest of us, it is a problem and there isn’t a lot of room for discussion with someone who isn’t willing to engage with reality.
In Berlin, you could see graffitis such as "we will vaccinate you all!" or "covid deniers out". If there was any way to measure it, I'd bet that the net effect of that is negative.
So does Hydroxchloroquine from credible scientists all over the world.
You're just picking and choosing who you call credible.
(2) The correspondence of the authors behind the initial Lancet article which dismisses non-natural origin investigations as conspiracy theory (seeking to build the consensus view and much cited by the above jornalists) has been obtained by FOIA. It reveals the authors engaging in conspiracy and collusion: the managing editor bypassed the normal editorial process, the authors decided not to have some people sign so the statement would look less partisan and chose wordings that they knew were not supported by evidence, in particular deciding to ignore concerns about the very unlikely codons at the furin cleavage site. Moreover, none of the authors declared conflicts of interest. (And still, after much outcry, only one has made such a declaration.)
In short, any consensus for a natural origin is very much artificial and should be considered irrelevant.
A very simple cause and effect that nobody will do anything about because dollarinos.
Black is 10.0% of all vaccinated while making up 12.4% of population.
White (non-hispanic) is 61.5% of all vaccinated while making up 61.2% of the population.
So we're talking ~2.4 points behind at worst (stats are from the CDC link in your article). For comparison we're talking about more than a 10 point gap when comparing counties by political affilation. https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi...
I was also very skeptical of the speed at which a vaccine could be created and rolled out. But, once it was rolled out and it was shown to be reasonably safe, certainly far safer than actually getting COVID, I went and got the jab. These are not hypocritical or diametrically opposed viewpoints and actions. They are the behaviors of someone living in reality, with all of the uncertainty that entails.
Are you sure that is a true statement? What exact ruination are you referring to? Are you saying that we would not have had a delta wave in the U.S. if more people had vaccinated? Or that lockdowns would have gone differently? Or schools?
Australia still has a covid problem, despite their lockdowns. Israel is still having covid breakouts, despite their high vaccination rates. It's putting a strain on many health care systems.
What do you think will change if we had closer to 100% vaccine compliance?
> and there isn’t a lot of room for discussion with someone who isn’t willing to engage with reality.
Quite the contrary, there's plenty of room for discussion. You obviously don't understand their point of view. Not everyone thinks the way you do. This ending to your comment struck me as quite dismissive. That's a lot of people you just wrote off.
Where does it leave us if we can't talk about these things, and respect our different values?
The failure modes of the combination of democracy and America-style capitalism are fascinating, as is the reluctance of those with authority to act, to do so.
The American media is both too docile to ask difficult questions (so as to maintain access), while simultaneously riling up viewers' emotions with opinion-shows. Independent media in other western countries do a better job at holding authorities to account - even with something as basic as asking follow-up questions at press-conferences, or pushing back at incorrect characterizations.
As you've commented (but then hand waved), the motive behind the distrust. "An orange man told me" vs. "The US government has spent hundreds of years oppressing our people, and the US medical system fails minorities consistently time and time again".
http://cultresearch.org/help/characteristics-associated-with...
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
- The group has a polarized, us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
- The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group.
- The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and control members. Often this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
- Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
Trump has been vaccinated and recommends vaccination. Trump's administration instituted Operation Warp Speed, which supported and expedited vaccines the entire world has benefited from.
At the time, Democrats were busy sewing distrust about it.
It seems that you have trouble viewing things outside of this racial lens. My original comment was in hopes that you would start to consider this in a different light and understand why there perhaps might be race neutral reasons that people are hesitant. The opioid crisis is much closer to what people are afraid of. They're afraid that the vaccines are meant to help, but that they might hurt, at least if they're in a particular age group, or have a particular pre-existing condition, etc.
It's unfortunate that you're not willing to treat this issue and your political opponents with more empathy, but there's nothing I can do about that. At this point, you're pretty obviously downvote baiting me with outrageous comments, waiting eagerly for me to respond, so this is the last I'm going to engage with you.
The argument is about government distrust. I'll skip the rest of your post.
Secondly linking participation to social life and freedoms such as moving inside the country (or heck even buying food!) to the vaccination status of an individual is totally unheard of. The last time remotely similar measures were implemented was during WWII were passes where need to go from occupied zone to zone libre. This whole thing is astonishingly shocking and it's scary how many zealots will defend it. Especially now that data shown the virus is only dangerous for a very small segment of the population (obviously increased in countries were large segment of the population is obese).
When we know vaccines still put people at risk why are we not locking everyone down and closing borders?
Democracy is nice, but historically it leads to very bad outcomes in a few hundred years. What remains to be seen is whether or not this democracy will sustain itself.
This has been the case since Global Warming was coined, then the models didn't line up so they called it Climate Change and castrated anyone who questioned the science.
Because the DPRK SoS was not the one openly talking about regime change in China.[1]
[1] Mike Pompeo Just Declared America’s New China Policy: Regime Change (https://nationalinterest.org/feature/mike-pompeo-just-declar...)
As far as people not living in reality, this isn’t even primarily about COVID. It also isn’t a refusal to try and have a discussion on my part. It is what happens when people reject information that doesn’t reflect what they believe. They have written themselves off. You’re right. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks there is a satanic cabal of liberals who prey on children. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks 5G is going to read their minds. I don’t understand the point of view of someone who thinks the vaccine is the mark of the beast. I don’t understand the point of view of, based on various polling, 70-80% of republicans who don’t believe Biden won the election legitimately.
Or rather, I do. Or at least I can see how they got there. But what I can’t do is convince them that these things aren’t true. I can’t convince them that someone on the internet who claimed to be an insider and now hasn’t posted anything in like over a year wasn’t actually able to predict all the future events leading up to Donald Trump being reinstated as president and rounding up all the Democrats and liberals and child abusers. These people have already bought into something that is so far out that there is no reaching them. It isn’t for lack of trying. They aren’t willing or ready to accept anything else.
Eventually some of them will find their way out of it, but that is a place they have to get to on their own before anyone can help them out of it.
To answer your final question, it leaves us in a terrible place and exactly where we are. I don’t enjoy this. I’m not reveling in it. It’s fucking depressing. It’s sad. It’s an actual tragedy. We’re in a bad place and I don’t see that changing or getting better any time soon.
I’ll happily discuss things of this nature with people who don’t agree with my general beliefs but I don’t have a lot of patience for someone, and I’ve interacted with more than a few, who flat out deny things that are objectively recordable, let alone anything subject to interpretation. They closed the door, they shut down the conversation.
Democacies are indeed young so I don't get your point that it will lead to something "very bad".
That seems to impliy that everyone who thinks the lab leak is possible also thinks it was intentional. Which I didn't see much of, in real life.
Overall the idea the hospitals collapsed seems to have been a form of telephone game exaggeration, egged on by media reports claiming there were so many bodies they were piling up (actuality: undertakers were refusing to touch bodies because they are mostly old and had been told it would kill them).
What did collapse were care homes. But not because of COVID. Staff fled in fear, often back home to Eastern Europe before the borders closed, leaving too many elderly to die of dehydration and abandonment.
For you and me it might be, because we may have the acquired skills to research sources, spot bullshit, etc. We still miss stuff.
But for a lot of people "choosing wrong", it might just be the sum of their environment. A media diet too heavily reliant on Facebook for example.
Ah but they're choosing to stay on Facebook you say... Well, yes, but if they can't directly make the link between Facebook and the propaganda, they don't even know they have a choice to make.
"Free will exists" is a hand wavy way of victim blaming here, imo. There is a reason these people are called victims of propaganda, not willful soldiers.
See also, the impact of claims of voter fraud/rigged elections on Republican turnout in Georgia Senate and the California recall election.
It was like a mirror image of Trump's election in 2016.
While personally I preferred Obama (as a non-US citizen) it's really sad how much anger and rage is expressed over these political differences.
Personally I think gerrymandering is the proximate cause, as it creates more safe districts for party members, which allows them to be more extreme than would be acceptable in a more competitive district.
Covid19 is a religion. You cannot question religions. It's also not a problem until something goes beyond.
>I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies.
Until it became a religion. Those right-wing crazies are religious seeing it as religion vs religion.
Compared to the flu seasons, which we go get a shot and then do nothing else. Covid for ages 25-35 is 40 times less likely to harm you compared to the regular flu season.
If you are 25-35, you go get the shot and then stop giving a shit about covid because it's virtually no risk. By all measures soon as the covid shot was available. You offer it as the flu shot and tell people to get it and you go back to flu season measures. Which is basically nothing.
Yet I know how many people who will drive 100km/h in a school zone are scared shitless by covid. The risk mismatch is not because of actual risk but rather because it's a religion. Morality tells them they need to be scared.
>It reminded me of the time people were worried about pollutants causing hormonal changes in indicator species, and then Alex Jones started talking about how "they're turning the frogs gay" and the meaningful version of that discourse vanished too.
There are 9 confirmed estrogens in our drinking water. Especially true of salt-water coastal cities. Hence why you pretty much MUST have water filtration.
How well would society function if we were doing mass hormone replacement therapy on everyone? Would people start being far more likely to be gay frogs or trans or just emotional messes like typical HRT symptoms. Especially if you aren't aware HRT is occurring. Why the huge increase in trans people? Is it because of these estrogens in our drinking water? Nestle and others approve though.
> It's made me wary of the sport of finding what crazy things my political enemies believe to make fun of them, because it seems like the net effect of this is creating "opposite" erroneous beliefs with no evidence
We are on this world together. Finding 'crazy things' or trying to start fights by calling people names does not benefit anyone.
For some definitions of "law" this is probably true. But I think under the more general principle it's much more likely to happen than not. If you look at the law as any set of rules, you find that they generally accuse you (it is not the subjunctive mood, but the imperative that is the mood of least reality): why do I have to tell my kids to wash their hands after going to the bathroom? Because they don't. It's the law of hand-washing. (For a more humorous take, Gary Larsen forever immortalized the idea with the alarm + light over the men's room.)
COVID's hand-washing suggestions are the grown-up version. And the way my kids resent it when I tell them to go back and wash their hands is not much different than the way some of my otherwise reasonable co-workers reacted. Of course not everyone reacted this way, but if the messaging were somewhat different I wouldn't be surprised to have found compliance higher.
Law is always paired with a consequence. For my kids, it's a short trip back to the washroom and possibly a haranguing depending on whether I'm extra irritable. For our society, it's sometimes death and/or being subjected to schadenfreude (haha, stupid rednecks took ivermectin and not only poisoned themselves but also died of COVID).
YMMV, but I have found this basic principle explains a lot: the law always accuses, and it always provokes its opposite. Moreover, people are really good at hearing law even if that's not the intent of the speaker. Communicating is hard.
A friend was a climbing instructor for awhile, and she related that when teaching people who were scared of heights to climb that the phrase "don't look down" (the law of "don't look down") was verboten. Instead, the command was "keep looking up." The difference between the two phrases was illuminating.
> right-wing crazies
Seems to be a bit hypocritical, no?
It's pretty clear that the vast majority of humans prefer reacting to understanding.
Or put another way: If you assume that people will take the time to understand what you're saying, you're going to be disappointed. Sure, some will, but it will not even be close to the majority.
I think it's pretty natural to try to avoid that outcome, and it's a much better hypothesis given hanlon's razor.
As far as I know, COVID isn't going to stop spreading around the rest of the world. So as soon as the lockdown in a given country ends, that country will be exposed to it and face the same pandemic they would have faced in the first place. Now, that makes a lot of sense to me if they are facing it with a new tool in hand (like the vaccine), that means a lot fewer people will die than if they'd gone through it with nothing.
But if there is no better treatment coming, what does locking down for 3 months, 6 months, or a year accomplish?
No test necessary. I can guarantee you 100% you have more than 1 estrogen in your tap water. Also multiple kinds of antibiotics, anticonvulcants, mood stabilizers.
The majority of estrogens in the water will be estriol, estrone, and estradiol. If you're salt water coastal where they keep that water around for long. You will also have equilenin, progesterone, and lots of BPA.
If you have wondered why filtering your water is important and why there's so many filtration options its because of this.
While Israel got far out ahead in its vaccination campaign early on, it’s current rate of vaccination isn’t particularly high, still below 65% of the population has completed the full course of vaccinations.
Heard immunity estimates have always been at the 70-85% level, so there’s no reason to believe Israel was immune to such outbreaks, especially with a more virulent variant such as delta. All that matters is whether the replication rate is above or below one, if you don’t have the level of population immunity to keep that R value below one, you will see outbreaks.
one of the central problems of organizations is control/coordination, and religion (through normalizing and centralizing beliefs) provides a very convenient avenue for that (especially because the locus of power is perceived to be beyond any given tribal member). force can be used for control but that's adversarial (also limits size, and therefore power), and a cognizant leader eventually realizes its easier to have the people control themselves than always exert force on them (something most children eventually learn, at least subconsciously, during play).
politics isn't necessarily negative by the way--it's simply a part of the bargain when people aggregate into larger bodies and need to coordinate. it's also a relatively recent innovation that we try to separate government from religion, the intertwining of which had been a long-established norm across cultures.
Everyone has the choice to ask, "but what if they're wrong?" That simple question alone illuminates the incremental path to greater understanding (however long the journey may be). Many of these people who have been enthralled by the narrative that vaccines are dangerous and unnecessary are otherwise normal people. They're able to function in their jobs and day to day life. If they believed everything anyone told them they'd never be able to function in society, and yet they do function. Precisely because they are able to choose who and what to believe; we all do it every day! They choose to never question certain sources or authorities. It's a willful choice.
Look.... I believe in democracy, but I don't have a religious fervor over it. I am shocked when my fellow Americans seem so unschooled in basic history. Indeed, many of the undemocratic things put into our constitution (like the much maligned electoral college) were put there by our founders hoping to avoid the pitfalls of democracy. They were very aware that democracy typically fails spectacularly, and put in many anti-democratic things into the constitution to avoid it.
"Linking participation to social life and freedoms" has been around for decades in form of school vaccine mandates. Mandatory masking had a clear precedent in 1918. If you're surprised by any of this, I don't even know what to say.
Instead of bread, it’s shiny disposable gadgets; instead of circuses, it’s the culture wars.
On the topic of covid specifically, I think that people have vastly different outlooks on the personal and/or societal risks of dying versus the impact of extended lockdowns. I don't think it is an unreasonable position. It's hard to point at definitive data proving that anything works for certain, there's a lot of confounding factors and surprises in the numbers. Some people can't get past the individual tragedies. Some people only look at the population scale numbers. Some people are more educated than other. Lots of people make up their minds on a hunch, as you said, and look for sources that confirm their biases.
A fascinating book I read called "The Republican Brain" talked about this stuff, theorizing that some of the partisan divide is due to personality differences, that people are born with different feelings about authority, hierarchies, individualism, communitarianism, etc. I was left with the impression that this was an evolutionary advantage as a species, that the variety of ways of thinking makes us better as a group.
I don't think that it's the end of the world that we as a group don't agree on everything. We could celebrate that and support each other in our differences, or at least respect each other. But so many do not, both on the left and on the right. They'd rather win 51% of the vote, and impose their point of view on the losers, winner take all. Mass media and further removing isolating people make the problems worse.
> And we still have a non-trivial segment of the population who can’t get vaccinated (under 12) who are quite literally the victims of people who are largely unvaccinated
You called out some things the other side say that are unreasonable. I think the language you used above is a bit strong, and I'm not sure how much fact vs feeling it is. Not a lot of kids die of covid. It's similar for them to the risk from the flu in other years. And RSV. And the vaccine is not 100% effective, lots of people will still die, just like people die of the common cold every year. It seems unreasonable to draw a "quite literally" connection between the vaccinated and the small amount of kids who die, some every year, from respiratory ailments.
Also there is no country in the world who has a 100% vaccination rate, so maybe it is outside the bounds of human nature to expect that amount of compliance on such a short notice controversial issue? Perhaps it would be better for politics to account for the strong beliefs that large segments of their populations hold? For instance, why haven't we build more hospitals in the last 18 months? Are there better ways to support the vulnerable? What are the numbers used to justify various decisions? Can we admit what we don't know? etc
Contrary to that England is a parliamentary democracy for nearly 200 years now and the monarch only has a representative role.
But on that account every form of governance has failed. How many autocracies and monarchies have failed? In that case it isn't because of fundamental flaws and had other reasons?
I don't think the US constitution is full of anti-democratic rules at all. On the contrary, its intent is to grant rights.
Exactly this.
Which is why I remain skeptical. My elderly father had a massive stroke 3 days after receiving the second shot, which was administered right after he recovered from covid, which he contracted after the first shot.
I'm also certain his care givers did not report this to the FDA's voluntary MedWatch database, which is the only way the government is tracking adverse events.
If the narrative that it was an accidental lab leak took hold (even if that really is the case), China would likely cease all cooperation on the rest of the science.
It is both reasonable and rational then for the virologists to condemn such theories, to avoid harming the more important research into how infectious the disease it, what the symptoms are, what mitigations might be effective, etc, all of which could be helped by cooperation with China.
I think we Americans are killing each other differently. Nobody has more guns--or gun violence--than we do. We lead the world in mass shootings.
Regarding the civil war part, right now, about 2,000 Americans are dying everyday from COVID-19, where a free and readily available and safe vaccine exists.
We have governors who are essentially part of a pro-COVID death cult, who are complicit in their constituents dying by spreading disinformation against the vaccine, social distancing and masking.
We've allowed a virus in the 21st century to kill more people than a not too dissimilar virus-based pandemic from 1918 did.
Never in history have people been more free, had more economic self-determination, and been more safe and had more peace - for billions in every part of the world. What other system of government has even approached it?
When the law says, 'separate your plastics and glass for recycling', not many people intentionally start mixing them. When it tells businesses to pay minimum wage, they don't cut wages further below the new minimum. Most people think of most laws as reasonable.
Yes, it needs to be communicated effectively. If you attack people, they feel unsafe and get defensive. Most law is very dry reading, not accusatory or emotional. And very few people read the actual laws.
I also recognize ad hominem arguments.
This is just magical thinking. It's the same thinking behind the magical forms of american exceptionalism
People make statements like this and I can only hope they're not american, because the idea you could be educated in an american school and come out believing this is too horrifying to ponder.
Our founders directly stated in contemporaneous documents their fear of unchecked democracy and how it can descend into tyranny.
There is a natural conflict between democracy (and any form of government) and individual rights.
The founders sought to create a republic (not even a democracy really) with heavy protections for individual rights which they saw as at risk from democratic forces
That you think individual rights and democracy are intertwined is only because of bad history linking the american constitution to some great creation story of democracy itself. Many democracies have been authoritarian nightmares for those in the minority
Some Americans wanted a monarchy after the civil war, but they still wanted individual rights protected. Democracy won out but not because of its human rights record. Indeed, the founders were familiar with democratic tyranny based on their classical studies.
The examples of the natural misalignment between democracy and human rights are numerous. Slavery, Jim crow laws, drug laws, all of which were highly popular in their day or are popular now, but agree or disagree obviously curtail individual rights.
Now to your points.... No the Roman republic was not at all like north Korea. The Roman republic was an actual republic, with elections, power transfers etc.
England has been a monarchy for a thousand years and still is. Parliament is a nice thingy but the queen can get rid of it if she wants and she knows that. That's why they behave themselves most of the time. In fact she did this in recent memory in Australia.
All governments fail, but some fail faster and more spectacularly than others.
(I don't have time to give you every thing said by the founders on the danger of democracy and it's nTueal tension with individual rights... Here's a good starting point https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/jimhuntzinger/2018/1...)