Furthermore, I seriously doubt that there is anything close to a “populist” war on expertise. The US public has had a somewhat adversarial relationship with Science throughout its history (possibly because College is not considered mandatory, but that’s me speculating). The lack of education and the unrelenting advertisement infrastructure around climate denial is probably what has painted scientists especially in a bad light.
Um, what? Look no further than the manufactured controversy over climate science, or evolution.
That's not getting it right, it's a different type of shit show.
My point is that they reacted the second half of January, after trying to cover up the outbreak for weeks/months. If the local and regional officials had acted effectively in late December, there might not be a global pandemic.
Sure, China did some bad things and shares some blame. That said, we did figure out China was lying in January, but did nothing nothing for the next six weeks (besides an ineffective travel "ban"). We have some culpability as well.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I'm afraid that your post upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834681) is an example. We don't need that sort of low-information, high-indignation arguing on inflammatory topics.
It's flamebait to recite the material and relevant facts about the Chinese Communist Party / dictatorship including the fact that they murdered the doctors who were trying to warn them and investigate it, after which this same dicatorship lied to the world about the spread of the disease and permitted tens of thousands of people to leave Wuhan provence, carrying what they knew to was a highly infectious virus with them. And now thousands are dead.
That is nationalism and flamebait and not the mere recitation of known facts ?
Seriously just trying to get my mind around the standards we're held to here at HN. We are supposed to deny or massage reality if it makes psychopathologically murderous and murderously irresponsible regimes look, you know, bad?
If that's not what you're telling me, then please, explain. Cite just one sentence or phrase which I wrote you think misrepresents reality and constitutes "flamebait".
I'm here all week.
These comments are clearly fighting a political/national battle, and you can't do that and have curious conversation at the same time. Those are two different states of the nervous system. We want curious conversation here.
In case it feels like I'm saying this because I secretly support the other side: I'm really not. Comments in the flamewar style the other way get moderated just the same, when we see them.
When you're inclined to use labels like psychopathological murder or murderous irresponsibility, it's probably better to wait until your system shifts into a different frame. In case it feels like I'm picking on your personally: we all have our version of this, definitely including me.
Re facts: the thing to realize is that there are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that. Which facts you select, which stand out to you as important, is not itself a fact—it's a consequence of how you see the situation and which side you identify with. Those on the opposing side select other facts.
If you show up in a thread with a bag of stones to throw at the other side, it doesn't make it ok if the stones are facts. What matters is the stone-throwing: it destroys the shared connection that makes good conversation possible. Actually, it's worse if the weapons are facts. They make harder stones, and harder hearts too.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
To give an analogy, our court system is adverserial and most debating societies follow the similar rules. The reason for this is because the best arguments are just that- arguments. In a debating society both sides present their cases as strongly as they can and the audience (here readers) decide. Asking someone not to form accurate, relevant, and decisive facts into an argument because the facts themselves will inflame people is, let's just say very Europeanish. It's akin to bannning so called "hate speech", which is nothing but speech that pisses off the people it exposes in some way.
I can't support a platform that has hatespeech moderation built into it.
What is going on is that people who do do what you're saying I am doing, attacking with selectively edited facts which distort reality, are ruining your platform. They suck up mindwidth and attention and litter the place with n-nested, tit-for-tat, lastwordistic threads. They ruin the joint. Then it's not an engaging place to be anymore and the Good People leave. Just so you know I know what you're talking about.
It's your place, not mine and you can do as you see fit. I can't participate as a commenter, that's all. There's just zero chance I'll change my approach, so it's better that I just refrain, which I am happy to do.
Reddit got it right btw, and then it went full totalitarian and those two things aren't unrelated. When you let people develop their ideas fully, using all the means their intelligence and imaginations can muster, then complex issues become clear. When that clarity doesn't favor your preferred narrative, as it didn't favor the narratives of the handful of Reddit mods who run that place, then you're put in the position of hosting your own ideological destruction. Not many Sam Adamses are ever birthed in the first place and certainly not enough to keep Reddit stocked with moderators, so, of course, they shut dissenting subreddits down faster than a kissing booth at the Wuhan county fair.
I voluntarily retire my commenting privileges.
Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts?
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/dems-misconstrue-trump-bud...
> China, for all its failings, gets this right. Their leadership is more STEM and less lawyers and politicians.
You don't know anything about China's leadership. They're all politicians. Not a decision gets made without it being vetted ideologically -- ideology always comes first. And we should look at the timelines from China before saying they "got it right."[1]
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devas...
I'm not a fan of fact-checker battles but Snopes says "Claim: The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. True."
One would think reading only the Snopes article, or the Twitter thread (!) the piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired.
Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council (not CDC, contrary to what toomuchtodo claims) hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.
COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.
You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.
PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
PPS - Trump was not acquitted in the Senate until February 5. Thought experiment: What do you think would have happened if he had implemented the only thing that would have 100% kept COVID19 out of the US, completely shut down all borders (including with Canada) before January 15, the day "patient zero" entered Seattle from Wuhan? (The WHO was still stating that person-to-person contact for COVID19 did not seem to be occurring.)
Further, the entire culture he created — don’t speak truth to power, or you will be fired - is also responsible for the late actions and poor preparedness of the administration.
The problem isn’t risk experts; the problem is that government representatives elected have no domain expertise nor leadership fortitude to put domain experts into the driver’s seat when the situation dictates.
China, for all its failings, gets this right. Their leadership is more STEM and less lawyers and politicians.