Re:Chernobyl and the Cost of Lies (2019)
by epistasis on Sunday April 26, 2020 @11:29AM
(#22987821)
The show's writer has been pretty clear that he sees this story as a cautionary tale about our current governments ideological refusal to accept climate science and the politically driven lies that dominate all public discussion.
And when the ruling party has taken that same anti-science attitude when dismantling our pandemic response (as well as all other areas where the US has strong science), we now end up with massive loss of life, and massive economic losses, that would have been completely unnecessary with just a small amount of scientific leadership.
And I don't think any of us realized how quickly our science and leadership had been dismantled. There were cautionary stories telling us this in 2018 when it happened, but with all the other distraction and lying going on, it was completely lost.
Other countries hadn't realized just how far we had fallen either, and our lack of throwing up a warning signal probably made other countries think that SARS-CoV-2 wasn't as threatening as it was, because we were all used to competent pandemic response being helpers by the US. For example, during our prior president's term, we helped a lot with Ebola, which our current president criticized heavily, yet when given a chance to respond, did not manage it any better than Italy or Spain, and in fact quite a bit worse than those governments.
The cost of lies are massive. A few people in tech, including some prominent investors, think that politics is a realm where reality can be manufactured. And to some degree it can, particularly with economics. But when it comes to the physical world, such attitudes are disasters waiting to happen.
And when the ruling party has taken that same anti-science attitude when dismantling our pandemic response (as well as all other areas where the US has strong science), we now end up with massive loss of life, and massive economic losses, that would have been completely unnecessary with just a small amount of scientific leadership.
And I don't think any of us realized how quickly our science and leadership had been dismantled. There were cautionary stories telling us this in 2018 when it happened, but with all the other distraction and lying going on, it was completely lost.
Other countries hadn't realized just how far we had fallen either, and our lack of throwing up a warning signal probably made other countries think that SARS-CoV-2 wasn't as threatening as it was, because we were all used to competent pandemic response being helpers by the US. For example, during our prior president's term, we helped a lot with Ebola, which our current president criticized heavily, yet when given a chance to respond, did not manage it any better than Italy or Spain, and in fact quite a bit worse than those governments.
The cost of lies are massive. A few people in tech, including some prominent investors, think that politics is a realm where reality can be manufactured. And to some degree it can, particularly with economics. But when it comes to the physical world, such attitudes are disasters waiting to happen.