I will mark this off-topic now (which downweights it on the page) and we'll see how good or bad the other comments are, but at the time I'm typing this, it doesn't matter how good or bad the other comments are, or whether this thread even has any actual comments about Cuban vaccines, because the flamewar you started has filled it with low-rent internet flaming about (god help us) communism, Israel, and who knows what else. Such flamewars have nothing to do with the mandate of this site. They convince no one of anything, except how right they are and how aggrieved they are and therefore how justified they are in doing whatever they want to the other side.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Edit: I'm getting the feeling that I may have left some people with the impression that I lack sympathy for Cuba or admiration for the achievements of Cuban researchers. Not at all. I think this is a great topic for HN to discuss. In order to be able to discuss it, we need to avoid flamewar and to avoid flamewar we need to avoid flamebait. That's all I mean, and I see that I put it in an excessively flamey way myself. Sorry!
If you don't see how the GP comment is flamebait, that might be because you're not aware of how large and geographically/politically/ideologically distributed this forum is. What to some readers reads as a bland factual statement is guaranteed to land with others as an outright provocation. That is obvious to me because I deal with these divisions in this forum every day. But I can see how it might not be obvious to others, and that's no doubt why my comment came across as excessive. Perhaps this was conditioned by spending the bulk of yesterday dealing with political flamewars on HN.
Now you can argue that this is why the parent post is a flamebait, but since the sole fact that Cuba is such a small, socialist country is why this vaccin is interesting in the first place, you may as well ban this vaccin from being discussed on HN entirely.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
> you may as well ban this vaccin from being discussed on HN entirely
I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me. The situation seems rather simple: non-flamebait, non-flamewar discussion of the vaccine story is welcome. Flamebait and flamewar, about this story or any other story, is not.
And separately: in the last 5 years i took a break from the Silicon Valley and spent most of the time in Latin America, traveling and learning Spanish. Check my IP history. Had to deal with the medical system and with the so called "Cuban doctors" in various countries. The original comment completely distorts the factual truth about Cuban medicine.
Original comment invited political flaming by throwing in the "great showing" jab at the end.
> I fail to see the "invitation" to flame honestly.
Many people will end up interpreting "A great showing for a small, socialist island nation under decades of embargo by hostile anti-communist forces." as "A great showing for a nation being oppressed and bullied for decades by the big bad US and its bully friends". And, well, the knee jerk reaction is to defend yourself if you think someone is accusing your country of bullying another country for no reason.
Do you? Agreeing with parent implies that you consider your own comment to be highly inflammatory (and implicitly against HN code of conduct etc.). If that is the case, you can take it down or edit it with an apology.
NOTE: I'm not saying I agree with parent, just pointing what seems to me to be a logical necessity stemming from your agreement with parent.
The problem with your logical inference is that you're applying binary logic and human interactions are profoundly non-binary.
I can't really imagine the amount of effort you have to put into keeping HN on track. I thank you for that as well.
I do however want to mention that the US cultural context is not always that apparent for a non-American (such as myself). My comments were made taking into account strictly the GP and your comment, not any pre-existing cultural context. Back where I'm from (broadly speaking the EU) simply mentioning that Cuba is socialist or that the embargo is anti-communist doesn't come across as particularly controversial or flame-bating.
I wrote about that here if you (or anyone) are interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
I can say that in my case confronting people with wildly different political opinions has pushed me to become more dispassionate/detached in my replies, as well as to focus on the substance of the argument. I have started taking things more literally (which is probably what lead to our present conversation) and providing more precise and detailed rebuttals.
All of this I consider to be intellectual progress on my part, so to me HN has provided challenging and fruitful waters to swim in. For that, again, I am grateful :)
Did they edit their post because there is nothing even remotely ideological or controversial in that statement?
> A great showing
This part is subjective, so perhaps is the most problematic, but I don't think we normally react negatively to calling scientific achievements "great".
> for a small,
Factual.
> socialist
Factual (although I would have expected "communist").
> island nation
Factual.
> under decades of embargo
Factual.
> by hostile anti-communist
I think even pro-embargo folks would be ok with this description.
> forces.
Small problem here maybe?
The problem with the flamebait sentence I was objecting to was twofold: (1) it was political rhetoric of precisely the kind you would read in a political publication or hear in a political broadcast, and (2) it took the thread on a generic ideological tangent, that is it replaced the topic of Cuban work on covid vaccines with a much larger, more general, and more inflammatory one. Yes, it's related; the word "tangent" implies that; but that's not enough. It reliably leads to much worse discussion, and predictably did so in this case. I've been trying to explain this to HN for many years:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
There's nothing different about the moderation practice in this case—it was utterly routine. But two things were different: (a) I wrote more hastily than I usually do and didn't calibrate my language very well; and (b) something about the specific question of Cuba appears to land differently with HN's internationally distributed community than most subjects do.
However, the funny thing is that there was no ideological flame war in response to the comment. Why? Because there was nothing there that anyone even disagrees with or find inflammatory.
In fact, the only reactions have been to your (in my opinion) overreaction.
To which comment? If you mean the original comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27654110), that's quite wrong. The flamewar reactions were why I replied in the first place. Some of them are dead and/or collapsed now.
I sense that some people may be taking my comments as if they are expressing a perspective on the topic of Cuba. I'm not. My comments are strictly limited to internet forum dynamics, since that's what it's my job to deal with.
I assure you I'm not thinking from "the US perspective on things", but very much internationally. I believe this is a case of people in different parts of the world not understanding each other, and underestimating how differently the same statement can land elsewhere. (I wrote about that here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.) Of course it's easy to take the position, "The fault lies with the others; my perspective is the valid one," but the problem with that is that it's a recipe for flamewar at scale. That isn't in any of our interests because it destroys the capacity of this place to remain interesting.
People don't need to change their views in order to take this into account, but they do need to adjust to the presence of other people. Across the kind of differences that we're dealing with in a large international community like this, that is not easy.
> Cuba actually has 5 vaccine candidates, and 2 of them have greater than 90% effectiveness. A great showing for a small, socialist island nation under decades of embargo by hostile anti-communist forces.
Which part is ideological boilerplate? Is it false that Cuba is a small, socialist island nation? Is it false that it has been under decades of embargo? Is it false that the forces that are imposing the embargo (mainly the US) are hostile to Cuba and anti-communist?
NOTE: You should not infer any agreement or disagreement to GP from my comment. I simply find it to be literally, factually correct. If it isn't please point me to sources that invalidate any of the factual points I mentioned.
And yes, it's a perfect tactic to sink any topic on a site with any kind of automoderation.
You cannot properly discuss anything moderately controversial if any topic can get framed, and sunk as "flamebait" because moderately controversial topics are "flamebait".
People have heated discussions about matters of ideology, that's the very obvious truth of life.
The more important is the matter, the more, longer, louder, and more emotionally people will argue.
There's also no evidence that anybody said that as a "discussion sinking" tactic. On the contrary, the simplest explanation easily applies: people responded to flamebait with more flamebait, which cascaded into flamewar. This is one of the most common phenomena that exists here, and one doesn't need sinister constructs to understand it.
This goes along with the view that the forum would be a peaceful and productive place if only those people (the ones I disagree with) were moderated and banned, and therefore it is the moderators' fault when flamewars happen on HN. Much as I'm deeply interested in improving as a moderator, I don't think this view is realistic. In fact the solution is in the opposite direction: less blaming of the others, more effort to see one's own contributions more clearly. Needless to say this applies irrespective of political or ideological or geographical identification.
(And yes, I need to do more of this too - for example it's clear that I could have handled this particular case much better. I was hasty and (ironically?) a little inflamed myself, not because of anything to do with Cuba or vaccines but because I didn't want to spend a second afternoon in a row dealing with a really nasty political flamewar. As a result I created a meta version of the same thing. Such lessons are expensive, which is fortunate.)
p.s. I see that your replies are getting rate-limited. That doesn't seem fair, so I'll turn that off for now. In return I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from this sort of destructive comment in the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848534. That's why we rate limit accounts. Actually you've done so much of that that we could easily have banned you and a rate limit was a mild response; but I don't want to throttle anyone from responding to me in a discussion about moderation.
"oh no"
(You're not really engaging the points raised and I find the low-key threat hilarious, so no, I won't be responding further.)
Personally, I hope this is one of the rare times when communist authorities tell the truth. Or hopefully Cuba 2020 has a different relation to the truth than Eastern Europe 1980. But count me skeptical until independent trials confirm the results.
People that lived under a communist party regime learned the hard way that communist regimes engage routinely in fake data. From 99% elections to the incessant claims that the quality of life is superior to the "decadent capitalist West", when reality on the field looks like this: https://dustyoldthing.com/inside-soviet-grocery-store.
I think the thing to learn from the Cuba experience is that embargos are usually ineffective mechanisms for enacting regime change, because it just reinforces the "us vs them" mindset. If there truly was a concerted international embargo of Israel, Netanyahu would be in power another 30 years.
I agree on your comment on the ineffectiveness of embargos. Unfortunately the solution to the Israel problem is to not create Israel in the first place. At this point, the damage is done. That's why governments (looking at you US) should think more before deploying military (vietnam, iraq, afghanistan, .... )
As for “expulsion” 22% of Israeli citizens are Arabs and further more are Druze, Circassian, Bedouin, etc. with equal rights. An Arab party is literally part of the Government right now. If you’re going to try to derail a topic with ignorant nonsense about Israel, at least get your facts right.
You questioning my facts shows you are a rude person. I shared my opinion and you insult me. Wanna come invade my house and claim it yours maybe?
Facts don't belong to anyone. They are just facts. You calling my refugee grandparents fleeing the Holocaust "invaders" is arguably ruder than me calling your fact-free nonsense, er nonsense. Cope.
- "Israel became a state by UN mandate" : I believe that mandate was an invasion. I believe I was clear. That's my opinion. I am happy to discuss it and change my mind if convinced. You insulted me and gave me 0 food for thought.
- "Facts don't belong to anyone": You were the one who said "get your facts right". You are incoherent in a matter of 2 messages. That said remember that facts are not easy to find, as it's very clear lately. So, while they don't belong to anyone, for a lot of things we will never have access to them and we have to rely on opinions.
- "You calling my refugee grandparents fleeing the Holocaust "invaders"" : I didn't. And ofc this is macro political argument, not a personal matter. I already told you what I consider an invasion. The UN mandate. The Holocaust was a great tragedy and I believe the victims had to be taken care properly. I just think that the way it was done created decades of wars and suffering and have shown how inadequate of a solution that was.
I am not gonna answer any more messages though. It's not really helping anyone and I think you are extremely emotional about this. This is not the kind of conversation I was looking forward or what I want to engage in.
I wish you all the best! I mean it!
You only dislike the sausage here because you can see it being made.
You can be a brutal savage and you conquer land and just claim it yours. All good.
At some point you evolve into a modern civilization and start following the rules of law, basic human rights and those sort of things.
That is the moment when you cannot just conquer land by force because it goes against your own values.
Israeli was formed by countries whose values would not allow its creation. It was just extremely convenient for them and everyone looked somewhere else.
Just wanted to point out, Jews are native to Israel.
citation needed
In any case, here is a short paper showing Cuba's healthcare outcomes are comparable to Canada and US: https://globalhealth.washington.edu/sites/default/files/50%2...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/americas/brazil-cub...
Be it a capitalist country like Iceland or a socialist like Cuba, with enough funding and an educated workforce you can run a pretty successful healthcare system, despite the fact that it could be better. And perhaps that is precisely why the workers in a successful healthcare system complain. They are educated enough to know how it could be improved even further.
To me it sounded like you were using the fact that doctors complain about their working condition as evidence against parent’s claim. So it felt natural to explain that a healthcare system can be successful despite the fact that the workers in said system have complaints about it.
Ideally these workers should be paid a fair share for their labor (particularly when their boss—the Cuban Government—claims to be a socialist). But regrettably that is not the world we live in. I wouldn’t be surprised—if the numbers were crunched—that a doctor employed by a for profit hospital in a capitalist country also only received a tenth to a quarter of the profits they generate, after their bosses take their profits and their governments take their taxes.
This feels like a specific claim being made.
For everyone downvoting me, just want you to know that yellow is one of the worst colors in the world.
Edit: I forgot to link statistics for the country itself, not just the doctors they send abroad. They perform admirably against both the U.S. and most European countries[3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism
[2]: https://time.com/5467742/cuba-doctors-export-brazil/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba#Health_stat...
It's a pretty controversial topic, though- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba#Contrasting...
The average Cuban makes in the neighborhood of $30 a month. Cuban doctors make about $70 a month. US doctors make something around $30,000 a month.
As it turns out, it is much easier to have a cheap medical system when you pay basically nothing for labor. However, this is a feature of a system which is otherwise rather unenviable.
I am almost entirely in favor of this proposal, except that it would probably be preferable in such a case to admit immigrants from less prosperous parts of the world who would go on to earn substantially less than that. This would bring the overall income figure down, but would still be a major win for the world's overall prosperity.
structurally, it's a good target model. materially, capitalist embargoes have prevented import of drugs and equipment that isn't already manufactured locally.
https://theconversation.com/is-the-cuban-healthcare-system-r...
they also provide medical education for free, even to foreign citizens.
notably, che guevara was a doctor before he was a soldier, and this probably informed the cuban communist party's healthcare policy.
39 out of 191, 2 places behind the US.
On the other hand, many of these doctors are sent to work in Cuba's allies, where most of their pay goes to the Cuban government. At home, their medical system goes through some pretty rough patches from time to time, and you have people who need to turn to the black market to buy the iodine necessary for disinfection of their own surgeries.
Of course its relative - is it better than Switzerland? Of course not, but comparing to peers in 3rd world, they are absolutely stellar. Cheap/free advanced medicine and care, tons of foreign missions around the world.
I recall from cold war, Cuban medical scientists and doctors were regarded as top notch in eastern bloc and many exchange missions were done to get some of that to other parts of the world. From Cuban perspective, cold war didn't end with fall of USSR
But otherwise, yes, Cuba is a human rights disaster in it's own right.
You're honestly trying to blame Cuba for this one?
This is a positive thing
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cubas-Soberana-02-COVID-...