Sadly, there's enough MAGA here to share their downvotes but your "evidence" is pointing in a different direction.
They overlap with the climate deniers, the nukecels, libertarians and Trump fans.
And it clearly goes to the top, since his vice-president and primary funded was a Google CEO ex-wife, and he had high level support even before he went back on his stated opinions and joined the Trump campaign.
"Trump isn't Hitler, Hitler had policies" being one memorable zinger of his.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rfk-jr-compared-trump-...
On Dr Phil, an audience member raised concerns about "stratospheric aerosol injections." Kennedy responded, "That is not happening in my agency. We don't do that. It's done, we think, by DARPA," referring to the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "And a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. You know, those materials are put in jet fuel. I'm going to do everything in my power to stop it."
Ha ha, what a glowing endorsement.
I wish we could open trade talks with these people instead. But, alas, that’s not how it works.
What do you propose I do?
Or did you just want my permission to be personally angry at me? Not sure you needed it, but you’ve now got it.
When it comes to the bad stuff there’s a shift in language. There’s no “we” anywhere to be found. It’s vague but it’s definitely someone else in another state who’s responsible. A crazy politician. A corrupt interest localized elsewhere. Overall result is blurry, meaningless. The blame belongs to someone specific.
The usual first reaction is “but those were different people you were talking to” and you’re right. But what a coincidence that when someone assigns blame there’s always an answer like yours to deflect it, but when they were assigning “awards” nobody ever came up to deflect those. Either most Americans think they should only get the praise and every other voice is drowned, or maybe it’s a balanced split but you only speak now to tell is you feel slighted and victimized but chose to be quiet back then when you were honored as an American.
It’s this coincidence you should be upset with. When the right hand only brags about the good stuff and puts the golden crown on your head, and the left hand only shirks responsibility when it’s pointed out that there’s gunk all over the crown and the backside is wooden.
Which is fine, but attempting to grandstand while doing it is just boring to read.
Or maybe you just need more practice at this kind of internet kickdown.
If you thought I was wrong you wouldn’t spend 3 paragraphs (yes, a sentence can be a paragraph, and in this case it is) talking about me, you’d show me it’s not like that, not like everyone else sees it.
Funny thing is that unlike you who only had some 2bit ad-hominem to offer, GP is probably not wrong. They really aren’t responsible for the current situation and maybe even did their part to fight it. But they were immediately triggered and had to object when they felt unfairly bundled with the “losers”. Did you ever see anyone objecting to being unfairly bundled with the “winners” (i.e. never really contributed to the win)?
Your edit to claim a sentence can be a paragraph just makes you look even more pathetic
Success always has many fathers, failure is always an orphan, anywhere. At least I am recognizing failure, if only to disown it!
(And if I rightly feel shame now, even without personal responsibility, cannot I not be allowed some sober pride in equal measure in other circumstances?)
American voting systems are bad. Average Americans have minimal influence on the policy that's enacted[1]. I wonder if where you are from these don't apply as much, and you are used to having more control over what the government does.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error?...
[1] https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-...
Congrats on discovering that people claim credit collectively and blame individually. That’s not a uniquely American sin, that’s every human tribe since forever and you just gave it a paragraph structure and called it a diagnosis.
COVID was another vivid illustration of how you're just along for the ride with people who can act contrary to everyone's collective self-interest
Seems it's people with outsized media influence that have the most agency for change, beyond that a fish rots from the top down
If the question was “what do I do to fix it” that’s not something you’ll get answered in a comment.
They asked to stop deflecting. Take that literally. Imagine this page without the comment and the comments hanging off it.
"Don't do this thing". "What should I do instead?" Your choice. Maybe nothing. When there is nothing serious to say, maybe sit with the silence, that space where a little joke or some cynicism would relieve the pressure without doing any productive work, and let it work on you. At least until you can't take it anymore, and maybe tomorrow you'll last longer, and maybe next week you'll have a breakthrough.
At any rate, others can't tell us how to fix a situation we're not part of causing. In a society of millions, while each can say "I'm just one of many", nobody else can say more, so we always have "full" responsibility, that is, the maximum possible. Put differently, it is not possible for a single person to be solely responsible for what two people do, but that doesn't change the responsibility they do have.
This isn't about spilled milk, but rather about the question on who it is to fix this. It is on you. If you cannot do it alone, you have to organise with others. But there is nobody, as long as you're an adult and a citizen, that you can point to that should be expected to "do it" instead.
Though I don't mean this in a finger-pointy way either because we all sit in glass houses. There may be differences in degree and all that, but when it comes to what should or could be, and how it is, we're all so far from the mark that bickering about who is the worst and who should get "the" blame for the situation, rather than how to change it, seems pointless.
> Or did you just want my permission to be personally angry at me? Not sure you needed it, but you’ve now got it.
I personally wish you a really awesome weekend, stranger. You insisted on making this personal, now deal with it >:[
That's merely a symptom of the underlying problem, which is that capital interests run the show, and have for many decades.
What we refer to as a democracy is illusory. We basically have a uniparty, but most people are fooled by the sports team arrangement of good cop / bad cop. Those who aren't fooled feel powerless, and they are right to.
Anyone who balks at this need only consider which things receive bi-partisan support.
I've got a family member and ex friend (both trained in science) and they drank the koolaid hard. A funny story about them -- both had stayed at my home (different times) and I had taken to heating the water for my coffee in the microwave.
Both of them were horrified by that and refused to use that water. Neither could give reason why, and artfully deflected when I pressed the matter. I think antivaxers caught a virus that melted their brains.
But what is never discussed in the Lab Leak pursuit is: so what? I mean, yes, poor biosecurity and containment should be called out and not covered up, but the real value is in being the foundation of a conspiracy. "The government conspired to make you sick!".
Think about this: covid has mutated consistently since it's been tracked. Were those mutations coming from a lab or was it viruses doing virus things. Was Ebola made in a lab or did it come from a place we know viruses come from.
Was the Spanish Flu a Chinese plot? Was AIDS?
The handling of the outbreak was clearly bungled, but let's remember who was in charge in the US when it happened. The guy who shut down research and tracking teams because Obama had funded them (So had Bush -- until then, this kind of stuff was non-political and taken seriously as a non-partisan issue).
The failure for masking was again, on the then POTUS, and it's been conjectured by many (including myself) that he was against masks because it would mess up his makeup.
Yes, it could have been handled so much better, and sadly, could have been an incredibly valuable teachable moment that made us all safer in the future. But instead it was used to further divide us and foster the literal fucking insanity of antivaxxers. I have nothing but contempt for those people because they are a danger to humanity.
What was a conspiracy was the cover-up by health officials who knew that it had escaped a lab. And by the Chinese government, which knew even earlier, and which I believe saw an economic and strategic advantage in keeping the information and the genome of the virus to itself for a few months while it was already circulating in Wuhan.
One does not have to believe that the lab leak was intentional to believe that once it happened, the responsible parties conspired to cover it up.
As for the gain of function research itself, though defensive in nature and benign in intent, it was something that was deemed too risky to be performed in the US, and outsourcing it to a country with a much poorer safety record was wildly irresponsible. When it backfired, a cover-up naturally ensued.
I'm not a MAGA person (I've always voted Democrat, actually). This is just my take as to the most likely scenario given what's publicly known. And of course the virus has mutated in the wild, as viruses do. The question is whether the initial strain was given genetic advantages that were evolved under human guidance - defensively or not.
This does a good job of painting that picture: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/933
But this also returns to the "so what" path. The conspiracy paints GOF as "evil government doing bad things" (which is not unreasonable conjecture in many contexts), but the work is primarily intended for defensive measures:
https://asm.org/getmedia/ef3e09db-a3c3-4eff-8e73-5d7edbcabb4...
Search Google for this: "did the us outsource GOF research into sars to wuhan labs in china"
I found the answer to be reasonable and credible. Again, governments lie but so do conspiracy theories.
To make this more HN aligned I'll share a story:
I was introduced to Chuck Peddle at a wedding not long after the turn of the century. I first learned assembly language on the 6502 so I knew who he was and was thrilled to meet him and hear his stories. At that point in time he was working on some hardware startup in Malaysia (IIRC), and was a seasoned world traveller.
The last part of our conversation was his observation through his travels that due to the nature of overcrowded cities in third world countries and the advent of air travel where people could disperse rapidly to anywhere else in the world, he shared a fear that a deadly outbreak would eventually happen and would travel the world in days, with horrifying consequences.
That came to mind when Covid happened.
Lastly, I'm not at all fond of these types of conspiracies because they spread like a virus and their value is primarily in giving people the feeling that they know what's going on and they know better than everyone else -- and it becomes such a part of their identity that trying to debunk that conspiracy is only perceived as a personal attack -- there's no room for reason.
All of this "the truth is out there" while we have real conspiracies happening in broad daylight and people just shrug like "oh, that just happens, whatever". I'm referring to the current US presidential administration.
I think my point stands that once a gain of function-mediated virus escaped a lab, the incentives aligned in such a way that the people and the government responsible for that fuckup took steps to cover it up, and that is a perfectly logical and reasonable conclusion.
I absolutely agree that government coverups are absolutely unacceptable.
I state my conclusion as "it seems to be this way" whereas I read you as saying "no, it was this, case closed".
Intent matters. In the courtroom and out of it. My frustration is that (from my perspective) the intent behind the lab leak theory is to turn it into a government plot against the people (and yes, those can happen), and that the whole affair of dealing with Covid was a nefarious plot to harm the population and importantly to force vaccines upon the masses.
As the purported incident happened in China, there will likely never be any admission or redress. And the torches and pitchforks will continue coming for vaccine research. And I have every right to be less than happy about that.
I would say this about the purported incident happening in China: From the perspective of the Chinese government, it really didn't matter whether it was a lab leak or not, as their concealment of the problem for 2-3 critical months would likely have happened even if saving face was not an issue. It was a simple projection to say that an authoritarian regime with a top-down economy and an unlimited ability to lock down outbreaks would gain an edge in relative GDP growth over a disorganized, democratic adversary, which would compound for every day they withheld information even though they were attempting to contain the spread within their own borders. That's the economic calculation I called an act of war.
Sure.
Face saving in China is a cultural institution (not that it doesn't happen in the US and elsewhere). Ascribing that to an intentional act of war is a stretch. Coverups are virtually all motivated by CYA by their very nature.
China is handily winning the economic war without taking the tactic you suggest, and if we are unable to shake the current regime and it's scions, will mop the floor with us.
The reason I am so testy about this conspiracy is that it focuses all attention off the conspiracy that Grump did by dismantling the institutions that were built to protect us from such an outbreak, and then bungle the reaction to it actually happening.
Again: let's say China comes out tomorrow and says: "Sorry, we fucked up. Our researchers got sloppy and lied to us. We're sorry"
What does that do to either protect us from future events (which can be from out of the wild)? Other than the satisfaction of "I told you so", what do we get from that?
RFK Jr is running the show, and must appease his boss and his whims. They'd likely take that confession and use it as a parade and patting themselves on the back while they continue to destroy the science and institutions that are there to prevent future pandemics.
Anti-vax thinking was around pre-pandemic. An article from 2018:
* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6122668/
and 2015:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/health-33774181
2020+ was mostly about anti-vax 'contrarian' thinking merging with anti(-Democrat)-government thinking.
Before vaccines were created, Democrat and GOD death rates from COVID were about the same, but after they became available GOP rates became higher:
* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37486680/
* https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/study-finds-large-gap-in-...
The pandemic provided healthy doses of copium. It absolved Grump of responsibility for not achieving any of the reforms he promised in 2016 (having to deal with the pandemic instead). It created something that looks like a coordinated conspiracy, even though it is just people's obvious reactions to mitigate a pandemic. It created a whole bunch of "unprecedented" authoritarian actions by institutions even though you merely had to look back to previous pandemics to see precedents.
All of these effects also applied to Grump personally as well, as it seemed like the "deep state" was lined up against him (in the same way that one's entire family becomes "against them" as their dementia progresses), creating his obvious conclusion that the administrative state (ie the system that has brought us prosperity and stability in the post-WWII period) must be destroyed.
They also tend to contaminate the raw milk bacteria you aren't using.
Close enough?
So these people have a leg to stand on. It's a wooden leg (arrrg) but they have a leg. Of course they, and their supporters, are never doing any kind of statistical analysis or risk calculus. The the "risk" part is the thing that really, really matters. I mean, we have chemotherapies which have a very high chance of fucking your shit up or even killing you. But untreated cancers are fatal, and sometimes very quickly. It's all nuanced.
I think the lesson here is just because someone is anti-something doesn't exactly mean they stand for something. Just because someone is anti-corruption it doesn't mean they are pro corruption etc. Because people always find it easy to run their mouths and be arm chair experts.
I had a chance to see the full 10 year cycle of an anti corruption candidate. He got elected into power and did nothing. Nada. Because all he knew was to fight and find someone to blame. He was just a weasel. 10 years later the place was worse off and corruption was even higher. When I pointed this out to some MAGA folks - they were like but how do you know until we try. Its like Americans want to tempt fate and want to see for themselves how institutions which took multi decades to get destroyed in few years.
RFK is similar case. He has a stance - whether right or wrong. But under pressure he just abandons them to save his own skin. He has never owned up to the issues his anti vax crusade causing the Samoa measles epidemic. And just like that Americans wanted to tempt fate with - "he is making good points about food". He is not. He demand accountability from others but owns up to nothing. He will weasel out of every issue is causing.
Wasn't my darling candidate. Mostly because I can read research papers and understand that drinking raw milk and avoiding vaccines doesn't make me healthier.
*directly = cow milked into a cup.
1) extremely closely controlled cow health
2) minimal storage time
3) minimized chances of cross contamination/reasonably clean cows <- that's the big one
4) healthy immune system to minimize infection chances
If even one of those isn't there, it's basically sickness in a cup. Why take a risk if there's no benefit?
In germany, there's the concept of "Vorzugsmilch", which is raw milk from specifically controlled farms with super tight regulations with regular and intense controls and testing of milk, e.g. monthly testing of every individual cow's milk.
But even then, it's an - albeit small - risk without benefit, with the exception of raw-milk cheese, which can't be made in any other way. I just don't get it, practically none of the claims of the raw-milk-gurus could be proven under controlled circumstances. Why needlessly take risks?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30234385/
Not every pre-pasteurization child died, but far more died than post-pasteurization.
Raw milk is just a bad idea at anything beyond incredibly tiny tightly controlled scale. Sure, you got lucky. It's still not a good way to feed a society.
"I drank raw milk and didn't get sick" is not actually the same as "drinking raw milk is safe."
Indeed. There is no reason to consume raw milk. Pasteurization is not actually the problem.
On the other hand, there is no reason to homogenize milk at all. It is safe and legal to procure "cream top" or non-homogenized milk at many grocery outlets. Cream-top milk is not processed, and in fact there have been detrimental effects linked to the consumption of homogenized milk, which you can avoid by drinking cream-top milk instead.
Homogenization does not make milk safer or healthier to drink. On the contrary, it permits the processors to remove healthful elements and sell them in a more profitable vehicle. Why not simply keep your entire product intact, as it was found in nature?
The "raw milk" craze is a bonkers red herring for everyone. Don't drink raw milk. Don't buy the hype. But you don't need homogenization, either!
Cream-top milk is not merely full-fat: the cream is unmixed and free floating. You can immediately tell it is different by texture.
Some people separate the cream and reserve it for coffee or something. Or you can agitate it for “manual homogenization”. The difference is texture, really. It may have bothered housewives trying to cook or to pour it. But I love the experience.
the "who you elect" is a specious argument. Everyone in California could elect democrarts forever, and 2 senators in Wyoming still have a larger sway per capita.
> Yuri Orlov: [Narrating] Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
I mean, it is not as if RFK was the darling candidate of HN at one time?