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On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? Show nested quote +I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans.
1) If any did, sure. I've seen people claim some did, but no actual evidence (no, not even the tweeting!).
2) My point is that, so far as I can tell, no one is getting off easy. I don't doubt that if the DOJ thought they could bring a case against a sitting member of congress, they would.
I'm am not trivializing that day, but I am also not pretending it was something that it wasn't. My point in bringing up the general public is to make the point that the people most unwilling to move on are Democrats in congress, and the reasons for that are obvious. Support for a commission is high, but not deep.
I would like someone to explain why a congressional committee can't do it, I mean Dems control them and with all the Russiagate rule changes the chair can do almost whatever they want!
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On May 30 2021 01:17 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans. That last quote from introvert is representative of what many point to as one of the most worrying trends among Republicans, that the importance of anything and everything is forcefully channeled through what they think voters think at the expense of all other principles; rather than lead such that votes follow, Republicans follow their voters so uniformly that the rare few who take public positions are derided as not true Republicans (like Romney) or become the de facto ideological hotshots of the party (like Gaetz, MTG, and most of all, Trump). McConnell and McCarthy lead from Congress in lockstep with that framework, and I'd guess it'll take something worse than 1/6 (which isn't hard to imagine happening sometime within the next couple years) to shake it up.
Well I'd spend more time on why I don't think that the capitol riot was an "armed insurrection" or a "coup attempt" but that's a lost cause and why I simply reject the 9/11 comparisons out of hand.
It is surely easier, if perhaps still hopeless, to show people why a commission is political stunt... Rather than to convince a bunch of lefties who follow and care about politics so much that they spend years posting about it on a gaming forum that the riot wasn't a Republic-alterting event.
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On May 30 2021 01:20 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans. 1) If any did, sure. I've seen people claim some did, but no actual evidence (no, not even the tweeting!). 2) My point is that, so far as I can tell, no one is getting off easy. I don't doubt that if the DOJ thought they could bring a case against a sitting member of congress, they would. I'm am not trivializing that day, but I am also not pretending it was something that it wasn't. My point in bringing up the general public is to make the point that the people most unwilling to move on are Democrats in congress, and the reasons for that are obvious. Support for a commission is high, but not deep. I would like someone to explain why a congressional committee can't do it, I mean Dems control them and with all the Russiagate rule changes the chair can do almost whatever they want!
It's humorous that you mention "Russiagate's" influence on the legislative process as though it gives Democrats reason to resort to it in lieu of something more officious; anyone who pays any attention to how Republicans conduct themselves in typical committee hearings would see that they're very good at asking incredibly stupid questions, making all kinds of pointless point-of-order motions and maneuvers, and otherwise gumming up the process despite being the minority. The only way Democrats are able to do anything with committees is by conducting them in the most partisan way possible such that they restrict Republicans from being involved, which is one among a number of reasons why a more formal 9/11 style inquiry is or should be preferable to anyone actually interested in investigating 1/6 with reasonable finality as an end-goal.
On May 30 2021 01:26 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:17 farvacola wrote:On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans. That last quote from introvert is representative of what many point to as one of the most worrying trends among Republicans, that the importance of anything and everything is forcefully channeled through what they think voters think at the expense of all other principles; rather than lead such that votes follow, Republicans follow their voters so uniformly that the rare few who take public positions are derided as not true Republicans (like Romney) or become the de facto ideological hotshots of the party (like Gaetz, MTG, and most of all, Trump). McConnell and McCarthy lead from Congress in lockstep with that framework, and I'd guess it'll take something worse than 1/6 (which isn't hard to imagine happening sometime within the next couple years) to shake it up. Well I'd spend more time on why I don't think that the capitol riot was an "armed insurrection" or a "coup attempt" but that's a lost cause and why I simply reject the 9/11 comparisons out of hand. It is surely easier, if perhaps still hopeless, to show people why a commission is political stunt... Rather than to convince a bunch of lefties who follow and care about politics so much that they spend years posting about it on a gaming forum that the riot wasn't a Republic-alterting event.
You're proving the point that Republicans and those who do their apologetics have totally abandoned the ground of actually proving things on principle, you're instead more than content to put everyone in their ideological box and use that to justify anything and everything. God forbid someone on the right try to convince someone on the left of something.
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On May 30 2021 01:30 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:20 Introvert wrote:On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans. 1) If any did, sure. I've seen people claim some did, but no actual evidence (no, not even the tweeting!). 2) My point is that, so far as I can tell, no one is getting off easy. I don't doubt that if the DOJ thought they could bring a case against a sitting member of congress, they would. I'm am not trivializing that day, but I am also not pretending it was something that it wasn't. My point in bringing up the general public is to make the point that the people most unwilling to move on are Democrats in congress, and the reasons for that are obvious. Support for a commission is high, but not deep. I would like someone to explain why a congressional committee can't do it, I mean Dems control them and with all the Russiagate rule changes the chair can do almost whatever they want! It's humorous that you mention "Russiagate's" influence on the legislative process as though it gives Democrats reason to resort to it in lieu of something more officious; anyone who pays any attention to how Republicans conduct themselves in typical committee hearings would see that they're very good at asking incredibly stupid questions, making all kinds of pointless point-of-order motions and maneuvers, and otherwise gumming up the process despite being the minority. The only way Democrats are able to do anything with committees is by conducting them in the most partisan way possible such that they restrict Republicans from being involved, which is one among a number of reasons why a more formal 9/11 style inquiry is or should be preferable to anyone actually interested in investigating 1/6 with reasonable finality as an end-goal. Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:26 Introvert wrote:On May 30 2021 01:17 farvacola wrote:On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans. That last quote from introvert is representative of what many point to as one of the most worrying trends among Republicans, that the importance of anything and everything is forcefully channeled through what they think voters think at the expense of all other principles; rather than lead such that votes follow, Republicans follow their voters so uniformly that the rare few who take public positions are derided as not true Republicans (like Romney) or become the de facto ideological hotshots of the party (like Gaetz, MTG, and most of all, Trump). McConnell and McCarthy lead from Congress in lockstep with that framework, and I'd guess it'll take something worse than 1/6 (which isn't hard to imagine happening sometime within the next couple years) to shake it up. Well I'd spend more time on why I don't think that the capitol riot was an "armed insurrection" or a "coup attempt" but that's a lost cause and why I simply reject the 9/11 comparisons out of hand. It is surely easier, if perhaps still hopeless, to show people why a commission is political stunt... Rather than to convince a bunch of lefties who follow and care about politics so much that they spend years posting about it on a gaming forum that the riot wasn't a Republic-alterting event. You're proving the point that Republicans and those who do their apologetics have totally abandoned the ground of actually proving things on principle, you're instead more than content to put everyone in their ideological box and use that to justify anything and everything. God forbid someone on the right try to convince someone on the left of something.
To the contrary I think congressional investigations are the way this would normally be handled. Perhaps this gap is too large to be bridged, but Trump was already impeached for the actions of that day. Is there any doubt what the result of this commission would be? I am looking at past behavior to predict future behavior. I have abandoned no principle because I do not believe there are any at play here. I watched how these people behaved throughout the last presidency, the Democrats in favor of this idea are no more seekers of truth than the members of their opposition.
You may say that's simply because I have abandoned principle already, but I obviously disagree. I have nowhere defended any Republican or even mentioned them. Both sides are in fact motivated by 2022.
Perhaps my viewpoint is also colored too much by my view of the events on that day, but to be fair I've thought more or less the same since it was happening in real time.
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I think its a wild strawman to try to say a commission must be about something as bad as 9/11 in order to ever exist. That is silly. Imagine if that was the threshold for something being considered worth talking about. 9/11 is not the minimum threshold for a commission. We can do better than that.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
I do want to offer concurrence with at least one small part of Introvert's argument: the Capitol riots aren't something I want to see as a big focus of the next 2-4 years of legislative work. The riots happened, which is very concerning and worthy of criminal investigation. But, like the email situation that someone else mentioned, it primarily concerns individuals who are currently disgraced and out of power, so I'd prefer that limited political capital be expended on issues that matter more to the nation as a whole, such as the failing economy and government infrastructure. Even Trump understood quite well that it was wise to let the whole Hillary matter go after he won the election; when folks like AOC try to use the Capitol riots to win political points it's a clear game of make-relevance that matters a lot less than anything else they could be focusing on.
To take away some support, there's a lot of problems with Introvert's larger point that a lot of people have mentioned already. But at least this one item, I can agree with.
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On May 30 2021 01:57 LegalLord wrote:
I do want to offer concurrence with at least one small part of Introvert's argument: the Capitol riots aren't something I want to see as a big focus of the next 2-4 years of legislative work. The riots happened, which is very concerning and worthy of criminal investigation. But, like the email situation that someone else mentioned, it primarily concerns individuals who are currently disgraced and out of power, so I'd prefer that limited political capital be expended on issues that matter more to the nation as a whole, such as the failing economy and government infrastructure. Even Trump understood quite well that it was wise to let the whole Hillary matter go after he won the election; when folks like AOC try to use the Capitol riots to win political points it's a clear game of make-relevance that matters a lot less than anything else they could be focusing on.
To take away some support, there's a lot of problems with Introvert's larger point that a lot of people have mentioned already. But at least this one item, I can agree with. Are they all disgraced and out of power?
How many Republicans currently sitting in Congress have/still continued the notion that the election was stolen/fake?
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I mean, I guess I agree with LL it shouldn’t be a primary legislative focus because it’s not primarily a legislative problem. Congress has a job (in theory, anyway) and it has enough trouble getting anything done without trying to tackle problems it doesn’t obviously have the power to solve. If there were clear legislative remedies they couldn’t pass them anyway. But at this point “the 2020 election was stolen” or “we should install partisans in election-certifying positions to change election results we don’t trust” are plurality, if not outright majority Republican positions. The case for optimism here has to be premised on thinking these people don’t actually mean what they say.
I think historical analogies like the end of the Roman republic are massively overused, but one lesson I think can be pretty universally applied is that once illegitimate means of seizing powers are accepted, there’s no reason to use any other means at that point. Once people are directly bribing voters to become consul there’s no point in running a persuasion campaign. Once people are seizing the throne by building an army and marching on Rome, that’s the only way anybody comes to power. Once you can assassinate political opponents to enact change, nobody will ever bother with the idea of “voting them out” again. Why would you? Even if you manage to “win” by legitimate means they can just undo it with illegitimate means, so either play by their rules or don’t play at all.
In this case every “rising star” in Republican politics was explicitly or implicitly endorsing ignoring certified election results and installing their preferred candidate. Not one favors punishing Trump for trying it, or condemns casting doubt on a legitimate election, and there’s very little reason to think they’d respect a 2024 outcome they didn’t like if they had the means to block it. That’s the majority opinion in the caucus and they’re punishing any Republican who disagrees any way they can.
Either that position is defeated or that’s the only way people take power from here on out. Which, as I said, ends in mass political violence any way I can picture it.
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In other news, there is now (and throughout this weekend) a large demonstration in Tulsa, Oklahoma by several groups of black gun owners and 2nd amendment advocates. This comes on the 100 year anniversary of the 1921 massacre, with an open carry march, to promote black solidarity, gun ownership, and educate on gun rights and both historical and current racial violence.
Nearly a century after the violence that destroyed an affluent neighborhood in Tulsa known as Black Wall Street and left as many as 300 Black Americans dead, a collection of gun rights groups organized the peaceful event for Saturday, the anniversary of the 1921 massacre. After a year of international protests against racism and police brutality, the men and women will continue the fight for racial justice, which includes being able to arm and protect themselves without consequences, the same way white Americans can.
“Our hope is to try to galvanize a community, educate around the position of Second Amendment rights, and hopefully be a vehicle to more or less unify the African American community,” Yafeuh Balogun, the co-founder of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club in Dallas, told VICE News.
“We want to be part of history,” he continued. “We want the generations, the younger kids to understand the timeframe and the importance of recognizing the people that came before them and the sacrifices that they made.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbadk/hundreds-of-black-gun-owners-are-marching-on-black-wall-street-this-weekend
I think this is pretty interesting, and support what they are doing, as a 2nd amendment advocate. This is also a constitutional carry state, meaning that anyone who can legally buy and own a firearm can also carry it in public, concealed or openly, without license (as long as local restrictions don't interfere, such as entering a gun-free zone.)
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On May 30 2021 01:52 Mohdoo wrote:
I think its a wild strawman to try to say a commission must be about something as bad as 9/11 in order to ever exist. That is silly. Imagine if that was the threshold for something being considered worth talking about. 9/11 is not the minimum threshold for a commission. We can do better than that.
Not to mention that if the 1/6 attack was successful, it arguably would have been more damaging than 9/11.
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On May 30 2021 10:16 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 01:52 Mohdoo wrote:
I think its a wild strawman to try to say a commission must be about something as bad as 9/11 in order to ever exist. That is silly. Imagine if that was the threshold for something being considered worth talking about. 9/11 is not the minimum threshold for a commission. We can do better than that. Not to mention that if the 1/6 attack was successful, it arguably would have been more damaging than 9/11.
Inarguably. But this whole argument hinging on comparisons to 9/11 is claptrap anyway. Nobody's talking about how it compares to 9/11 when they talk about why it's important. They talk about why a violent coup attempt sponsored by the president was a fucking problem. It stands on its own. Introvert had to prop up the 9/11 strawman so he could knock it down, that's why he had to bring it up. Nobody else cares about the stupid 9/11 arguments. It's a distraction.
And one last time, Introvert, if you don't think they were there, unauthorized and with weapons looking for Senators and even Pence, with intent to stage a violent attack and overthrow the election results, what do you think they were doing there? It wasn't for a picnic, my dude. If you can't just answer this question then you can get lost in my book, for real.
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On May 30 2021 00:34 raga4ka wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2021 17:58 Doublemint wrote:On May 27 2021 05:30 BlackJack wrote:On May 27 2021 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:
Really happy to see the left starting to embrace investigating chinese covid lab stuff. So much smoke. The hopsitalized researchers in earlier in the year is a huge red flag. My wife is a microbiology researcher and she is very outraged by the whole thing. She sees this as the most cut and dry case of lab incompetence you can ever see. Its honestly weird to me there aren't already sanctions on China. It has always seemed to me that the biggest reason the left had, until now, rejected the wuhan lab origin of coronavirus is because it was supported by the orange guy. It's a strange time we are in when the plausibility of something is seemingly dependent on what Trump thinks about it. I often wonder about what the OG anti-vaxxers think about all their new MAGA allies. Like are the Jenny McCarthy's of the world happy now that so many more people are anti-vax or do you think they are so horrified to be associated with the MAGA people that they might give vaccines a chance? lol yeah people are irrational beyond belief, however as far as rationality is concerned going against Mr. Big Lie is generally not a bad bet... the lab theory gaining traction again, though certainly interesting enough, will most likely lead nowhere... there are hardly any people reporting from China anymore and good intelligence (assets) are hard to come by. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/27/china-expels-foreign-journalists-crackdown-transparency/ I think China would've been more open about sharing more information if Trump didn't focus his whole presidency and foreign policy on trade war with, isolating, trying to contain, bash and blame China for everything, even his epic fail in containing the Coronavirus spread in the US. The end result is that racism and hate crime are on the rise against Chinese and other Asians. As comments here prove, people starting to jump the gun without any evidence again, just like the start of the pandemic. Pandemics will come and go through history, but such backlash only happens when it supposedly originates in China. I didn't read or heard any kinds of conspiracy theories about the Spanish flu and Swine flu originating from the US or other disease like MERS originating from Saudi Arabia, which sounds much more plausible to escape a lab, since Saudis aren't exactly the shinning example of free speech and democracy, not to mention a state sponsoring all kinds of terrorists and mercenaries in the middle east. The Wuhan lab theory is only a thing because, the US is insisting that there is a lab theory and that the world as a whole was grossly unprepared for such a pandemic and there is a need to blame someone else for personal incompetence. Why would China want to share any information with the US when they were blamed with all sorts of conspiracy theories from the start? Any information even benign ones shared with the US could just fuel the hate that Trump and Pompeo were preaching and spreading through their whole term. Trump himself praised China for the lockdowns it did to tackle the spread at first, but quickly did a 180 degree turn to relentlessly blame China for everything he couldn't hid, about his incompetence. Some people think that China created the virus as some sort of weapon, which is highly unlikely. Others think that through examination of animals they've uncovered the virus and somehow the virus broke free from the lab. I would think that China would more likely publish information and research papers and advance the knowledge in virology and brag about a new discovered virus... or they would hid it, because it's a weapon of mass destruction... And there is the third view that the scientists support that the virus originated in the wild and was spread through wet market meat sales... Regardless if the virus originated in a lab or in the wild, what would you suggest that China should've done better to contain the pandemic and not get these kinds of backlash, apart from being a one party system. Should they change to a 2 party system like the US? There was information about the virus in the end of 2019 and there was information of people dying by it in November and December, but the cases were few. In January China had already completely mapped out the virus and send the necessary information to the WHO and had the whole city of Wuhan under lockdown, a 11+ million people under lockdown. What more information did the rest of the world and the US need?I'm gonna quote information from wikipedia about Spanish flu and Swine flu, and I want you to tell me what the US did better then China to prevent an epidemic? "The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted about 19 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, and was the most recent flu pandemic involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic and the second being the 1977 Russian flu).[12][13] The first two discoveries were independently made in the United States in April 2009.[14] The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses and that further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[15] leading to the term "swine flu".[16] Some studies estimated that the real number of cases including asymptomatic and mild cases could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.[9] The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.[17] However, the Spanish flu infected a much higher proportion of the world population at the time, with the Spanish flu infecting an estimated 500 million people, which was roughly equivalent to a third of the world population at the time of the pandemic.[18] The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 18,449,[10] though the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.[19] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[20] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[21]" What did China do wrong in comparison, except that Sars-Cov 2 happened to be far more infectious and lethal virus then the influenza virus and how the hell would China know that before January 2020?
look, as you and others say nobody actually knows the origins of covid 19. as we have incomplete information that (mainly) leaves the realm of speculation. as more information "leaks" we get at least a bit of a blurry picture.
people like to jump to conclusions or even worse, play politics based on wrong conclusions... the attacks on Asians are a travesty, and as much was said in this thread. a good portion of posters here are Asian Americans iirc.
China is such an easy target to pick on and be angry about because they are not an open society. worse still, they are a country with a totalitarian system. a rather small elite of politapparatschicks, relative to the full number of inhabitants, are giving orders based on an ideology enforced by a technologically enhanced iron fist. and they got camps as well.
in such societies information flows are different. tightly controlled speech and propaganda are the main messages on all the major information streams.
it is very common that information critical to the public gets ignored, dismissed, or censored away.
Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctor
inertia of big ass organisations does not help to do things quickly... and verification also takes time. but as you see they had ample opportunity to be in the know. and very recently we had the news of lab workers getting sick even sooner... so there is quite a bit of room for inconvenient questions.
the consequences the virus already had, and might still have, are too vast to leave the origin story to propaganda, no matter from which side.
now how POTUS reacted... even beforehand with the trade war "that is easy to win"... and then leaving the WHO DURING a fucking pandemic - a pandemic he denied and thus exacerbated in his own country - to score a "political win" with the braindead caucus...
leaving the WHO also weakened getting to the bottom of the origins. if you are inside the organisation you can put pressure on members, form coalitions etc... being outside you can tweet about how terrible things are.
as to how they should run their country and do things differently? I dunno. it is up to them, however cries for (more) freedom are rather universal. what is rather clear is that their oppressive system is a hindrance to getting to the bottom of the pandemic. just bear with me and let's say they already know the origin. it was the lab, they made a mistake, they happen and what then? people there will be fucking pissed. worse even, people abroad will be pissed. no idea what might happen then. sanctions/boycotts?
I don't think there is a scenario where China comes out ahead, so they do not have any interest to get to the bottom. so we play this propaganda blame game...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-hits-back-as-us-revisits-covid-lab-theory/ar-AAKrBpZ
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Look, a violent but poorly organised coup-attempt by some wacko fringe group is, in itself, a mid-tier problem. If they were just a bunch of extremists who decided to attack the capitol on their own, a review of the security arrangements and the counter-terrorism failures and so on would be appropriate.
However, they weren't. The capitol riots were a violent but poorly organised coup-attempt incited and encouraged by a sitting president, with the intent of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power away from his office. The second half of that sentence is fucking important, as is the fact that a huge chunk of congress not only condones those actions but actively supports the insurrectionist ex-president, and continues to lay groundwork for him or his ideology to run again.
By attempting to frame it as an isolated incident, Intro and his ilk are handwaving away their own culpability. Engaging on the terms they set does nothing but propagate their both-sidesing nonsense.
The idea that it can be dealt with by rolling the wierdos and some of the security guards is naked spin. Sitting members of congress placed their own political convenience above the fundamental tenets of democracy they pretended to stand for, and remained sitting members of congress. An entire party has tied itself to a man who attempted to orchestrate an authoritarian takeover of government, and only failed because he did so even more incompetently than he governed beforehand.
I am sure the people who support him have "moved on". That means nothing.
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On May 30 2021 20:45 Doublemint wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 00:34 raga4ka wrote:On May 28 2021 17:58 Doublemint wrote:On May 27 2021 05:30 BlackJack wrote:On May 27 2021 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:
Really happy to see the left starting to embrace investigating chinese covid lab stuff. So much smoke. The hopsitalized researchers in earlier in the year is a huge red flag. My wife is a microbiology researcher and she is very outraged by the whole thing. She sees this as the most cut and dry case of lab incompetence you can ever see. Its honestly weird to me there aren't already sanctions on China. It has always seemed to me that the biggest reason the left had, until now, rejected the wuhan lab origin of coronavirus is because it was supported by the orange guy. It's a strange time we are in when the plausibility of something is seemingly dependent on what Trump thinks about it. I often wonder about what the OG anti-vaxxers think about all their new MAGA allies. Like are the Jenny McCarthy's of the world happy now that so many more people are anti-vax or do you think they are so horrified to be associated with the MAGA people that they might give vaccines a chance? lol yeah people are irrational beyond belief, however as far as rationality is concerned going against Mr. Big Lie is generally not a bad bet... the lab theory gaining traction again, though certainly interesting enough, will most likely lead nowhere... there are hardly any people reporting from China anymore and good intelligence (assets) are hard to come by. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/27/china-expels-foreign-journalists-crackdown-transparency/ I think China would've been more open about sharing more information if Trump didn't focus his whole presidency and foreign policy on trade war with, isolating, trying to contain, bash and blame China for everything, even his epic fail in containing the Coronavirus spread in the US. The end result is that racism and hate crime are on the rise against Chinese and other Asians. As comments here prove, people starting to jump the gun without any evidence again, just like the start of the pandemic. Pandemics will come and go through history, but such backlash only happens when it supposedly originates in China. I didn't read or heard any kinds of conspiracy theories about the Spanish flu and Swine flu originating from the US or other disease like MERS originating from Saudi Arabia, which sounds much more plausible to escape a lab, since Saudis aren't exactly the shinning example of free speech and democracy, not to mention a state sponsoring all kinds of terrorists and mercenaries in the middle east. The Wuhan lab theory is only a thing because, the US is insisting that there is a lab theory and that the world as a whole was grossly unprepared for such a pandemic and there is a need to blame someone else for personal incompetence. Why would China want to share any information with the US when they were blamed with all sorts of conspiracy theories from the start? Any information even benign ones shared with the US could just fuel the hate that Trump and Pompeo were preaching and spreading through their whole term. Trump himself praised China for the lockdowns it did to tackle the spread at first, but quickly did a 180 degree turn to relentlessly blame China for everything he couldn't hid, about his incompetence. Some people think that China created the virus as some sort of weapon, which is highly unlikely. Others think that through examination of animals they've uncovered the virus and somehow the virus broke free from the lab. I would think that China would more likely publish information and research papers and advance the knowledge in virology and brag about a new discovered virus... or they would hid it, because it's a weapon of mass destruction... And there is the third view that the scientists support that the virus originated in the wild and was spread through wet market meat sales... Regardless if the virus originated in a lab or in the wild, what would you suggest that China should've done better to contain the pandemic and not get these kinds of backlash, apart from being a one party system. Should they change to a 2 party system like the US? There was information about the virus in the end of 2019 and there was information of people dying by it in November and December, but the cases were few. In January China had already completely mapped out the virus and send the necessary information to the WHO and had the whole city of Wuhan under lockdown, a 11+ million people under lockdown. What more information did the rest of the world and the US need?I'm gonna quote information from wikipedia about Spanish flu and Swine flu, and I want you to tell me what the US did better then China to prevent an epidemic? "The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted about 19 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, and was the most recent flu pandemic involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic and the second being the 1977 Russian flu).[12][13] The first two discoveries were independently made in the United States in April 2009.[14] The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses and that further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[15] leading to the term "swine flu".[16] Some studies estimated that the real number of cases including asymptomatic and mild cases could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.[9] The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.[17] However, the Spanish flu infected a much higher proportion of the world population at the time, with the Spanish flu infecting an estimated 500 million people, which was roughly equivalent to a third of the world population at the time of the pandemic.[18] The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 18,449,[10] though the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.[19] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[20] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[21]" What did China do wrong in comparison, except that Sars-Cov 2 happened to be far more infectious and lethal virus then the influenza virus and how the hell would China know that before January 2020? look, as you and others say nobody actually knows the origins of covid 19. as we have incomplete information that (mainly) leaves the realm of speculation. as more information "leaks" we get at least a bit of a blurry picture. people like to jump to conclusions or even worse, play politics based on wrong conclusions... the attacks on Asians are a travesty, and as much was said in this thread. a good portion of posters here are Asian Americans iirc. China is such an easy target to pick on and be angry about because they are not an open society. worse still, they are a country with a totalitarian system. a rather small elite of politapparatschicks, relative to the full number of inhabitants, are giving orders based on an ideology enforced by a technologically enhanced iron fist. and they got camps as well. in such societies information flows are different. tightly controlled speech and propaganda are the main messages on all the major information streams. it is very common that information critical to the public gets ignored, dismissed, or censored away. Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctorinertia of big ass organisations does not help to do things quickly... and verification also takes time. but as you see they had ample opportunity to be in the know. and very recently we had the news of lab workers getting sick even sooner... so there is quite a bit of room for inconvenient questions. the consequences the virus already had, and might still have, are too vast to leave the origin story to propaganda, no matter from which side. now how POTUS reacted... even beforehand with the trade war "that is easy to win"... and then leaving the WHO DURING a fucking pandemic - a pandemic he denied and thus exacerbated in his own country - to score a "political win" with the braindead caucus... leaving the WHO also weakened getting to the bottom of the origins. if you are inside the organisation you can put pressure on members, form coalitions etc... being outside you can tweet about how terrible things are. as to how they should run their country and do things differently? I dunno. it is up to them, however cries for (more) freedom are rather universal. what is rather clear is that their oppressive system is a hindrance to getting to the bottom of the pandemic. just bear with me and let's say they already know the origin. it was the lab, they made a mistake, they happen and what then? people there will be fucking pissed. worse even, people abroad will be pissed. no idea what might happen then. sanctions/boycotts? I don't think there is a scenario where China comes out ahead, so they do not have any interest to get to the bottom. so we play this propaganda blame game... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-hits-back-as-us-revisits-covid-lab-theory/ar-AAKrBpZ
I just don't see how China could've contained the virus better... I think that after China locked down a city of 11+ million in January 2020... by then we all knew that the virus is highly infectious, but other countries were not taking the virus as seriously. They helped it spread and only have themselves to blame. Everyone who had flown to China and all their contacts should've been tracked as soon as possible, not to mention that a 14 day lockdown would've been the best thing to do, but that was unimaginable at the time, because slightly hurting the economy and individual freedom was at stake, so in the end why blame China, for something that almost every country in the world failed to do?
Supposedly China informed the world a week or even 2 earlier and made lockdowns faster, would that have changed anything if the EU and the US already had infected people, since it's not possible to not have infected people with the amount of people flowing in and out of China? It would've only slowed the infection, but the end result would've been the same... The lack of response would've been the same, with no lockdowns in EU and US the end result is the same. So even if should've, would've, could've in the end the world just underestimated a potential pandemic and choose to downplay the risk, because politicians didn't want to deal with the backlash from their own citizens for having tougher pandemic measures. Not to mention that most people only started following measures after virus deaths were by the thousands, already a lost fight. If everyone started following measures as seriously in January 2020 when China locked down a 11+ million Wuhan, then we could've contained the virus, but we didn't. So again, why blame China for our own failure?
Frankly, after over a year of witnessing how the world dealed with the pandemic, I'm even more inclined to believe that China did a great job of containing and eradicating the virus within their borders, and I didn't see most other countries doing a better job.
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US intelligence, including the president, were aware of the threat posed by the coronavirus as early as December '19. China could've had as poor a response as we did and we'd still be completely culpable for how badly we were affected, as a nation. The people in power knew, and deliberately chose to let it do its thing for a while specifically so they could call it such horrible names as the "Kung Flu" and stir the fear mongering pot. Trump was the one who weaponized the virus for political gain, not China. It has always been comical to me that we in the US have tried to be some kind of international moral authority in the pandemic when we had some of the worst response measures worldwide. The one thing we got right was the vaccine rollout once it was ready. That's about it.
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On May 30 2021 23:42 raga4ka wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 20:45 Doublemint wrote:On May 30 2021 00:34 raga4ka wrote:On May 28 2021 17:58 Doublemint wrote:On May 27 2021 05:30 BlackJack wrote:On May 27 2021 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:
Really happy to see the left starting to embrace investigating chinese covid lab stuff. So much smoke. The hopsitalized researchers in earlier in the year is a huge red flag. My wife is a microbiology researcher and she is very outraged by the whole thing. She sees this as the most cut and dry case of lab incompetence you can ever see. Its honestly weird to me there aren't already sanctions on China. It has always seemed to me that the biggest reason the left had, until now, rejected the wuhan lab origin of coronavirus is because it was supported by the orange guy. It's a strange time we are in when the plausibility of something is seemingly dependent on what Trump thinks about it. I often wonder about what the OG anti-vaxxers think about all their new MAGA allies. Like are the Jenny McCarthy's of the world happy now that so many more people are anti-vax or do you think they are so horrified to be associated with the MAGA people that they might give vaccines a chance? lol yeah people are irrational beyond belief, however as far as rationality is concerned going against Mr. Big Lie is generally not a bad bet... the lab theory gaining traction again, though certainly interesting enough, will most likely lead nowhere... there are hardly any people reporting from China anymore and good intelligence (assets) are hard to come by. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/27/china-expels-foreign-journalists-crackdown-transparency/ I think China would've been more open about sharing more information if Trump didn't focus his whole presidency and foreign policy on trade war with, isolating, trying to contain, bash and blame China for everything, even his epic fail in containing the Coronavirus spread in the US. The end result is that racism and hate crime are on the rise against Chinese and other Asians. As comments here prove, people starting to jump the gun without any evidence again, just like the start of the pandemic. Pandemics will come and go through history, but such backlash only happens when it supposedly originates in China. I didn't read or heard any kinds of conspiracy theories about the Spanish flu and Swine flu originating from the US or other disease like MERS originating from Saudi Arabia, which sounds much more plausible to escape a lab, since Saudis aren't exactly the shinning example of free speech and democracy, not to mention a state sponsoring all kinds of terrorists and mercenaries in the middle east. The Wuhan lab theory is only a thing because, the US is insisting that there is a lab theory and that the world as a whole was grossly unprepared for such a pandemic and there is a need to blame someone else for personal incompetence. Why would China want to share any information with the US when they were blamed with all sorts of conspiracy theories from the start? Any information even benign ones shared with the US could just fuel the hate that Trump and Pompeo were preaching and spreading through their whole term. Trump himself praised China for the lockdowns it did to tackle the spread at first, but quickly did a 180 degree turn to relentlessly blame China for everything he couldn't hid, about his incompetence. Some people think that China created the virus as some sort of weapon, which is highly unlikely. Others think that through examination of animals they've uncovered the virus and somehow the virus broke free from the lab. I would think that China would more likely publish information and research papers and advance the knowledge in virology and brag about a new discovered virus... or they would hid it, because it's a weapon of mass destruction... And there is the third view that the scientists support that the virus originated in the wild and was spread through wet market meat sales... Regardless if the virus originated in a lab or in the wild, what would you suggest that China should've done better to contain the pandemic and not get these kinds of backlash, apart from being a one party system. Should they change to a 2 party system like the US? There was information about the virus in the end of 2019 and there was information of people dying by it in November and December, but the cases were few. In January China had already completely mapped out the virus and send the necessary information to the WHO and had the whole city of Wuhan under lockdown, a 11+ million people under lockdown. What more information did the rest of the world and the US need?I'm gonna quote information from wikipedia about Spanish flu and Swine flu, and I want you to tell me what the US did better then China to prevent an epidemic? "The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted about 19 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, and was the most recent flu pandemic involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic and the second being the 1977 Russian flu).[12][13] The first two discoveries were independently made in the United States in April 2009.[14] The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses and that further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[15] leading to the term "swine flu".[16] Some studies estimated that the real number of cases including asymptomatic and mild cases could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.[9] The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.[17] However, the Spanish flu infected a much higher proportion of the world population at the time, with the Spanish flu infecting an estimated 500 million people, which was roughly equivalent to a third of the world population at the time of the pandemic.[18] The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 18,449,[10] though the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.[19] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[20] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[21]" What did China do wrong in comparison, except that Sars-Cov 2 happened to be far more infectious and lethal virus then the influenza virus and how the hell would China know that before January 2020? look, as you and others say nobody actually knows the origins of covid 19. as we have incomplete information that (mainly) leaves the realm of speculation. as more information "leaks" we get at least a bit of a blurry picture. people like to jump to conclusions or even worse, play politics based on wrong conclusions... the attacks on Asians are a travesty, and as much was said in this thread. a good portion of posters here are Asian Americans iirc. China is such an easy target to pick on and be angry about because they are not an open society. worse still, they are a country with a totalitarian system. a rather small elite of politapparatschicks, relative to the full number of inhabitants, are giving orders based on an ideology enforced by a technologically enhanced iron fist. and they got camps as well. in such societies information flows are different. tightly controlled speech and propaganda are the main messages on all the major information streams. it is very common that information critical to the public gets ignored, dismissed, or censored away. Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctorinertia of big ass organisations does not help to do things quickly... and verification also takes time. but as you see they had ample opportunity to be in the know. and very recently we had the news of lab workers getting sick even sooner... so there is quite a bit of room for inconvenient questions. the consequences the virus already had, and might still have, are too vast to leave the origin story to propaganda, no matter from which side. now how POTUS reacted... even beforehand with the trade war "that is easy to win"... and then leaving the WHO DURING a fucking pandemic - a pandemic he denied and thus exacerbated in his own country - to score a "political win" with the braindead caucus... leaving the WHO also weakened getting to the bottom of the origins. if you are inside the organisation you can put pressure on members, form coalitions etc... being outside you can tweet about how terrible things are. as to how they should run their country and do things differently? I dunno. it is up to them, however cries for (more) freedom are rather universal. what is rather clear is that their oppressive system is a hindrance to getting to the bottom of the pandemic. just bear with me and let's say they already know the origin. it was the lab, they made a mistake, they happen and what then? people there will be fucking pissed. worse even, people abroad will be pissed. no idea what might happen then. sanctions/boycotts? I don't think there is a scenario where China comes out ahead, so they do not have any interest to get to the bottom. so we play this propaganda blame game... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-hits-back-as-us-revisits-covid-lab-theory/ar-AAKrBpZ I just don't see how China could've contained the virus better... I think that after China locked down a city of 11+ million in January 2020... by then we all knew that the virus is highly infectious, but other countries were not taking the virus as seriously. They helped it spread and only have themselves to blame. Everyone who had flown to China and all their contacts should've been tracked as soon as possible, not to mention that a 14 day lockdown would've been the best thing to do, but that was unimaginable at the time, because slightly hurting the economy and individual freedom was at stake, so in the end why blame China, for something that almost every country in the world failed to do? Supposedly China informed the world a week or even 2 earlier and made lockdowns faster, would that have changed anything if the EU and the US already had infected people, since it's not possible to not have infected people with the amount of people flowing in and out of China? It would've only slowed the infection, but the end result would've been the same... The lack of response would've been the same, with no lockdowns in EU and US the end result is the same. So even if should've, would've, could've in the end the world just underestimated a potential pandemic and choose to downplay the risk, because politicians didn't want to deal with the backlash from their own citizens for having tougher pandemic measures. Not to mention that most people only started following measures after virus deaths were by the thousands, already a lost fight. If everyone started following measures as seriously in January 2020 when China locked down a 11+ million Wuhan, then we could've contained the virus, but we didn't. So again, why blame China for our own failure? Frankly, after over a year of witnessing how the world dealed with the pandemic, I'm even more inclined to believe that China did a great job of containing and eradicating the virus within their borders, and I didn't see most other countries doing a better job.
2 things.
1. I responded to the "lab theory" and the "blame" China rightfully or wrongfully received because of that. you are talking about how it handled closing off a city...
which is fine and all, but if you paid any attention at all the last year... that is not the hard part. and also might seem nice because "they are doing it right" and law and order style fight vs. the virus...
but it does hardly anything to stop a spread already WAY outside wuhan... in a globalized economy where international flights are the norm.
virus clusters flare up, subside and return. to counter that and detect the clusters we needed pcr tests, we needed protective equipment for health workers... literally EVERYTHING was lacking because our contingecy plans for this were paper tigers and nobody actually prepared for such an unprecedented situation - at least in most people's lifetime. it also does not help that our supply chains were outsourced to the country where the virus originated.
2. China is not over the hill just yet - they are very much still in a situation where caution is still required. very much like "we" are.
they have got (sub par) vaccines which of course help, but reinfections are way higher than with "western vaccines" for example. and their vaccination rates are quite a bit lower than you would expect.
what I find most interesting, is that Taiwan has a vaccination rate of 1.9%(of ppl with at least 1shot)... I could not believe it at first as I heard it on the radio while driving a couple of days ago, but it checked out. apparently they are also picky with their vaccines.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/tracking-coronavirus-across-the-world (paywalled unfortunately)
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In order for China to have handled this remotely respectfully, they would have needed to inform other countries many months earlier than they did. And they would have needed to not suppress information. And they would have have needed to give 5000000% access to all their labs. China handled this shamefully.
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On May 31 2021 03:15 Mohdoo wrote:
In order for China to have handled this remotely respectfully, they would have needed to inform other countries many months earlier than they did. And they would have needed to not suppress information. And they would have have needed to give 5000000% access to all their labs. China handled this shamefully.
How many months earlier? Information about the new disease only started popping up in December 2019, maybe late November, I'm not a 100% sure, but there were only a few cases at the time being reported in the media, did China even have any detailed information at that point?
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On May 31 2021 00:51 NewSunshine wrote:
US intelligence, including the president, were aware of the threat posed by the coronavirus as early as December '19. China could've had as poor a response as we did and we'd still be completely culpable for how badly we were affected, as a nation. The people in power knew, and deliberately chose to let it do its thing for a while specifically so they could call it such horrible names as the "Kung Flu" and stir the fear mongering pot. Trump was the one who weaponized the virus for political gain, not China. It has always been comical to me that we in the US have tried to be some kind of international moral authority in the pandemic when we had some of the worst response measures worldwide. The one thing we got right was the vaccine rollout once it was ready. That's about it.
Pretty much this. You can blame China for their early decisions, but once it hit Italy, the whole world could see how insanely dangerous the virus was. The US didn't do anything until shit hit the fan at home.
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If Dems in the minority here could do this, then imagine what they could do in DC with all three branches of government if they actually cared
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EPT
