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An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

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Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#221

Post by [deleted] »

justicezyx wrote: post #193
angelzen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zing! This is how communist regimes work in practice: * Utter incompetency. Got to promote the 'working class' in positions of authority across the board regardless of actual qualifications. Got to follow ideological prescriptions to a T regardless of real-world outcomes. * Extreme message control. The communist society is perfect, except for those horrible people that refuse to support the party 100%. And also movin…

> communist regimes Not sure how this comes into the question. There has not been a communist regime on earth, according to Karl Marx's definition. And China is a capitalism country... Ask any mentally stable US citizen visiting China, if they tell you that China is in any bit less capitalism than USA, they probably are trying not to offend your American Exceptionalism.

[deleted]

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#222

Post by mbg721 »

ianleeclark wrote: post #125
advael wrote: post #98

It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks…

> It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I've long thought the best way of reaching 100% vaccination in the US was to have competing Democrat and Republican vaccines. Democrats could don a dashiki and say one thing while Republicans could put up a crack smoking pillow salesman to say another.

The whole idea that "Republicans will all just listen as long as this spokesman says so" is yet another Flyover-Country dismissal from people who don't get it--the angry conservatives do not have anyone in government meaningfully representing their views, and that's why they're so angry. Trump was the closest thing lately, but it's about deeply-held personal philosophy, not the cult of personality the media wishes it were. If Trump got on TV and started sounding like Mitt Romney, they'd toss him aside in two seconds.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#223

Post by int_19h »

tasogare wrote: post #9
peakaboo wrote: post #3

We live in interesting times, where "conspiracy theories" become true after about 6 months. The reality of the situation is that people who actually pay attention, not the ones who constantly watch the TV news narrative, have been able to not only understand the true origin of covid, but also predict the entire chain of events that has occurred as a consequence. When will the general public stop seeing conspiracy the…

> but also predict the entire chain of events that has occurred as a consequence I wouldn't have agreed with you a year ago, but having seen it for myself, it's scary how true it is. All the wild "conspiracy theories" about the vaccine passport notably came to reality 6-8 months or so after being voiced.

What's the conspiracy aspect of that? It was widely understood early on that if anything would be a long-term solution, it's vaccines. And vaccine mandates have been around for many decades, so why was it surprising that they also showed up?

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#224

Post by Aeolun »

cwp wrote: post #167
Thorentis wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue they are addressing, is that some people assert a natural origin of COVID-19 as fact, when in fact as shown in this article, there is no evidence to support it. So in one sense you're right, we can only debate the likelihood of finding facts to support the theory of lab leak vs natural origin right now. The aim of this paper is to encourage that debate rather than try to silence it, the way the natural orig…

I understand all that. My point is that "debate" is about persuading people to hold your point of view, while this is a question of fact. You can't change a fact no matter how persuasive you are, because facts aren't subject to debate. Now, in this case, the fact is hidden from us. SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin or it didn't, but we don't have enough evidence to decide that question either way. In the absence of evi…

> In the absence of evidence, people are using prejudice to decide what is true, and trying to persuade others to adopt their prejudices. That is utter folly.

The problem is that prejudice one way leads to never solving the mystery at all, and prejudice the other way leads to having a snowballs chance in hell of solving it.

One party in this saga is actively covering up all evidence. So unless we hunt down what exists now (if anything still does) we’ll never have the answer.

I do agree that the answer doesn’t particularly matter though. It’s best to act as if it were a lab leak, and natural infection both, and change procedure based on that.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#226

Post by justicezyx »

AdvancedSimian wrote: post #203
justicezyx wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> communist regimes Not sure how this comes into the question. There has not been a communist regime on earth, according to Karl Marx's definition. And China is a capitalism country... Ask any mentally stable US citizen visiting China, if they tell you that China is in any bit less capitalism than USA, they probably are trying not to offend your American Exceptionalism.

So we're getting the "real communism has never been tried" trope here on HN? Honest question: do fascists use the same excuse?

Well, if you read it. You can see that one way to frame the discussion is to discuss as it is, and not applying grandiose general statement.

If one say, I often see Chinese government is incompetent, and list some examples; then follow with a proposition that since China claims to be pursuing the communism ideology, and all previous attempts in any government has incompetency.

That's a closely relevant reasoning.

"Communist government utterly incompetency" as a statement is what? Really makes sense to you at all?

And back to the original statement, communism country simply does not apply, since China is not communism...

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#227

Post by refurb »

titzer wrote: post #172
advael wrote: post #98

It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks…

As an American who has lived abroad for a significant number of years and returned recently, it becomes abundantly clear, that if we only measure by the amount of time spent bitching, moaning, and fighting, Americans hate each other more than anything else on this planet. Disease, war, famine, injustice, genocide, plague? None will garner as much sincere unflagging burning rage as what those other fuckers did or said…

This observation is only true if you assume what you read on the internet and media accurately represents the population as a whole.

It doesn’t.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#228

Post by iammisc »

It's time we admit a lot of 'science' was done with the express purpose of contradicting a republican president, and then admit that this is the reason why many conservatives do not trust science and scientists and experts anymore. Until we do that, this country will not be able to come together.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#229

Post by iammisc »

advael wrote: post #98

It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I'm in a big American city, and I remember that until the online kids and snarky liberals started moralizing about mask protocol, there wasn't as much resistance to wearing masks among right-wing crazies. I remember when there was that controversy about 5G networks…

Everyone's a reactionary.

Re: An appeal for an objective, open, transparent debate re: the origin of Covid-19

#230

Post by joshuaissac »

mbg721 wrote: post #222
ianleeclark wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a mantra at this point that polarization has gotten out of control, but one of the biggest effects it seems to have is this reverse-psychology effect I've long thought the best way of reaching 100% vaccination in the US was to have competing Democrat and Republican vaccines. Democrats could don a dashiki and say one thing while Republicans could put up a crack smoking pillow salesman to say another.

The whole idea that "Republicans will all just listen as long as this spokesman says so" is yet another Flyover-Country dismissal from people who don't get it--the angry conservatives do not have anyone in government meaningfully representing their views, and that's why they're so angry. Trump was the closest thing lately, but it's about deeply-held personal philosophy, not the cult of personality the media wishes it…

> If Trump got on TV and started sounding like Mitt Romney, they'd toss him aside in two seconds.

That's right. Trump was booed the moment he suggested that his supporters get vaccinated against Covid-19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Z4J9nY0v4

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