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How utterly irrational of you… /s
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Clearly I need to be re-educated, perhaps they can send me to a “reading comprehension” camp
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Well that’s precisely my point. Lots of people in the world, who are nothing whatsoever to do with Trump or the US right wing would like to see proper scrutiny of China’s actions. It’s only Trumpian if you then add “and ignore what’s happening in the US” which I explicitly do not.
I am concerned that, just because Trump now says the same thing, it shouldn’t stop that happening. Not everything in the world is US politics.
I don’t have the time right now to read this topic, maybe already addressed. But you got MANY likes on that, so I want to emphasize:
The Lancet is not news media. It is of UTMOST (think of me screaming this on the top of my voice) importance that scientists who are misquoted or used in evident lies by any government speak up, and do it loud and clear, and that news media reports this.
Also, for a scientific journal, this is rather rare to speak up this directly. It shows how dangerous they believe the US government’s bullshit is.
Otherwise, I am completely of your opinion.
I don’t even think you meant that this should not be reported, but as a general statement.
However, I feel so strongly about this that I needed to emphasise why The Lancet writing a direct rebuttal is, in fact, great.
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The World Health Assembly has just agreed to a general independent inquiry into the global pandemic response.
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Deliberately so. Biff didn’t write that letter (its Flesch-Kincaid score would be too low for someone who’s either aliterate or practically illiterate), which means it was carefully crafted by one of his minions to allow ample room for misinterpretation (in this case: “a respected medical journal backs up our anti-WHO narrative”).
The archives of this BBS alone will be a goldmine for a future scholar wanting to explore how people portraying themselves as disinterested and neutral champions of competence somehow ended up defending various resurgent (and often dangerously incompetent) right-wing populist regimes.
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I see how you could interpret my comment as a swipe against The Lancet, but that wasn’t my intention.
The anti-intellectualism that characterizes conservative thought in the US has given rise to the idea that all opinions are of equal value. For some things that’s fine -we can tolerate a multiplicity of opinions on German potato salad vs. that disgusting concoction shat forth from the bowels of Big Mayonnaise, but in health care and in science, expertise matters. The largely uncritical reporting of Trump’s wholly worthless mouthings creates a false equivalency between his ideas and those published in journals like The Lancet. In a sane world, The Lancet wouldn’t have to correct him because no-one would be listening to him.
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There has already been analysis of China’s actions early in the pandemic. They screwed up. The WHO went in and straightened them out. They’ve been pretty transparent since then.
The main problem I have with your posts in this topic is the criticism of the WHO. That is the right wing talking point that I’m pissed about. And it’s a global right-wing talking point, not just the US. The reality is that the WHO has to walk a pretty narrow line between performing their mission and staying out of politics. From what I’ve seen, the main thing people are critical of the WHO over is that they have stayed out of politics; that they don’t overtly criticize China over the handling of the pandemic. That’s not their job. And the last thing we need during a pandemic is to weaken the WHO or decrease public confidence in their mission.
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Well, that’s great, because it means we largely agree. I’m in favour of the WHO generally, I don’t think they should be holding anyone to account, and agree that’s not their job (and it is weird if anyone is criticising them for not having a bigger role, whilst calling for them to have a smaller one. I do think there are questions they need to answer both about Chinas influence, and specifically about the meeting between the DG and Xi.
Are you talking about the “No evidence of human-to-human transmission” tweet? The one that has been widely misinterpreted by laypersons? That’s the problem with non-scientists interpreting scientific writing.
“No evidence” does not mean “Evidence against.” One reports “no evidence” until there is evidence one way or the other. The same thing happened with hydroxychloroquine in the US. There was “no evidence” of harm in COVID-19 patients, which non-scientists interpreted as evidence of safety, which medical doctors quickly tried to correct. Now we have pretty compelling evidence that hydroxychloroquine does in fact kill people with COVID-19, but there is already widespread damage done by the misinterpretation.
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Thank you for not taking offense.
Not putting words in your mouth, but I rather rephrase it like this.
I often think so, too. But there is plenty of historical evidence of demagogues who were successfully driving communities, or whole countries, even large empires into an hateful human abyss.
The Nazis are a poster child of this, of course. But fascism isn’t alone in this. I am worn out, but I think I could scan my history books and go back even to Herodotus for examples.
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And I sunk it on purpose!
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