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You're seriously saying that a "short burst of mass deaths" is a better option than getting your shit together and doing proper social distancing followed by pr
by abraae 6y ago
You're seriously saying that a "short burst of mass deaths" is a better option than getting your shit together and doing proper social distancing followed by proper contact tracing?
It's great that we've got rid of the virus for now in NZ, but yes, there are many questions, including whether there will still be an incentive to even try for a vaccine once major countries reach herd immunity (if and when that happens).
But it truly astonishes and depresses me that the US - the country that went to the moon, that invented the internet, that built a military capability that literally saved the world in ww2 - seems to have given up.
How hard would it really be to do proper contact tracing in a population of 300 million? Yes it's a big job, a very hard job, but the big jobs, the tough jobs, that's what Americans do!
- afiori 6y ago> the US - the country that went to the moon, that invented the internet, that built a military capability that literally saved the world in ww2 two of those are in part result of propaganda
- abraae 6y agoI've read a fair bit of military history, and I'm fairly confident the moon landings were not done using a green screen, so please elaborate on which 2 of these are not true.
- rscho 6y agoMaybe "saved the world" and "invented" the internet? Because yeah of course, the internet has been "invented"! It was absolutely not a natural evolution of local networking based on known technology...
- majewsky 6y agoThrough that sort of reasoning, computers have never been invented. They are just a natural evolution of mechanical calculators. I mean, sure, but that definition of "invent" is so narrow as to be meaningless.
- rscho 6y agoInternet is a US invention as much as lightbulbs are a US invention.
- afiori 6y agoI said partly. Regarding the internet the US had a central role in developing and implementing the technology and infrastructure, as is testified by the fact that our current domain system is still US-centric, but in a sense they did not invent it. Regarding defeating the axis and specifically Germany (Italy was not a military colossus) there is data that shows that the USSR had a bigger impact in defeating the nazis. No one denies the contributions of the US in both of those feats, but also it is undeniable that the narrative isn't always factually true.
- ansible 6y ago>> the US - the country that went to the moon, that invented the internet, that built a military capability that literally saved the world in ww2 > two of those are in part result of propaganda Eh, no. We (the USA) did really go to the moon, though I know some USA citizens dispute that. It was really USA universities and corporations (with DARPA funding) that built the foundations of Ethernet, TCP/IP and the Internet. Yes, plenty of contributions from others (including foreign grad students), but still, USA institutions. The USA produced a lot of war material for all the Allies in WW2. A lot went to the USSR to keep them in the fight. This in no way should diminish the absolutely unprecedented loss and sacrifice of the USSR peoples in the Great Patriotic War, who bore the brunt of it. But without the USA, I really doubt the Allies could have stopped the Axis powers.
- arethuza 6y ago"I really doubt the Allies could have stopped the Axis powers" It was a team effort - without combined efforts of the USA and the Soviets (and to a lesser extent the UK) the Axis powers might have prevailed.
- rscho 6y agoWow incredible! Apparently, the USA have also developed the world's most potent propaganda machine.
- lebuffon 6y agoThat has always been the case. George Washington and the cherry tree comes to mind. And so it began. Sometime near the end of the cold war I realized that the West's propaganda machine was in fact better than the Soviet version. Nobody in the USSR believed "Pravda" but everybody believed the NBC Nightly News. :) One might argue however that we need such a mechanism since in 2020, as the Scots might say: "People can ni' agree on the color o' Shite"
- somewhereoutth 6y agoIn addition - regarding the European theater, the most important contribution of the US was keeping the USSR to the Elbe, otherwise the entirety of continental Europe would have fallen under communist rule.