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Perhaps depends on your goals. Virulent enough to cause global panic and show how a totalitarian state can respond better to a pandemic than democratic stated.

Perhaps depends on your goals. Virulent enough to cause global panic and show how a totalitarian state can respond better to a pandemic than democratic stated. But not virulent enough to actually kill everyone. Similarly SARS and MERS were perhaps too virulent and could thus easily be controlled by screening for symptoms, while the new coronavirus can spread without symptoms, which could possibly be attributed to the lower virulence.

SZJX 6y ago
Now this sounds exactly like something Donald Trump has been saying all this time, and such conspiracy theories don't contribute much to the discussion. If thousands of deaths in China, a complete lockdown that hit the economy incredibly hard and perhaps more crucially, the total breakdown and potential reshaping of the global supply chain, which China has been benefitting from massively, is something that the Chinese gov wants to to achieve, then such conspiracy theories might hold water. I think it's plain to see how nonsensical they are. Also, nobody made the US look bad but themselves. This is obvious if you compare COVID responses in countries like Germany with those in the US.
- jakeogh 6y ago
  Which professional published best case death estimate did the US not beat? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407130 Excess deaths are the only accurate measure.
  - skj 6y ago
    Then it was truly unavoidable for the us to keep getting worse and worse, for some reason more in states full of people who think masks are mind control (a total mystery that we will never understand), while other countries are seeing things get better.
    - Bjartr 6y ago
      It's not that mysterious how tribalism, fear, and the discomfort of admitting being wrong, just to name a few contributing factors, can result in people holding irrational beliefs. They're not a different species, they're people. If you give into the urge to treat them as "other", as inferior, or as a different "tribe" to be defeated you're not as different from them with their ridiculous beliefs as you might like to think.
    - jakeogh 6y ago
      We? No. You don't understand. That's fine. You can learn. https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infants-Withholding-Affection/13213 https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infan... You ignored the Q you responded to. "Which professional published best case death estimate did the US not beat?"
      - skj 6y ago
        The "a total mystery that we will never understand" was intended to be fairly obvious sarcasm. My mistake.

SZJX 6y ago

Now this sounds exactly like something Donald Trump has been saying all this time, and such conspiracy theories don't contribute much to the discussion. If thousands of deaths in China, a complete lockdown that hit the economy incredibly hard and perhaps more crucially, the total breakdown and potential reshaping of the global supply chain, which China has been benefitting from massively, is something that the Chinese gov wants to to achieve, then such conspiracy theories might hold water. I think it's plain to see how nonsensical they are. Also, nobody made the US look bad but themselves. This is obvious if you compare COVID responses in countries like Germany with those in the US.

jakeogh 6y ago
Which professional published best case death estimate did the US not beat? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407130 Excess deaths are the only accurate measure.
- skj 6y ago
  Then it was truly unavoidable for the us to keep getting worse and worse, for some reason more in states full of people who think masks are mind control (a total mystery that we will never understand), while other countries are seeing things get better.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    It's not that mysterious how tribalism, fear, and the discomfort of admitting being wrong, just to name a few contributing factors, can result in people holding irrational beliefs. They're not a different species, they're people. If you give into the urge to treat them as "other", as inferior, or as a different "tribe" to be defeated you're not as different from them with their ridiculous beliefs as you might like to think.
  - jakeogh 6y ago
    We? No. You don't understand. That's fine. You can learn. https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infants-Withholding-Affection/13213 https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infan... You ignored the Q you responded to. "Which professional published best case death estimate did the US not beat?"
    - skj 6y ago
      The "a total mystery that we will never understand" was intended to be fairly obvious sarcasm. My mistake.