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How on earth is wanting to know why I was locked in my house for months with men with guns patrolling the streets.... "misplaced"? This is what 50 years of pos

How on earth is wanting to know why I was locked in my house for months with men with guns patrolling the streets.... "misplaced"? This is what 50 years of postmodernism and cultural relativism broughts us. "Why" doesn't matter, don't search beyond what the consensus is telling you.

ImaCake 5y ago
It is valid to disagree with the parent comment about wanting to know why this all happened. But you carry a lot of ideological baggage along with it. "men with guns patrolling the streets" is the police and was routine before the pandemic. "50 years of postmodernism and cultural relativism" has nothing to do with what caused the pandemic and no one is saying that it does.
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  In my country is was the literal army - first time in 30 years. As for dismissing "why for the sake of why" being the fault of cultural relativism... shrug to me it has the same smell.
halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
Because if we had a competent strategy for dealing with the virus, you wouldn't have been locked in your house for months. This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People searching for the "why" are ultimately looking for blame when we should be looking ahead on how to stop the next one (and the current one).
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  > "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People are going to die in traffic accidents whether i drive home drunk tonight or not, so it probably doesn't matter what I do, right? Understanding why something happened is also a pretty important step in trying to prevent it from happening again. If you're having production incidents every day, "just get better at incident response" is probably not a very thorough solution.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    I understand the need to understand why but if we can't mount a response to any virus, it again, ultimately doesn't matter. We've instituted safeguards against car accidents (seatbelts, speed limits, harsh penalties for driving drunk, etc). What have we done for wide-spread, novel disease response?
    - tim333 5y ago
      If it was a lab leak it very much does matter and can be dealt with by stopping such stuff.
      - flybrand 5y ago
        Even more so, if pursuing the origin story uncovers a dishonest or low integrity system - then we shouldn’t continue to trust that same system.
      - ModernMech 5y ago
        The point being made is that even if you stop all pandemics with a lab leak origin, pandemics will still happen. So at the end of the day if you prove covid was lab leak and put in safeguards that will, with 100% certainty stop pandemics with a lab leak origin, you’re nonetheless going to encourage yet pandemics because they are a fact of nature. Therefore it’s more important to respond pandemics rather than prevent them (because you can’t).
        tim333 5y ago
        Yeah but you should do both. Regulate labs and prepare for pandemics.
        ModernMech 5y ago
        No one is saying you shouldn’t do both.
        radu_floricica 5y ago
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  A competent strategy for an aerosol virus that also remains hosted in domestic pets requires many years of preplanning and N95 stockpiling.
  - philjohn 5y ago
    Which is why pandemic preparadness plans are a thing - as are teams that run regular drills, and stockpile the necessary PPE. In both the US and the UK those plans were either ignored, or the teams disbanded.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      Yes, the sad thing is that we could have redirected one tank worth of funding 10 years ago for an entire years supply of N95s for every American just waiting in local warehouses to be distributed. Proper N95s age well.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. Whos government? This is a global issue. It doesn't care about governments.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    Governments have the ability to isolate, mitigate and mobilize a response. Unless we have a global government to do all that, I don't get your response. Look at New Zealand for an example of how to do it right (read: better).
    - EMM_386 5y ago
      > Governments have the ability to isolate, mitigate and mobilize a response. Only so much, and New Zealand is clearly an outlier. Has their response to this been an A+? Without a doubt. But I'd need some hard evidence this stance works across the globe. Everywhere from India to Brazil is going through this. Which is why these pandemics are so dangerous. If this was slightly worse, New Zealand would succumb to it too, despite best efforts.
DebtDeflation 5y ago
>don't search beyond what the consensus is telling you I'm seeing this in real time across the Internet as anyone who questions the FDA's (split) Friday decision against recommending boosters broadly is being shot down as "not following the science".
wbl 5y ago
Because the CDC is incompetent and the FDA too. That's something that will affect us the next time no matter the origins.

ImaCake 5y ago

It is valid to disagree with the parent comment about wanting to know why this all happened. But you carry a lot of ideological baggage along with it. "men with guns patrolling the streets" is the police and was routine before the pandemic. "50 years of postmodernism and cultural relativism" has nothing to do with what caused the pandemic and no one is saying that it does.

radu_floricica 5y ago
In my country is was the literal army - first time in 30 years. As for dismissing "why for the sake of why" being the fault of cultural relativism... shrug to me it has the same smell.

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago

Because if we had a competent strategy for dealing with the virus, you wouldn't have been locked in your house for months. This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People searching for the "why" are ultimately looking for blame when we should be looking ahead on how to stop the next one (and the current one).

AmericanChopper 5y ago
> "Why" ultimately doesn't matter because viruses can just spontaneously evolve in carrier animals, in a lab or by whatever other means causes a mutation where it is now infectious to us. People are going to die in traffic accidents whether i drive home drunk tonight or not, so it probably doesn't matter what I do, right? Understanding why something happened is also a pretty important step in trying to prevent it from happening again. If you're having production incidents every day, "just get better at incident response" is probably not a very thorough solution.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  I understand the need to understand why but if we can't mount a response to any virus, it again, ultimately doesn't matter. We've instituted safeguards against car accidents (seatbelts, speed limits, harsh penalties for driving drunk, etc). What have we done for wide-spread, novel disease response?
  - tim333 5y ago
    If it was a lab leak it very much does matter and can be dealt with by stopping such stuff.
    - flybrand 5y ago
      Even more so, if pursuing the origin story uncovers a dishonest or low integrity system - then we shouldn’t continue to trust that same system.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      The point being made is that even if you stop all pandemics with a lab leak origin, pandemics will still happen. So at the end of the day if you prove covid was lab leak and put in safeguards that will, with 100% certainty stop pandemics with a lab leak origin, you’re nonetheless going to encourage yet pandemics because they are a fact of nature. Therefore it’s more important to respond pandemics rather than prevent them (because you can’t).
      - tim333 5y ago
        Yeah but you should do both. Regulate labs and prepare for pandemics.
        ModernMech 5y ago
        No one is saying you shouldn’t do both.
      - radu_floricica 5y ago
mensetmanusman 5y ago
A competent strategy for an aerosol virus that also remains hosted in domestic pets requires many years of preplanning and N95 stockpiling.
- philjohn 5y ago
  Which is why pandemic preparadness plans are a thing - as are teams that run regular drills, and stockpile the necessary PPE. In both the US and the UK those plans were either ignored, or the teams disbanded.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Yes, the sad thing is that we could have redirected one tank worth of funding 10 years ago for an entire years supply of N95s for every American just waiting in local warehouses to be distributed. Proper N95s age well.
EMM_386 5y ago
> This is entirely a failure of government. The origin is for all intents and purposes irrelevant. Whos government? This is a global issue. It doesn't care about governments.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  Governments have the ability to isolate, mitigate and mobilize a response. Unless we have a global government to do all that, I don't get your response. Look at New Zealand for an example of how to do it right (read: better).
  - EMM_386 5y ago
    > Governments have the ability to isolate, mitigate and mobilize a response. Only so much, and New Zealand is clearly an outlier. Has their response to this been an A+? Without a doubt. But I'd need some hard evidence this stance works across the globe. Everywhere from India to Brazil is going through this. Which is why these pandemics are so dangerous. If this was slightly worse, New Zealand would succumb to it too, despite best efforts.

DebtDeflation 5y ago

>don't search beyond what the consensus is telling you I'm seeing this in real time across the Internet as anyone who questions the FDA's (split) Friday decision against recommending boosters broadly is being shot down as "not following the science".

wbl 5y ago

Because the CDC is incompetent and the FDA too. That's something that will affect us the next time no matter the origins.