7 ms·

Glad to live in a free country where we don't praise dictatorships and authoritarianism. The world should just boycott fucking China.

savant_penguin 5y ago
We did skip a COVID variant Greek letter to appease the dictator though
- addicted 5y ago
  That’s not even close to true. There’s tens of millions of people with that name. The WHO did not want to stigmatize all of them which is why they skipped the letter. It had little to do with Xi Jinping alone. The WHO moved to Greek lettering to avoid stigmatization faced by people who were being associated with different variants. It wouldn’t make much sense to do the same when you can avoid it by just skipping a letter.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    Mu is a more common surname than Xi, but they weren't so worried about stigmatizing that name. I have no doubt that they _would_ have avoided it, had anyone brought it to their attention, but they didn't. Yet somehow they avoided Xi.
  - herendin 5y ago
    Chinese surnames pronounced 'Mu' are similarly common to 'Xi'. There is a Mu variant of Covid[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johnebgd 5y ago
Agreed. Watching ADV China really helped me understand how bad the government is over there: https://youtube.com/c/ADVChina https://youtube.com/c/ADVChina
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  Don't take this to mean I support china or think everything is roses over there, but that channel is simply propaganda. Genorously 40% of it is valid criticism, but if someone in china stubs a toe they will make a 30 minute video about the unsafe furniture epidemic.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I don’t watch that channel but have seen a couple of videos from laowhy86 before he left China, so would be curious to know what is not true on their channel.
    - wh313 5y ago
      Here's a two of his videos where he claims that COVID-19 emerged from a lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GVcfP1zrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GVcfP1zrg And here's a pretty thorough analysis of the flaws with this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk
      - philliphaydon 5y ago
        I'm unsure how he claims to have found the source. The theory begain at the beginning of Jan 2020 but he posted in April 2020. Just watching the 'thorough' analysis video, he talks about some person who posted a paper about the source, and in the screenshot it shows Feb 2020. And says the source of the paper was from laowhy86's video, which is published April 2020. I stopped watching there because it already makes no sense.
        wh313 5y ago
        I believe you misunderstood his analysis. At timestamp 6:36 of his video [1], laowhy86 analyzes a copy of the draft "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" to conclude that the virus must have come from the lab. This preprint has been shown to be false by future scholarship (see the citations of the draft at [2] for some examples). Potholer then analyzes the veracity of the claims within that preprint in his video [3], starting with an excerpt of [1] starting at 2:02. So the timeline should be: Feb. 2020 - Preprint published -> Apr. 2020 - laowhy's video -> May 2020 - potholer's rebuttal [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=16994351437843448992&as_sdt=10005&sciodt=0,8&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1699435143784344899... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk
sniperjzp 5y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  Honestly this comment is the problem with the western world. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The U.S is not even on the same plane of evil as the Chinese government is.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    On many aspects it's more evil. On many other aspects it's less. Shits not a binary. In just pure number of lives fucked, the US has the record for now. We shouldn't let China's shit mean that we should praise the US and not thrive to fixing our own problems.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - dathinab 5y ago
    the problem is that the US is not just "not perfect" the US is a weird twist between a "first world"(1) state and a failing state. Between being a bacon of democracy, and a country you can't rely call full democratic anymore. (1) I don't like the terminology but it convais the point. --- To elaborate: For something between 15% and 50% of the population the US is a failing state, failing in healthcare, economics/job availability, safety, chances to get the right you have by law, political representation, protection for governmental/police overreach, projection from company overreach, .. Also a political system which in practice only allow a two parties is fundamentally non-democratic (more like oligarchy). To name some points. (There are more). Sure, China is way worse wrt. many of the points mentioned above. Which puts the EU in quite a bit of trouble it's in different ways dependent on both the US and China, but at the same time many of it's values do not sign with either of them and both try (in different ways) to force some of their views on the EU.
    - 5y ago
beckman466 5y ago
> Glad to live in a free country what country is that?
dang 5y ago
Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. No more of this, please. No, that's not because we're secretly in cahoots with communists—it's because we don't want a site that consists of lame flamewars and then turns itself into scorched earth and then heat death. We want thoughtful, curious conversation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: your previous two comments were egregiously breaking the rules here as well—even worse actually. That's seriously not ok. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting like that, regardless of how strongly you feel about $country, and regardless of how legitimate your reasons are (which I'm sure they are). I don't want to ban you but we can't have accounts carrying on like that here.

savant_penguin 5y ago

We did skip a COVID variant Greek letter to appease the dictator though

addicted 5y ago
That’s not even close to true. There’s tens of millions of people with that name. The WHO did not want to stigmatize all of them which is why they skipped the letter. It had little to do with Xi Jinping alone. The WHO moved to Greek lettering to avoid stigmatization faced by people who were being associated with different variants. It wouldn’t make much sense to do the same when you can avoid it by just skipping a letter.
- eloisius 5y ago
  Mu is a more common surname than Xi, but they weren't so worried about stigmatizing that name. I have no doubt that they _would_ have avoided it, had anyone brought it to their attention, but they didn't. Yet somehow they avoided Xi.
- herendin 5y ago
  Chinese surnames pronounced 'Mu' are similarly common to 'Xi'. There is a Mu variant of Covid[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

johnebgd 5y ago

Agreed. Watching ADV China really helped me understand how bad the government is over there: https://youtube.com/c/ADVChina https://youtube.com/c/ADVChina

droopyEyelids 5y ago
Don't take this to mean I support china or think everything is roses over there, but that channel is simply propaganda. Genorously 40% of it is valid criticism, but if someone in china stubs a toe they will make a 30 minute video about the unsafe furniture epidemic.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  I don’t watch that channel but have seen a couple of videos from laowhy86 before he left China, so would be curious to know what is not true on their channel.
  - wh313 5y ago
    Here's a two of his videos where he claims that COVID-19 emerged from a lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GVcfP1zrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-GVcfP1zrg And here's a pretty thorough analysis of the flaws with this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      I'm unsure how he claims to have found the source. The theory begain at the beginning of Jan 2020 but he posted in April 2020. Just watching the 'thorough' analysis video, he talks about some person who posted a paper about the source, and in the screenshot it shows Feb 2020. And says the source of the paper was from laowhy86's video, which is published April 2020. I stopped watching there because it already makes no sense.
      - wh313 5y ago
        I believe you misunderstood his analysis. At timestamp 6:36 of his video [1], laowhy86 analyzes a copy of the draft "The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus" to conclude that the virus must have come from the lab. This preprint has been shown to be false by future scholarship (see the citations of the draft at [2] for some examples). Potholer then analyzes the veracity of the claims within that preprint in his video [3], starting with an excerpt of [1] starting at 2:02. So the timeline should be: Feb. 2020 - Preprint published -> Apr. 2020 - laowhy's video -> May 2020 - potholer's rebuttal [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=16994351437843448992&as_sdt=10005&sciodt=0,8&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1699435143784344899... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk

sniperjzp 5y ago

ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
Honestly this comment is the problem with the western world. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. The U.S is not even on the same plane of evil as the Chinese government is.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  On many aspects it's more evil. On many other aspects it's less. Shits not a binary. In just pure number of lives fucked, the US has the record for now. We shouldn't let China's shit mean that we should praise the US and not thrive to fixing our own problems.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dathinab 5y ago
  the problem is that the US is not just "not perfect" the US is a weird twist between a "first world"(1) state and a failing state. Between being a bacon of democracy, and a country you can't rely call full democratic anymore. (1) I don't like the terminology but it convais the point. --- To elaborate: For something between 15% and 50% of the population the US is a failing state, failing in healthcare, economics/job availability, safety, chances to get the right you have by law, political representation, protection for governmental/police overreach, projection from company overreach, .. Also a political system which in practice only allow a two parties is fundamentally non-democratic (more like oligarchy). To name some points. (There are more). Sure, China is way worse wrt. many of the points mentioned above. Which puts the EU in quite a bit of trouble it's in different ways dependent on both the US and China, but at the same time many of it's values do not sign with either of them and both try (in different ways) to force some of their views on the EU.
  - 5y ago

beckman466 5y ago

> Glad to live in a free country what country is that?

dang 5y ago

Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. No more of this, please. No, that's not because we're secretly in cahoots with communists—it's because we don't want a site that consists of lame flamewars and then turns itself into scorched earth and then heat death. We want thoughtful, curious conversation. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: your previous two comments were egregiously breaking the rules here as well—even worse actually. That's seriously not ok. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting like that, regardless of how strongly you feel about $country, and regardless of how legitimate your reasons are (which I'm sure they are). I don't want to ban you but we can't have accounts carrying on like that here.