Your reference to good people with good intentions is apt, (I rec Raul Hilberg, Noam Chomsky, Milton Mayer and Norman Cohn for more on this, though I suspect you read their works before you were 16).
Good people with good intentions, and many other people following along in passive compliance out of concern for careerism and convenience, as noted by Chomsky in Great Vocations, The Intellectual talk. (circa 1985, Harvard Divinity School).
Good people going along is an old story.
Now, after the lab leak, it's the shocking number of lies, defamation and gas-lighting in a desperate attempt to drown out truth. I guess, in some ways, that I find so fetid.
Self-conscious lies after the fact are more contemptible. I doubt seriously appealing to decency in some of the people against even thinking about lab leak, even now, will work.
Mar 29, 2023·edited Mar 29, 2023Liked by Alex Washburne
Thx. Alex - once again! -
- Seen from a psychological angle, your claim about the good intentions of the thousands of scientists that were involved in this case are - a bit too much of good will, I'd say.
You have to know a person well to be able to talk about their motives. - That's what dramas are about and novels. Jonathan Franzen has written two very insightful novels about the will of scientists, media people and environmentalists to do good and how it resonantes in persons and their characters / souls: Freedom and Purity - and it turns out it is very complicated to find / disentangle the motives of those willing to do good. We love to say we are doing good, but deep down inside...
So to put it bluntly: The presupposition about scientists as good people is misleading.
It is already clear that the covid story has millions of links to Governments and - agencies. Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi showed that with the Twitter files. And there are tight connections between those manipulations of the discourse and science and scientists. These hard social facts seem to be the focus of the dark underbelly of the Covid story - and there are millions (!) of scientists, media pros, doctors, managers, economists, politicians, administration employees... and all other kinds of people intertwined with this dark and wrong part of the Covid story which is not least about science as part of the modern world powerplay. The dominant forces are those of the superpowers (I count China in here) - and thus science is - - - not a pawn, but an officer in this game. It has some freedom to maneuver, but by and large politics rules and science goes with its imperatives - for the better or worse.
The structures that enable the conflicts between science, society and politics that we dabate here, have long been known and debated. Science - as progress in general, has its pros and cons. We have to keep that in mind and soldier on - as good as we can.
My Covid bottom line is: The free speech violations/ hinderings /censorship in the name of science and in the name of medicine were never justified and - wrong from the start and were the main obstacles to handle this virus in a reasonable way.
Bottom line II: He who has not understood/ known before how important free speech is in complex modern societies has a huge case study right in front of his eyes now that proves - again! - how important this basic insight is to come to grips with the complexity of modern life. Free speech is the necessary link between human failures and societal needs to cope with them. - None of the two we can escape. Not now and not in the future - as we have never been able before too. Humans failures are inescapable and free speech is the most civilized and reasonable tool to handle this existential truth that we have at our hands - if we are willing to make it happen (without this will, free speech is no reality).
In addition to internationally banning gain of function research, I question the need to do research on viruses from remote locations which humans rarely encounter (ie. bat coronaviruses in remote bat caves).
More likely to increase the likelihood of pandemic prevention would be more comprehensive public health initiatives and monitoring of pathogens that are known to regularly jump from animals to humans. That approach seems a long way off at this point.
It seems the US Senate, under the influence of Robert Kadlec, can't even bring themselves to write in their report that EcoHealth was doing gain of function research on bat coronaviruses.
I'm a longtime vaccine advocate. My family travelled to Ghana in West Africa in the mid 1960s so my father could work there as a college professor teaching forestry. So we could travel there, our entire family was vaccinated with every vaccine available at the time. I had my daughter vaccinated with every vaccine recommended for children in California. Our family have all been vaccinated at least three times with the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
Still, given that the machinery at the NIH, NIAID and other agencies is clearly in the hands of Big Pharma and lobbyists, I am not too sure that I will be as strong a vaccine believer in the future.
I happened to be around at the end of the time period when the public was involved in setting (some) research priorities. This was followed by funding of the scientists, by the scientists, for the scientists. I agree with everything here, and would add that we need more involvement of people at the prioritization level as well as transparent regulation and safety checks by a third party.
I think it’s time to stop inflating all these numbers. From past pandemics, to current one. Part of these numbers is the fact that for 2 years we had no influenza, pneumonia, or overdose deaths, but now they’re “exploding” because they are trying to hide the actual excess mortality caused by the death shot
I don't think there were good intentions - those were just the excuse for doing dangerous research. If it is just the researcher that gets injured I would accept it, but not allowable when the risk to many is high from even a rare accident.
Evil does not require an explicit intent to cause pain in order to flourish - only the willingness to give in to vices like hubris, envy, or greed paired with an abandonment of virtue.
Your reference to good people with good intentions is apt, (I rec Raul Hilberg, Noam Chomsky, Milton Mayer and Norman Cohn for more on this, though I suspect you read their works before you were 16).
Good people with good intentions, and many other people following along in passive compliance out of concern for careerism and convenience, as noted by Chomsky in Great Vocations, The Intellectual talk. (circa 1985, Harvard Divinity School).
Good people going along is an old story.
Now, after the lab leak, it's the shocking number of lies, defamation and gas-lighting in a desperate attempt to drown out truth. I guess, in some ways, that I find so fetid.
Self-conscious lies after the fact are more contemptible. I doubt seriously appealing to decency in some of the people against even thinking about lab leak, even now, will work.
Thx. Alex - once again! -
- Seen from a psychological angle, your claim about the good intentions of the thousands of scientists that were involved in this case are - a bit too much of good will, I'd say.
You have to know a person well to be able to talk about their motives. - That's what dramas are about and novels. Jonathan Franzen has written two very insightful novels about the will of scientists, media people and environmentalists to do good and how it resonantes in persons and their characters / souls: Freedom and Purity - and it turns out it is very complicated to find / disentangle the motives of those willing to do good. We love to say we are doing good, but deep down inside...
So to put it bluntly: The presupposition about scientists as good people is misleading.
It is already clear that the covid story has millions of links to Governments and - agencies. Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi showed that with the Twitter files. And there are tight connections between those manipulations of the discourse and science and scientists. These hard social facts seem to be the focus of the dark underbelly of the Covid story - and there are millions (!) of scientists, media pros, doctors, managers, economists, politicians, administration employees... and all other kinds of people intertwined with this dark and wrong part of the Covid story which is not least about science as part of the modern world powerplay. The dominant forces are those of the superpowers (I count China in here) - and thus science is - - - not a pawn, but an officer in this game. It has some freedom to maneuver, but by and large politics rules and science goes with its imperatives - for the better or worse.
The structures that enable the conflicts between science, society and politics that we dabate here, have long been known and debated. Science - as progress in general, has its pros and cons. We have to keep that in mind and soldier on - as good as we can.
My Covid bottom line is: The free speech violations/ hinderings /censorship in the name of science and in the name of medicine were never justified and - wrong from the start and were the main obstacles to handle this virus in a reasonable way.
Bottom line II: He who has not understood/ known before how important free speech is in complex modern societies has a huge case study right in front of his eyes now that proves - again! - how important this basic insight is to come to grips with the complexity of modern life. Free speech is the necessary link between human failures and societal needs to cope with them. - None of the two we can escape. Not now and not in the future - as we have never been able before too. Humans failures are inescapable and free speech is the most civilized and reasonable tool to handle this existential truth that we have at our hands - if we are willing to make it happen (without this will, free speech is no reality).
In addition to internationally banning gain of function research, I question the need to do research on viruses from remote locations which humans rarely encounter (ie. bat coronaviruses in remote bat caves).
More likely to increase the likelihood of pandemic prevention would be more comprehensive public health initiatives and monitoring of pathogens that are known to regularly jump from animals to humans. That approach seems a long way off at this point.
It seems the US Senate, under the influence of Robert Kadlec, can't even bring themselves to write in their report that EcoHealth was doing gain of function research on bat coronaviruses.
I'm a longtime vaccine advocate. My family travelled to Ghana in West Africa in the mid 1960s so my father could work there as a college professor teaching forestry. So we could travel there, our entire family was vaccinated with every vaccine available at the time. I had my daughter vaccinated with every vaccine recommended for children in California. Our family have all been vaccinated at least three times with the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
Still, given that the machinery at the NIH, NIAID and other agencies is clearly in the hands of Big Pharma and lobbyists, I am not too sure that I will be as strong a vaccine believer in the future.
I enjoyed reading your blog!
I happened to be around at the end of the time period when the public was involved in setting (some) research priorities. This was followed by funding of the scientists, by the scientists, for the scientists. I agree with everything here, and would add that we need more involvement of people at the prioritization level as well as transparent regulation and safety checks by a third party.
I think it’s time to stop inflating all these numbers. From past pandemics, to current one. Part of these numbers is the fact that for 2 years we had no influenza, pneumonia, or overdose deaths, but now they’re “exploding” because they are trying to hide the actual excess mortality caused by the death shot
I don't think there were good intentions - those were just the excuse for doing dangerous research. If it is just the researcher that gets injured I would accept it, but not allowable when the risk to many is high from even a rare accident.
Ioannidis argues that this virus will likely continue to kill people, over time totaling more than a billion people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmErXFRKAOo&t=1122s
"There was no evil in COVID-19"
Evil does not require an explicit intent to cause pain in order to flourish - only the willingness to give in to vices like hubris, envy, or greed paired with an abandonment of virtue.
I guess I would like to see the already written principles that scientists adhere to. Are these principles similar to the Hippocratic Oath??
how did this happen??
you might want to ask gates ... as to preventing the next one - again might want to ask mr. gates ... yeah well ... will see ...