Understandably there’s a lot of anger directed against the police and administrators that censored Dr Li. Of course they will be convicted of corruption or misconduct or something, but that just makes them victims too. They were doing their jobs exactly the way they were trained and incentivised to do it. I’m not justifying them, actively supporting a corrupt system is a corrupt thing to do, but them being punished by the system they worked for is bullshit.
I just hope Chinese people realise that the censorship of their protests about this is exactly the same as the censorship of Dr Li. It’s the same system run by the same people for the same reasons.
It’s crap like this that the HK protesters are trying to keep out of HK. Most Chinese mainlanders swallowed the party line about HK. I hope this gives them cause to reconsider that attitude.
So, in your opinion, being coerced to kill someone with a gun to your own head would make you guilty of a crime? Most systems of law disagree.
There is a large difference between "orders" that disobedience to results in being fired, or a dishonorable discharge from a military; and "orders" that disobedience to results in being disappeared. The latter is plain-and-simple coercion, no different than being held hostage and being told to do something by your hostage-taker.
> So, in your opinion, being coerced to kill someone with a gun to your own head would make you guilty of a crime? Most systems of law disagree.
I'm not so sure about this. There are many legal and law-like systems that would agree you've done something wrong by committing the murder, even if you had a good reason.
I'd expect more agreement as to the idea that punishment should be light than that your behavior wasn't wrong in the first place.
“Following orders” should IMO be graded against the surveillance capabilities of the state.
Disobeying orders on moral grounds was way easier before, but nowadays the people “following orders” are subject to the same surveillance as everyone else so dissent and disobedience is harder and can be squashed easily.
I'm not saying they are blameless, or should face no consequences. I tried to make that clear. I'm saying that the system that made them do what they did punishing them for doing it, and then carrying on the same way training and incentivising others to do the same all over again, is not justice. It is a sham facade of justice being used as a distraction from the real injustices of the system.
Someone living in a dictatorship (I dunno which) told me there is one advantage to it: No one believes the official news. He got the impression people in the west really believe everything they read while in reality our western news is as propagandized as theirs if not more.[sic] I don't know how gullible the Chinese are but I assume they find the official narrative pretty suspicious.
At least in the west you get to choose your propaganda. There is no single party line all the media have to toe, and different media outlets frequently disagree vigorously with each other.
It's not what they say it is that they dance around the same narrow narrative. How many billions of news worthy topics would there be? We both come to HN in our search for something interesting to read or talk about. After the limited, carefully designed scope has been injected into the collective here too people cant resist pumping it to the front page. If there are specially hot topics that everyone must talk about and everyone is looking at the left hand the right hand is doing all kinds of highly news worthy malicious things that no one talks about.
If you think you can do a better job than the mainstream media, go ahead and do it. Nobody will stop you, but you don't get to tell people what to be interested in or care about, any more than the Chinese authorities should.
Not sure what you mean with better. However great the content is doesn't matter. Producing great content consistently is already going to cost money. Buying readers is going to cost even more. How much would it cost to take on say newscorp? But say for sake of argument you happen upon a pile of money at the end of some rainbow. If you then chose to publish rebellious unflattering articles about the status quo there will be infinite funds available to silence you. Not that you will ever get to that point.
I look at things like facebook likes and youtube views for US presidential candidates. There are lots of candidates! The amount of attention they get drops to 200 views per video at the green party. Slightly further down they don't have the likes or views to account for direct friends and relatives.The numbers are so incredibly low that we can see non of the journalists around the world even took notice.
The system is perfect, you cant do better than this.
Off the topic, but I feel somehow because HKer only wanted to keep the bad things out of HK, that made the mainland Chinese less sympathetic toward them. To fight against the bad things HKer have to ally with mainland citizens to fight together, which I don't think is being considered even. There's no 独善其身 in this.
I'm not a HKer, but I often her them say things along the lines of "country over party" or "love the country, not the party". I definitely have heard discussion about a desire to unite with mainlanders, but my understanding is that they are having a hard time spreading the message to the mainland. I think reasons for that should be apparent given this particular discussion about censorship.
FWIW, I have mainland Chinese friends who generally identify as patriotic, but who also use VPNs etc. to better inform themselves. They went to Hong Kong during the National Day celebrations and shared their observations on Weibo. They took note of the fact that there was lots of graffiti, but the only vaguely patriotic slogan was "love the country, not the party". The post wasn't taken down, as far as I know, so the message spread at least slightly, despite the censorship.
If possible could you please provide some sources? Or it’s just heard in person? I’ve been living outside of China for years and read many pro independent sources especially during the protests but haven’t seen any on uniting with mainlanders. And during the protests I’ve seen reports of protesters trashing businesses that are related to mainland and infrastructure connecting to mainland. I don’t think they think every mainland business is CCP sponsored don’t they?
I'll admit, on /r/HongKong the "unify with mainlanders" posts don't rise up. It is not trendy. Probably because a lot of people interact with mainlanders that are against their movement. Which my understanding is that this is a selection bias (mainlanders that support them aren't seen). But this is going to happen in any movement that has a lot of fear in it (there is clear justification for the fear).
Communicating/Interacting with ppl who have different opinions is hard enough. But what I meant by allying is even harder than that. It's to help them get the freedom they wanted first. It will be a long process but I think that's the only solution. Only when China is more free then HK will surely not lose its freedom. It's some effort to protest and wave US/UK flags during a protest. It's some effort to get US/UK to have economic sanction against CN. It's some effort to say we have done our best to inform mainlanders of what's going on. Not all of those effort will help and for the ones that help they are probably not enough. Only mainland citizens can make China more free. We can install a "democracy" in China tomorrow but if the citizens don't have the knowledge to use it then HK might end up in a worse situation, facing the full strength of the tyranny of the majority.
There were protests at the border checkpoints trying to reach out to mainlanders and inform them of what the protests were about, and counteract mainland government propaganda.
Also factions will use these sorts of events to push other factions out.
Depending on the scale of things we might see some changes at the top. It’s no accident that mr Xi is putting one of his lieutenants in charge of the response (to have separation and also convenient pint to blame —but that only goes so far).
> I’m not justifying them, actively supporting a corrupt system is a corrupt thing to do
Ok, I'll justify them. There is almost no chance that anyone in the saga decided to do the evil thing because they wanted to watch the world burn. Not the government policy makers nor the police who carried out their orders. Every person is doing what they believe is the right thing. Some of the people were mistaken. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that Li Wenliang was not mistaken.
How many SARS II hoaxes has the government stomped on that we never heard about. How many doctors or patients in a nation of ~billion people have misidentified an outbreak of the common cold as "the next SARS" in the last 17 years. They aggressively stamp out the embers of a rumor before it gets going and becomes a raging fire of panic. This time the government erred, it wasn't a misidentification, the virus was real. They aren't evil or corrupt or murderous. They are fallible humans and they make a mistake.
That's a false dichotomy. It isn't either a hoax, or real.
More importantly, it isn't that either the government decides to stamp out info, or hoaxes/misidentifications will become a "raging fire of panic".
In most of the western world (among other places), everyone is free to say what they like. The government doesn't get the right to decide what you can and can't say. And yes, hoaxes happen. Misinformation happens. But I don't think there have been these massive problems that you're foreseeing. And what's more, it's not clear that the government has the right to decide what's worse - these kinds of problems, or potentially more people dying.
I was trying to suggest that human are fallible - doctors, patients, police and policy makers all; however I used the word hoax way too much as both responses focus on that. I've reworded. Hopefully that addresses the issue?
> the government decides to stamp out info
There are other ways, as you've described, but I believe this is the way the Chinese government has demonstrated that they prefer to handle it. You can argue it is a wrong choice but I can't accept the OP's characterization of it as a corrupt choice.
That would maybe work if he wasn't arrested for talking about this problem in a private WeChat group. Li wasn't trying to announce it to the world at this point, he was just discussing with his peers.
Also remember lots of things changed under Xi. China never allows political dissidence, but it is under Xi where everything in WeChat is heavily monitored and people get arrested for all sorts of minor things. So Xi is personally responsible for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
Before XJ, China seemed to be gradually opening up. IMO it was inevitable that one of their metros would eclipse Silicon Valley. Now with XJ in power, a lockdown on freedom of expression, and a more perfect execution of state policy; I no longer see it happening. It’s more likely that India will have Silicon Valley’s successor in the future, if anyone can produce one
There were other popular social media platforms in the past, such as Sina Weibo and other online discussion boards, which were not heavily monitored as WeChat is.
Fair enough. At that time, and we are talking going back 10 years now, did the government lack the will or the technical capability to carry out the large scale monitoring?
My wife is Chinese and we used to use Skype to video-chat with her family. From about 2008 the only version of Skype you could download in China was called TOM Skype, a modified version with back doors enabling Chinese state surveillance of communications. Links to regular Skype download sites were blocked and redirected you to TOM Skype.
So none of this is really new. As technology and platforms have developed, the Chinese state has improved and expanded it's surveillance and suppression apparatus. I'm no fan of Xi and the situation has definitely worsened under him, but this is how the system works.
> Of course they will be convicted of corruption or misconduct or something
What? No such thing will happen. This is an authoritarian regime. The government will never admit wrongdoing. They'll attempt to sweep it under the rug and continue operating with a "perfect" record.
We're already seeing it happen with Beijing blaming the mishandling of the virus outbreak on local authorities in Wuhan. The people are rightfully looking for a witch to burn, and the CCP will give them one that doesn't upset their hold on power.
Good point. I hadn't considered that. What a terrifying way to live - serving your government knowing that at any point you may be thrown under the bus for following orders.
Which orders did Vindman follow and later was punished for, exactly? I would actually put Snowden as an example of a regime punishing the whistleblower.
Snowden didn't follow the orders to the letter and then get punished. He wasn't a scapegoat for following a broad government policy which later became inconvenient/unpopular. He became an enemy of the state for opposing a government policy.
> reporting what he believes to be illegal conduct to congress one one side.
“Former” cia analyst that was directly involved in the events being investigated by the administration is reporting through his friends to an associate in Congress about an “illegal” conduct. Sounds a bit more like covering up former shady deals for his political friends.
The admin is now making noise about 'disciplinary action' against him, I read just now. That seems to be very recent, so we'll see if it's the full story.
It's human nature and isn't unique to authoritarian societies. People prefer to know that a problem was caused by a villain rather than a systemic failure.
Authoritarians are particularly good at getting people to take the blame.
It's more nuanced than believing China can do no wrong.
I have family (edit: living in mainland) that will admit personally that Xi Jinping is probably crazy and bad for things (maybe I shouldn't put that in writing?). But at the same time, there's a lot of faith given to the government that's increased literacy from 50-98%, increased GDP per capita from $100/yr to $10k/yr, built all the infrastructure, etc etc, in like less than 50 years, without major armed conflict.
Remember that prior to 1950, China had a couple centuries spotted with wars, rebellions, etc that killed tens and tens of millions of people.
Stability and prosperity buys a lot of good will.
Edit: because I just threw out numbers without comparison, the $100-$10k growth in 50 years is comparable to the period in the US from literally before the US was a country (pre 1800s) to about 1950 ish. That's how long it took the US to get from $100-$10k (real) per capita GDP. China did it in 50 years. US didn't have literacy rates below 50% since like before 1850 (actually it looks like already 70% literacy by 1850?), and only got to 98% literacy by ~1960.
Growth, stability, and prosperity doesn't excuse things, but it does explain why people are maybe more forgiving than we are looking in.
>Stability and prosperity buys a lot of good will.
The other side of this is that if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers in the system around to hold things together until the situation improves.
If the gravy train of growth ever stops, I think it could very quickly get very, very scary.
On the other hand, if the gravy train just coasts a bit and slows down gradually, after prosperity increases another say 4x, and is accompanied by gradual relaxation in liberties and other measures of quality of life (looking at you, Beijing air quality), then maybe it'll be ok.
Indeed, this was and to a certain extent is a major problem for the Qing dynasty (the last one), which consisted of widely-hated foreigners who had conquered China.
The Japanese have a certain ability to resist cultural messages from the West by looking to the legitimacy of the Emperor, which notionally goes back 2600 years. The Chinese have a long cultural tradition to draw on in a similar manner, but it's much more challenging when the legitimacy you're trying to invoke petered out in the 17th century. Vowing to maintain the traditions that obtained under the despised invaders just isn't as moving of a message.
More recently, the Soviet Union also fell apart after everybody stopped believing in it... but was that a bad thing?
> if hard times ever come, there will be no true believers
That is where brain washing and xenophobia come in. Just like in Russia, the CCP is already preparing for the hard times by blaming ills on the Other. I.e. the US (especially around trade war, and military alliances in the pac rim), Japan (reviving WW2 resentment), Western Europe (propaganda around "century of humiliation"), Taiwan, HK and so on.
The strategy is to create brainless followers who will reject foreign media output just because it comes from "the enemy".
I'm always surprised to hear that the government, rather than the people of China are credited with the recent lift in quality of life in China. It was Deng Xiaoping's decision to reduce government control of the economy and people's lives, giving Chinese people greater freedom to make their own decisions that has unleashed some of China's potential. We shouldn't be surprised if China becomes the wealthiest nation in the world. We should expect a nation with China's cultural and intellectual wealth can draw competent leaders that govern with competence, what should be surprising is that it was once so brutally and chaotically governed that it was ever poor.
It's not as hard to do it in 50 years when you're starting with the sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago. Doing it in 150 years, starting 220 years ago is far more challenging and impressive.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of what you wrote.
Perhaps the more apt comparison is democratic India, which had the same sum total of knowledge available 50 years ago and was at similar poverty level. Yet authoritarian China ended up roughly 3 to 5 times richer today.
Even if all you need to do is catch-up growth, rapid implementation is far from given. It's not the idea but the execution that matters, as techies would say.
Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue. Rather, it's that the authoritarian decided to change the way they were doing things. (Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening up".)
> Of course China didn't suddenly turn authoritarian in 1990, so this is not a democracy vs. authoritarianism issue.
Given the development of India, we might conclude that a democratic/non-authoritarian government is neither sufficient nor necessary to gain a good standard of living.
If their values are stability and prosperity then why do they look down on Western governance which has resulted in both more stability and greater prosperity than China?
It's kind of like (and this is a terrible metaphor/analogy, so sorry) why some companies have a higher market cap but lower revenue and profit. Trajectory matters.
I don't know why you get downvoted for asking that, it's an eminently reasonable question to ask.
Also most Chinese I've talked to don't look down on Western governments or structure of government, they just don't have any particular motivation for thinking it's better for them. I can't say what the average person in mainland actually thinks, of course.
Because successful western governance is predicated from stability and prosperity developed through state capitalism. Not the other way around. Almost everywhere western governance model has been applied without first developing domestic industries via state directed mercantilism, the country either fails or stays poor. You need an authoritarian government phase to rapidly build a base. China is following the proven Asian Tiger model, it just takes longer to uplift 1.4b people, if that's possible at all. Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution. Also they're not blind, every Chinese can look to Indian and know democracy + huge population either doesn't work or doesn't work fast enough.
> Almost every rich western country today behaved like China during their industrial revolution
I'm not a historian so please correct me if I'm wrong but the US gained independence, democracy, and the rule of law well before the industrial revolution. I'm pretty sure 90%+ of the population were still subsistence farmers back then.
Outside of the world wars I'm not sure the US ever practiced state capitalism either. They didn't even have a central bank until 1913.
Absolute nonsense to equate the idea of American Exceptionalism with Chinese nationalism. We don't get "admonished" or sent to work camps for being insufficiently or even anti-nationalistic. Our schools regularly even have curricula where American exceptionalism is questioned, unlike the Chinese model where the government is beyond questioning lest you risk a lowered social credit score and a trip to the gulag.
I swear people don't understand how good we have it in the West and how differently people think in China when they are subject to fervent brainwashing from birth. It is extremely difficult to even think to question the government when you have been explicitly and implicitly conditioned from birth to tow the line. Ask a Chinese national coworker about Coronavirus right now and how things are going there and watch them not even flinch when they tell you that everything's fine and under control - just know that if you do so you are putting them on the spot. They are so used to having their digital and in person communications monitored that they wouldn't risk even telling you the truth in person.
> Ask a Chinese national coworker about Coronavirus right now and how things are going there and watch them not even flinch when they tell you that everything's fine and under control
In my WeChat feed, I've seen a lot of panic about not being able to buy face masks or Shuanghuanglian and other kinds of traditional medicine, as well as outrage about the city of Dali intercepting shipments of face masks destined for other regions. "Everything's fine and under control" looks more like a minority opinion. Of course that could be biased by me attracting a certain kind of people, but ironically the harshest critics of the government in this case have been people I think of as "strong China" patriots/nationalists. Turns out they react especially negatively to government failures.
My contacts agree with you. (To be fair, I'm going off what I hear from ~4 people.)
Nobody believes everything's fine. Views of the government are at rock bottom. Trust in the government is zero or negative.
Here are some things that have been said to me (though this is private messages, not public feed posts):
> the government is shit! [2020-01-24, followed by much unsolicited venting about the state of things in Wuhan as reported through unofficial channels]
> 我觉得这次的疫情好像已经时空了 [I think it looks like we've already lost control of this epidemic] [2020-02-05]
> 封闭了小区，外面的人不允许进来。每天还消毒（Me: 内面的人可以出来吗?）可以的，但是要有“出入证” [Our apartment complex has sealed itself, outsiders cannot enter. We disinfect every day. (Me: Can insiders leave?) Yes, but you need an exit/entry document] [2020-02-10]
> 如果说，现在社会忽然流传某种说法，然后政府辟谣，然后大家就知道，这个说法是真的 [If a rumor suddenly spread through society, and then the government denied it, everyone would know it was the truth.] [2020-02-10]
Social trust is down too; I also hear rumors of escapees from Wuhan concealing their sickness (this one's easy to believe) and of sick people striking back at the society that failed them by spreading their saliva on elevator buttons and doorknobs.
Something that stuck with me (from long before the current crisis) was when I asked a friend how she thought Chinese people generally perceived America. The response was much as you'd expect: some people see it as a faraway paradise, some feel pretty negative, many don't really care.
But she specifically mentioned one guy from her workplace who fell into the "relentlessly negative" camp, always criticizing America if he got the opportunity. She said even he admitted the US did one good thing that deserved the thanks of the Chinese people.
That thing was publishing air pollution numbers based on measurements in American consulates in China.
I usually think about this in terms of the apparently huge diplomatic win it presented for very minor effort, but it also says something about the level of trust in the Chinese government pre-crisis.
I'm also seeing some more critical views of the government show up on my WeChat feed. I think neutral views of the government/exhortations to stay positive among my contacts on my feed still wins out slightly, but there's definitely some pretty harsh criticism and in some cases, disillusionment.
The Chinese government is probably keenly aware of the growing discontent and is unlikely to overplay their hand and crack down hard on communications, at least at the moment. For example, they could've decided to block all mentions of Li Wenliang from the Chinese internet (as has happened with many other things in the past), but they haven't, at least not obviously. If they did, I suspect discontent would explode.
> The Chinese government is probably keenly aware of the growing discontent and is unlikely to overplay their hand and crack down hard on communications, at least at the moment. For example, they could've decided to block all mentions of Li Wenliang from the Chinese internet (as has happened with many other things in the past), but they haven't, at least not obviously. If they did, I suspect discontent would explode.
> Dr Li died on Wednesday or Thursday from exposure to the coronavirus. He leaves behind a pregnant wife and a young child. He is being dramatically mourned on social media sites, faster than the censors can scrub them. [Widespread Outcry in China Over Death of Coronavirus Doctor, by Li Yuan, NYT, February 7, 2020]( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/china-coronaviru... ) There have even been demands he be given a state funeral.
> That bagpipe band playing “Amazing Grace” that I heard while crossing my living-room was a popular nonverbal way to mourn. The censors rely on keywords in text; it takes them longer to figure out nonverbal protests.
I appreciate your perspective. As an insider, do you think we can trust recently published literature from Chinese sources regarding the virus? This article[1] for example is somewhat reassuring but I don't know if the numbers are trustworthy. On the other hand I imagine academia is at least somewhat insulated from the reaches of the government and academics are probably more likely to be willing to take risks to communicate truth.
I'm not sure how much I'd consider myself an insider... luckily I happened to not be in China when all this happened so I'm watching from afar as well (although I would like to go back for a bit when all this blows over).
No real idea sorry. I mean things look more transparent than what happened with SARS (which I can get into detail about if you want) and there's way more discussion in various different online venues this time around (more people also have access to the internet), but I don't really think I have a more trustworthy opinion beyond that weak assertion.
And on the ground, well there's a lot of conflicting reports as happens in any major event.
This is the problem, everything is hush hush or online. No one has the _____ to stand up and say this is not right. I'm only contrasting this with democratic govts. (However flawed the system is) have a voice to stand against a govt. This is non existent in China.
> everything is hush hush or online. No one has the _____ to stand up and say this is not right.
What do you even mean by this? Online is how you reach the largest audience, so of course people are speaking out online if they want others to hear what they have to say.
>We don't get "admonished" or sent to work camps for being insufficiently or even anti-nationalistic.
Colin Kaepernick was blackballed from the NFL for kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance. Look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks:
> On March 10, 2003, during a London concert, nine days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Maines told the audience: "We don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush) is from Texas," which garnered a positive reaction from the British audience but led to a contrasting negative reaction, and ensuing boycotts, in the United States, where talk shows denounced the band, their albums were discarded in public protest and corporate broadcasting networks blacklisted them for the remainder of the Bush years.
It is a genuine human accomplishment that in the west, we hold being left unemployed by a sports league or uncovered by broadcasting networks comparable to state level abuses of human rights.
It’s not often I feel “pride” for where I was randomly born, but your comment brought a bit of it out through this shift in perspective, thank you.
Do you feel like you are risking your livelihood, reputation, or personal safety for publically posting comments critical of the U.S. government and/or U.S. culture? Because I guarantee the average Chinese citizen does. That's the critical difference.
Corruption exists in the U.S. but thankfully authoritarianism does not (yet).
How do you make this guarantee? The average Chinese citizen I know expects critical comments to be deleted, but getting a visit by the police is rare. I know one person to whom that happened, in the early 2010s. He didn't suffer any major repercussions beyond being told to stop posting like he did.
......you think that's ok? You don't think after being reprimanded he feels that way now? You don't think his social credit score likely took a hit, if it existed back then?
Perhaps visits from police are rare because it's enough to be warned with the implicit threat of punishment for future transgressions? That alone, being forced by the government to delete material (i.e. no first amendment right) is what I'm talking about.
I don't think it's ok in the sense that it's not some kind of acceptable trade-off to make for a society-wide benefit or something like that, but I think it's ok in the sense that it's just a minor annoyance that doesn't make life unlivable. China is not some kind of dystopian hellhole where citizens constantly feel the government's boot on their necks. The government doesn't allow people to express themselves freely, but that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. There simply aren't enough police officers to react to every violation. It doesn't exactly cow people into submission. My friend obviously wasn't praising the government when he told me how they tried to make him shut up.
I think you should be careful not to assume too much about life in a foreign country you haven't experienced for yourself.
Case in point, you talk about the social credit system as if it were operational, maybe even back then. In reality, nation-wide rollout is planned for this year, and many details are still up in the air. There are local pilot projects, but all of them are different and many are limited to providing data on companies (often not much, essentially just putting the company register online). Any stories you may have heard about people being punished by the social credit system are actually low-tech solutions without scores that have been rebranded, presumably so someone can claim to be on schedule implementing the master plan.
My wife is Chinese and I know from her and her family exactly what it was like for them. When my father in law talks about the hardships inflicted on their family he tears up. You clearly have absolutely no idea what it's actually like.
Equating arbitrary detention, re-education camps and political executions to being boycotted by some TV stations is a shameful farce.
Yes in the west things can go badly wrong, innocent people can get chewed up and hurt much more than a trivial example like the Dixie Chicks. Good grief, that's the best you could come up with? But the Chinese system is based on knowingly trashing people's lives systematically on a massive scale.
There are millions of immigrants from the former Soviet Union who will tell you exactly what it is like to live under an authoritarian socialist regime.
Life in other countries can be very different from what you've experienced in the U.S.
Though I agree that there is a difference in scope, I’m not entirely sure what you say applies to the NFL. I guess Kaepernick would have to move to Australia if he wants to keep playing professional football.
This supposed option of choice only applies if there is non-monopoly and there is an equal power dynamic between consumers/workers and heads of company. Neither is true of the NFL.
Also, I don't think most people cared about their political beliefs. And that's why it blew up, in both cases. They cared because they were customers, who were paying for entertainment, but receiving a lecture/statement on politics.
When you're an entertainer, you risk your livelihood by upsetting your fans. That's not government censorship; it's a bad business decision.
Does the punishment need to meet a certain severity level to be "bad"? The parent comment I replied to made it sound like criticizing the government is free from any consequences in the West, which is patently false.
I am talking about Chinese citizens criticizing the Chinese govt. __in China__ the same way as American citizens can criticize the American govt. in America, if it wasn't obvious. And by criticizing I mean openly criticizing in public, not hiding behind some pseudonym online
It comes off as a play on the old Cold War joke (crude translation of how I remember it being told in the 1980s in Russian) with an American and a Russian discussing about their regimes; and the American proudly says - we have freedom of speech, I can go next to the White House with a banner saying "Reagan is a fool!" and that's going to be okay; to which the Russian responds - so what, that's not any advantage, I can also go to the Red Square with a banner saying "Reagan is a fool!" and there won't be any problems...
An American and a Russian are sitting in a bar, arguing over whose country was better. The American argues,
"See, in America, I am free to do whatever I want. If I wanted to, I could walk right into the White House, slam my fist on the President's desk, and say 'Mr. President, I don't like the way you are running our country.'"
The Russian then said, "I can do the same thing."
"Really? You can?" asks the American.
"Yes," continues the Russian, "If I wanted to, I could walk right into the Kremlin, slam my fist on the General Secretary's office, and say 'Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan is running his country.'"
Perhaps, but at the same time I have never met such self-hating people as urban Americans post-2016.
The exceptionalism might be the degree of freedom it allows in thoughts about their own Americanism, and the seeming ability to believe both ends of the spectrum at the same time.
They don't hate themselves, they hate their non-like-minded compatriots.
Just like when one sees a big pickup truck festooned with american flags and the pledge of allegiance plastered across the rear window, it's not to express their sheer joy in being American, but to admonish their non-like-minded compatriots for being insufficiently 'American'.
I don't hate myself; I hate the series of events and conditions that has turned the US into a severely-divided nation where half of the country has been brainwashed into voting for people who believe that rights and empathy and power should only be granted to straight cis-gendered white people and/or "true Americans", for whatever arbitrary definition of that they've decided on in a given week.
Chinese are sooo brain washed. Trump supporters are sooo brain washed. Seems there’s a tendency that for people we don’t really understand their motives, can’t take their perspectives we just assume they are brain washed. Like with that assumption we can just ignore any opinions that are different?
You don't need to look very far in the US to see similar abuses and well, a complete failure of oversight. I hope I don't have to enumerate the failures but, in no short order, Iraq and WMD, Vietnam, Iran Contra, Trump's impeachment, the generalized legalized bribery of campaign finance contributions in the US...
Hopefully Americans are by now completely inoculated against the idea of having systems in place to stop people from "making false comments on the Internet." The Chinese now have a very bad situation on their hands with no clear ways for them to improve it, but America is not there yet.
I'm of the opinion that such systems are part of the problem. We've generally produced a population that thus far hasn't had to think critically about and question the information they receive. Skepticism towards new information reasoning about the validity of new information from first principles are valuable skills that have either atrophied or never been learned in the first place. The more you put such systems as you suggest in place, the worse the general population gets at figuring out what information should be trusted.
Ha-ha, no. Rather the opposite - after all, we need some kind of system to prevent anti-vax disinformation from undermining our public health response.
Not sure whether your response was tongue-in-cheek, but just in case it wasn't.
When you get a loaded gun like this that gets passed around, you don't get to control what the next holder of that gun does with it. Just because it is you or your buddy who would want to use it for a good cause (preventing anti-vax disinformation), doesn't mean that the next holder of the gun won't use it in a way you won't like.
And even then, that's assuming you do not believe that anti-vaxers should be allowed to publicly post their disinformation. I absolutely disagree with anti-vaxing, but I do believe in their right to post their info, just like i believe in their right to be publicly beaten into submission with overwhelming amounts of scientifically accurate information.
If someone made it illegal to post anti-vax statements, it would just embolden people to do it more. That's just how human psychology works. It's also the most ridiculous, knee-jerk reactionary power we could possibly give the government.
By this reasoning, China censoring doctors who warned about the flu was merely very effective reverse-psychology in order to get people to take it seriously?
I don't support internet censorship, but I do support consistency of reasoning.
Obviously his censorship by the Chinese government was dumb and harmful and obviously he was right about the virus. But I don't quite understand how an opthalmologist would be equipped to identify Coronavirus. Does anyone have the details here?
He didn't identify Coronavirus specifically. He initially called them SARS cases. The message to his colleagues was along the line of, "hey, there's something going on here. We're seeing SARS again." After that, he was called into the police department for "rumormongering."
>I don't quite understand how an opthalmologist would be equipped to identify Coronavirus.
A patient could have come to him with symptoms of a conjunctivitis [1]:
> As explained by Dr. Ignasi Jürgens, medical director of ICR, some reports suggest that the virus can cause conjunctivitis and be transmitted by aerosol contact with the conjunctiva. Therefore, patients who go to the ophthalmologist for conjunctivitis and have respiratory symptoms, in addition to having traveled abroad, especially to China, could be suspected of having the virus.
It says he saw a report that 7 people had confirmed SARS infections. He simply sent that to his friends on WeChat, who then sent it to other people on WeChat, who sent it to other people...
He didn't identify it, he just told the public about it.
I think what happened was that the initial doctors who identified the coronavirus cases were told to keep silent by the authorities and hospital. Li happened to see some of these reports and he notified other doctors in the WeChat group. So he didn't identify it, he raised the alarm when no one else was.
> After screenshots of his WeChat messages were shared on Chinese forum and gained huge attention, his manager talked to him, blaming him for leaking the information.
Would love to see a toxicology report that has some verifiable chain of command element to rule out foul play from his unfortunate demise as a dissent in that harsh political climate where having an unpopular opinion can result in your life being ended.
Generally, besides having a productive and globally-connected economy, a global leader will need to:
1) Function as a global policeman. Aside from serving domestic interests with this force projection, they will be expected to protect shipping lanes, offer humanitarian relief in emergency situations, etc.
2) Offer a stable currency of last resort
3) Export cultural values that are appealing to other countries
In fact, the majority of countries worldwide request military assistance from one of only a handful of nations (US, UK, China, Russia, France primarily) for police like protection through Defense Pacts/Treaties.
The UN and NATO specifically, are explicitly chartered to serve as a collective for this function where all have shared interests. In reality most treaties are done outside of the UN.
So I'm unsure on what basis you're suggesting that the political arms of nation states do not regularly seek a globally capable actor to police their neighbors.
China literally tried to hide everything about this virus, going as far as prosecuting people for mentioning it. Don't take it as ad hominem, but i dont know how you're missing the point here.
The implication seems to be that this will have some sort of effect on chinese global leadership. I see zero evidence of those kind of consequences actually existing in the world.
I don't like that situation. But I have a strict policy of seeing the world how it really is instead of how I wish it to be.
From the outside looking in the combination of Coronavirus response and Hong Kong protests are the strongest challenges to the Communist Party legitimacy I've ever seen. I think we're a long way from any possibility of downfall but its been interesting to see the backlash from mainland citizens over Li's death and even Xi go out and make public appearances to sure up the appearance of control over the virus response.
Reading many Chinese sources made me doubt your assessment. Regular mainland Chinese are not happy. But not to the point that they are thinking alternative governance. Rather some of the anger are rooted with the expectation that the Party can be better in future.
The trust can get irreparably broken, though. This happened in eastern Europe, resistance was not an option so the result was widespread apathy and stagnation instead.
Czechoslovakia had the advantage of being a small country next to the EU.
China had the disadvantage of being the most populous country in the world.
In crisis, economic or otherwise, Czechoslovakia is much more likely and capable of being rescued by the international community. China will need to rely on itself if only because it is way too big for any kind of help to be substantial and meaningful.
Thus the outcome will likely be even worse than Russia, which only has around 1/10th the population of China and an impressive natural resource reserve.
There are also countries that thrived economically after the fall of socialism. Why yes, I'll gladly take an apartment in East Berlin if you're offering me one.
You’re forgetting that China had a renaissance moment under the comunist party. They may not agree with some things but are majorly backing their government. They’re in a way rational, if the communist party fell overnight they’d be in big trouble, they wouldn’t be able to self govern democratically. The problem is that the party is corrupted and has absolutely no plans to reform. It will only get more corrupted before something significant changes.
Hong Kong is China territory with semi-democracy government under "One country two system" policy. But most of the legislators are appointed by CCP or groups close to CCP. That's the reason why even facing landslide defeat in 2019 Hong Kong local elections, Chief Executive Lam doesn't budge a bit and continue to suppress protesters. Recently she refuse to close border with China which results in medical workers strike.
Taiwan is an independent country with full democracy system but not being recognized by international society because China is pushing its "One China" policy to other countries. Foreign countries or companies violate this idea would be punished economically by China(France got punished for selling Mirage 2000 to Taiwan)
Right, the revolution did not happen because his election was like opening the pressure relief valve. There can still be reconciliation in the society.
I don't think "legitimacy" is a useful concept here. The Communist Party of China doesn't derive its power from the consent of the governed, as Mao said, it derives it from the barrel of a gun. As long as they have the weapons and continue to be ruthless enough to use them they are not going anywhere.
As big of a challenge as this is, the party has more control now than it ever had before. Control from technology but also control from social structure and how they teach people to think.
USSR dissolved because of atrocious economy. It was hard for people to have their families fed, fixed prices and influx of money in the economy had led to a coupon system - basically a right to buy a certain quantity of sugar/dairy products/meat/etc. (I was born in the USSR and had lived through the agony of the regime)
Unless CCP somehow screws up the economy really BAD, driving everyone to the point of starvation, nothing will change.
And even then: looking at North Korea, people there were driven far beyond the point of starvation, and they still endure these hardships without any discontent against Kims.
I don't agree with your assessment of those events. 3 letter services had very little control over the process of dissolution, and their attempt to stop it (the GKChP putsch) was met with decisive resistance.
Of course, in most republics local elites have cleverly kept the reigns of power in their hands, but those were the Party officials, not KGB officers. I think that Russia is the only ex-USSR country where KGB managed to seize complete control. Others are democracies (Baltic countries and, arguably, Georgia and Ukraine, maybe even Armenia), authoritarian states (Belarus, Russia) and a number of sultanates.
Agreed with all your points but I don't think DPRK is a good comparison to PRC. DPRK is small enough to brainwash all its citizens and imprison those that refuse, not so for PRC (although they do seem to be trying this in Xinjiang).
I don't think small nation is easier to control. For example, in Russia, whoever controls Moscow controls the country (don't want to explain here why exactly, so please just trust me in this). So, theoretically, a moderately big popular uprising against Putin in Moscow could gather 300K-500K protesters, and Moscow police would have just 30K riot troops to deal with it, plus 40K regular policemen. However, in a span of few hour, reinforcements from all over the country can be brought in from all over the country, bringing the number of riot police to 150K, quite comfortably enough to counter 500K protesters. And regional protesters have no real way to join the protests in the epicenter, because Russia is freaking big, travel is controlled by the government and can be ceased in case of emergency.
Side note: 2013-2014 protests in the Ukraine worked for a simple reason - not only protests enjoyed an overwhelming support in the capital, and had a fraction of parliament supporting it, Kiev is relatively close to western Ukraine, so many active protesters from there just got on buses and drove to join the fight and make the balance more even.
This said, I believe that the bigger the country, the easier it is to control, because government forces are way more mobile, which easier brings local numerical superiority. As for imprisonment, in a bigger country you just need more prisons, that can be achieved without much difficulties.
I think part of the reason why Li Wenliang's story stirred up such emotions is that he wasn't really an activist with a righteous indignation, he was just a normal citizen looking out for the people around him. That said, his action effectively blew the whistle through the spread of information.
Although we all get what you mean and respect your experience, let us not confuse corrupted, oppressive, authoritarian single-party regimes with "socialism" just because they call themselves "socialist" or "communist" states. Especially in case of China, whose economy these days is de facto capitalism with strong rule of government
It was also a corrupt, repressive, single-party, authoritarian regime, which was the important ingredient for its badness and eventual downfall. Its economic policy likely just made it fail faster, which I think is what sets China apart and has made it more successful. That, and more-advanced technology that has made mass surveillance more practical.
It comes back to distribution of power and if you believe power is all corrupting or not.
You either have some guys in charge managing things, or you attempt a distributed/mob rules mentality in regards to policies and legislation. Either way in a socialistic system the government is THE governing body, and there aren't really any checks and balances other than the very body managing it. Which goes back to the question of whether or not you can trust the government.
IMHO the debate between the extreme right and extreme left is more about philosophy than policy.
Is the lack of checks and balances a necessary feature of a socialist government, or is it just that the Soviet Union didn't have checks and balances, by design?
Socialism lacks checks and balances because it's a decentralized/distributed model of rule. Now in reality it's possible the military could exist as a pseudo "check and balance". But checks and balances do not exist as a defined construct in socialism, by being distributed it argues it doesn't need checks and balances, because it's run by the people.
Secondly checks and balances are arguably anti-socialism even, because it would introduce a backdoor/round-a-bout way of enacting rule that wasn't endorsed and driven by the people. So no, the lack of checks and balances isn't just a Soviet Union thing, it's a socialism thing, otherwise it isn't true socialism.
Well this is off-topic but Soviet Union was an expansionist superpower whose elite ultimately seized control of production and capital. Whatever you mean by "pure socialism", it at least should aim for ownership of production capital to be distributed among the people. Soviet Union was not for the people as much as the elite that was leeching off the working class.
Look at much of the Western world which has some sort of single-payer or government healthcare option. They have lower healthcare costs than the US, generally better outcomes, and are in no danger of public revolt or economic collapse.
Equating "government subsidized healthcare" with "authoritarian regime" is just arguing in bad faith on your part.
I think we all need a little humility on how good our medical information is. It is bad. Very bad. We've had success with using math and science in domains like chemistry and manufacturing and think that we can apply it directly to human biology. Unfortunately it's not that simple. Human beings are far more complex than anything we make (look at how many cells your body produces every second, and how much information is in each one of those cells), and we don't have the luxury of massive, repeatable experiments.
Our current data tools are nowhere near good enough for us to be so confident in most domains of medicine, such as vaccination.
I get vaccines, but I support someone's write to abstain. It's a bit of a leap of faith and "authorities" have a long track record of giving terrible medical advice all the time. Here are 4 loosey goosey examples: currently 2 million opioid disorders with hundreds of thousands of deaths stemming from "prescriptions"; $100's of billions in revenue to depression drugs which have been terribly ineffective, and only now, after decades of banning them, is USGOV allowing psychedelic trials, which seem to cure people in a session, for next to nothing; the food groups—a lot of good nutrition advice has done; stress is a top of cause of medical problems and the top cause of stress is financial problems from health expenses!
We don't need to "remove actual false statements from the internet". Instead we need to figure out how to actually put true statements on the internet. And no one I've seen is close to figuring that out.
> Our current data tools are nowhere near good enough for us to be so confident in most domains of medicine, such as vaccination.
I think you're conflating things like nutrition with the whole of biology. There are lots of things we understand quite well, and have mountains of data on, and vaccines are one of the best examples of those.
Nutrition science is famously unreliable, but there are reasons for that beyond just the intrinsic complexity of the domain itself:
- It grabs headlines because it's something individuals can control themselves, and because it has a direct relationship to mass-market priorities like physical appearance. So the media jumps at every opportunity to sensationalize a study that may not actually be making any bold claims.
- Billions of dollars are funneled by megacorps into sham studies that pollute the discourse, for their own profit-seeking motives.
All three factors can also apply to drugs, especially mental-directed ones (because the human psychology is a whole other layer of complexity). The opioid crisis had nothing to do with the science, but with greed and addiction. The drugs themselves were safe; you can overdose on anything.
But none of these apply to vaccines. Their relationship to the human body is comparatively simple. They aren't a home-remedy. They aren't (relatively speaking) a big business. They also aren't some new, unproven technology. They are one of the most widely-deployed and successful medical inventions ever created by man. There are few things in the world that we have so much conclusive data around.
There's plenty of true information on the internet. The past several years have made it abundantly clear that true information does not win out against false information rooted in fear. Don't be part of the problem.
> There are lots of things we understand quite well, and have mountains of data on, and vaccines are one of the best examples of those.
Point me to this "mountains of data" in a usable form. There should be a site right, that contains a simple big table of all vaccinations administered worldwide and how the results went? I don't want to see some static PDF with a paltry 10,000 data points. We are all savyy programmers here and know that a relatively simple table could be created so any parent can do a simple single query against all the world's medical live data to see if vaccines are safe, right?
That would be science. That would be Six Sigma.
But I can't do that. So I need to take a bet on who to believe: scientists pushing non-science or non-scientists. I recently talked to some doctors here who recently were in Samoa helping the Measles outbreak there. Two children died from getting vaccines there in 2018 (https://www.immune.org.nz/hot-topic/infant-deaths-samoa-trag...). Clearly those deaths shouldn't have happened. Where's the push to bring Six Sigma to the medical world? Instead it's "vaccines are safe", read the PDF.
We can't be so confident until we actually have clean, accessible, usable databases. Our medical data infrastructure is very very bad.
> They are one of the most widely-deployed and successful medical inventions ever created by man
I agree in the ranks of medical inventions vaccines are amazing. But still, not the best comparison group. How effective was the flu vaccine this year? Surely I should be able to see that information in a single query. But I can't. (the rough answer from doctors I've sampled is about 30%, or 70% ineffective).
People are right to be skeptical of medical advice until some dramatic innovation comes to the space.
> We can't be so confident until we actually have clean, accessible, usable databases.
And then you'd question who put that data there, and whether it was real.
It's impossible to never take anything on any level of trust. When your scenarios get more and more elaborate (a secret worldwide conspiracy to push vaccines? we can't even cooperate on simple stuff), at some point you have to ask yourself, "Is my skepticism driven by real information, or by what-ifs?" That's how you distinguish conspiracy theories from not: what prompted the question?
Not that an increase in open data would ever be a bad thing. But it's a huge logistical challenge, and it shouldn't be required for something this well-known.
> And then you'd question who put that data there, and whether it was real.
That's a fair point. You're right, you do need to take some things on trust at some point.
I don't know what the solution is. If I knew the answer I would have built it by now :). But I do hope we don't start censoring skeptics and instead overcome them by building things.
I am curious about how exactly you go from observing biological complexity to doubting the biomedical community's confidence in vaccination as a safe and effective means of combating infectious diseases.
The biological complexity warrants a lot more doubt on all biomedical topics.
I think vaccines are a good bet and I myself get vaccinated and encourage it.
But I don't think the response to anti-vaxxers should be vilification and censoring their content on the Internet claiming it is "false". Instead I think it should be doubling down on how pro-vaxxers can build better tools to give people access to truer data.
The disease of the modern age is the belief that ‘my opinion is better than your knowledge’.
An anti-vaxer is standing in the way of true knowledge. Opiate prescribing was driven by pharmaceutical interests and lobbying, as well as a misguided notion that pain is something to be conquered and abolished.
When I was in the US during medical school, I routinely saw people being discharged after simple procedures with bucketloads of opiates, things that I would discharge in Australia on simple analgesia (paracetamol and ibuprofen).
The public health stance on vaccines is not in any way analogous to the opiate crisis, and whilst I understand the layman’s distrust of medical experts arises in part from this, the two are separate issues stemming from different causes
> things that I would discharge in Australia on simple analgesia (paracetamol and ibuprofen).
Good on you. I'm sure that's not the only thing amiss you saw in our system :).
> The public health stance on vaccines is not in any way analogous to the opiate crisis, and whilst I understand the layman’s distrust of medical experts arises in part from this, the two are separate issues stemming from different causes
To me the issue is part of the same problem: giving advice (or prescriptions) without giving access to good data.
If it's so important to vaccinate, why not build a much better live data system that concerned individuals/parents can query in real time to see the true numbers behind the gamble they are taking? That would be the scientific thing to do. Not to remove what one deems "false" information from the internet. Of course, what I'm dreaming of is a lot harder to build than a censorship system but I think it would be worth it.
every health system has flaws. You're talking about one of the most complex components of any economy - 10% of spending in Australia, up to 20c in every dollar in the US. there are no simple fixes.
> If it's so important to vaccinate, why not build a much better live data system that concerned individuals/parents can query in real time
I'm not sure what you mean. The evidence behind vaccination has been out there since Jenner in the late 1800s. The idea that this is an argument that needs rehashing every year or so, for what is undoubtedly an invention that has saved more lives than anything humanity has ever invented (with the possible exception of sanitation and sewerage) is in the first instance a victory to those who wish to sow doubt in an area where there is none.
Now, having said that, you can get a bit more nuianced - for example, generally speaking the NNT to prevent a case of the seasonal flu (dependign on the prevailing strains of the year) is around 20-30. Ie. 20-30 vaccinations for one prevented case. Whereas, when it comes to Hep B and Smallpox, your NNT is effectively 1 (depending on the titre response from the vaccine). As a result, we have eliminated Smallpox from the wild and massively reduced the disease burden of Hepatitis B.
But we don't force every person to have the flu vax every year. As a healthcare worker, I consider it my responsibility to have mine, because I am constantly exposed to the elderly and young and others with compromised immune systems, where infection poses a very real risk to their lives.
Other communicable diseases (ie the childhood vaccination ones) that are really what the anti-vaxxers are all about being 'pro choice' on, are significantly more deadly than the flu (which, depending on your stats and year of illness, probably rate somewhere around the 0.005% death rate and 0.01-0.02 severe infection/needing hospitalisation rate).
Against the numbers of lives saved and morbidity avoided by vaccinating for these severe diseases, the risks of vaccination are basically the same as that of crossing the street and getting hit by a bus. Let's keep in context that The current wave of anti-vax hysteria was kicked off by (Former Doctor) Andrew Wakefield's false study that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused Autism. The death toll from his bullshit propaganda, just in Samoa in the last 6 months, is 83.
Whilst there is a non-zero rate of harm from vaccination (ranging, at the worst end, apparently 1-2 deaths per million vaccinations for Smallpox back in the day, down to just rashes and fevers on the low end, but including Guillian-Barre Syndrome which may mean a patient needs ventilator support for a while), the discussion around risk-benefit is not an equivocal one - the evidence is literally littered in journals and around the web from publications stretching back over 150 years
I plead ignorance on the specific anti-vax movement and don't know of Wakefield and the events behind it.
I believe the ballpark estimates you provided on the low risks of vaccination. I get vaccines (and my family does as well). I do not have the unfortunate problem that you must have to deal with of convincing folks to make the good bet and getting vaccinated.
I would like to eliminate that problem as well. But instead of the approach of attempting to censor "false" information, I think we need to revolutionize the way we put out good medical information. As you describe it, and I would completely concur with, "the evidence is literally littered in journals and around the web from publications stretching back over 150 years". The problem is exactly that: the evidence is "littered" and even if one works in the field (as I do), it is a huge burden to answer questions with sound data backing.
Imagine if you had a parent express skepticism about getting their 1 year old vaccinated, and you could take out your tablet in front of them and say "show me health outcomes for all babies in the past ten years, grouped by vaccination status" and it would pull up live data on one hundred million patients, that's where I think we need to go.
This is interesting, but where do you draw the line?
I mean, even showing the specific data from your example above, you may have long periods of time where the unvaccinated proportion of the population (take for example Australia's Northern Rivers region or areas of California recently) that, for a long time experience declining immunisation rates, with no increase in disease. Then eventually herd immunity falls low enough that they aren't protected and someone gets infected and it rips through a population. For 10 years, the data may have shown no adverse impacts one way or another - the only way to tell the difference between a vaccinated and unvaccinated child would have been to measure antibody titre. Then, all of a sudden, lots of people are sick and a few babies are dead.
You can't convince people to read the 'good' information. I mean, to take another example, the information for healthy eating and lifestyle are all around us but it certainly hasn't lead to a change in average BMI heading anywhere but upwards in the last 30 years.
Literally the first 10 google queries for Vaccines are form the CDC, Mayo Clinic and other excellent resources going through the evidence for vaccines. I'm not sure how a further portal is going to help people who have decided to make decisions contrary to the evidence. It's a quasi-religious belief that is being fought
> even showing the specific data from your example above, you may have long periods of time .... Then, all of a sudden, lots of people are sick
This is a fair point that pandemics are outliers and one must weigh expected value of a high impact event and not just probability. Making it easy to simulate expected outcomes to inform decision making would be an important component. Similarly, you need to take into account the other low probability event that vaccines may be fine for 50 years and then one year's formulation goes awry for one population group. It seems like VAERS is designed for this latter purpose and really what I'm talking about would in a sense be a much more comprehensive VAERS.
> Literally the first 10 google queries for Vaccines are form the CDC, Mayo Clinic and other excellent resources going through the evidence for vaccines.
This is a good data point. I opened the 10 links and they are indeed good extensive resources about the existing information.
Both leave a lot to be desired but definitely a big step in the right direction.
> You can't convince people to read the 'good' information....I'm not sure how a further portal is going to help people who have decided to make decisions contrary to the evidence.
I think the problem is it's really hard to truly make decisions based on the evidence because the evidence is so hard to use correctly. I think we should figure out how to bring the evidence front and center instead of burying it in very slow and hard to use ways (pdfs, clunky complex query interfaces, registration or permission walls etc).
The approach the US has taken to date is to summarize the data and make widespread proclamations that are right for the mean but often wrong for the individual. Instead if we could bring the data closer to the user we could make it as fast for a user to determine for themselves that getting a vaccination is a good bet than it is for them to just accept that based on a blanket statement. The NIH's Precision Medicine Initiative is another step in the right direction but there's still a long way to go.
I just hope Chinese people realise that the censorship of their protests about this is exactly the same as the censorship of Dr Li. It’s the same system run by the same people for the same reasons.
It’s crap like this that the HK protesters are trying to keep out of HK. Most Chinese mainlanders swallowed the party line about HK. I hope this gives them cause to reconsider that attitude.