Is the 10k-50k "grants for the science of ecosystem stewardship" refers to the sum of all grants to the "the science of ecosystem stewardship", or just that marine biologist got for his particular study? Is there only his team doing study in this field or there are other teams doing similar ones got separate grants?
Is this the same MAC app: kid pix delux 3D? That is really great software. Only pity is it is not compatible with new MAC OS versions, hope it could get some upgrade.
The free world gave the criminal CCP regime a free pass after the 1989 massacre. The same criminal regime get stronger in the last 30 years and put on a capitalist shell on its bloody skin. But it never stopped its criminal practices but has been doing it more relentlessly just with more concealment. For about 20 years it made large scale human organ sells from people they kidnapped or arrested. It put up huge concentration camps in Xinjing to get rid of some minor race people in the number of millions. That is just a small sample of its crimes still actively happening. I am glad US starts to realize the CCP regime is not a country following normal human ethics.
The doctors were not jailed, because luckily CCP need them to work to fight the virus. Some of them died for it already, mostly due to the hard work, insufficient protection CCP provided to the doctors, and in one case at least, intentionally punish the doc by delay his treatment.
Talking about the origin of this virus, this paper of 2015 is quite interesting: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
. In this paper, the wuhan P4 institute people basically described how they produced a prototype of the 2019 wuhan virus.
I said in my comment clearly it is a hypothesis. While it is important and useful to think logically the Euclidean way, it is also important to find clues and make hypothesis, that is how people discover things in the real world.
Without information about how this letter was prepared and signed among these people in detail, my hypothesis stands.
I think US gov has done quite well by cut air traffic with China after CCP announced that there is a plague going on around Jan 2x. But the problem is the plague has gone on at least 2 months in China until that time, so even North Korean which closed its border immediately after CCP announcement now has an outbreak. Before CCP made the announcement they suppressed info as much as possible and did nothing to control the spread. Until around the Jan 2x when it can not hide it anymore. Even after this, CCP still made WHO to lower the alert level of the world. Today's situation is the sole result of CCP's wrong doings and they should do a full accounting of it in the world court.
By two months I mean until the time the CCP made public announcement around Jan 2x, relative to the reported date of first patient 2019-12-01, which is supported by CCP's own media (for eg: http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2020/02/23/693805.html).
A little bit off topic:
for me, this first case looks very impossible to be the first one, and it further supports my theory that wuhan virus is a bio-weapon created by CCP and got leaked. That is why it is so hard to pinpoint the zero patient because CCP is hiding this info.
The Virologists that host the TWIV podcast cited some studies suggesting that the first cases were likely in October or November, which went undetected.
Officially, there's been no outbreak in North Korea.
Of course, there's no way to trust NK on this, but there's been no confirmation of cases in NK by another source (I'm discounting South Korean anti-NK propaganda as an unreliable source).
Exactly. I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.
I have warned many times that CCP is an evil regime and will cause big disaster for whole human society. Whoever in the free world still trying to make some profits collaborating with CCP, just remember: dance with the devil, just wait for the music to stop.
> I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries.
In authoritative countries the messenger of bad news tends to be 'disciplined', and so bad news is not delivered. It still exists, but no one wants to be the individual that creates the (negative) feedback loop that may be contrary to the diktat that came down from on high.
Of course hiding bad news happens in less authoritative countries as well (being the "tall poppy", Law of Jante, 「出る杭は打たれる」), but the consequences may be less severe.
There was all sorts of secrecy with SARS many years ago, and it seems that China has still not completely broken that 'habit':
I wonder if there isn’t a certain element of hindsight bias here. Now it’s clear that more action should’ve been taken earlier. But knowing the panic this has caused, not to mention the economic, global logistics and travel impacts I don’t know if it was such an obvious situation at the time. Especially when the vitality, severity and mechanism of transmission etc weren’t clear. CCP policy and behavioral patterns aside, I can see the local official in charge wanting to avoid being the guy that caused a bunch of public panic over nothing.
Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.
I can understand also the need to prevent public panic. But I can not understand the motivation of organizing big public activities when knowing a dangerous virus is in the ran. I am referring to the so called "40k family banquet" （https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI）. Permit me copy my other comment here to explain what it is:
I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called 40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv recordings.
At this point it’s undeniable that the government tried to keep things quiet in the beginning and that’s not a good thing. But slow reaction to new diseases isn’t uncommon. I recall when mad cow was going around a while ago the reaction in Canada was slow as well. The desire to down play things happen at multiple levels of an organization for all sorts of reasons.
I’m not dismissing the initial attempt at cover up here and the Chinese government should seriously examine their priorities. I just think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to link this event to causing a “big disaster for whole human society”.
Well, I wouldn't go it as far as saying "a big disaster", but I can say with confidence that a lot infections (and possibly deaths) could have been spared if the Party had chosen not to put its head in the sand.
I would just like to point out that this is exactly, almost word for word and certainly in spirit, how anti-Americanism is expressed e.g. in Europe (where I grew up, born 1982).
It's crossing a line where one's ethnocentrism paints the other not just as "different" but fundamentally "lesser": e.g. many Europeans consider the USA to be "ethically behind" comparably rich countries for its arguable lack of reverence for human life (comparative differences like death penalty, no generalized health care, weak labor and family protection, a certain love for the harshness of capitalism, scientifically flawed sex ed, etc). From this view to qualifying the "lesser" as "evil", there is but one step that some don't hesitate to cross.
It's always been somewhat painful to me, because knowing both sides of the pond, culturally, I just know that the grass isn't that much greener on either side; it's really a matter of perpective, and Europe also has ethically grey values (think history, think apathy).
So today, whenever I hear a blanket qualification of 1.5 billion people (or their regime), especially in absolute terms like "evil", I roll my eyes first, and then I'm afraid. Dehumanizing others, believing that they're lesser than us, is but the first step down a very dark path.
Don't forget that for all our cultural differences, you might be closer genetically to a Chinese person of the other gender than you are with your own neighbor who otherwise looks and thinks just like you.
The OP's criticism was directed at the CCP, not the nationals of the PRC. You can dislike a government without having a negative opinion of its people.
This is precisely one of the assumptions that I am, humbly, questioning. It's more complex than that. Are the French so unlike all their governments and regimes? Are Americans that much unlike their leaders and political system? Is any society, really, thus separable in parts, beyond the abstraction of analysis? And what happens to ideas formed abstractly, in a vacuum, as they land in reality?
I mean, you can make the factual, scientific category; you may reason about it and build models that work to some extent; but reality is never clear cut, it's always hyper-complex in comparison of any short statement (hence why it's hard to meaningfully discuss such concepts in less than articles, ideally books). That's one my take-aways from a few years of sociology. Some things you just can't condense, even if it makes for a witty and intuitive proposition. Rigid values, as opposed to starting from relativity, really is the enemy of the thinker in a complex/chaotic environment such as those attemptedly described by the social sciences.
Just my 2cts. Claiming that "politicians are A, but the people are B!" is already a dubious proposition that lacks substance beneath its romantic appeal; but generalized to a massively distributed yet pyramidal political system of 1.5 billion people, it's sociologically nonsensical.
The free world gave the criminal CCP regime a free pass after the 1989 massacre. The same criminal regime get stronger in the last 30 years and put on a capitalist shell on its bloody skin. But it never stopped its criminal practices but has been doing it more relentlessly just with more concealment. For about 20 years it made large scale human organ sells from people they kidnapped or arrested. It put up huge concentration camps in Xinjing to get rid of some minor race people in the number of millions. That is just a small sample of its crimes still actively happening. I am glad US starts to realize the CCP regime is not a country following normal human ethics.
Would you please stop using HN for nationalistic or political battle? You've been doing that repeatedly, and we ban such accounts. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I appreciate the reason for the rule, but in this case, I'm curious who this person was "battling?" Seems like it was a top-level post that didn't argue with the original headline or article, but provided additional context. And I found it helpful since I'd forgotten about the whole "execute prisoners for their organs" thing that was (is) going on in China and that seems relevant.
The article is about a massacre, lots of other threads debated the existence and scale of atrocities in the massacre, and this specific thread just seemed to mention similar atrocities?
Specifically, if they had removed the "evil" and "bloody" metaphor, and phrased it like "Considering the supply chain and trade interactions between the US and China, it's worth considering the significant differences in human rights. For instance, the black market organ schemes of the 1990s and the Uighur concentration camps where millions of ethnic minorities are currently interned." <-- That seems like the exact same content which is completely relevant to conversations here?
(I'm an American with no Chinese connections or vested interest in the conversation, but I'm just curious how it specifically crossed a line, especially given the recent HN conversations about political discussions. I know it's a fine line but for this particular topic, it sparked my interest.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.)
The whole comment was fiery rhetoric against a political enemy. All that people are doing in that genre is shooting flaming arrows at each other. The arrows are predefined talking points and the flames are aggressive language.
Here's something I've learned by studying HN voting data: people's reactions to such posts are determined entirely by which side of a topic they're on—nothing else. Such posts exist not because of curiosity where we might grow or learn, but purely for repetition in which an existing feeling gets confirmed. The feeling might be pleasure (finally someone telling the truth about this important matter!) or pain (yet another asshole propagating lies!) but it's the same mechanism either way, no doubt with some hard core biochemistry behind it. If we want to have a site where curiosity can flourish, which is the point of Hacker News, we have to moderate that in every way we can.
A government has no credit itself build up a credit system for its subjects. Before CCP grabs power in 1949, they promised a western democracy system. 30 years ago until 1 or two years ago they push for a one child policy and promised that the government will take care of old people. Both promises and many others not listed here they now just pretend never happens. This whole social credit system shit is just try to have a more strong control to the slaves who can not vote and take their organs etc easily when necessary.
