Then I explained Putin's ties to the European neo-Nazis and far-right, since you said you were not aware of it. — hairy belly

You don't seem to understand how argument works.

You assumed the argument as your premise--that neo-Nazi's would be a justification for war--and your rebuttal was that Putin also has ties to neo-Nazi's.

Putin's ties to neo-Nazi's would not make a sound argument about justification of fighting neo-Nazi's unsound, it would just make Putin a hypocrite. The argument would still be sound.

Arguing someone is a hypocrite is different than arguing any of their positions are unsound, invalid or false in themselves.

I can present only sound arguments, but be a hypocrite since I simply don't do what I argue; doesn't make my arguments unsound.

Putin's argument that neo-Nazi's are bad, and there's too many in Ukraine, could be sound, and his also supporting neo-Nazi's would then make him a hypocrite.

That's the state of that exchange between us. Now, if you want to backtrack and argue there aren't or then not enough neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, you may do so, but that's independent of Putin's ties to neo-Nazis. Or then, you can continue your own argument that assumed there was enough neo-Nazi's in Ukraine but just that Putin's a hypocrite for also supporting neo-Nazi's and so demonstrate that.

However, if you're backtracking, then Putin's ties to neo-Nazi's isn't really relevant, and if you aren't backtracking then feel free to demonstrate Putin's ties to neo-Nazi's and what relevance that has: for example, if we assume there's too many neo-Nazi's in Ukraine and therefore the Russian's invading is justified, it's this a larger harm to neo-Nazi's (doing more good than not) compared to whatever other links Putin has to neo-Nazi's (how does demolishing a neo-Nazi state help the neo-Nazi cause?).

So, that wasn't my question. Do YOU agree with Putin's use of force to takeover another country? — schopenhauer1

I don't really reason by taking an opinion first ... and then asking for more information. My initial comment was asking people who knew more about the subject.

As I say, I don't like neo-Nazi's. Now, if as @ssu says they're irrelevant, then for certain there's no justification for the war. However, it is a legitimate question how many neo-Nazi's a state can foster, integrate into institutions and have battalions, carry out language and cultural suppression (form of genocide) and not be morally responsible and invite entirely just war on itself.

I would very much like to see someone demonstrate the neo-Nazi's of Ukraine are as fringe as they are in the US (where, as I mention, I do not think Republican's generally speaking were and are "tainted" by fringe neo-Nazi's supporting Trump and that leftist propaganda was irresponsible; of course, doesn't mean there's not a lot of racism in the Republican base and neo-Nazi's are not also racists, nor plenty totally legitimate reasons to be against Trump and republicans).

That being said, I do not view the Kremlin as a "good" government.

For example, if some country randomly attacked China (totalitarian hellscape, as I call them), in the narrow "self defense" justification then China would be justified for fighting back. But in the larger context of China not being a just state then it's actions are not justified generally speaking. Of course, it gets complicated; for example, I think few would argue China detectives finding a serial killer is "unjust" just because China's state is unjust.

Now, it maybe said Ukraine hasn't attacked Russia ... but Russia would respond Ukraine has been attacking ethnic Russians in the East that have a right to separate after a coup of a democratically elected leader (which, true or false, neo-Nazi's take credit for staging a violent coup). Therefore, not only are there neo-Nazi's that the Ukrainian government are responsible for supporting and so invite invasion, but it is also self-defense of the ethnic Russian separatists.

Ukraine may respond to that the coup / revolution is non of Russia's business, and that Russia attacked first by taking Crimea and it is Ukraine that has a right to fight back in self defense.

These arguments can go on more or less forever.

However, my original comment was seeking insight into something else and far, far worse.

Which is Putin and the Kremlin actually want a total break with the West to recreate the Soviet style totalitarianism based on China's "perfecting" it using modern technology (IPR courtesy of the West of course).

In this case, of course, the moral arguments above are completely irrelevant.

Of course, the Western narrative would be immediate response "Yes! Yes! Putin's evil and wants to re-create Soviet totalitarianism". However, such a response contradicts the idea sanctions are "hurting" the Kremlin. You can't have it both ways of saying sanctions are disrupting Russia and undermining the Kremlin's grip on power and about to trigger an uprising in Russia as normal people get fed up who see zero reason for the war in Ukraine ... and, also, total break with the West is exactly what Putin and the Kremlin want in order to import the Chinese system of social control.

Of course, you can also have a situation where a state is pretty bad but attacked by something even worse, so, reluctantly, we are glad the first bad state succeeds. For example, we in the West are generally reluctantly grateful that Hitler didn't conquer the Soviet Union even if Stalin gave Hitler a run for his money in terms of evil dictatorship, the Nazi's seemed genuinely worse (hence alliance with the Soviet Union). Likewise, the pro-Assad argument (from a democracy is good point of view) rests on Islamic State being far worse than a run-of-the-mill dictatorship.

Certainly Putin and Kremlin would have preferred an easy victory and no sanctions (you don't "need" sanctions to transition away from Western integration, which Russia has been doing since 2014), but the narrative of "miscalculation" assumes Putin and Kremlin didn't have a plan B in place if massive sanctions were put in place and defeating Ukraine longer and more arduous.

This seems dangerous. So in this view, Canada should takeover the US because there are known neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists? Or the other way around if that was known? This is just slippery slope justification. — schopenhauer1

As I've said several times, if neo-Nazi's are fringe (as I would agree they are in the US) the argument doesn't follow. One would need some threshold of neo-Nazi "de facto power" for the argument to work. Unfortunately, neo-Nazi's in Ukraine simply do not seem like a fringe group, I much rather they were. Now, are they "enough" to for this argument to work; that would be a political theory (what would be "enough") and factual question (are there enough) that with all the propaganda is difficult to just randomly guess about.

Just the presence of neo-Nazis.. that is your basis for invading a country? Also, if there were neo-Nazis found in Russia should Ukraine or anyone else invade Russia? — schopenhauer1

I've explained many times, as above, there needs to be enough, some threshold of too many neo-Nazi's with too much influence, that it can be credibly argued not-invading them is appeasement.

Yes, stated reason...along with a rambling manifesto about how Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union and isn't stupid how that was lost when the USSR disbanded. — schopenhauer1

Yes, obviously discussing the stated reason for something is relevant. You can argue is purely propaganda if you want, but it's obviously relevant to the situation.

I just don't get your position here.. I guess my question to you is do you agree with Putin's use of force to takeover a country? — schopenhauer1

I'm presenting the counter argument to the Western media narrative, understand the counter-party perspective, which is the basis of negotiation; which I think is preferable to more bloodshed.

As I said, war seems entirely justifiable if the neo-Nazi element is above some critical threshold. It is definitely, from my point of view, uncomfortable amount of neo-Nazi elements to easily argue against his justification. So, that doesn't make me happy, nor the EU doing absolutely nothing about it.

Considering the West had 8 years to do something about neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, I think the burden of proof is on those Western actors to demonstrate how they are fringe or marginal in Ukraine's de facto governing processes.

For example, the neo-Nazi association with Trump I would agree is totally fringe thing and not a justification to assassinate Trump, and the whole "Trump is a neo-nazi or supporting neo-Nazi's" I viewed as irresponsible and propaganda (although, I certainly didn't nor do support Trump; just, Republican's aren't significantly composed of neo-Nazis).

However, there does legitimately seem a lot more in Ukraine.

And, therefore, not invading can be argued to be the appeasement.

Correct. And that's because the movement is anti-Russian. — Apollodorus

Indeed, and did Europe benefit from directly and indirectly supporting violent anti-Russian extremists?

Now, possible, war would have happened anyways, but with some actual track record of opposing these neo-Nazi's, this entire conversation wouldn't be happening and the EU could credibly say there are other policies available to reduce neo-Nazi influence and full scale invasion is unwarranted.

Right? But this is just reiterating m point. Losing a trade partner should not be a legitimate reason to then takeover that country. — schopenhauer1

I've never said it was ... nor is anyone. Putin's stated reason is "de-Nazification".

What I'm pointing out is that, in a political realist point of view, the EU removing itself as a good faith trading partner of Russia and instead just parroting US talking points that "Putin be bad boy", removes the downside to attacking Ukraine.

Resulting in only upsides and no downsides.

Any rational strategist will do a move that has minimal downsides and plenty of upsides without hesitation.

Western media is saying this is miscalculation because they don't like Putin "even more" now ... but were they doing him any favours before?

When that "securing" happens through annexations, you do understand that is really classical imperialism. — ssu

For sure. This is definitely classic imperialism.

And you do understand that the whole motivation for countries neighboring Russia to join NATO is the threat of this? — ssu

Totally understand it. The problem is if NATO doesn't let you in the club, maybe take that into consideration in dealing with your largest neighbor that can flatten your cities.

Yes, and people holding the view that the real culprit here is NATO hold dearly to what George Bush jr. proclaimed. Which was just one US President (that change every then and now) and which needs all the members to agree with the issue. — ssu

I'm not saying NATO is the real culprit, I explained at some length that I do not view criticism of authoritarianism as constructive. I'd much rather see Russia a vibrant democracy. However, criticism of Russia doesn't serve much of an analytical purpose.

Also, I actually appreciate Russia not nuking the planet ... so far. I honestly believe that's worth at least some good faith offers of economic collaboration in return and having a more nuanced public discourse than "Putin is basically the Satan" ... I think Satan would have nuked the planet.

At some point, political realism is required. If you're not going to let Ukraine into Nato, the actual credible diplomacy is a better course of action than just shit talking Putin.

And that actually would have been totally possible, if Russia wouldn't have had the imperial aspirations towards Ukraine. Far before all of this, Putin used to be the most popular politician in Ukraine. Not anymore. — ssu

It is possible that this was Russia's "plan all along", the problem is, without a credible negotiation process, you can't demonstrate that, as no reasonable offers and no reasonable response to legitimate grievances are ever made in which to prove the counter party's bad faith.

The offer: "Do not insist Ukraine doesn't join NATO ... which we are not going to let Ukraine join by the way, but we'll leave them hanging high and dry if you invade" is not credible diplomacy.

And how much Putin thought of the Budapest memorandum or international law in 2014? I think you can put Russia in the same category. — ssu

They obviously have arguments about that. Things change, if you can argue the other side broke the agreement (didn't deliver the product) then you can justify not following the agreement too (not paying for what wasn't delivered); of course, one's arguments need to be credible.

The "good faith / bad faith" game is one of proving one is more good faith than the other, as no one's perfect.

If there was some new agreement, clear commitment by Russia to not invade in exchange for Ukraine committing not to join Nato and remaining neutral, and then Russia invades anyways without any further changes in the status quo, that's then clear bad faith.

NATO promised not to move east, which Russia tolerated right up to it's border (on small areas), a good faith move to tolerate that and not just invade everyone; from Russia's point of view, that good faith must be answered with good faith (such as committing not to expand all the way to large borders ... and also be one shell away on thousands of KM of border, from nuclear escalation). That's how negotiation works.

I'm not saying it's a cause for military action, I'm saying the EU refusing good faith collaboration with Russia lowers the downsides of military action.

The basic logic is: Well, if EU isn't offering us anything, and forcing us to reorient our entire economy both inwards (to be immune to sanctions threats) and towards China (to be immune to sanctions threats) and offload our USD and build up gold reserves ... may as well take Ukraine.

Now, if it was "the plan all along", then the "sanction proofing" of Russia would have happened before, and not after, sanctions were first imposed.

If there were no sanctions, Russia would not have sanctioned proof (no way to justify it to their population they can't use Western brands) and therefore the cost of the Ukrainian war would have been significantly higher (cause real economic dislocations, instead of manageable nuisance ).

Of course, there's still an impact, and could tip the Russian population over the edge, just not as much as in 2014 when Russia had far greater economic dependencies ... maybe because it wasn't in some insane scheme to basically cut all ties with Europe and invade Ukraine before 2014 for zero justifiable reason.

The whole process just underlines the opinion of nearly every expert on the issue that sanctions do not work as a deterrent and decrease rather than increase chances for peace.

A continued role for NATO benefitting the US' influence in it as the most powerful military country. It's ability to project that power across the world through local bases. An increase in countries wanting to join NATO. — Benkei

Obviously countries want to join NATO, and NATO could have let Ukraine in if it wanted to.

However, for nations already in NATO (basically all of Europe) there's not necessarily any benefit to letting new countries in (it would have been great for Ukraine, no questions about that ... but could also trigger world war III and nuclear exchange, which isn't necessarily a good risk to take for the sake of Ukrainians ... and NATO has chosen not to; big surprise).

And, of course, NATO countries can say all they want that other nations have "a right" to join ... but if the offer's not actually on the table, that sort of talk doesn't actually get you any NATO protections.

It's like me telling you again and again you have "a right" to work at this company ... but, also, I'm not offering you a job ... but you definitely have a right to the job, if it was offered, but it isn't so ... basically NATO discourse on Ukraine.

The cost? Mostly a loss of soft power (weakened trust in Western countries), which weakens European countries more than it does the US. Again a relative gain for the US, although they never cared much about soft power to begin with. — Benkei

It's a huge relative gain for the US by reducing the relevance of soft power generally speaking.

It's Europe that has a legitimate moral basis, and the largest economy, to lead the world with soft power.

US doesn't want to see that happening, but wants leadership of the West to be hard power centered (aka. new cold war) ... which, seems, now it is.

In one media cycle the disasters of Iraq and abandoning allies in Afghanistan are totally forgotten, all Western nations must kiss the ring of the top "don" of NATO and build a new Iron curtain with the "evil" red army.

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement, but please point out any nuances or differences.

Putin says these things. Those are the reasons given to this war. That is the Stalinist narrative. What do you think the de-nazification of Ukraine is about? — ssu

Yes, exactly, seen as their the stated reasons for the war, it's relevant to discuss certainly in the context that that's what Putin says is the justification.

I totally agree that Putin and Russia will exaggerate whatever neo-Nazi presence is in Ukraine. We're not in disagreement that, whatever the truth, it's also propaganda.

However, it seems to me undeniable that there are neo-Nazi organizations in Ukraine / "ultra nationalists" that seems to, at least, sympathize with them.

It's also undeniable that the EU has put zero pressure on Ukraine, even symbolically, to curb this movement.

The main point is that this is a ridiculous war. It genuinely doesn't have credible argumentation. The Putin that annexed Crimea was totally different: thought about actual Russians and Russian speaking minorities, gained total strategic surprise and used well all his information warfare abilities. This is the propaganda of Stalin. — ssu

The long term strategic objectives: to secure Crimea with a land bridge, take land east of the Dnieper river (at least enough to easily attack any buildup on the near side), destroy the existing Ukraine military capability, secure a treaty guarantee of not joining Nato in a negotiated peace (and, anyways, after such a mess I don't think Nato will be considering that anyways), and, yeah, sure, why not take those gas deposits on the coast, are all perfectly rational strategic objectives that Russia is likely to achieve.

The downside of the war is cutting collaboration with the EU (Russia's largest trading partner), but since EU will continue to by Russia gas anyways ... the "big loss" of cutting economic ties has not and is unlikely to happen.

No EU "credible negotiation" would have done anything. If one thinks so, one is just fooling oneself and basically going and trusting a liar, who said that Russia wouldn't attack. I guess this and the idea that "all this wouldn't have happened if no NATO enlargement" are just those arguments for those who only see to criticize the West as something valid (as they don't care so much about Putin or Russia). — ssu

You misunderstand what a credible negotiation is. I do not mean that a credible negotiation would have for sure avoided the war nor is a credible negotiation just giving the counter party everything they want.

However, in a credible negotiation, if it fails, and you want to accuse the other side of bad faith and refusing all reasonable offers ... well you need to be able to produce a paper that represents your reasonable offer the counter party refused. If you can't, it's just speculation.

Likewise, in almost any negotiation (in particular between organizations) there are lot's of issues, and each side always has legitimate grievances. The "Azov" brigade that even Western governments admit is a neo-Nazi-ish and naming things after Nazi collaborator war heroes and carrying out suppression of the Russian language and, yes, Russia's own security concerns that ... if not assuaged ... they'll invade Ukraine and lots of blood will be spilled ... as they have just done, are all legitimate grievances.

Now, obviously there's also legitimate grievances on Ukraine side and EU side etc.

A credible negotiation tries to parse all those grievances as well as add positive reasons for a resolution.

EU has more-or-less just ignored the issue, repeats "Putin is bad", paid lip service to "Ukrainian sovereignty".

That's not a credible negotiation process.

Now, if there was some indication of making credible offers and responding to credible grievances (such, yes, indeed, these neo-Nazi elements we don't like either, and their having their own paramilitary organizations we don't see as a good thing either, and, because we're also against it, we'll put some pressure on Ukraine and at least denounce it; that we support Ukraine independence ... but not neo-Nazi, however many they be) ... and Russia still invaded.

Ok, yes, was the plan all along and diplomacy was bad faith on the Russian's part.

However, without a credible good faith process on the EU side, it's simply not possible to then just accuse the other party of bad faith.

It's also completely stupid if Russia just invades anyways and the EU does nothing meaningful about that (send troops for instance, which would not trigger article 5 insofar as the fighting is over Ukraine and not attacking a NATO nation per se--of course, no nation in Europe wants to).

True, Ukraine has a "right" to join NATO and sign the treatise it wants ... problem is NATO wasn't actually making an invitation with anything on the table to sign.

Ukraine also has a "right" to sign a treaty with Russia (committing to not join NATO for example), it can do so now, and it could have done so years ago too.

Now, if Ukraine signed and Russia still invaded; ok, same exact result, nothing was "lost" because Ukraine couldn't have joined NATO anyways (... otherwise it would be in NATO now), but then the sell to the Russian people and how non-Western Nations view it would be very different. Only the US can just go around ripping up treatise; other Nations would think twice before reneging on a treaty it just signed without any rational whatsoever. It makes it difficult to make agreements with anyone in the future.

LMAO. — hairy belly

Great argument, I'm impressed. Someone arguing their point on a philosophy forum, engaging with rebuttals and other points of view ... is somehow unusual.

The whole point of an open forum like this is that people can't be shut down for arguing their point of view in good faith.

If I was just repeating the same thing, not responding to new points (which, in philosophy, are sometimes subtle and nuanced), ask the mods to ban me.

Dude, to whom are you replying? — hairy belly

I literally quote the people I'm replying to.

However, as mentioned, I'm presenting the opposing view to that of the Western media. If Russia is exaggerating the neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine (which I would definitely agree, whatever the threat is, Russia is exaggerating it) the Western media has been doing their own exaggerations: military failure (not credible to say when strategic goals are already achieved), Russian opposition to the war (certainly some but there's no reports of large scale revolution at the moment), and Russian economy will free fall into some sort of failed state (... yes ... but only before, and not after, transferring all Western IP to China and South-East-Asia more generally; economic sanctions do not matter if you can just get vital equipment elsewhere easily ... which you obviously can from China ... that's what the West does too; the real economic value the West provides at this point is basically brands, but nobody stops doing business simply because they need to switch brands).

Oh, and the most ludicrous, that "declaring" renewables are now a priority is sticking it to the Russians somehow. "In 50 to 100 years will be independent on Russian natural resources. Haha! take that Russia!". I work in the renewable energy sector ... and this idea is so insanely idiotic, it severely discredits every politician that repeats it.

Definitely we should have started to transition to renewable 50 years ago, not only stop subsidizing but forcing the internalization of true costs of fossil, and, so, be largely independent of Russian fossil fuels by now. I could go on how hypocritical it is too: saving the planet means absolutely nothing in making renewable a real priority ... but "Putin bad, boohoohoo" and suddenly everyone's on the renewable bandwagon ... which, again, is just empty talk, policies will barely change once the blood we see today just dilutes into the 24hr news cycle of the usual carnage.

↪boethius What, specifically, is Russia afraid of wrt to neo-nazi's? — RogueAI

Mostly we've been talking in the context of Putin's stated justification for the war; Putin literally calls it a "de-nazification" operation.

I certainly agree with @ssu that it's "mostly" propaganda; and, propaganda can be true; just because someone has a bias and purpose for spreading information, doesn't mean it's not true.

The best propaganda is usually based on true elements that form the basis of valid arguments and, with time, impossible to say really.

Unlike, for example, Iraq having WMD's which was proven to be false; obviously, that propaganda would have worked a lot better if they even found some WMD's, people would be pointing to a single vial of something with zero real strategic relevance to do this day ... if they had found it. And, for example, the deaths of the fire bombing of Dresden were certainly exaggerated by Goebbels, but the fire bombing did happen.

So, for the current propaganda game, it is pretty important for most wars for the enemy to be an ideological enemy. The US has no problems slaughtering Arabs in the middle East because they are ideological enemies. Without understanding the neo-Nazi justification, the war in Ukraine seems incomprehensible because, otherwise, Ukrainian's are not ideological enemies of Russia, they are fellow white people (hence the horror in Western media and "serious response" from Western nations and institutions; obviously if Russia went and slaughtered Muslims, even white Muslims, there wouldn't be "sanctions" about that).

However, there is also a longer strategic view. There is certainly a neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine which is certainly growing. How big it is now and how big it would grow to if left unchecked by both the EU and Russia is difficult to say.

However, it clearly represents a real risk. Russia certainly doesn't want a neo-Nazi state on it's doorstep for the indefinite future, could cause all sorts of problems. The time to invade was more-or-less becoming "now or never" with the modernization of Ukraine's military, so, to mitigate the risk of a neo-Nazi state in Ukraine (and, the current President being Jewish doesn't somehow mean every future administration will have a Jewish leader; things change), invading now may seem not only a good option due to the real perceived threat of neo-Nazi's festering on the board but also that it's an easy sell to the population by simply amplifying what's there already.

People should also keep in mind that the Kremlin is a pretty old institutions, and old institutions tend to have long memories and long foresight.

The geo-political framework is undergoing rapid change, who knows what the future holds, but what is clear is that, even at relatively high cost, Russia can take large parts of Ukraine now that are of long term strategic benefit: connecting Crimea and pushing the border right to the Dnieper river (or at least close enough that there's no room to make defensive infrastructure on the near side), the West insists on providing zero value to Russia (just grandstanding and sanctions and no meaningful collaboration), therefore, taking the East of Ukraine has only long term strategic benefits and no long term strategic costs (if the EU has given up on any meaningful collaboration, which it clearly has).

To talk about drug addict neo-nazi's ruling Ukraine is utter nonsense and just Stalinist propaganda rhetoric. It's the level Putin has fallen to. — ssu

Drug addicts? Ruling Ukraine? I don't say these things.

And, if I was just hearing about this now, I'd be very skeptical and presume it is just fabricated propaganda. However, I've been hearing and reading about it since 2014. Also, the Russian language and suppression policies I also read about before (from non-Russian sources), doesn't seem invented now for the purposes of propaganda.

Now, obviously it's also propaganda. It's just way easier to make propaganda based on real elements that support a valid argument.

Now, whatever the "true" level of neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, there's obviously the perception of it as a relevant factor; for instance, explaining the lack of full scale rebellion, perhaps even majority support, in Russia.

And, since, whatever the reality, this perception of there being a credible neo-Nazi force in Ukraine since 2014 should, if we're doing credible diplomacy, be met with the credible response from the West and the EU of such neo-Nazi's. Obviously, just because the West ignores it doesn't mean Russia media ignores it, and, without a response to the perception (which could be proving there are only 10 of these neo-Nazi's doing drugs in an alleyway) it is again an excellent fuel for propaganda to point out the West has no response, tolerates them (which, Germany being the largest EU nation, isn't a good look), are hypocrites etc.

I do negotiation for a living. To run even a small corporation requires negotiating with people I disagree with, people I don't like, people wanting from me what I don't think is fair but they have the leverage to get it.

It's really difficult for me to imagine that the entire EU really couldn't have prevented this war with credible negotiation.

The only reason it appears sound is because there is a hidden premise: "If Putin himself has no ties to such groups". — hairy belly

I say say assuming the premises are true it's a sound argument, I then go into some discussion about the premises.

It's entirely possible the argument is sound; but, my point is more of perception of it's soundness in Russia.

However, you're counter criticism was that, even assuming the premises are true, that the argument doesn't hold because Putin has himself ties to neo-Nazi's.

Your argument assumed the premise, and I was nearly pointing out it's therefore a sound argument (you weren't, in that rebuttal, arguing against the premises or the logic just making a parallel argument)--so, argument is sound in itself according to your own rebuttal, but only hypocritical of Putin to use if he has neo-Nazi ties according to your argument.

Now, whether there's some "absolute neo-Nazi value" we can determine as well as some "neo-Nazi threshold that justifies invasion" would be one political and moral argument to have.

However, what I'm focusing on is more Russia's argument (this is literally the argument Putin uses, "de-nazification" he calls it) as well as, I think pretty clear, the West didn't do anything about neo-Nazi's in Ukraine nor chastise Ukraine in anyway for carrying out language suppression campaigns of the Russian language.

The war consolidates Putin's power, is amazing for China, and achieves US objectives of preventing a real "World Leader" competitor, which both China and Russia could never be, but Europe would have already displaced US as a global leader with A. peace with Russia and the enormous benefits of it's mineral riches and B. some fucking balls in positions of influence rather than "leaders" that both make sure they appear, as well as seem to feel in their heart of hears, that they must be USA bitches.

This Ukraine war is a disaster for Europe, easily prevented, and a few speeches doesn't rectify anything. Washington, Moscow and Beijing are all getting what they want. Indeed, China and USA far more than Russia, but at least Russia's getting something.

Europe gains nothing, loses a lot, and it's failure to do anything meaningful to have peace, is because European elites do not care much about European interest, neither Ukrainians nor their own populations; they care about US interests, for reason I honestly don't get (I talked years ago with bureaucrats in Brussels about there being no purpose or benefit to antagonizing Russia for no discernible reason; they honestly didn't get my point of view, would just repeat USA talking points about the issue).

When I pushed for some sort of justification, "like why? why though?" they would just get angry with me.

And the "appeasement" argument doesn't work as there's already NATO ... which, ok, sure let Ukraine in by surprise over a weekend ... and see how that goes, but if, by your own admission, no one's letting Ukraine into NATO, why a pointless war of words and sanctions that simply push Russia towards China rather than stick to the European policy of economic ties with democracies a good way to spread to democracies. There was zero logic nor even any understanding of the political situation with Europe's largest neighbor ... supplying 40% of it's natural gas.

As far as I could tell, Brussels bureaucrats just like sucking American dick. Offensive, maybe, but I find pointless bloodshed and cities leveled to the ground more offensive ... don't like that ... well either do diplomacy or go send troops there to defend against said shelling you say you don't like. Honestly, arguing with a mix-tape of stupid would have been a more interesting conversation.

Argument has basically been: if we appease Russia by doing diplomacy in some credible way, they may invade Ukraine ... but stop there because everyone else is in Nato. However, if we don't appease Russia they will for sure probably invade Ukraine as we're for sure as hell not letting Ukraine in our little Nato club, as that would be provoking Russia too much. Therefore, we are fucking morons.

Credible diplomacy not only may have worked, but also increases the costs significantly for Russia if there were credible offers turned down, credible denunciation of neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, EU stopping Ukraine's language suppression programs etc. common sense things, all increase the likelihood of peace directly but also decrease the cost-benefit of war as it's a harder sell to your own population.

Instead, USA is basically "Hey, Germany, go make sure neo-Nazi's are seen to be of credible importance in Ukraine with the implicit backing of the EU, and also make sure they can do whatever language and cultural suppression of Russian speakers there that said neo-Nazi's dream of: make sure Russia sees you do it Germany, I'm counting on you."

I was merely pointing out that it wouldn't follow logically because Putin himself has such ties. — hairy belly

It doesn't make the argument in itself unsound, would just make Putin a hypocrite.

Also, all these arguments I've presented are "for the sake of argument", presenting the counter-arguments to the Western media (at least in the first week of the war, almost declaring "victory" ... seems starting to balancing out now somewhat).

This is definitely a risky move by the Kremlin, so could indeed fail; but with at least some strategic gains in Ukraine (that Russia has already solidified) I wouldn't say there's actual chance now for military failure (Kremlin can stop anytime and just consolidate the land grabs they've made so far, say "enough war" we have achieved our security objectives and to demonstrate our "peaceful intentions" are ending the war here, and declare victory).

The large size of Ukraine makes total occupation difficult / impossible, but, the large size of Ukraine makes a lot of land grabbing easy. For the same reason Russia can't easily occupy all of Ukraine, Ukraine cannot easily defend all of Ukraine.

Definitely full scale rebellion in Russia would be a failure or then failing to re-orient their economy towards China integration. I'm definitely not saying these aren't risky things, just presenting the arguments and, indeed, potential facts in which success is possible.

In particular, the Western media is basically just in a circle of saying Putin is failing because the Western media doesn't like Putin like "a lot" now ... but that was already the case from Putin's perspective.

Putin's not some youtube influencer living in fear of being cancelled by Western media corporations.

However, it's not clear to me Putin has neo-Nazi far right ties. There are lot's of flavors of authoritarianism (which Putin definitely has lot's of ties) but neo-Nazi are definitely fringe on the world stage as a whole; indeed, seems to me Ukraine has the biggest such movement (precisely due to conflict with Russia, the old Nazi propaganda and "opposition to communism" can find sympathetic ears as well as "enemy of my enemy is my friend" tolerance from others).

It logically follows only if you ignore Putin's ties to the European far-right (neo-Nazis included). — hairy belly

I'm not defending Putin here. As I say in my original post, seems to me this war in Ukraine (whether the original intention or not) will consolidate a Russia-China totalitarianism axis (if you want to call it an "axis of evil", no complaints here), and Russia has and will continue to import China's totalitarian technology and, together, they will export that to other nations.

I always, however, focus my criticism on people who, at least nominally, have the same objective as me (real freedom for people, whatever our differences in vaguely imagining it), as that criticism is constructive. The 1984 totalitarian hellscape of the PRC needs only be noted ... there's no real point in arguing with the PRC about it and ... as far as I can tell, they don't participate in our little conversations here.

It could be that Russia had decided it would invade all of Ukraine already in 2014 and all diplomacy was genuinely meaningless. Nevertheless, doing nothing meaningful (even symbolically) about neo-Nazi's in Ukraine is a powerful weapon in Putin's hand. Likewise, diplomacy during and since 2014 seems as bad-faith on the Western side as for Russia.

Russia's demands were also not really unreasonable: agree to not join Nato or we invade. Ukraine: Fuck you, we'll join Nato if we want! Nato: awesome bros, we're such good friends, hugs!!

Then Russia invades as they said they would ... I don't see Ukraine with any meaningful friends.

Now, you can say if Ukraine signed such a deal, Russia would invade anyways ... but the result is the same. Strategically, taking the deal is a no brainer if you are a Ukrainian and want the best chances for peace (US doesn't actually want peace between Russia and EU; it's a fundamental strategic objective, US "policy makers" are happy to talk about).

? — ssu

I already responded above, but if you believe there's enough neo-Nazi's, definitely that justifies invading Ukraine if fighting the first Nazi's was justifiable. I don't see any problem with that logic.

Of course, people against the invasion will argue the neo-Nazi element is fringe and irrelevant, and the pro-invasion (i.e. Kremlin and supporters) will argue it's above whatever threshold is needed to justify the invasion.

And, I'm not being facetious here; this is literally the argument Putin makes, and, regardless of "fact", the perception that it's true (which I honestly don't know what the average Russian thinks) has an impact on events.

Notice that not only Crimea was different, but that the whole situation was now different than in 2014. Let's remember that Kharkiv was a mainly Russian speaking city. Ukraine didn't collapse as Putin had estimated. — ssu

Oh, I definitely agree it's totally different.

Why my first comment was in the form of a question of people who know more about Russian sentiment. Definitely military moral could collapse and Russian people "take to the streets"--it's certainly a possibility--but the Western media seems, at least, exaggerating the odds.

The nation building part has gone splendidly! Ukrainians have never been so united in defending their country against an hostile invader. — ssu

Yes, for Ukrainian speakers, definitely, but I doubt it was ever Russia's plan to occupy the entire Ukraine, but just A. punish Ukraine for unfriending them (an important message to other client states of Russia) and B. take all pro-Russia territories that won't have an insurgency and C. increase energy prices and D. cause lot's of real problems for the EU.

Really, not "rebelling" in any meaningful sense? Oh, only thousands have been detained and tough sanctions have been set against demonstrations, but that isn't meaningful? It has been so meaningful that tough new laws proposals are made and rumors go around of martial laws. — ssu

I mean on the scale of a true rebellion to topple the government. There are definitely protests, which I would definitely agree could spark a meaningful rebellion (hence the arrests).

If you want say these protesters are meaningful rebels I would agree, but, at the moment at least, I do not see the Kremlin at risk of a large enough rebellion to stop their war plans or threaten their grip on power.

Fighting neo-nazis...

Starting with the Jewish President who is a native Russian speaker and his party that has majority of the seats in the Rada, which has an ideology "denying political extremes and radicalism, but being for creative centrism". — ssu

As I say, the argument entirely depends on how much credibility you lend these neo-Nazi's. That it's the basis of a sound argument goes a long way to explain Russian's more-or-less accepting the war, for now. It's certainly relevant in the propaganda and, I would say, based on uncomfortable amount of real evidence.

Does it "actually" justify the invasion because there's "enough neo-Nazi's" and, even if there was, Ukraine would be a significant enough threat like the original Nazi's, would be a different question and I would definitely agree it's a stretch, but a "stretch" is a far better propaganda tool than something totally fabricated (like WMD's in Iraq for example or Afghanistan had something to do directly with 911).

Is there a popular nazi-esque leader that could plausibly become dictator? And do the neo-nazi's in Ukraine have significant political power? For example, how many parliament seats do Ukranian neo-nazi's have? — RogueAI

That's why I say it depends on how much influence you believe they have ... obviously, Russians are going to be skeptical of the argument that "a popular Nazi leader hasn't risen ... yet".

Of course, the propaganda goes in all sorts of directions, so "how many seats" they have in parliament or other positions of power etc. is difficult say; however, what I think is credible is that it's not a fringe movement, used merely as pretext; they are definitely there and have real power (just how much can be debated).

What is also I think difficult to contest, is that the neo-Nazi element is far greater in Ukraine than it ever was supporting Trump (where, I would say neo-Nazi's are truly a fringe movement in the US) ... yet, the mere association of neo-Nazi (fringe, but real) in the US with Trump was the justification to say Trump was a new potential Hitler.

Now, I didn't and don't like Trump, and (if he could) I'm sure he would have and would now declared himself Emperor of the Universe, but I think it was simply far fetched to say his movement was literally neo-Nazi based.

What I can say for myself, is I don't like people having it both ways: if you argued neo-Nazi supporting Trump is a reason to fear Trump (or the Trump movement) would rise as a new Hitler (an argument people certainly made) then ... it does seem to me to logically follow that Putin's rational for invading Ukraine (with neo-Nazi in far greater relative power compared to the Trump administration) entirely justifiable. "Not invading Ukraine" would be the Nazi appeasement from this point of view.

Of course, Ukraine is not 1930's Germany with a potential to invade all of Europe, but, in terms of how things play at home for the Kremlin if they A. achieve strategic aims and B. perceived to defeat Nazi's, then it's likely to sit well with a lot of Russians and the short term economic disruptions livable.

The Wests coddling those neo-Nazi's like some sort of freedom fighters, definitely doesn't help the West's cause of inflicting any real annoyance to the Kremlin.

The sanctions, the bad press, the UN declarations, the "courageous speeches" would be, in a real and/or perceived victory by Russia and reorientation of their economy, but empty words echoing to no where.

It is of course early days ... but strategic goals being met (such as land bridge from Crimea to Russia) don't actually embarrass Russia in any meaningful way. Nitpicking about a few extra losses may not matter.

Of course, the whole thing is a massive risk. If the Russian people did "rise up" due the hardships of war and sanctions then it would be a true disaster for the Kremlin. My describing the neo-Nazi situation is to explain why that has not and may not happen. Basic point being, Western talking heads wagging their finger at Putin is hardly a "strategic loss", and that's all I can see at the moment.

Indeed. Why should Eritrea support a world that threw millions of vaccines away that instead could have saved a lot of lives? Economy and capital ruling again. — EugeneW

Yes, Westerners often forget that no one much else sees any "prosperity" and, therefore, do not feel they owe anything to the Western system.

... indeed, a lot of Westerners themselves don't see much of that freedom prosperity (inside where they actually live). Western media will put up a handful of "middle class" having fun in some caricature mall in a sea of poverty and call it capitalism "winning".

Thanks for the detailed reply; as I state in my post, I myself am wondering about the thinking of the Kremlin, but I think it's fruitful I present the counter arguments to your rebuttal.

He probably knew that there would be sanctions, but the sanctions have really been harder than anything seen in history. I don't think he anticipated the level they're at. — Christoffer

Preparing in advance for "total sanctions" is not necessarily a sign they are unexpected. They are also not yet total; only some banks are shutoff from SWIFT and Western corporation "abandoning" Russia ... only matters if there's no replacement in Russia or China.

Putin's power relies on him looking strong. Everything from threats to the recent breaking of Sweden's borders with fighter jets is his jabs to show strength. It's also, in my opinion, a sign of desperation. He doesn't have control over the situation, especially when it starts to affect his war chest. — Christoffer

The Russian army is shelling cities to the ground and already achieved a key strategic goal of linking Crimera to Russian territory. Russia may pay a price for these land grabs, but all military analyst agree whatever Russia takes it will keep. There was no insurgency in Crimea, citizens were in the least ambivalent about Russian control; hence, Russia simply keeping such territory and leaving insurgent territory and so having conventional fronts is a perfectly acceptable endgame. The parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan don't really make any sense as Russia isn't trying to "nation build" in an entirely different and hostile culture.

But China isn't as clear-cut as it seems. They try to play both sides and if Russia's economy tanks the trade agreements might mean little to them. Even China works hard for renewable changes and gas and oil might not be needed in the long run. We don't really know how long the sanctions will be in play, it could end tomorrow if Putin withdraw his troops, or more likely, it will drag on for long. China's actions in the UN shows that they're not fully on board with Russia, regardless of how they've communicated towards them. — Christoffer

China will not stop buying Russian minerals and energy, and won't stop selling to Russia whatever it has to sell. Transitioning to renewables in any credible way is a half century project ... to just get started. This war in Ukraine will be a long forgotten episode in the densest fog of the 24 news cycle, and Russia will be still selling gas and oil and minerals. True, EU pays a "higher price" but if global instability increases price generally, it's still a higher price to sell at a 20% discount something that is now twice as costly.

Again, words are cheap and what China says matters little; if they aren't going to put sanctions on Russia (which they won't) then what they say or vote or virtue signal in the media or the UN, is of no meaning whatsover.

So I think the west is ripping the band-aid right now, aiming for other solutions to things like climate change or global trade. Russia could very well become a third world country because of Putin, but he doesn't care since he's too occupied with his "New World Order" empire fantasies. When all of this is over, he might have his new borders drawn, but the cost will be so high that it could force upon him a new Russian revolution, destroying everything he thought he had. — Christoffer

If you project energy needs out a few decades (which certainly Russia pays close attention to), there is declining conventional oil reserves that are difficult to replace (they exist, but are dirty, expensive and cannot necessarily be scaled to replace depletion elsewhere). The famous "peak oil" is very real and is happening in terms of what are called conventional fossil fuels.

It maybe Russia's analysis (which is not at all fringe) that their resources are not replaceable in any practical sense, renewable capacity cannot be scaled at a rate to effectively displace depleting fossil reserves. Unlike the 80s and precursor to the fall of the Soviet Union, low oil prices are history and, by extension, any fundamental risk to the Russian economy. In short, there will always be buyers for what Russia is selling.

If he thinks cutting the west off from trade is good, he is truly delusional. And cutting off trade is the only way to ensure being separated from the west. — Christoffer

The West has transferred basically all it's IPR to totalitarian China in exchange for slave labour.

The one critical thing China doesn't have, advanced semi conductor industry, it is still all based in South-East Asia that China has significant clout in; no semi conductor producing South East Asian country, including Taiwan, is going to burn political capital to try to stop China reselling chips to Russia.

Western sanctions are only effective if A. you have nothing of critical value to sell to a third party that doesn't care much about the sanction and ... well basically that's it. North Korea doesn't have anything of critical value to sell the Chinese and the Chinese don't care to subsidize them, so the economy completely collapses (trade is definitely necessary; but if Sanctions don't de facto cut trade with the global integrated economy, they are of no long term significance; certainly disruptive in the short term, but Russians have always highly prized the long term advantages of territory).

Also, in terms of economy, there is also today a structural difference, in that the rapid expansion phase of capitalism is approaching limits. This would be a topic for another day, but without real growth the "dynamism" of capitalism does not necessarily out perform command economies. Capitalism is the process of new institutions out performing old ones based on fundamentally new innovations of some sort; if room for innovation slows then there is little need to displace old institutions through chaotic "market forces" and you can just keep the same one's as nominal or de facto government bureaucracies. Feudalism was incredibly stable because there was little room for innovation, and, make a long story short, the energy cost of displacing existing institutions had no upshot: so they just all stuck around (church, guilds, aristocracy, family farms etc.).

That's what I think. I think Kremlin didn't expect sanctions to be this severe and I don't view Putin as aspiring to anything else than his own empire fantasies. He has big ideas for the future of Russia, but he thinks in old terms, he believes the world moves as it did 30 years ago, he thinks the old way of invading and controlling through propaganda works, but it's much harder to do that today. — Christoffer

It's possible, but if cutting ties with the West is an "acceptable outcome", the severe sanctions is actually doing Putin a favour: banishing Western companies and Western influence from Russia in a weekend.

Russia's economy is based on resources: energy, food and minerals. There is no non-Western country that would refuse the buy cheaper from Russia, much less go without the resource, for the sake of some happy sounding Western words ... which many of the authoritarian leaning / transitioning states (Brasil, India, Turkey) don't like to hear anyways (at least their governments).

Indeed ... EU is still buying gas from Russia as it "supplies words and arms" to Ukraine.

Information flows much easier and more independent while geopolitics rely more heavily on vital global trade and corporate investments than actual authoritarian leadership. We can criticize that in itself, but that's the zeitgeist we live in. If he thinks he could "Hitler" himself into power as in the 20th century he will be deadly mistaken. — Christoffer

Putin is no Hitler with ambitions to take over all of Europe. Ironically, Putin's justification (why the Russian people aren't "rebelling" in any meaningful sense) is fighting neo-Nazi's in Ukraine, which are definitely there and have been coddled and apologized for by Western powers for some reason and largely ignored by the Western press. However, the Russian press doesn't ignore Ukrainian's waving Swastika's and parallel symbols and praising Nazi "war heroes".

Indeed, depending on how strong you believe these neo-Nazi elements are, it can be argued the Russian invasion is entirely justifiable if fighting the Nazi's the first time ever was.

And again, Russia has already achieved key strategic objectives and can declare a magnanimous new peace now at anytime and declare victory.

I would guess the plan is that there is not much fighting in the East, as that's where they plan to Annex, so they will cut through Ukrainian speaking territories North to South, and call it a day. As they do not need to fight in any urban combat, except a few key way points and ports, once they create a North-South front they can simply annex everything to the East of that.

(They've sent a 40 km armor column to simply surround Kiev, creating the required pressure on leadership to sign the deal they want, who will say they Ukrainians fought with honour, blah blah blah, but the bloodshed must end and the page must be turned ... sad, sad, sad ... end of speech)

Putin owns him now. — SophistiCat

Indeed, we are seeing the consolidation of authoritarianism and the retreat and retrenchment of "Western values" ... not some sort of pyrrhic victory for those values.

For example, what did the West do for the rest of the world, in particularly economically, during the pandemic? Basically nada, and it's a fools errand to expect loyalty and honour in return for none.

Since there are people on the forum who know more about and, I believe, even live in Russia, I am curious what people think of the extent all the economic sanctions by the West were an acceptable consequence to the Kremlin? As Putin himself said "all outcomes are acceptable"?

Western media takes it as a foregone conclusion that this was a "miscalculation" by Putin ... because it's played so poorly in the Western press and Western nations have flocked to offer moral support and a bit of hardware and economic sanctions.

However, the Kremlin has been preparing itself for this exact threat by the West since 2014, building redundancies for all critical systems and scaling up economic ties with China.

Of course, Oligarchs are punished via their Western assets ... but the Kremlin may not actually care about that, indeed, presumably most oligarchs are also competitors in some way and reducing elite power is never "so bad" from the top's perspective (the Roman Emperor was a stable position as it controlled something like half the Empires GDP ... in the stratosphere of wealth compared to other elites, likewise emperor of China and other stable authoritarian systems have a big gap between the two top rungs of the ladder).

Oligarchs were necessary insofar as there was economic ties with the West, just as China required fostering their own oligarchs to interface with the West to expand economically based on Western intellectual property (an oligarch is a friendly and understandable face for Western investors and CEO's). However, structurally speaking, oligarchs are not necessary if you want independence from Western capitalism.

Another way to put it is that there's no reason to believe Putin cares about Abramovich tears over the Chelsea football club. This is "terrible" only from the perspective of Western financial talking heads where taking a billionaires wealth (even for breaking obviously laws) is the worst thing that can ever happen in the history of the planet; but Russian oligarch wealth outside of Russia there's no reason to assume matters much to the Kremlin. Indeed, the whole premise of "punishing" oligarchs to somehow pressure Putin maybe doing Putin a favour (creates easy leverage for Putin over the oligarchs ... no reason to assume it's vice-versa in anyway).

Obviously Russia's invasion plays poorly in Western media ... which then Western media points to as a "backfiring" the fact Western media really doesn't like Putin (a bit of self projection as being lambasted by the Western media is the worst thing for a talking head to experience).

In terms of geo-politics, Russia can source all essential components and capital equipment from China, and is obviously self sufficient in food and energy and minerals.

Furthermore, if democracy is the big threat to Russian authoritarianism (which I would definitely agree with), then severing all ties to the West seems like a good strategy to deal with that threat (from the authoritarian perspective) ... and, there's a big authoritarian world out there that doesn't give a shit about Western values; if the US is in decline, the impetus to even pay lip service maybe removed.

So, considering all this, I am wondering to what extent the economic war is either an acceptable risk (certainly the West and Russia have been exchanging words about since 2014), or even a desired outcome to impose "made in Russia" and Russian controlled information systems etc.?

For example, once China no longer needed to grovel for Western IPR, it then built it's own parallel information systems. So, if you actually want Russia to become a copy of China's authoritarian system ... this war with Ukraine accomplishes that.

I am totally against authoritarianism and I view China as a 1984 styled hellscape, but I am wondering at this point how far the "pivot" to China was predetermined to go and the Ukraine war basically total commitment to the "China way" of doing things. Or, do people more familiar with Kremlin history and logic, support the idea of the Western press that the war is backfiring and Western responses are a surprise "act of courage" (of course, by taking almost zero actual risk, naturally)?

(There's of course many military, intelligence agents and bureaucrats that remember the authoritarian Soviet days, including Putin, and may regret the fall of that system, including Putin, and may look to China as having "ironed out the kinks" in that system, indeed, even gone to China, including Putin; such an outcome, in my opinion, is more to fear than the war in Ukraine itself; it would represent consolidating pure totalitarianism and laying the foundation to absorb more and more countries into such a system ... for the West, in recent times, seems only to ever offers words about freedom, and no one can eat them.

I can essentially guarantee you, that to a lot of the world, in particular elite classes, the abandonment of Afghanistan and now this war in Ukraine paints a very clear picture: The West cannot or will not defend it's "friends", don't trust its words, they are worth nothing. Token symbolic support is of little use when you're being shelled.)

Anti-vaxxers & Assange? — Agent Smith

1. What does anyone here think of the link between Assange & Conspiracy theories? There's lotsa ammo in the warehouse, sir! — Agent Smith

What Assange helped expose were obvious conspiracies such as unjustified killing of journalists and torture (denied at the time ... and even if "legal" in the States due to someone writing a memo, that didn't make it magically legal in other countries where supporting, directly or indirectly, the US torture program was obviously illegal, at least nominally, in other Western countries).

Assange being extradited to the US is likewise an obvious conspiracy between US and UK governments, as the charges are complete bullshit. But again, if you use the standard any thing stamped "legal" by a government cannot, by definition, be a conspiracy to make a mockery of the law or then against international legal standards or simply moral standards, then feel free to assume Assange publishing whistle blower information can be considered "espionage".

Likewise, if high ranking politicians openly advocating assassinating someone is cause for political asylum if coming from a corrupt government of a poor country ... but not if the US does it. Feel free to apply such a double standard.

Now, dictionary has re-defined "anti-vaxx" to refer to those also against mandates; i.e. creating second class citizens. Assange, like most anti-authoritarians on both the right and the left, are against such mandates. The whole point of the limit to government power is not that "well, it's ok as long as the government happens to be 'right'" it's because governments should need to actually convince their populations to comply (use that reason and science they keep talking about to convince people to comply in good faith) and also ... maybe the government's gets it wrong next time; who's to judge.

If people aren't convinced because they have lost faith in institutions for waging unjust wars, letting elites get away with obvious crimes, degrading the environment, obvious irrational and massively harmful policies like the war on drugs, degrading work conditions, fraudulent inflation numbers justifying lowering wages in real terms and increasing rents, etc. etc. etc. maybe trust and respect need to be earned, and making credible institutions is the solution and not institutions simply skipping the whole "convince people" part and using coercion and force to implement "right according to themselves".

Are the obvious conflict of interest, misrepresenting data, hiding data, using proxy data to draw unsupported conclusions, not collecting data that can only say "the wrong things", etc. etc. a criminal conspiracy? Well, no. It's business as usual.

I hadn't dared to post Norman's work, I'm glad someone did. Another perfectly decent career down the pan. He hasn't had a single paper accepted by any journal since publishing his query about the validity of these statistics. A perfectly normal (actually slighter higher than average) acceptance rate up to that point. But apparently nothing to see here...

Since it's out now - his evidence to the UK's Parliamentary committee - https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/13847/pdf/ — Isaac

The idea Dr. Norman (and his whole team!) can just be removed from the conversation is completely absurd. Likewise, other experts, of which there are many with advanced degrees, professorships, questioning the statistical "evidence" of the governments as well as moral / legal basis for mandates in any case.

I was told by a doctor, who I happen to know, just last weak that she spoke with her infectious disease colleagues and they are all against the mandates and say the policy is driven by politics and not science; that the health minister her has made "fighting Covid" her little personal war.

Of course, these doctors aren't against reasonable policy vis-a-vis Covid, but against using Covid as the only health metric of society. For instance, my friend doctor and most of her colleagues were extremely worried about school closings due to the mental health consequences on children (rich kids with good parents "no school" can fun, but a lot of poor kids school is the place they get a good meal, have structure and feel safe, not to mention just physical space needed to stay healthy: being stuck in an apartment was difficult for adults and adult relationships, yet society decided the affect on children can be completely ignored; and that's not even to mention the obvious consequence on learning!).

But, ok, if they're wrong (in particular that we can know "cost-benefit" without even collecting the data about the costs!), people can present the rebuttal.

Academics that don't speak out are simply corrupt.

Why do independent left-wing voices, supposedly concerned about things like social welfare, fighting corporate overreach and government 'sponsorship' rackets, act like they're in Pfizers PR department...? — Isaac

One reason I've been away from the forum a few months is I accused a private equity investor of money laundering (because he was obviously laundering money and trying to use our engineering documents and concepts to do so ... then tried to make me actively help launder money by offering a million Euro bribe), which created a shit storm that persists to this day.

But the other reason, is that the libertarian critique of most of the left turns out to be true, not surprising for the corporate left, but I have been genuinely surprised at the extent it's true for also for the "independent voices".

Likewise, I thought maybe the US needed assault weapons for all to check US government power ... but in advanced democracies we were "better" and there was effective democratic processes that made the threat of violent insurrection unnecessary political tool.

It's painful to see I was wrong, how easily so called advanced democracies become "paper carrying" jurisdictions.

Turns out Nazi's were totally correct about the use of coercive medical interventions (whatever people want to call it), relentless propaganda and blaming everything on a scapegoat that in turn solicits unquestioning loyalty to government power insofar as governments can deliver on harms to those scapegoats.

I guess the idea now is that the Nazi's were just wrong about the reasons for their coercion, wrong about their particular version of "peer reviewed science", and wrong about the class of people targeted for scapegoatism and second class citizenship ... but they were right about the basic setup, as long as the reasons happen to be claimed as "correct" this time? That's the European policy?

That's why mandatory vaccination could be a last resort. It would force the government to act more transparently and to take at least a part of the responsibility for the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

The only problem is that with covid in particular, the "effectiveness" of the vaccine would be about the same as the course of the disease without the vaccine, and then the government could take the credit and make vaccination mandatory indefinitely. — baker

Agreed ... except I would say that was already the plan last year ... as I pointed out over a year ago:

In which case, the likely situation is still not "good". The current vaccine programs are too little and too late to affect this winter season; coronavirus has demonstrated strong seasonal tendency and so will anyways go down in the spring and it will be difficult to know if the vaccine is working or not, and if we will be hit by a third wave next season anyways, whether due to the vaccines not working or new strains defeating the vaccine. — boethius

... because policy makers and their corporate donors preferred not to know, but to rather roll out a multi billion dollar gamble in a statistical haze. — boethius

(Stated over a year ago, fast forward to today)

And yet every day we hear things like, "If so and so would've gotten the vaccination, he'd be safe and well." — baker

I remember a prediction made on this very forum a year ago:

The glint of a few pence off the tax bill. It's really not that hard to explain why Italy was so unprepared. It costs money to be prepared and people were not willing to pay it.

But hey you can stick to your narrative of the big bad virus coming out of nowhere with no-one to blame for its spread but the tinfoil-hat wearing anti-vaxxers. I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry will be along soon on their white chargers to save us all, and then we can get back to business as usual... killing 22,000 children a day from poverty and no-one giving a shit because they're not white middle class taxpayers. — Isaac

And also this analysis:

No, my point was firstly, that a rushed vaccine based on new technology may be either falsely effective, have unexpected side effects (already we're getting allergic reaction that was not anticipated), or too expensive to help poorer countries.

And secondly that a huge proportion of the deaths are in poor communities coupled with poor healthcare services. Investing in core service provision and community healthcare is a far more efficient as it helps not only this pandemic, but also future ones. I've previously cited papers showing how proper ICU care more than halves the mortality rate. The overlap with poorer communities and existing health issues is well documented, but I can cite some if you like.

Thirdly, investment doesn't spring out of nowhere. It's taken from other budgets. I've just cited figures for TB excess deaths which result from only a fractional drop in the availability of frontline services.

Basically if you've already decided that the solution is an expensive vaccine then the investment is great. If your aim is to increase the number of vaccines in the world then this is a big score. If, however, your aim is to look after the immediate and future health of the population with the scarce resources we have available then the fact that a few rich countries have used up years of healthcare investment on a luxury vaccine is hardly the Holy Grail. — Isaac

You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect?
— ssu

Maybe, but there is currently no evidence that they will. In my version of science I believe things when there is evidence to believe it. The experimental design of the current covid related vaccine trials, do not seek to answer the question of whether the pandemic will be significantly curtailed in one way or another, and the scientists running these trials do not make such a claim.

For instance, if the virus simply evolves to defeat the vaccine (how evolution works) the scientist will simply point out that their experimental design did not seek to provide any insight on this issue.

The reason I mention evolution is that in an exponentially expanding new virus there are many evolutionary paths available and with 7 billion people there are many hosts available in which those evolutionary events can take place. There are already now a diversity of strains of the virus, a vaccine developed against a certain strain may already not be effective against strains that already exist, which will of course then come to dominate once the conditions are such that they have an advantage. The virus has simple maths on its side. The long amount of time it usually takes to make an effective vaccine, for good reasons, means simple math is not on its side.

But my main point seems to be lost on you, which is that obviously vaccine technology cannot possibly be relied on to intervene to prevent major harms from infectious disease ... because those major harms have already occurred in the case of Covid, for basically the reasons you state.

Vaccine technology is simply not a reliable basis for protecting public health from infectious disease generally speaking and the disastrous consequences of a pandemic. You may say "But of course! Vaccines take time and aren't meant to intervene to strop a pandemic before there is already major health harms and economic disruptions! dum dum", but, of course, my response is simply to repeat, that for exactly that reason, "Vaccine technology is simply not a reliable basis for protecting public health from infectious disease generally speaking and the disastrous consequences of a pandemic". There do exist other policies that can have a much bigger consequence.

Other policy measures do not have this problem, and in the case of public health in terms of "healthiness", actually pay for itself. Therefore, focus should be first investing in policies that both intervene at all stages of a pandemic such as we are experiencing and moreover pay for themselves. Ultimately, relying on vaccine technology to control infectious disease was lazy thinking by the medical community. Does that make them idiots? I'm sure you are already confident my answer is yes, yes it does make them idiots. However, it was not a consensus; many experts predicted exactly this scenario and pointed out more effective investment strategies to protect global health against the inevitable "high impact" event we are seeing. — boethius

Written over a year ago: we've entered the groundhog days scenario of stupid policy ... during a situation we seem now to be in the exact repeat of, just with the experience of vaccines not having solved the problem last year ... but are going to this stime ... well, no one's actually claiming that anymore at all, but get your boosters!

There's now not even nominal policy for most Western governments stating some plan out of the pandemic: restrictions until further notice.

Why is it placing the whole burden of responsibility on the people? — baker

Just chiming in to point out the near exact repetition of the conversation over a year ago (comment below was made in December 2020).

Other than the critical policy mistakes of abandoning containment in the early stages of the pandemic (which every country that made a competent effort succeeded in doing), if things do go wrong with the vaccine, we can note the further policy disaster of allowing vaccine developers to issue press releases on their data and work with their media sycophants to create such a hype train that governments basically had to approve the vaccines (not only because they too are sycophants but, in addition, due to the overwhelming pressure and belief created in the media that "over 90% effective and the pandemic will soon be over with these vaccines!! woweee").

Governments should have designed and mandated new trial protocols appropriate for the situation (much larger with much better experimental design and carried out by third parties), and corporations should have been gag-ordered to provide zero information to the press so that review and approval processes were not affected by public opinion and media hype. Simply accelerating the old normal process was not a reasonable policy because phase 3 is not usually followed by massive deployment of a new pharmaceutical, but there is phase 4 of post market surveillance, that is usually many years of "seeing what happens" and only a small percentage of the population gets the intervention every year (i.e. the risk of something being missed isn't so great because few people get the new intervention for many years). A competent medical professional would want a new trial design that would seek to get some of the same insights as phase 4 in an accelerated time line, which (if it is statistically impossible to do) then want direct challenge experiments (exposing trial participants to the virus deliberately, including known mutations) would be the only reasonable course of action; the benefit obviously outweighs the harm in this pandemic situation, and the only reason direct challenge experiments weren't used to get much, much more certainty about efficacy and side-effects in humans is because policy makers and their corporate donors preferred not to know, but to rather roll out a multi billion dollar gamble in a statistical haze.

The die is cast now though, so we'll see what happens.

And if you think policy makers aren't disastrously idiotic and corrupt, just look at the pandemic up until this point in the places rushing to be first to deploy the vaccine. Although past stupidity and corruption doesn't guarantee future stupidity and corruption, I wouldn't personally bet against it. — boethius

And also October 2020:

There isn't really a basis for this belief. No vaccine trial, vis-a-vis covid, is designed to prove actual effectiveness at changing the course of the pandemic. Different experimental design would be needed for that and very likely different targets of efficacy.

Generally, there is healthy skepticism in the evolutionary biologist community whether a vaccine that cannot irradiate the disease is a good investment, as the obvious prediction based on science is the disease will simply evolve to defeat the vaccine. Vaccines of this kind also have the potential to simply shift harm profiles around without reducing total harm, which is difficult to capture in trials which may easily a confuse looking at a shift at one part of the harm profile and conclude a general reduction of harm can be inferred when there is no basis for such a conclusion (vaccines that reduce disease severity for most people, may increase transmission while significantly increasing the severity for a sub population; for instance, that a sub population has severe over-reaction of the immune system). So, we will find out, but there is no reason to have higher confidence than a skilled gambler down on his luck on this particular issue.

However, considering the harm the pandemic has already had on the global community, we can already conclude that vaccine technology does not protect public health from negative infectious disease outcomes, and investments in vector control, better outbreak protocols, treatment capacity, but most importantly simply public health in a general sense (preventing preventable diabetes, obesity, lung harm from bad air etc.) are more effective investments. In particular, investments in public health in the sense of healthy people is not even a cost but pays for itself many times over.

And yet, public health policy of the last decades has been based on under-investing in healthy foods, healthy city design, healthy habits, and healthy air -- which turns out to benefit fossil and food corporations -- and over-investing in medical technologies that "fix problems post-fact" -- which turns out to benefit pharmaceutical and other medical corporations. Certainly only coincidence and these policy failings will be swiftly corrected going forward. — boethius

Of course, it's now "anti-vax" to point out the original claims about vaccines ending the pandemic that had zero evidence supporting them at the time ... turns out didn't come true.

What I got wrong though, is that blaming the insane sequence of failed policy and bailouts and gifts to large corporations on the group of people (that we knew ahead of time would exist, and sane policy would take into account as basic reality ... not to mention groups of people in poor countries that won't be vaccinated as we don't give a fuck about them anyways and it's logistically impossible to deliver) refusing vaccination has basically saved government from further scrutiny (... at least in the mass media).

Wendy Brown describes a left leaning narrative: — frank

Honestly a good read, thanks for posting.

Would you agree with part below?

The narrative is not wrong — Wendy Brown

And of what follows:

but, I will argue, incomplete. It does not register the forces overdetermining the radically antidemocratic form of the rebellion and thus tends to align it with fascisms of old. It does not consider the demonized status of the social and the political in neoliberal governmentality nor the valorization of traditional morality and markets in their place. It does not recognize the disintegration of society and the discrediting of the public good by neoliberal reason as tilling the ground for the so-called “tribalisms” emerging as identities and political forces in recent years. — Wendy Brown

Of course, the more radical left has not at all been surprised. We usually call it "late stage capitalism".

Here's some sample content:

I haven't heard of police dragging anti-vaxxers off to a facility and forcefully vaccinating them. Anyone? The likes of kindergartens, schools, hospitals, military, is where vaccination has been mandatory (or at least some vaccinations have), for some time. I suppose the unvaccinated don't qualify for some things (the blind don't qualify for driver's license, either). — jorndoe

Making life essentially impossible without an internal vaccine passport, is a use force. What happens if you don't have your papers? Fine or prison. What if you don't pay the fine? Prison. What if you don't voluntarily go to prison? Force.

If something is needed for survival, you are de facto forced to do it. That there is a nominal difference with holding you down and injecting you is not so relevant ethically. If you withheld food from a prisoner unless they danced like a chicken, most people would not quibble that that's not "physically holding them and making them dance like a chicken".

Now, if it's perfectly easy to continue to live a normal life without the vaccine, then I'd agree it's not a use of force or "coercion" for those that prefer that softer lexical version of the same moral thing.

And, as noted, many countries do not have anything close to a "vaccine mandate" or "vaccine internal passport", but common pro-vaccine-mandate sentiments on the internet are: denying care to the vaccinated and making life impossible without your "papers". UK recently reneging on their vaccine passport plan.

Obviously, is up for fairly legitimate debated Which again, my basic point in this threat is that vaccine issues are no where close to the shape or age of the earth (in the sense of 000 or roughly 4 billion) issues.

Part of a narrative to delegitimize any dissent from government policy while serving as a scapegoat for obviously failed government policy.

That coercion is legitimate, considering the stakes. This is a public health issue. Likewise, school and work vaccines that have existed for decades are also legitimate. — Xtrix

Obviously it's not legitimate for a lot of people considering many government have made no coercive measures. Again, clearly not on the same level as flat earth and 6000 year old earth, which this thread is supposed to be equally about according to your own OP.

You've also answered your own question, on at least this vaccination point, by engaging with me.

The vaccine passport idea is perfectly ethical in situations I’ve heard so far: travel, concerts, etc. how else will we know if those are vaccinated or not? — Xtrix

The issue of the vaccine passport is "how much". But again, zero vaccine passports and no serious talk of making any where I live.

If people were smart and decent, these measures wouldn’t have to be taken. So these proposals are necessary because all other rational pleas have failed. — Xtrix

What about the "rational plea" to governments to contain the virus when it first broke out?

Or the rational plea to prepare enough resources for the next waves ... or even the first wave with just keeping existing legally obliged stocks of emergency supplies up to date and so on.

If governments (so incompetent as to let the crisis get out of hand where other governments "following the science" haven't) aren't held accountable for existing policy failures, why should people trust the next policy? All I hear is "yeah, yeah, yeah, government fucks you and lies to you all the time, will ruin your health and planet in a heart beat if corporations can gain anything from it, but! but! this particular issue is different".

Trust needs to be earned. Governments that have not earned any trust shouldn't be surprised when they start to lose the basic trust needed to govern in the first place.

That's not on the table in the US. No one will be sent to prison. You get vaccinated or you don't come to work/school -- simple. That's coercion? Fine -- then it's excited for decades. — Xtrix

People (especially in the US) need to work to survive; obviously it's coercion if "enough" jobs require vaccine that you cannot practically find work at a "normal level" (making you a second class citizen); likewise, suddenly changing the policy for professions that previously had no such requirement is coercive to people who depend on that profession and did not provide "informed consent" when they started in that career.

If such mandates are for a limited set of professions, then easy to argue you can do something else, so depends on how many such work places we're talking about.

School has other issues (parents rights vs. state rights; children can't "consent") etc. lot's to debate about.

However, what's clearly coercive is needing "papers" to simply exist in any sort of normal way in society, which is pretty much the explicit goal of the pro-vaccine-passports partisans on the internet.

Now, UK government I believe just backed down from the internal vaccine passport policy.

And, if few governments, including the US, have even implemented any such policy, seems just to support my view it's not obviously ethical, settled medical ethics question, which was the statement of yours I was responding to.

That's a political and legal issue. The WHO has been pretty clear on their recommendations. No one is saying we want to physically force people into vaccinations -- that's a false characterization and a red herring. — Xtrix

I've made it clear I am talking about needing papers to participate in normal society, which I would define as "force". The force is the fines or prison (and prison if you don't pay the fines); clearly using force.

However, I'm fine with the word coerce or just internal vaccines passports.

In exchange for not giving the state power that could easily be abused (people needing "papers" to participate in normal society), there are costs to that. — boethius

There's sensible debate to be had about the legitimacy of state power, and whether vaccine mandates are an example of such. I get the concern. I'm not equating this with anti-vaxxers, and especially not flat Earthers. But I do think the case is clear cut and that people are arguing for the sake of argument -- typical in philosophy forums, I suppose. — Xtrix

This is all I'm trying to say here.

I'm not saying the issue is clear cut; I even stated a scenario could be so extreme that I would support forced medical intervention. Maybe aliens (from the movie aliens) come to earth; what do we do then?

However, what seems pretty clear to me in the pandemic is that competent governments that really do "follow the science" didn't need vaccine mandates or hard lock-downs (those "restrictions" for the sake of public safety), with disastrous health consequences anyways (both on lot's of people who got covid as well as the trauma to health professionals trying to deal with the situation) ... because they took science and public safety seriously to begin with.

And, because they took science and public safety seriously to begin with, people have high confidence in such a government and vaccine uptake is not only high it's done before there's any significant wave (reaping the full benefits the vaccines can offer to society, assuming they work as advertised).

Of course, I think each issue is worthy of discussion, and feel free to start a thread on anything that don't already have a thread about.

Even the "flat earth" issue is worth while to go over why we are as certain the world is a ball as we can be about essentially anything; though, more interesting to me is the what's pretty clear to me the media making "a thing" about flat earthers to make the intellectual equivalence with dissent of essentially any kind. Why wasn't "flat earth" an issue of any relevance before? Because it's not an issue of any relevance now; and I'm pretty sure 99% of "true believers" only found out about it because the media turned it into some sort of relevant public debate (which it's not), I'm nearly 100% confident the entire flat earth content was started as a joke (extremely typical engineery / physicicsy joke material).

The title of the OP obviously makes all these issues "the same" with respect to the question of "worth engaging with". That's the question.

Again, if whole countries don't have mandated vaccines, it's no where close to "settled science" and "settled ethics" like the earth is round like a ball.

Norway is particularly interesting (because, it's not "unconstitutional", but they haven't don it, because competence generally means they don't really need to consider it):

The Norwegian Government has since the beginning of the pandemic maintained that vaccination against Covid-19 will be voluntary like other vaccines. Behind this benevolent attitude lurks sweeping pre-pandemic legal powers for the Minister of Health and Care Services to order compulsory vaccination if necessary, to contain a serious outbreak of a dangerous contagious disease (Article 3-8 of the Infection Control Act 1994). However, compulsory does not mean forced vaccination. Violating a vaccination order may constitute a crime punishable with fines or potentially prison (Article 8-1). — Article explaining Norwegian vaccine position

Turns out reasonable government people trust more:

One reason for the authorities’ legal toolkit not being applied may be that the public view on vaccination is generally positive. In a survey from June 2020, 89% of the respondents agreed that vaccines in general are safe and the authorities enjoy a high level of trust. A survey from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health conducted in December 2020 before vaccination started, reported that 73% of the adult population were likely to accept a Covid-19 vaccine, while 11% were negative. However, a large scale (65,000 respondents) survey conducted in April 2021 following the AstraZeneca vaccine being put on hold in Norway due to serious side effects, showed that the attitude towards vaccination is contingent on its safety. Only 28% were likely to accept the AstraZeneca vaccine, while 91% were likely to accept a vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna and 68% would likely accept another non-specified vaccine. — Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position

Also interesting, the "technically they can law" isn't so easy to implement:

Another reason is that compulsory vaccination in the current situation would hardly be legal anyway. Suppose the public support for the vaccination program dropped, leading the Norwegian authorities to consider making vaccination compulsory, that decision like all other measures according to the Infection Control Act 1994 would have to pass a proportionality test (Article 1-5). Even if compulsory vaccination against Covid-19 would be introduced in other countries and would in principle be accepted by the ECtHR given the wide margin of appreciation, it would not necessarily pass a proportionality test in Norway. A proportionality test such as the one required by Article 1-5 of the Norwegian Infection Control Act 1994 needs two components. One is the necessity of containing the spread of the virus due to its negative effects on public health. The other is the harm caused by the infection control measure, in this case a very intrusive interference with the right to private life. While the potential negative effect of compulsory vaccination is likely equal in all countries, the potential benefit from the vaccine is not, but rather dependent on death, sickness, and infection rates in each country. In Norway, where the death rate of the virus is very low, the outcome of the proportionality test may therefore be different than in a country with a very high death rate.

Incidentally, the same logic of proportionality appears to lie behind Norway’s decision to put the AstraZeneca vaccine on hold, while it is still administered in countries with a higher death rate. — Same article explaining Norwegian vaccine position

"Medical procedure"? That's deliberately beefing up what amounts to a tiny prick of the arm. But so be it. — Xtrix

It's not beefing up anything. Saying masks are a "medical procedure" I would agree is exaggeration, even if, technically it is.

Injecting a therapy into someone that is going to change their immune system is clearly far from "wearing a mask".

It's clearly a significant medical procedure, and there are obvious risks, and obvious risks of giving the government control of what they can decide to inject into you.

For instance, just a couple years ago a large part of the US population was convinced a fascist takeover was, if not imminent, certainly "on the table".

Maybe it was close or maybe Trump and co. were so amazingly incompetent they couldn't even coup if they had the means to do so.

It is worth considering, however, if a "bad government" does get into power, how much power they get to start with.

What I am arguing here, however, is simply that these questions have far more room for legitimate debate than "the earth is flat" or "the earth is 6000 years old".

Which is the only thing being grossly conflated in this thread.

I haven't seen anyone argue this. I've seen a lot of deliberately conflating, however. — Xtrix

That's why I say, look around, maybe get out more.

It's not deliberately conflating ... if there are governments that exist which are have zero coercive measures, and their politicians even say they couldn't legally do so without changing laws, maybe that makes the point it's obviously not basically unanimous medical ethical position to mandate / coerce / force vaccination; which was your original point.

There's even a government, Norway, that has a law that would allow the government to mandate (with threat of fines / prison), but has not implemented that law. Presumably, there's some medical ethical reasons not to do so (no consider Covid "bad enough" to warrant that).

Of course, Norway also followed the obvious pandemic science (actual scientific consensus) and has few deaths and social disruptions due to the pandemic, so, "mandating" seems alarmism and government overreach in a context of a government putting in place competent policy from the beginning.

In places where governments weren't competent ... maybe those governments aren't competent generally speaking and we can maybe see why people have low trust in their government.

It brings to mind the soldier blaming the hippie for causing the loss in Vietnam. The analogy can be spun out in a different direction, though. This war is at home. Government policy early on may have been fucked, but the protestor didn't help. Indeed, evil gubmn't was just getting oxygen from them. — James Riley

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with my basic point on the issue (and I haven't developed it much, since my main point is that obviously this issue is totally different than the earth being flat).

However, where I live there has never been a legally enforced mask mandate, not even talk of "internal vaccine passports" in any serious way (as totally unconstitutional), never a "hard lock down" (but some months non-essential shops were closed), benefit of seeing how vaccines play out in other countries and then using those statistics to optimize choice of vaccines per group, timing of shots, easier to convince people too when other countries have done the hard part of experimenting on their citizens, pretty much only a handful of covid deaths throughout the pandemic and nothing close to triage has happened (though there are lot's of knock-on effects; mainly people cancelling their own appointments for fear of going to the hospital, creating a health backlog, but obviously not has bad as an actual lack of resources).

Why?

Because the government actually implemented "the science" that said pretty amazingly clearly that the longer the delay, the harder the measures later, the higher the burden on the health care system (that has less time to prepare), the more disruption to society, the more deaths for a whole bunch of reasons.

No real "first wave" to speak of.

Plenty of governments "listened to the science" and reaped the benefits.

Governments that didn't, blood of the first wave and every subsequent wave are on the hands of the politicians that didn't follow the obvious science, but followed the stock market (obviously Trump the champion here; literally phoning ariplane CEO's to ask their opinion; we don't have the transcripts but I can guarantee each one said "well, I'm not a medical expert, but I can say that stopping air travel will affect the industry", as, obviously it would, and, I'm sure they simply didn't know what else to say).

I've been writing about this topic, on this forum, since March 2020.

The moment to put in place policies that would have had a dramatically different outcome was then. The countries that contained competently ... managed to contain the pandemic.

March 2020:

All of the above is also complicated by the fact people will continue to need care for other things. This creates 2 issues. First, people come into the hospital for other reasons but happen to have coronavirus, transmit it to health workers who then transmit it to other patients and visitors in hospital for other reasons. When a place get's contaminated, they aren't disinfecting the entire place for no reason; it's just that bad in terms of persistence in the environment which quickly becomes an impossible task at a large scale. Second problem is that as health services are strained, people start dying from other things due to lack of care, so those people must be added as casualties of the pandemic. There is lot's of pneumonia anyways.

All this combines to create a complete global health catastrophe. Although there's already plenty of global health catastrophes due to poor policies, so what's one more, this one was likely preventable with policies previously in place, so is unfortunate in that regard.

Basically it's the mutabu virus, just played out in China with the US as a "don't place sycophant in charge" thematic sub-plot, and changing the main plot to preserve face rather than "the weapon" ... and infecting the entire world instead of blowing up a small town, is what I'm saying.

This may seem preemptively overly dramatic, but 700 million people are already in quarantine, self isolation or restricted travel in China, which is 10% of the global population and happened within the span of months; it's fairly reasonable to expect the same to happen to the rest of the globe within the next few months now that containment within China has completely failed and the rest of the world is where China was about 2 months ago.

The speed of this outbreak also means that it's unlikely the virus will lose much in lethality, as evolving to be less lethal as viruses normally do is an evolutionary process that takes time ... but such quick spreading doesn't create less strains than had it proliferated over a longer amount of time and so different strains may emerge that can infect people again (on-top of it, potentially being the case, that many can get the same strain again).

The only viable way to even slow down the virus significantly at this point requires basically shutting down the global economy. We're in the down-playing and denial phase from Western governments, in my opinion, to avoid pressure to take radical measures until it is too late for those to serve any purpose (as they calculate it — boethius

Really depends on age. A bad outcome radically increases with age ... which will also help spread the virus exponentially when the younger generations realize it's not a huge threat to them and need to go about their business at some point.

If you're young, main problem of travel is potentially being trapped in quarantine ... but Western governments seem to have decided to stop trying to maintain containment, but they may turn that policy on and off randomly for PR reasons. — boethius

All predictions that came true, from one random poster on the internet, over a year and a half ago.

The people most responsible are the governments that had "the science" telling them contain early, contain hard (especially early days, how "bad" the virus even was represented large error bars; could have been a lot worse than it is even now, which is bad). This was all known and uncontroversial science of literally decades of study and modelling of pandemics, how to identify them, and what to do.

Definitely total incompetence of the Trump administration I would say most contributed to "all the grief", doesn't make them less responsible just because they were totally incompetent. But, he's voted out, why didn't the next administration immediately start fixing those obvious policy failures of not preparing for more waves.

If people are suffering now from governments not preparing health systems to deal with another wave, that's really avoidable grief. Governments and twitter warriors blaming individuals for failed government policy is simply pathetic standard of intellectual honesty.

What did experts say back then about a vaccine? Well, would be nice if we could develop one, and would be nice if it works really well, and would be nice if both logistically and everyone being willing resulted in super high numbers to achieve some level of heard immunity. But, hope for the best, prepare for the worst.