? — ssu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 owns him now. — SophistiCat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wendy Brown describes a left leaning narrative: — frank

The narrative is not wrong — Wendy Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm afraid you may be right. Too bad. I can't imagine all the grief that could have been avoided. — James Riley

No, it isn’t. You have no right to harm others. — Xtrix

Not forced any more than school and work vaccinations have been forced, for decades in fact. — Xtrix

I agree to this, this is barely a kind of "ethical" question. — Ansiktsburk

If people don’t want to vaccines, fine— then isolate yourself. You have no right to spread the virus to others — to the vaccinated out unvaccinated. — Xtrix

This document only cites 6 references, 4 of which are the authors’ own, and of these 2 are not actually published. Therefore I would not regard this document as having any scientific credibility. — From rebuttal paper Bano posted

It's great that people notice this, as you have. This is truly the West's world order collapsing. Many people don't see it. — ssu

And it seems like most western countries are at that place. I do not see the situation is "something our lifestyle" has produced, capitalism or whatever. — Ansiktsburk

I come from a poor family, most scandinavians were around 1900, and the society has given my family a much better life, which I cannot for my life see as a bad thing. I would say that people being angry on "capitalism", should do some genealogy. — Ansiktsburk

I'll respond to you later about the last part of your post. — ssu