Sad all round.
(Edit - downvoters, do you not agree that this is likely, or do you think that it's OK?
If the former, it's been done before so it seems very likely to me. If the latter then I have to say I agree with this take in scientific american - "To include TCM in the ICD is an egregious lapse in evidence-based thinking and practice."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-health-...)
Edit: It's dumber and worse than I thought.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-health-...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/10/chinese-traditiona...
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3326972/ho...
https://rhinos.org/tough-issues/promotion-of-traditional-chi...
It actually is like they're sending TCM doctors to Africa!
I had no idea...
No doubt ingredient sourcing is in the mix too.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-health-...
2. Even if they didn't push it, the west has been stealing ("appropriating" in liberal speak) Ayurvedic remedies for years. Take turmeric for example. The GoI had to sue to keep turmeric patent free.
2. Ayurvedic and TCM largely refers to those things which haven't undergone clinical trials to understand their efficacy as prescribed medicines. Anything from that sphere which is clinically proven to work and is dispensed as prescription medicine just becomes part of medicine. It's not about "stealing" or whatever, it's about whether people should be given proven effective medicines or hopefully effective medicines, the former being what we should promote globally
Interestingly enough, RCTs of acupuncture (with sham needles) show pretty large effect sizes for many treatments but only in China, which is super weird. The most likely explanation is that the blinding doesn't work (which is a perennial problem in basically all RCTs), but it's interesting nonetheless.
In case you're one of they many people here who have an inexplicable reverence for China, i'll be clear that China gaining more influence in international affairs is imo Not A Good Thing.
Sure, I don’t agree with lots of their stuff, but I’d rather a guy who doesn’t flip flop his mind every 4 years.
It's a daily challenge to keep track and not spiral into despair. It's not just that one man, it's that so many citizens love him. It truly boggles the mind.
> we’re tired of funding the world’s defense
Reads like "The outrageously high R&D costs of modern weapons systems are being subsidized across many customers. This must end immediately!"
What other business wants fewer customers to spread R&D across, or less revenue from fewer units sold?
Are we instead discussing how much the US spends internally on defence, then exports the largest military in the world to protect the country and her interests? Because not only is that an example of America choosing to spend her own money instead of being coerced by other nations, but the guy that just ran a snatch'n'grab on a foreign leader was enabled by that same policy. Forgive my disbelief that he'll dismantle that system any time soon.
Military misadventures in the Middle East, trickle up economics, prioritizing corporate profits over things like low cost healthcare, good jobs, or a solid industrial base... These are all products of American culture and politics, not imposed by any other country.
At the same time, there are things you can do besides voting. Maybe you already know or do these things, but just putting it out there... You can call your representatives (and they might actually listen, if you're a Democrat in California), you can donate to candidates in other races if you have the means (there are probably going to be some pretty consequential senate races this year), you can join a protest (peacefully, and especially if you don't have any dependents).... And who knows, maybe none of these things will make a difference in the end, but I think the bottom line is that if you truly care about some of these things that are happening right now in the US, it's better to find ways to act on your convictions than to stay frustrated and fume online.
Just my 2 cents.
You do not seem to understand how America's position in the world has been used to benefit the country in a massive way post world war II. You can throw that position away, that's your privilege, but the result will be a much smaller economy in which your costs for various items will go up rather than down because a lot of money will no longer flow to the USA.
The amounts you are paying for healthcare, medication etc are not coupled to that but are coupled to your broken political system. You could fix that easily enough but neither the democrats nor the republicans have ever followed that path because you (plural) have been deluded into thinking that that is socialism.
Reducing the USA's standing in the world is not going to fix your political problems but is going to harm your economy in a massive way. The position you are taking here is not consistent and whether you voted for Trump or not is not relevant because it effectively carries water for him: this is precisely the kind of thing that an uninformed Trump supporter would say.
And that's not even considering the direction the US is heading, I mean in it's current state.
I'm not sure you're disagreeing with GP.
Then you should fix your laws. Like, until a year or two ago Medicare was forbidden from negotiating drug prices. Coupled with the absurdity of direct to consumer advertising of drugs (only allowed in the US and New Zealand), plus your massively complicated health care system, it's a recipe for disaster.
On the world police thing, I'm definitely sympathetic, but this was something your government did for a mix of selfish and altruistic reasons, and the consequences of not doing it will be bad in some ways for Americans. I do think that Europe/EU need to step up here, and it looks like we're finally doing this. I'd also note that of the current potential world police (US, Russia, China) you guys are the least worst.
I always find it so weird to assume such things are done out of good heart. The US has always been dependent on their ability of world wide power projection, because that's a level that always works. Through 'America first', in the next years the US will experience a decline of beneficial trade deals and US-interest friendly foreign politics. It's net negative for everybody except China and Russia to some degree.
> I also want Americans to get the same deal Europeans and Canadians get on prescription drugs.
That's not about foreign politics though. If you didn't want Billionaires to get richer, you shouldn't vote for one of them being the president.
The argument always seems to be that the US is getting these rough deals, but objectively what it has spent the last few years be it in terms of soft power for organizations like this or in weapons to Ukraine, a few decades ago people would have opened champagne bottles getting that much bang for your buck.
This is British "the EU is stealing your NHS money" stuff, like it doesn't work at a basic level of arithmetics. What's driving spending in the US is entitlements, literally a straight line up
I applaud the consistency you put on display regarding the US budget though, and I gotta say you view (on this) probably should count more than mine - I'm a Canadian citizen, not American
And even if you think this is the right move, it's important to acknowledge that it's for all the wrong reasons.
https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/trump-family-corruption...
Instead we have been sold to someone(s) that only want to see us divided internally and externally expanding our isolationist stances.
It just feels like everything is taking polarization to the extreme.
I feel really terrible imagining what my daughter will inherit from all of this.
No one appreciates the hard work when lives are saved. Let some people die and you can rile your base
Here's what we know: In 2014, Obama administration halted the so called "gain of function" research because of risk of laboratory accidents. In 2017, the Trump administration restarted this dangerous research. See links below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-fun...
Excerpt: [Obama] White House announced Friday that it would temporarily halt all new funding for experiments that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous. The White House said the moratorium decision had been made “following recent biosafety incidents at federal research facilities.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...
Excerpt: [Trump administration] on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal. Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.
So, Trump restarted the dangerous research that Obama had shut down. You may be thinking, what does that have to do with Covid? Covid started in Wuhan, China, right?
It turns out that the Trump administration, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit organization focused on studying emerging diseases. The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses. The rest is history.
What should he have done that he didn't do, in your opinion? Fwiw, it was the economic shock from COVID that caused this situation where he's come back to ruin our lives again. Any further disruption to the economy during COVID would have exacerbated that
I’ll just run down the record and stop at the first obvious error.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._federal_government_respon...
> One month after [March 16, 2020, when the administration first recommended social distancing], epidemiologists Britta Jewell and Nicholas Jewell estimated that, had social distancing policies been implemented just two weeks earlier, U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 might have been reduced by 90%.
So there’s a concrete thing he could have done differently.
> Any further disruption to the economy during COVID would have exacerbated that
More stringent restrictions done earlier may have shortened the duration of the economic impact, who knows, we can’t exactly observe those alternate timelines directly.
The administration had zero discipline on messaging and so nothing was done with any consistency. As you say, he was initially positive that a vaccine would arrive quickly; when it was available, he flipped and endorsed alternative treatments of all kinds, many of them harmful. Formerly a champion of Dr. Fauci, then later his worst detractor and chief prosecutor in the court of public opinion.
Doesn’t line up with WHO’s record of events.
The bar is so low, but god I cannot wait until we have another president that I don't think about more than a few times a year.
If we just didn't have a president at all for a term it would be an improvement.
It's like these people think they're watching WWE.
Can't imagine what it must be like on the inside, I am looking forward to that no longer being the case, one day.
Videos of him wandering around with his mouth open, and then being dragged back on track.
I prefer Trump. Much less hypocrisy.
It's bad that Biden was silent. This enabled the mainstream media, which is captured by conservative oligarchs, to define Biden's presidency. There's going to be an onslaught of news either way, and it's already an uphill battle for anyone who isn't right wing to get a fair shake. So, you shouldn't let others make the news for you. Biden expanded overtime pay and oversaw a number of worker and consumer protections. It's bad that he wasn't tooting his own horn about this stuff!
Additionally, for America to ever return to being the shining example of democracy it claims to be, the next administration needs to very publicly make an example of the current administration. Americans, and the world, need to know that authoritarians have no place in America.
There is no chance of that happening. Trump will pardon every single person in his administration and anyone else who carried water for him. The next President will say "we have to move on" and Trump himself will ride off into the sunset with the billions he made for himself and his family.
- why did the Trump administration decide to leave the WHO?
- what impact will this have?
- is this at all beneficial to other countries that aren't the US?
Why did Covid cause every government to become authoritarian on the directions of the WHO which couldn't even, itself, verify what stance to hold authority on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/world/biden-restores-who-...
So, like, what exactly is the point of making up reasons to hate Democrats. Obviously it's all the rage on the left (as on the right) to do so, but fabrications from the left are no better than fabrications from the right.
There is strong continuity on foreign policy between administrations.
You have to put this in context that Trump is also creating what appears to be an alternative venue to the UN with the "Board of Peace" which was originally a colonial authority to impose our will on Gaza, but its charter doesn't mention Gaza at all and talks about international conflict in general.
Again, I feel like you have to live in an alternate universe to think that there is much continuity on foreign policy between Trump and <insert Democrat here>. Or you have to be laser focused on one or two similarities and ignore the vast chasms of difference on everything else.
There are a number of places where there are superficial differences, and those differences are important to people of color, trans people, etc, but the Dems are always looking for reasons to make a right turn. They track the Republicans who actively move right and create a small space a relative distance from their position.
You realize we just kidnapped a head of state, we're currently repositioning strike forces around Iran, and we just caused NATO to reposition troops to Greenland to defend against imminent US invasion?
Can you please identify events that you see as "continuous" with these ones?
The Democrats are better at dressing things up and making it look like they're the good guys when they do the same stuff.
We are in a reorientation of American policy. Trump isn't doing this without consent from our elites, the same people that fund the Democrats who suspiciously aren't fighting it.
The problem with a lot of these UN bodies such as the WHO, UNESCO etc is that they do not have proper external scrutiny, and instead have become overarching institutions which pass down diktats from on high. Because they are supernational/global, they are difficult to argue with or hold to account. Yet these bodies have ever more influence over our supposedly democratic institutions and are even attempting to override them in some cases.
It has spent the entire 2020s trying to push through a global treaty allowing them to declare situations independently of national governments. The backlash has been huge, especially since this can have consequences going beyond healthcare.
WHO is, like every scientific or humanitarian endeavor, imperfect. But the list of goods they've done in the world dwarves the list of failures.
UNESCO, well, I'm looking at its website and Wikipedia article now, and I don't understand what it does. (Or maybe it would be easier to list what it doesn't do, since even its list of sponsored institutions is mind-numbingly long.)
The WHO has been trying to push through an international treaty since 2020 which would allow them to override national governments on health matters.
Any example of a diktat from on high which you think was highly negative? Afaik, these bodies typically just promote whatever is scientifically / economically / etc. the prevailing worldview
Besides that the general decline of the American Empire seems relevant enough for today's world.
I do not like this outcome but surely nobody is surprised? The specific act took a year to enact. They had to announce the intent to withdraw back in 24/25.
This is politics. The impact on worldwide health will take a while to emerge but the impact on soft power will be clear if and when other WHO members pick up the slack.