It’s interesting to note that in the end, there was no one else coming: we were it. A large amount of disease containment and control was just fronted by the United States. As the US declines, it’s not that a new leader will come in. It’s not that the Chinese century will have their massive industrial engine put to the tasks that America put hers to. It’s just that things won’t get done.
Sobering, really, that despite all the ascendance of new powers (who do not yet share the norms) and the noble aims of the old (who are too weak), one year after the US left no one has filled the gap.
The organization has been burnt down in 12 months, but the expertise still exists. There are signs that the international community will finally start working on climate change now that the US has pulled out of the treaties. The Chinese are a decade ahead of the west when it comes to building cars.
The WHO admits they screwed this outbreak handling up badly, but, by my understanding, they screwed up less than the US did in Wuhan in 2019, and they’re exhibiting the will to improve instead of shifting blame (remember all the “investigations” of the Chinese biological weapons research programs that were co-funded and co-operated by the US with federal funds?)
I think we’re going to see some more dark years before a one-two punch that improves things dramatically:
1) international organizations step up to fill the vacuum the US left
2) After the 2026-2028 new Dust Bowl / Great Depression the US is heading into, voters (state and federal) in the US are going to demand progressive and populist candidates that will actually attempt to put the US back on competitive economic footing.
> The Chinese are a decade ahead of the west when it comes to building cars.
Now if those cars are actually good, price independent, then that would be worth mentioning.
First we laughed at them, then we fought them, then they won, then we solved the problem with protectionist tariffs.
Uhhh no? How did they screw up? They were notified late, and then they did what they were supposed to do.
His economic policy has way more overlap with Bernie's than people tend to understand. Both believe immigration lowers wages, and both believe tariffs are imperative (you have to dig back to pre-2017 talk from Bernie, he changed his website/talking points after Trump won).
Edit: People struggle so hard with politics because everyone is totally blinded by there side. Here are populist things Trump has done/trying to do
- remove taxes on tips
- implement tariffs on foreign goods
- implement strict immigration policy (note sanders wanted a pathway to citizenship, he did not want an open border, and he never addressed how he would handle millions showing up at the border)
- block corporate landlords from single family home ownership
- create a government funded college level education program to get free bachelor degrees.
- take government ownership stake in large American companies (us steel, intel)
- cap interest rates on credit cards
- lower central bank interest rates
- de-criminalizing drugs, reschedule marijuana
- pro crypto
- pro prediction markets
Guys, you can hate Trump, you can accurately access he isn't intelligent or competent, criticize his brutish approach, but if you cannot recognize he is a populist, you are objectively lost-in-the-sauce.
Just specific to tariffs, if you are a US company that wants to setup domestic manufacturing you have no idea what the situation will be next week much less several years from now. The chaos isn’t good for anyone but Trump. The rule of law is as much about stability as it is freedom.
My own megacorp is continuing to build mass manufacturing capacity in Europe, specifically because tariffs are causing hassles for US import and export, and our EU buyers are demanding EU made after the bull decided to destroy all diplomatic relations built the last few decades.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are on polar opposite ends of ideologies.
Bernie Sanders has a lifetime record of integrity, working to fairly distribute wealth, and good and transparent governance.
Donald Trump has a lifetime record of bankruptcies, fraud convictions, lying about his policies for the working while governing for the richest people, using government to enrich himself, and using government to hide his misdeeds and shield himself and his business partners from accountability. Donald Trump says he is many things he is not, and simply believing the words that come out of his mouth is being gullible.
I am not even a Bernie Sanders supporter.
There's a matter of debate as to what populism is. And on both ends of that debate are Trump and Sanders.
Sanders believes in governing for the popular good, it is why he is an independent. He's a throwback to early 20th century social programs. It is relatively noble and good. He wants fair redistribution of wealth. He wants to remove wealth's influence from the democratic process. He has a lifetime of track record and governance as proof.
Trump is the archetype of the "thin center" populist. He has no real driving philosophy of governance, and demagogues under the banner of populism. He panders to the religious right even though he can't name a book of the Bible. He panders to the nationalists and bigots. He panders to patriots. And he sets up his opposition, regardless of truth, as the opposite of those things.
Trump is a populist in the way the Goebbels set Hitler up as a populist (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/making-a-l..., https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/1934-nazi-pa..., and https://museums.nuernberg.de/documentation-center/topics/nat...). That is to say, he is not one at all, he just lies about it to exploit division.
So don't act like the world should be thankful for all the US has done when it pulls the plug in such a way that is maybe more devastating than having done nothing, because at least nothing would have left the spot for someone else to have risen to the occasion. Maybe this time though without using people's basic needs to create a political tool to be used opportunitistically.
The US saved tens of millions of Russians from starvation a century ago. Culturally they have absolutely no clue about that, they're entirely oblivious in terms of their own history. The good deeds never garnered the US any positive credit. Only the bad deeds garner the US bad credit aplenty.
I want my country to pay for these programs because they save lives and my country is rich enough to afford it. The way people talk about this stuff so amorally is incredibly off-putting.
I have literally met Japanese people who have been thankful to the US for dropping nukes on them while pissing themselves about North Korea having missiles. The difference is that they perceived the US as an enlightened hegemony, and this is in part because of the relative pennies spent on Africa.
Incidentally, There is an animated series called Gasaraki with an endearingly simplistic and worshipful view of the US that aligns with how they viewed the US, especially at the end.
Good luck with AI hunter killers replacing good will.
The vagueness of "being involved" is doing a lot of work in your comment. How often is the US vilified for these humanitarian programs and why should we pay attention to anyone who vilifies something that is obviously doing good in the world?
One year isn't a lot of time to fill a gap that was previously filled by decades of hard work.
Maybe if the US had had a transition plan, other competent and capable countries could have better filled the gap.
But I don't see how to logically make the connection that when you pull that charity back, you are now responsible for any crisis.
That is exactly the argument that people who are against foreign aid make.
Like I will help you walk and feed your dog if you can't all the time, but if I stop doing that and your dog gets sick, that's not my fault and I'm not a bad person.
Why you were doing it in the first place matters, too.
But that's not what happened. Elon Musk, a random rich guy who was not himself financing the charity, appointed himself dictator of all American spending programs. He promised his patron that he would make the government run more efficiently, but found himself unable to. Then he went around randomly breaking charitable programs in an attempt to prove that his failed government efficiency initiative was producing meaningful outcomes. That's why he is accountable (and will be held accountable) for the people his decisions have killed.
Apparently Gemini is the late night news anchor:
https://g.co/gemini/share/3504289b8dc8
Chatgpt the art critic:
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a11e80e-523c-83ea-9a1b-03329f860c...
And grok somewhat of an apologist:
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtNA_4071d2b9-ae39-43cc-abf1-cd...
I get what you're saying and generally agree with the overall point, but this specific aspect makes it worth remarking that even the model trained to be pro-Elon concedes Elon is at fault.
Africa has a large array of unique circumstances that make it much more 'viral' there, including various cultural funerary rituals that involve contact with corpses that can have extremely high viral loads, bushmeat consumption/processing (ebola can spread from animals to humans), as well as all the more stereotypical (and accurate nonetheless) reasons as well that make it particularly dangerous for healthcare workers there.
It's not entirely clear how it could spread uncontrollably outside of Africa.
Bunga bunga or whatever isn’t classic ebola. And it’s being given an expanding substrate on which to evolve.
But, yes, I would rather not have an outbreak of ebola.
Yes, outbreaks of extremely contagious and deadly disease often are major news stories in other countries, and yes western nations often ignore outbreaks in global south nations.
The discussion is about whether the western media is paying insufficient attention to the Ebola outbreak simply because it’s in DRC, and DRC/Africa doesn’t matter.
The post you responded to is suggesting a different hypothesis: that the media is paying limited attention because it’s in a country quite a long way away, on a different continent. In line with this hypothesis, it’s not unreasonable to question how much attention the press in countries a long way away would focus on a viral outbreak in a European country.
From the article "deaths reported at 177, and around 1,400 contacts now being traced". People are dying on the planet we all belong to.
Other than that, I think it bears considering that any specific level of fear may be a factor in the safeguard that have been put in place to mitigate outbreaks. Without some level of fear, not much would be done. I don't know if it's the direction your thoughts were going in, but an unreflected gut reaction of "just fear, it's never amounted to much" is the potential catalyst for removing guardrails that have prevented worse outbreaks. It's important not to reason solely from that sort of counterfactual premise but chesterton's fence should apply when considering "was the fear justified, has it played a part in directing responses and if so has that response been calibrated to the reality or too much by the fear?" We need to get past this tendency to leave things a hot-takes and gut checks.
You were right 6 years ago about a strong response needed for COVID: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315024
I’ll do my best to avoid the overnight cuddle vigil with an Ebola corpse.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-tent-fire-congo-9.721000...
I tend to do this naturally. Even people who sound like they might cough up blood.
Those initiatives inevitably cost far less than the economic impact of outbreaks (the US is currently diverting international travelers), but the best deal maker in the history of the universe says they’re a “bad deal”, so the rest of the planet gets to suffer.
There are ~197 countries in the world, you should also criticize the other 196 for also not wanting to pay for the exact same thing.
I'm also not going to criticize, for example, the UK, for recently providing 20 million pounds in new aid to help contain the outbreak...