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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

I feel obliged to point out that, despite submitting this link, I think this is factually in the same territory as climate change denial. It is railing against "elite, globalist, leftists" who are, for unstated reasons, undermining society with their hospitals and schools and vaccines and stuff.

I just find it fascinating, and wonder how much is knowingly telling a story that they know some people want to hear, and how much is constructing a complicated justificaton for their pre-existing beliefs because their political philosophy simply had no answer to "How do you deal with a viral pandemic?".

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I think the point is that dealing with a pandemic is very hard and at least some of how we are dealing with it is based in magical thinking, based on how we approach all problems.

If anything the main group he points at is bureaucrats, which in the West are not so much a leftist group as a career path in very centrist politics. The fact that he talks about social construction shows he's at least somewhat versed in postmodernism, which is generally associated with left and post-left thinking.

He does mention leftist elites, but I think he's more talking about the media narrative than some kind of conspiracy plot.

Three quarters through the article the reason is implied to be:

"China faked a Hollywood-style viral pandemic to undermine western political philosophy, and leaders of the world allowed themselves to be fooled because it conveniently grants them more power."

To be fair, alot of political philosophy had no real framework to deal with a pandemic.

Liberal globalism advocated for keeping borders open no matter the cost and against any restrictions of social life at the beginning. The progressive Left miss-identified quarantine for all entering the country as political scare-mongering against foreigners. The right is still embarrassing itself on a daily basis, regarding the pandemic. Most of the elderly politicians in all sorts of countries, seem to be entirely unable to adapt to new situations, outside of their life-experienced frame of reference. All they have is the fixated-idea to tunnel through "back to normal times".

The International Institutions were revealed to be underfunded, thus easily subverted and mostly interested in turning the first world into a fortress as protective measures instead of helping.

Government policies for all types & forms of government meandered and flailed. It seems after several generations since the last pandemic, the experience and institutional knowledge had been wiped out to deal with it. I have no solution for this, but it seems that while theoretical knowledge remains, a correct response can not be inoculated with just that.

I honestly doubt that even with the Obama Playbook around and in use, the outcome would have been much different. The measures would have been taken half-assed and the actions crippled by cost- and corner-cutting.

Those with the most pandemic experience fared pretty well at the start (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore mostly due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea... ) - but even within these societies the nature of the beast was largely ignored by sub-cultures (religious or otherwise).

It seems that some things, we can only learn and remember, by suffering through it. I hope, that this does not also is the case for imperialistic induced world wars.

They both challenge received wisdom. One bears a social penalty for making any arguments similar to either of these. Yep, checks out. Definitely in the same territory of climate change skeptics.

It's unfair to suggest that being concerned about fairly authoritarian measures amounts to being 'against hospitals', and also to assume somehow that people must have a 'philosophy' and that it somehow has 'no answers for pandemic'.

Creeping power and influence of fairly undemocratic globalist institutions and especially major multinational corporations that have far more power than any local government is a legit concern.

All of said - I do not like this article one bit.

It's really bad.

It's so bad that it should be considered for it's bad logic, more than anything the author has to say about face value.

There are lies, misrepresentations, logical fallacies in every paragraph.

He indicates that 'it's odd' that people can have 'good health but still have COVID', which is not odd at all.

He misrepresents the nature of testing: " Consider all those people these past months who have recovered from a respiratory illness, with fever and cough, without ever being tested." - insinuating in the following sentence that somehow untested individuals with 'fever' are counted as COVID, which is definitely not the case.

The author seems incapable of grasping that having a viral load means 'you have COVID' and importantly - can spread it.

"Central to the definition of Covid, is that mass testing programs be the only means of defining the extent of the disease, assessing the success of the technocratic response, and the virtue of the compliant population. Covid is not like other communicable diseases, which are diagnosed mostly in private, according to likely symptoms. "

Is completely false.

COVID is tested much like every other such disease, using tests made available for private and public, your doctor will apply them just the same and it's ludicrous to suggest a doctorw would only diagnose 'based on symptoms' if there were simple and accessible tests at the ready.

". There is no general unified Covid with a limited set of properties. Attempts to fix its characteristics dissolve in a pool of contradictory evidence. "

Yes, this is called Science. It's a new disease and our understanding of it changes rapidly.

"Reinfection aligns neatly with established doctrine about the inadequacy of our natural defences. "

No, it's just a common thing that happens in viral diseases.

" Remember that this all started with "two weeks to crush the curve,"

Yes, we had very short period of time to change behaviours to bring the R0 down. It mostly worked.

"To begin with, vaccines, while indeed extra-natural, merely stimulate natural immunity. If we may hope for a vaccine, it is unclear why we cannot let some of our natural immune systems join the fight. "

This is a totally nonsensical and contradictory statement. We know some people are infected, and we adjust that into our policy. We also know it's of much less risk to children and that they do actually represent some threshold of natural immunity.

He uses the term 'extra-natural' in different situations without any context, it has no meaning.

It's really difficult to parse through this really terrible reasoning, I'm all for contrarian arguments but this is a terrible piece.

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