Scarlet Fever is bacterial, not viral, and are fought by different parts of the body's immune system.
Few if any attempts at creating vaccines against bacteria are successful, whereas vaccines against viruses are typically more successful, although viruses such as Influenza can evolve new versions frequently, requiring new vaccine versions.
>And running a newspaper that continuously annoys a President doesn't really fit the apparently popular idea that Bezos is spending money to get favourable treatment from politicians.
At least from outward appearances, most of the ruling class and permanent government isn't particularly fond of the current President.
That's what our current President and his "deep state" wants you to believe. However, after three + years it's pretty obvious that our President has a firm grip on power. He still plays the victim every once in a while. But all the departments are quite clearly bowing and pleasing him as best they can.
Also the swine flu was much less of a problem for the US: the CDC reported less than 13,000 deaths in the US over a one year period vs stats today of over 34,000 for COVID-19 in just a few months — despite the extra precautions taken.
Slightly off-topic, but if you consider that 90% of "mainstream" media is owned by 6 huge corporations, which are interested in maintaining crony capitalism (of which the state is a central player) - then it would not be completely outlandish to think that the press is kinda part of state (conceptually speaking)
it's the difference between explicit and invisible force. people in favour of capitalism (in all its forms) consider the invisible forces "the way the world works".
Eh, fair point that the epidemics were different scales, when I first saw that comparison they were still fairly close in terms of impact to the States.
Still, it seems to me that the Trump administration originally clearly wanted to go for a 'herd immunity' strategy and changed it due to political rather than practical considerations. I'm quite sure that if it had the relationship with the fifth estate that, say, the Biden campaign enjoys, there would have been very little political fallout as a result. The press has managed the truth far more aggressively for other administrations.
It seems he had a mix of reasons, he says. No doubt now that it's a functioning entity he has an added bonus. I remember at the time though most people thought he was throwing good money after bad.
I wasn't defending Bezos - just putting forward the situation at the time. I feel the idea that this is some brilliant forward plan of domination isn't correct, sure it was a possibility but the element of risk was one that everyone else walked away from. Respect to him for that, having said that, I disagree with a lot of his business practices, but that seems to be the current business environment - he's just working within the rules. The rules need to change.
The reasons he gives for buying it don't tell us anything. His net worth is in the 12 figures. Everything he says publicly is crafted by a well paid and highly competent PR team.
If he bought it to gain political influence, which seems to me the only reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or for any other reason that would put him in a bad light, he would not in a million years come out and say that openly.
No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend, or his employees more than he absolutely has to. He didn't buy a newspaper because he loves giving money away on good causes.
> This is the guy who refuses to pay his shareholders a dividend
Amazons share price has grown 136,000% in the past 23 years or 36.8% per year. That is far above S&P 500 returns and the exact case for when you want a company reinvesting in themself instead of paying out dividends.
Do you have some personal insight into the minds of WP employees? Do you have first-hand knowledge that the identity of the owner of the business has had no impact on any of their decisions, like who to hire or what to publish?
Leaders like Bezos don't have to write down a memo to make sure people carry out their will.
You're wildly underestimating how rebellious newspaper editors are. If someone was messing with the reporting, everyone in DC would know, and you'd see remarkably detailed reporting on it throughout other parts of the press.
Of course academia is a "radical left" arena, as it's the domain of our youth and that is a natural expression of their view of the world.
All news has bias, but some are more biased than others, and that bias varies from personal and ingrained to organizational and intentional. It's important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
Project Veritas is a right-wing, extremely partisan organization with a shady history. They are not an organization that I would trust.
We're in dangerous political territory, so I'll preface my question in the context of being genuinely curious and not judgmental (of you).
My awareness of him is from several "stunts" where he "went undercover" and interviewed his targets surreptitiously and then dishonestly edited the results to support his ideological narrative.
I associate cable news with general incompetence, corporate shilling and whatnot, but generally a "noisy" signal. PV, on the other hand, is driven purely by right-wing ideological goals.
While I agree with you, I'll play devils advocate: The information in the documents is so bad, the damage it would cause would be worse than 9/11 itself.
What other logical reason is there for keeping it secret for this long?
Okay, damage to whom? The American people or individuals with compromised interests? I am unconvinced it's not the latter and that's a shame akin to the reality that we have to find of squaring with that it took a comedian pleading with tears in his eyes to convince Congress to do the right thing and even authorize funds for first responder's families.
Next question: More damaging than 9/11? Does that preclude the loss of life the morning of? To say nothing of the lives lost during the resulting military actions and regional fallout?
Let me end this by asking this: does this of all things really need a devil's advocate? The devil seems to be doing just fine pro se.
Basically yes, USA has went to absolutely unexplainable, completely bizarre extent to shield Saudis from the fallout, and even took out their biggest enemy in the region for them.
A document rendering multiple US administrations complete insert expletive will be deeply detrimental to political careers of many political clans on the hill.
But that's what OP is asking/saying right? If the information was made public it would mean that heads would role (proably even prosecutions) but the nation would be just fine (other than that lots of people might have to get to terms that their government has been lying to them for decades).
If peace and diplomacy are the goals, conducting it in the dark terrifies me as to what steps the interested parties aim to use in 'getting there' or the questionable trades and concessions they make outside of the spotlight.
I mean let’s turn this on its head: if peace and diplomacy are the goals, what do they have to hide? That’s a pretty universal outcome that I can’t imagine many people having a problem pursuing.
Can we stop treating the devil like an indigent defendant now and look this diseased horse square in the mouth? This is kabooky-simulacra-governance disguised as security policy.
The Saudis no longer control enough oil to explain it.
But maybe it's all connected to Epstein, or rather to the group that he ostensibly headed. That would account for the links to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. And there's the possibly that they're blackmailing many senior politicians from the US and who knows how many other countries.[0]
It doesn't, but if it is uncovered that it isn't, people will have to ask their politicians why they keep spending billions on Saudis is there is no terrible secret reason to do so.
If there’s any damaging or damning info, the people should hear it and decide how to respond. If the truth has been told to us already, then nothing could be that much more damaging. If we were deceived from the beginning, then that has already resulted in massive amounts of damage.
The only people who would lose are those within political organizations.
He suggests keeping your identity small. There is only so much you can do on that front. Some potential government policies are beneficial for people with certain characteristics, including immutable ones or ones that are difficult to change, and harmful for other people. Why would it not be rational for people to align politically along the lines of those characteristics to push for policies that benefit them on that basis, especially if they believe people who don't have those characteristics are aligning to push against them?
Part of what you're saying is right: it's rational to cooperate to achieve goals.
However, you're wrong in 2 ways:
1. Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation. I can vote to support gay rights without being gay. I can vote to support gun freedom without owning a gun. You're using the vague word "align" to mean both identifying as part of a group and cooperating, but these are not the same thing.
2. Your post is only looking at cooperating toward goals that arise from shared identification as part of a group. This is a myopic view: there are lots of people who despite identifying as part of the same groups, have different, incompatible goals. This is exactly why not identifying as part of a group is rational: if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
For example: I find myself cooperating with a certain political party more often than not--I've fairly consistently voted for them, and even worked for some of their political campaigns. But I don't identify as part of that party. This means that when someone criticizes that political party, I'm not offended: they're not criticizing me, because I don't identify as part of that party. I don't take it personally. And it also means that when I disagree with that political party, I don't fall prey to the Granfalloon technique. If I disagree with them (and I do) I don't feel any pressure to conform my views to the political party. I can rationally support my own goals, not theirs.
>Group identification is not a necessary component of cooperation.
I didn't say or suggest it was.
>if you identify as part of a group, then you will have the human impulse to take actions that achieve the goals of the group, even if those goals are incompatible with your own goals.
Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.
Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
> Sure, but the goals that you have in common with your group are more likely to be achieved if members of your group strongly identify as members of that group.
That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.
> Of course, it's certainly possible for groups that aren't really in the interest of the members of the group to form.
It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
>That might be true, but so what? Keep your identity small. That doesn't say you shouldn't cooperate with people who don't keep their identities small. You can cooperate with people who strongly identify as members of a group without identifying as a member of that group yourself.
You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals. That sort of behavior is quite destructive to the group, and groups have (of course imperfect) mechanisms to punish people that behave that way. If you can get away with behaving that way, so be it, but the group has a strong incentive to stop you from doing so.
>It's a property of groups that if they believe the group is beneficial, they'll make compromises to maintain the existence of the group. Each compromise takes them farther from their ideals, until they're no longer really serving their original goals. As a result, I would argue that all groups tend toward not really being in the interest of the members, unless careful measures are taken to prevent that.
In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
> You're suggesting acting parasitically toward the group, in that you are gaining the benefits of others sacrificing their own goals for group goals, while not sacrificing your own goals for group goals.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that not identifying as a member of the group allows you to make a conscious decision on whether to continue to cooperate with a group when the goals of the group no longer are compatible with your goals. Maybe that means ending or redefining your relationship with the group, maybe it means trying to change the group.
This is a particularly rich accusation coming from someone who thinks it's normal to behave out of rational self-interest. ;)
> In the long term, sure I could buy that. But the short term benefits could easily make it worth it overall to form the group. By the time the group degenerates as you describe, the members could be vastly ahead of where they would have been otherwise.
That's true, which is why you'd want to cooperate with groups and then exit them when they cease to be beneficial.
To be clear, a lot of your negativity on my position seems to be from your assuming that my goals are necessarily selfish. If you believe everyone acts only in rational self-interest, then all cooperation lasts only as long as you have the same goals anyway, so your position is self-contradictory. That is, unfortunately, how a lot of the capitalist economy works, but that's not how relationships and cooperation really work in a lot of cases. The reality is that when I cooperate with people, even if they have different goals than me, I often learn things from them that change my goals, or form a new goal of maintaining a relationship with that person. Goals can be prosocial.
There's nothing inherently 'rational' about self-interest (which is entirely orthogonal to the justification or lack thereof for the latter). It has literally never occurred to me to consider whether party policies are good for me personally when assessing who to vote for. This is not irrational behaviour on my part (I'm well aware of my values and the relationship, as far as I'm able to calculate it, between those values and proposed policies).
The conflation of self-interest and rationality is just ideology (often forcefully conveyed by evangelists for the most salient superstition of our age, ie. economics).
I certainly agree that everyone's values are ultimately arbitrary, but that's pretty far outside of this discussion. Most people are self-interested, and the person I originally replied to was talking about normal people. "This phenomenon is root of all evil in modern day America.
People identify with political parties as though they are sports teams."
That's fair enough, but I think the conflation of self-interest with rationality is so ubiquitous (and like most official ideologies, dangerously mistaken) that it's worth challenging when it arises. Or at least to the extent permitted by one's energies and everyone's good humour.
(I don't btw agree that values are entirely arbitrary, but that's a discussion for another day).
It's a longer discussion than I have time for now, but in short: it creates ethically worse people (unnaturally selfish) without them being any more 'rational' (just as subject to biases as ever). And it creates worse societies, eg. the US. The two feed back and forward to each other, making for a downward spiral very hard to arrest.
Like Scarlet fever?