I mean, the wet markets are CLEARLY a huge problem in regards to viruses. I just don't know what difference it makes once it was made known to the Administration through intelligence reports as soon as it started to spread. There was never any chance of it staying in mainland China. And instead of making plans, the covered their ears and went "la, la, la" for 4 months.
I dont think that the left is some monolith that is explicitly anti capitalist and anti state. I think there's some large shades of that, and they can be varying degrees of skeptical of capitalism and skeptical of the state, but dont necessarily have be full-throated in either regard.
I didn't say the left is a monolith. I said that leftist tendences are largely anti-state and almost entirely anti-capitalist. If you're not, then you're not on the left. You might be left of Democrats, but that's not the same thing. Just being anti-whatever the GOP decides to stand for isn't enough.
Noticing differences doesn't equate to racism. I don't care what you say.
Didn't you carefully define racism a couple of weeks ago to mean a very specific thing just to argue that it's not racist to view Asians as "disease carriers" just because they're Asian?
I didn't say Western values were better, just that they are different. Anything else is you putting words in my mouth. Give me examples of people in Europe buying rhinoceros horns and I'll take back my point. Even National Geographic talks about China and India contributing to the extinction of rhinos, pangolins and many other endangered species. Not to mention their pillaging of the South China Sea. Calling me a racist is just dismissive and frankly, I think you have an anti-West bias. The West has their own sins, to be sure, but the East is just as culpable in the rape of our planet.
They're not, though? Who exactly invaded, colonized, and annexed the continents of North and South America, Africa, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent?
Yes, China has been an imperial power, but to claim that Asia collectively has been "as bad as Europeans" shows a profound ignorance of history. Large parts of Asia have been colonized and subjugated by Europeans.
Adding that leftist ideologies are largely concerned with ending unjust hierarchies and the two forces that create and enforce such hierarchies are nations and capitalism. The latter requires that most be poor so that the few can be wealthy. If you're pro-capitalism, you aren't leftist.
I don't necessarily disagree with some of your points. It was never going to go the way you wanted in this country though. There is a distinct difference in the way people think in the West vs. the East. Regardless of how you think the West handles itself, keep in mind that the East is where a lot of these viruses are coming from. As horrible as you think we are, we're not slaughtering and eating bats and civets in wet markets. Nor are we buying ground rhinoceros horns or pangolin innards to brew up potions for relieving something we take a blue pill for...
Neither are most Chinese. Lots of Americans still eat wild game, too, and take nonscientific remedies like homeopathic placebos and supplements that consistently turn out to not contain what they say they do. Dividing the world into "us and them" isn't just racist, it's wrong.
The avian flu came from birds, hence the name. Recent genetic research indicates the "spanish" flu that killed more people than the Great War was an avian flu. It turns out America has a lot of birds, including overcrowded poultry farms that are cesspools of disease. If you want to believe that several pandemics coming from China means much more than "China has over a billion people and many of them are still living in poverty", then your predictions aren't going to age much more gracefully than Trump's did.
Noticing differences doesn't equate to racism. I don't care what you say.
I didn't say Western values were better, just that they are different. Anything else is you putting words in my mouth. Give me examples of people in Europe buying rhinoceros horns and I'll take back my point. Even National Geographic talks about China and India contributing to the extinction of rhinos, pangolins and many other endangered species. Not to mention their pillaging of the South China Sea. Calling me a racist is just dismissive and frankly, I think you have an anti-West bias. The West has their own sins, to be sure, but the East is just as culpable in the rape of our planet.
I totally agree. This is one of those "both sides" arguments where there are legit arguments for and against both sides.
I think again, one of the reasons for the fewer cases in China is there is a strong culture of mask wearing. Here in the states, up until recently, wearing a mask was going to get you yelled at in most places. Because the CDC and the WHO issued WRONG guidance to not wear masks. They did this lie for good reason, to prevent a run on masks desperately needed for our healthcare professionals, but it is a lie nonetheless and the "masks are bad" narrative has taken hold.
In China and in a lot of east asian countries it's normal to wear masks, has been for years, because air pollution is so bad. So it's not unusual at all to see a lot of people tooling around with masks.
A just released CDC report gives Covid-19 an R0 of 5.7! Which means that every person infected will infect an average of 5.7 more people. This makes it one of the most infectious diseases on the planet.
A mask is the tinniest least bit we can do. And the CDC was providing bad guidance about that until recently. Even now, a cloth mask isn't going to do much but better than nothing for you and might protect others if you are indeed a transmitter. We need medical quality masks but we can't have them because they don't exist for sale. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article
I dont think that the left is some monolith that is explicitly anti capitalist and anti state. I think there's some large shades of that, and they can be varying degrees of skeptical of capitalism and skeptical of the state, but dont necessarily have be full-throated in either regard.
I didn't say the left is a monolith. I said that leftist tendences are largely anti-state and almost entirely anti-capitalist. If you're not, then you're not on the left. You might be left of Democrats, but that's not the same thing. Just being anti-whatever the GOP decides to stand for isn't enough.
Noticing differences doesn't equate to racism. I don't care what you say.
Didn't you carefully define racism a couple of weeks ago to mean a very specific thing just to argue that it's not racist to view Asians as "disease carriers" just because they're Asian?
I didn't say Western values were better, just that they are different. Anything else is you putting words in my mouth. Give me examples of people in Europe buying rhinoceros horns and I'll take back my point. Even National Geographic talks about China and India contributing to the extinction of rhinos, pangolins and many other endangered species. Not to mention their pillaging of the South China Sea. Calling me a racist is just dismissive and frankly, I think you have an anti-West bias. The West has their own sins, to be sure, but the East is just as culpable in the rape of our planet.
They're not, though? Who exactly invaded, colonized, and annexed the continents of North and South America, Africa, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent?
Yes, China has been an imperial power, but to claim that Asia collectively has been "as bad as Europeans" shows a profound ignorance of history. Large parts of Asia have been colonized and subjugated by Europeans.
Ever heard of the Mongols? How about Imperial Japan?
When it's good, it's an absentee ballot. When it's bad it's mail-in voting. There's your trump speak hot take on this subject.
Democrats need to demand national vote by mail to protect the citizens and the next election.
Unfortunately, knowing Democrats, they will probably cave immediately to the right wing lies that convince average joes to argue against their own best interests to make variations of the following argument and starts whining about "but I can't pay my billz and I don't care if Republicans rip us off and take trillions! I need my $1200! I don't care that Democrats want to give everyone $2000/month for the duration of this, we need to do whatever the Republicans say now because when Republicans say it it's important and legitimate and when Democrats say something, it's bad!"
I'm disappointed at the death of Sanders' campaign. I do find it reassuring that Joe Biden has supported campaign finance reform for decades, but I think Sanders would have made it a much higher priority. Hopefully Biden's administration will implement the reforms we need.
As far as the question of whether Asia has been "as bad as Europeans" historically, I don't believe there's any way of measuring something as massive as all of European and Asian history, nor do I see the point in trying to weigh them--especially considering we're trying to weigh groups of civilizations, when even civilizations are too large to weigh. I'd compare it to the question, "Which civilizations were worse, the ones named A-N, or the ones named O-Z?"
I'm disappointed at the death of Sanders' campaign. I do find it reassuring that Joe Biden has supported campaign finance reform for decades, but I think Sanders would have made it a much higher priority. Hopefully Biden's administration will implement the reforms we need.
As far as the question of whether Asia has been "as bad as Europeans" historically, I don't believe there's any way of measuring something as massive as all of European and Asian history, nor do I see the point in trying to weigh them--especially considering we're trying to weigh groups of civilizations, when even civilizations are too large to weigh. I'd compare it to the question, "Which civilizations were worse, the ones named A-N, or the ones named O-Z?"
Those O-Z folks were the worst! You can't trust the last half of the alphabet...
I'm disappointed at the death of Sanders' campaign. I do find it reassuring that Joe Biden has supported campaign finance reform for decades, but I think Sanders would have made it a much higher priority. Hopefully Biden's administration will implement the reforms we need.
As far as the question of whether Asia has been "as bad as Europeans" historically, I don't believe there's any way of measuring something as massive as all of European and Asian history, nor do I see the point in trying to weigh them--especially considering we're trying to weigh groups of civilizations, when even civilizations are too large to weigh. I'd compare it to the question, "Which civilizations were worse, the ones named A-N, or the ones named O-Z?"
I do think there is some value in looking at the history of various civilizations, but only because people commonly seem to have a delusional view of "how bad" things were across, well, almost everywhere.
I do have a degree of respect for ancient Chinese civilization though. They were surprisingly meritocratic during some ancient periods, and has some pretty cool and advanced technology for their time.
I dont think that the left is some monolith that is explicitly anti capitalist and anti state. I think there's some large shades of that, and they can be varying degrees of skeptical of capitalism and skeptical of the state, but dont necessarily have be full-throated in either regard.
I didn't say the left is a monolith. I said that leftist tendences are largely anti-state and almost entirely anti-capitalist. If you're not, then you're not on the left. You might be left of Democrats, but that's not the same thing. Just being anti-whatever the GOP decides to stand for isn't enough.
Right It's not a monolith - you just *have* to be these two things or you're not it. Leftism is inherently relative, and not something that can be simply pegged down to stances on two segments of society.
I'll give you credit though, you're half right. Just being "anti GOP" doesnt make you left.
I'm convinced the Democratic Party is a good representation of what is left wing in America. People actually seem to somewhat like and believe in their candidates, something I can't relate to at all.
Applying any outside standards isn't useful in an American context.
I've seen quite a lot of comment recently criticizing the WHO for not recommending travel bans and supporting Trump's early decision to ban some people flying from China. I thought a bit of context about that might be helpful.
The WHO did not recommend travel bans because of the difficulty in practice of implementing those and the concern that only partially effective bans might make things worse rather than better. That appears to have happened in Italy, which instituted a total ban on flights from China on 31st January. That resulted in significant numbers of people flying to neighboring countries before crossing back into Italy. Consequently they were more difficult to track and less likely to report illness to the health authorities - contributing to Covid-19 becoming well established in northern Italy before the authorities woke up to the problem.
The WHO suggestion was that tracking and tracing people with the disease would be more effective than a travel ban. Doing that is the way that countries like Singapore and Taiwan have been able to greatly slow the spread of disease. There was very little effort put into this type of tracing in the US, so it's not clear how effective that might have been as a strategy.
The US travel ban from China was much less strict than the Italian one. Rather than stopping flights, the ban just applied to Chinese without residency rights in the US. In principle I'm sure it's right to allow residents to return to their country, but given the known risks at the time there should have been a monitoring process for those returning - and almost nothing has been done to monitor the 40,000 or so people that have flown directly back from China since the ban. The ban also did not apply to flights from Hong Kong or Macau, or indeed anywhere other than mainland China. Chinese and other nationals wishing to travel to the US therefore just needed to do so via another country (those rules were later tightened up somewhat when the ban was extended to Europeans).
I've seen quite a lot of comment recently criticizing the WHO for not recommending travel bans and supporting Trump's early decision to ban some people flying from China. I thought a bit of context about that might be helpful.
The WHO did not recommend travel bans because of the difficulty in practice of implementing those and the concern that only partially effective bans might make things worse rather than better. That appears to have happened in Italy, which instituted a total ban on flights from China on 31st January. That resulted in significant numbers of people flying to neighboring countries before crossing back into Italy. Consequently they were more difficult to track and less likely to report illness to the health authorities - contributing to Covid-19 becoming well established in northern Italy before the authorities woke up to the problem.
The WHO suggestion was that tracking and tracing people with the disease would be more effective than a travel ban. Doing that is the way that countries like Singapore and Taiwan have been able to greatly slow the spread of disease. There was very little effort put into this type of tracing in the US, so it's not clear how effective that might have been as a strategy.
The US travel ban from China was much less strict than the Italian one. Rather than stopping flights, the ban just applied to Chinese without residency rights in the US. In principle I'm sure it's right to allow residents to return to their country, but given the known risks at the time there should have been a monitoring process for those returning - and almost nothing has been done to monitor the 40,000 or so people that have flown directly back from China since the ban. The ban also did not apply to flights from Hong Kong or Macau, or indeed anywhere other than mainland China. Chinese and other nationals wishing to travel to the US therefore just needed to do so via another country (those rules were later tightened up somewhat when the ban was extended to Europeans).
Trump's solution was the same solution he has to everything, which is to attempt to ban or close something from another country. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But the hammer was made of of styrofoam. It wasn't even a half-assed attempt at what they now claim it was. And we're finding out tonight that it's very likely the outbreak in NY specifically is tied to travelers returning from Europe.
Not to mention Trump imported the virus when he brought people home from China and officials met them at the airport without PPE and then flew all over the country and the China returnees were allowed to scatter.
Noticing differences doesn't equate to racism. I don't care what you say.
All humans are pretty much the same. There is no significant intrinsic difference between someone born in Shanghai and someone born in New York. Stating otherwise is not only racist, it's wrong.
I didn't say Western values were better, just that they are different. Anything else is you putting words in my mouth. Give me examples of people in Europe buying rhinoceros horns and I'll take back my point.
Americans have paid to have a chance to kill rhinos. Europeans have paid for ivory. Both pay for quack nonscientific medical products, which is exactly what rhino horn is. What precisely is your distinction?
Even National Geographic talks about China and India contributing to the extinction of rhinos, pangolins and many other endangered species. Not to mention their pillaging of the South China Sea. Calling me a racist is just dismissive and frankly, I think you have an anti-West bias. The West has their own sins, to be sure, but the East is just as culpable in the rape of our planet.
No, it literally isn't, because the West had a big head start on industrialisation and continues to this day to use considerably more of the planet's resources. The very fact the planet cannot support China's one billion plus population living Western lifestyles (much less India, Africa, etc.) is an indication of how wasteful those lifestyles are.
It is not "anti-Western bias" to state that the world's environmental woes owe more to Europe and her colonies than it does to any other actor - it is simply truth. Just like it is simply truth to point out that believing in quack medicine is not peculiar to China or anywhere else.
Also, I have no strong feeling that you personally are "racist". However, what you said was racist - which is substantially different. Saying something racist can mean a lot of things, and most of us have been guilty of it at some point in our lives. However, arguing that your statement "there is a distinct difference in how people think in the West vs. the East" isn't racist is absurd, particularly when you were using it to explain "that's why they slaughter civets and bats in wet markets".
A small percentage of people do that for very practical reasons. Western people would do the exact same thing in the same circumstances. There is no difference besides circumstance - and a small percentage of Western people also eat game meat, further proving the point.
Umm, the Jacobins weren't Communist (or even socialist). And that is literally where the term "left" comes from.
This is, again, another reason why the terms "left and right" are unhelpful and actively misleading. Saying being pro-capitalism isn't leftist is to essentially cut down the definition of "left" to "communists" (neither Bernie Sanders, Justin Trudeau or Jacinda Ardern, to take three examples, have any public intention to destroy or replace capitalism). That is rather something I expect to see from the right than from people who identify as left.
I think again, one of the reasons for the fewer cases in China is there is a strong culture of mask wearing. Here in the states, up until recently, wearing a mask was going to get you yelled at in most places. Because the CDC and the WHO issued WRONG guidance to not wear masks. They did this lie for good reason, to prevent a run on masks desperately needed for our healthcare professionals, but it is a lie nonetheless and the "masks are bad" narrative has taken hold.
There is no scientific consensus as to the benefit of wearing masks when you do not know you are infected. People who study this sort of thing for a living genuinely disagree on the data. Anybody else's opinion is worth exactly as much as Donald Trump's.
As far as the question of whether Asia has been "as bad as Europeans" historically, I don't believe there's any way of measuring something as massive as all of European and Asian history, nor do I see the point in trying to weigh them--especially considering we're trying to weigh groups of civilizations, when even civilizations are too large to weigh. I'd compare it to the question, "Which civilizations were worse, the ones named A-N, or the ones named O-Z?"
Of course there are ways of measuring history. We do it all the time.
And I feel pretty safe in saying that, say, Japan has more blood on its historical hands than the Bahamas does. Or than Tibet does, even though Tibet was a theocracy and also an empire in its history. You wanna argue that the Bahamas' history is functionally indistinguishable from Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea or the Co-Prosperity Sphere, you can try, but you will be difficult to take seriously.
The trick here is that there is a difference between assigning responsibility, and placing judgements on what it means about them as a people. Great Britain has uncountable crimes to its name, and in a just world they'd bear the responsibility for them (as opposed the world we have, where only countries that lose wars have to bear responsibility for much). That doesn't mean British people are intrinsically evil.
If you truly believe that there are no differences between how people think depending on where they are, cultural nuances, religions, or family traditions and that pointing out those differences is racist, then I have to say that I respectfully disagree with you. I won't be debating this with you anymore so I'm just going to agree to disagree with you.
I think again, one of the reasons for the fewer cases in China is there is a strong culture of mask wearing. Here in the states, up until recently, wearing a mask was going to get you yelled at in most places. Because the CDC and the WHO issued WRONG guidance to not wear masks. They did this lie for good reason, to prevent a run on masks desperately needed for our healthcare professionals, but it is a lie nonetheless and the "masks are bad" narrative has taken hold.
There is no scientific consensus as to the benefit of wearing masks when you do not know you are infected. People who study this sort of thing for a living genuinely disagree on the data. Anybody else's opinion is worth exactly as much as Donald Trump's.
No scientific consensus? Wearing a mask slows the spread if you have it and provides you some protection more then nothing from catching it yourself. It's common sensus.
I think again, one of the reasons for the fewer cases in China is there is a strong culture of mask wearing. Here in the states, up until recently, wearing a mask was going to get you yelled at in most places. Because the CDC and the WHO issued WRONG guidance to not wear masks. They did this lie for good reason, to prevent a run on masks desperately needed for our healthcare professionals, but it is a lie nonetheless and the "masks are bad" narrative has taken hold.
There is no scientific consensus as to the benefit of wearing masks when you do not know you are infected. People who study this sort of thing for a living genuinely disagree on the data. Anybody else's opinion is worth exactly as much as Donald Trump's.
No scientific consensus? Wearing a mask slows the spread if you have it and provides you some protection more then nothing from catching it yourself. It's common sensus.
This. Even if people aren't symptomatic they still may be 'spray' talkers (I know a few myself). They also might cough from being a smoker or if they inhale something or get something in their throat. You don't need to be a scientist to know "better safe than sorry".
It's my understanding that the main purpose of the mask is to prevent the spread to others if you are asymptomatic. If you are wearing it to prevent it from infecting yourself, it's also good to wear glasses, because the virus can enter through the eyes.
As for the cultural difference, I believe in Asian cultures it also has in the past been a warning to others that you are sick as a courtesy, but I might be wrong on that one. Regardless, it can't HURT for everyone to wear a mask.
It's my understanding that the main purpose of the mask is to prevent the spread to others if you are asymptomatic. If you are wearing it to prevent it from infecting yourself, it's also good to wear glasses, because the virus can enter through the eyes.
As for the cultural difference, I believe in Asian cultures it also has in the past been a warning to others that you are sick as a courtesy, but I might be wrong on that one. Regardless, it can't HURT for everyone to wear a mask.
I think that's a significant factor. Wearing for others as a courtesy if you are sick is definitely a common courtesy thing but doesn't explain so many wearing masks. It's also the air is nasty and tastes like crap and to protect yourself somewhat from others.
It's my understanding that the main purpose of the mask is to prevent the spread to others if you are asymptomatic. If you are wearing it to prevent it from infecting yourself, it's also good to wear glasses, because the virus can enter through the eyes.
In general I think the WHO has done a decent job of providing information, but I do think they've got it a bit wrong in relation to masks. Their headline advice on that is that someone who is well should not wear a mask. That advice seems to have been issued with the higher standard masks (such as N95) in mind - and was aiming to balance the benefits of more general mask wearing with the increased likelihood of shortages for key workers. However, I don't think that advice sufficiently took account of the extent to which the disease can be spread unknowingly - given that it's pretty questionable to say that people feeling ill should wear masks, but not those feeling well. I think it would have made more sense to heavily discourage general use of N95 masks, while encouraging the general use of more simplistic ones.
The main objection to that more general use of masks is that it could potentially make wearers more vulnerable (either because they don't handle them properly, or because they indulge in more risky behavior as a result of the mask making them feel safer). Both those potential problems could be addressed through the sort of information campaigns being run on other aspects of protecting yourself against Covid-19 - such as hand washing and social distancing.
No scientific consensus? Wearing a mask slows the spread if you have it and provides you some protection more then nothing from catching it yourself. It's common sensus.
Congratulations on sharing with Donald Trump a complete contempt for the conclusions of people who do this for a living based on your "common sensus".
BTW, here's some direct quotes from the article you clearly didn't read:
"It’s also true in the scientific community, where dueling experts both urge widespread public face mask usage and dismiss face masks as useless and potentially dangerous."
“I would say there’s a lack of evidence to support either position,” said Benjamin Cowling, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Hong Kong University.
Sometimes, we have to make big, serious decisions, even when research hasn’t conveniently supplied us with absolute, unequivocal facts. We’re in the land of uncertainty — a place that the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced us to visit a lot lately. Masks are just one part of it. And the question isn’t, “Should we wear them or not?” It’s, “How do we make a decision when there isn’t an answer?”
Martin, who said she has watched misuse of masks and gloves spread disease in emergency situations, believes masks can create a false sense of security. After all, we know of other times where safety measures have led people to take more risks — not fewer.
Common sense doesn’t always apply. And you have to be prepared to update your choices as more information comes in. Be prepared, in other words, to get comfortable without knowing the correct answer right now, and get comfortable with knowing your answer may change in the future.
Comments
I didn't say the left is a monolith. I said that leftist tendences are largely anti-state and almost entirely anti-capitalist. If you're not, then you're not on the left. You might be left of Democrats, but that's not the same thing. Just being anti-whatever the GOP decides to stand for isn't enough.
Didn't you carefully define racism a couple of weeks ago to mean a very specific thing just to argue that it's not racist to view Asians as "disease carriers" just because they're Asian?
They're not, though? Who exactly invaded, colonized, and annexed the continents of North and South America, Africa, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent?
Yes, China has been an imperial power, but to claim that Asia collectively has been "as bad as Europeans" shows a profound ignorance of history. Large parts of Asia have been colonized and subjugated by Europeans.
I totally agree. This is one of those "both sides" arguments where there are legit arguments for and against both sides.
I think again, one of the reasons for the fewer cases in China is there is a strong culture of mask wearing. Here in the states, up until recently, wearing a mask was going to get you yelled at in most places. Because the CDC and the WHO issued WRONG guidance to not wear masks. They did this lie for good reason, to prevent a run on masks desperately needed for our healthcare professionals, but it is a lie nonetheless and the "masks are bad" narrative has taken hold.
Here's a couple black guys kicked out of walmart for wearing masks a couple days ago.
In China and in a lot of east asian countries it's normal to wear masks, has been for years, because air pollution is so bad. So it's not unusual at all to see a lot of people tooling around with masks.
A just released CDC report gives Covid-19 an R0 of 5.7! Which means that every person infected will infect an average of 5.7 more people. This makes it one of the most infectious diseases on the planet.
A mask is the tinniest least bit we can do. And the CDC was providing bad guidance about that until recently. Even now, a cloth mask isn't going to do much but better than nothing for you and might protect others if you are indeed a transmitter. We need medical quality masks but we can't have them because they don't exist for sale.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article
Ever heard of the Mongols? How about Imperial Japan?
When it's good, it's an absentee ballot. When it's bad it's mail-in voting. There's your trump speak hot take on this subject.
Democrats need to demand national vote by mail to protect the citizens and the next election.
Unfortunately, knowing Democrats, they will probably cave immediately to the right wing lies that convince average joes to argue against their own best interests to make variations of the following argument and starts whining about "but I can't pay my billz and I don't care if Republicans rip us off and take trillions! I need my $1200! I don't care that Democrats want to give everyone $2000/month for the duration of this, we need to do whatever the Republicans say now because when Republicans say it it's important and legitimate and when Democrats say something, it's bad!"
As far as the question of whether Asia has been "as bad as Europeans" historically, I don't believe there's any way of measuring something as massive as all of European and Asian history, nor do I see the point in trying to weigh them--especially considering we're trying to weigh groups of civilizations, when even civilizations are too large to weigh. I'd compare it to the question, "Which civilizations were worse, the ones named A-N, or the ones named O-Z?"
Those O-Z folks were the worst! You can't trust the last half of the alphabet...
At last, the British did something right - stopping the Zulu apocalypse
I do think there is some value in looking at the history of various civilizations, but only because people commonly seem to have a delusional view of "how bad" things were across, well, almost everywhere.
I do have a degree of respect for ancient Chinese civilization though. They were surprisingly meritocratic during some ancient periods, and has some pretty cool and advanced technology for their time.
Right It's not a monolith - you just *have* to be these two things or you're not it. Leftism is inherently relative, and not something that can be simply pegged down to stances on two segments of society.
I'll give you credit though, you're half right. Just being "anti GOP" doesnt make you left.
Applying any outside standards isn't useful in an American context.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/united-nations-coronavirus-176187
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/08/who-china-trump-coronavirus-176242
The WHO did not recommend travel bans because of the difficulty in practice of implementing those and the concern that only partially effective bans might make things worse rather than better. That appears to have happened in Italy, which instituted a total ban on flights from China on 31st January. That resulted in significant numbers of people flying to neighboring countries before crossing back into Italy. Consequently they were more difficult to track and less likely to report illness to the health authorities - contributing to Covid-19 becoming well established in northern Italy before the authorities woke up to the problem.
The WHO suggestion was that tracking and tracing people with the disease would be more effective than a travel ban. Doing that is the way that countries like Singapore and Taiwan have been able to greatly slow the spread of disease. There was very little effort put into this type of tracing in the US, so it's not clear how effective that might have been as a strategy.
The US travel ban from China was much less strict than the Italian one. Rather than stopping flights, the ban just applied to Chinese without residency rights in the US. In principle I'm sure it's right to allow residents to return to their country, but given the known risks at the time there should have been a monitoring process for those returning - and almost nothing has been done to monitor the 40,000 or so people that have flown directly back from China since the ban. The ban also did not apply to flights from Hong Kong or Macau, or indeed anywhere other than mainland China. Chinese and other nationals wishing to travel to the US therefore just needed to do so via another country (those rules were later tightened up somewhat when the ban was extended to Europeans).
Trump's solution was the same solution he has to everything, which is to attempt to ban or close something from another country. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But the hammer was made of of styrofoam. It wasn't even a half-assed attempt at what they now claim it was. And we're finding out tonight that it's very likely the outbreak in NY specifically is tied to travelers returning from Europe.
All humans are pretty much the same. There is no significant intrinsic difference between someone born in Shanghai and someone born in New York. Stating otherwise is not only racist, it's wrong.
Americans have paid to have a chance to kill rhinos. Europeans have paid for ivory. Both pay for quack nonscientific medical products, which is exactly what rhino horn is. What precisely is your distinction?
No, it literally isn't, because the West had a big head start on industrialisation and continues to this day to use considerably more of the planet's resources. The very fact the planet cannot support China's one billion plus population living Western lifestyles (much less India, Africa, etc.) is an indication of how wasteful those lifestyles are.
On a similar note, far more species owe their extinctions to the West than to China and India combined (and that's even if you don't count the many species that have or inevitably will go extinct due to climate change - for which the worst offenders per capita are in fact petrostates, and then Australia and Canada dwarfing per capita Chinese emissions).
It is not "anti-Western bias" to state that the world's environmental woes owe more to Europe and her colonies than it does to any other actor - it is simply truth. Just like it is simply truth to point out that believing in quack medicine is not peculiar to China or anywhere else.
Also, I have no strong feeling that you personally are "racist". However, what you said was racist - which is substantially different. Saying something racist can mean a lot of things, and most of us have been guilty of it at some point in our lives. However, arguing that your statement "there is a distinct difference in how people think in the West vs. the East" isn't racist is absurd, particularly when you were using it to explain "that's why they slaughter civets and bats in wet markets".
A small percentage of people do that for very practical reasons. Western people would do the exact same thing in the same circumstances. There is no difference besides circumstance - and a small percentage of Western people also eat game meat, further proving the point.
Umm, the Jacobins weren't Communist (or even socialist). And that is literally where the term "left" comes from.
This is, again, another reason why the terms "left and right" are unhelpful and actively misleading. Saying being pro-capitalism isn't leftist is to essentially cut down the definition of "left" to "communists" (neither Bernie Sanders, Justin Trudeau or Jacinda Ardern, to take three examples, have any public intention to destroy or replace capitalism). That is rather something I expect to see from the right than from people who identify as left.
What is wrong here is your certainty as to whether masks are a good idea or not.
There is no scientific consensus as to the benefit of wearing masks when you do not know you are infected. People who study this sort of thing for a living genuinely disagree on the data. Anybody else's opinion is worth exactly as much as Donald Trump's.
Of course there are ways of measuring history. We do it all the time.
And I feel pretty safe in saying that, say, Japan has more blood on its historical hands than the Bahamas does. Or than Tibet does, even though Tibet was a theocracy and also an empire in its history. You wanna argue that the Bahamas' history is functionally indistinguishable from Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea or the Co-Prosperity Sphere, you can try, but you will be difficult to take seriously.
The trick here is that there is a difference between assigning responsibility, and placing judgements on what it means about them as a people. Great Britain has uncountable crimes to its name, and in a just world they'd bear the responsibility for them (as opposed the world we have, where only countries that lose wars have to bear responsibility for much). That doesn't mean British people are intrinsically evil.
If you truly believe that there are no differences between how people think depending on where they are, cultural nuances, religions, or family traditions and that pointing out those differences is racist, then I have to say that I respectfully disagree with you. I won't be debating this with you anymore so I'm just going to agree to disagree with you.
No scientific consensus? Wearing a mask slows the spread if you have it and provides you some protection more then nothing from catching it yourself. It's common sensus.
This. Even if people aren't symptomatic they still may be 'spray' talkers (I know a few myself). They also might cough from being a smoker or if they inhale something or get something in their throat. You don't need to be a scientist to know "better safe than sorry".
As for the cultural difference, I believe in Asian cultures it also has in the past been a warning to others that you are sick as a courtesy, but I might be wrong on that one. Regardless, it can't HURT for everyone to wear a mask.
I think that's a significant factor. Wearing for others as a courtesy if you are sick is definitely a common courtesy thing but doesn't explain so many wearing masks. It's also the air is nasty and tastes like crap and to protect yourself somewhat from others.
For example:
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/bangkok-air-pollution-bleeding-noses-and-blood-red-eyes-as-bangkok-battles-toxic-air-1987784
Bleeding eyes and noses due to air pollution.
I agree that's the main purpose. Trials of the efficacy of masks against other respiratory diseases suggest they are of little or no benefit to the wearer, but they should provide improved protection for others. That is likely to be even more the case with Covid-19 where there's not just the possibility of asymptomatic spread, but also pre-symptomatic spread (the latter is unlike most other respiratory diseases).
In general I think the WHO has done a decent job of providing information, but I do think they've got it a bit wrong in relation to masks. Their headline advice on that is that someone who is well should not wear a mask. That advice seems to have been issued with the higher standard masks (such as N95) in mind - and was aiming to balance the benefits of more general mask wearing with the increased likelihood of shortages for key workers. However, I don't think that advice sufficiently took account of the extent to which the disease can be spread unknowingly - given that it's pretty questionable to say that people feeling ill should wear masks, but not those feeling well. I think it would have made more sense to heavily discourage general use of N95 masks, while encouraging the general use of more simplistic ones.
The main objection to that more general use of masks is that it could potentially make wearers more vulnerable (either because they don't handle them properly, or because they indulge in more risky behavior as a result of the mask making them feel safer). Both those potential problems could be addressed through the sort of information campaigns being run on other aspects of protecting yourself against Covid-19 - such as hand washing and social distancing.
Congratulations on sharing with Donald Trump a complete contempt for the conclusions of people who do this for a living based on your "common sensus".
BTW, here's some direct quotes from the article you clearly didn't read:
"It’s also true in the scientific community, where dueling experts both urge widespread public face mask usage and dismiss face masks as useless and potentially dangerous."
“I would say there’s a lack of evidence to support either position,” said Benjamin Cowling, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Hong Kong University.
Sometimes, we have to make big, serious decisions, even when research hasn’t conveniently supplied us with absolute, unequivocal facts. We’re in the land of uncertainty — a place that the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced us to visit a lot lately. Masks are just one part of it. And the question isn’t, “Should we wear them or not?” It’s, “How do we make a decision when there isn’t an answer?”
Martin, who said she has watched misuse of masks and gloves spread disease in emergency situations, believes masks can create a false sense of security. After all, we know of other times where safety measures have led people to take more risks — not fewer.
Common sense doesn’t always apply. And you have to be prepared to update your choices as more information comes in. Be prepared, in other words, to get comfortable without knowing the correct answer right now, and get comfortable with knowing your answer may change in the future.