That was actually pretty close to best-case scenario with the air conditioner apology, that woman had one job and that job was to not admit to fraud by a slip of the tongue, no matter how skilled the person on the other end might be at making people slip up and admit to fraud. Admitting fault only works with medical malpractice lawsuits, maybe; and that’s an apology for a clear mistake, not fraud.
Whenever I hear someone affirm their belief that a large institution is trustworthy, this is the slogan I use in response: Large Powerful Institutions Are Never Trustworthy, Their Management Structure Fundamentally Requires Too Many Lawyers In Order To Defend Against Power-Hungry Opportunists,
this is a slogan; in reality, listing the types of opportunists and defenses is better for conversation e.g. bribe-savvy billionaires, the military having a very short time horizon on something (e.g. a war or a brain-eating virus), and all the ambitious snakes constantly waiting for their once-in-a-lifetime chance to claw their way to the tippy-top
Does anyone have an estimate of the probability/prioritization that the military is currently worried about an imminent foreign lab leak in the short-term, versus mainly being concerned with biodefense in the longer term?
We shouldn’t let people protect themselves against disease, because they might feel they were more protected than they are. So instead we should make it illegal for them to protect themselves.
That’s actually reasonable, because the current vaccines don’t protect people much in the first place. Most ordinary people I’ve met (generally urban areas) tend to think of vaccines and boosters as this perfect armor that make them totally fine. When in reality they’re probably spreading the virus at mostly the same rate.
The authorities are not willing to dispel this misinformation because doing so might compromise mass vaccination campaigns in the future, with diseases that actually kill lots of people. Some things in public opinion last generations, like awareness of lobbyist influence, so the safest bet is to make vaccines as popular and beloved as possible. If vaccination is kept out of the headlines, then that is one less way that vaccination attitudes can be destabilized in the future (with future pandemics, vaccines not only might work, but also might prevent a deadlier virus from killing a third of the population). Especially if the virus itself doing just fine at imposing herd immunity upon the masses and nobody knows or cares about the brain damage that they are actively getting.
That was actually pretty close to best-case scenario with the air conditioner apology, that woman had one job and that job was to not admit to fraud by a slip of the tongue, no matter how skilled the person on the other end might be at making people slip up and admit to fraud. Admitting fault only works with medical malpractice lawsuits, maybe; and that’s an apology for a clear mistake, not fraud.
Whenever I hear someone affirm their belief that a large institution is trustworthy, this is the slogan I use in response: Large Powerful Institutions Are Never Trustworthy, Their Management Structure Fundamentally Requires Too Many Lawyers In Order To Defend Against Power-Hungry Opportunists,
this is a slogan; in reality, listing the types of opportunists and defenses is better for conversation e.g. bribe-savvy billionaires, the military having a very short time horizon on something (e.g. a war or a brain-eating virus), and all the ambitious snakes constantly waiting for their once-in-a-lifetime chance to claw their way to the tippy-top
Does anyone have an estimate of the probability/prioritization that the military is currently worried about an imminent foreign lab leak in the short-term, versus mainly being concerned with biodefense in the longer term?
That’s actually reasonable, because the current vaccines don’t protect people much in the first place. Most ordinary people I’ve met (generally urban areas) tend to think of vaccines and boosters as this perfect armor that make them totally fine. When in reality they’re probably spreading the virus at mostly the same rate.
The authorities are not willing to dispel this misinformation because doing so might compromise mass vaccination campaigns in the future, with diseases that actually kill lots of people. Some things in public opinion last generations, like awareness of lobbyist influence, so the safest bet is to make vaccines as popular and beloved as possible. If vaccination is kept out of the headlines, then that is one less way that vaccination attitudes can be destabilized in the future (with future pandemics, vaccines not only might work, but also might prevent a deadlier virus from killing a third of the population). Especially if the virus itself doing just fine at imposing herd immunity upon the masses and nobody knows or cares about the brain damage that they are actively getting.