Lies are what bind people into a manufactured reality that stymies their ability to live free and meaningful lives.
If we run with the cost trope, look at lies like a shady drug deal.
You are angry and want to buy some satisfaction. You lost your job, or can’t buy a house, the cost of living is too high. Whatever it is, you are looking for relief.
So a a shady dealer offers you a lie to give you some relief. You give them some personal freedom monthly and they sell you “immigration did this to you” and it works for awhile. But you start to realize the immigration story doesn’t hit the same way. You look for relief in new lies. So you give the dealer more freedom, and buy “its not just immigrants, its obviously trans people.” Yeah that’s it, those trans people are turning the steel factories into drag theaters, wrecking the economy. “Damn!” You think. “Its not my fault, its them!” The relief you get from the lies hooks you more.
The hook is powerful. But you’re never satisfied and you need more lies as your brain adjusts, maybe even protests. You’ve got to shut it up, and you start to conflate your issues with freedom itself. You’re happy to give more freedoms over to the dealer for relief through even grander lies.
The relief will always be temporary, but you don’t even realize that any more.
You’ll never solve the problems that plagued you and you’ll die angry and depressed. Maybe if you gave up just a little more freedom, you could have had a better life. You never awaken to reality that the people taking your freedoms are the ones ruining your life. The lies were too powerful, too addictive, and they rewired you to willingly accept your own servititude.
That’s the cost of lies.
We have no idea what the cost of lies is because nowhere in the world is there a baseline of truth to clock it against. Russia’s biggest problem is that they let the info get out. This is FAR from the first time a country fucked up containment, you would just never hear about it.
when Russia admitting an accident was news itself!
Just finished watching this and it’s one of the best miniseries I’ve seen. It did such an incredible job of portraying the oppressiveness of the Soviet state and its impact on its citizens. I found it a bit soul crushing seeing the parallels to what’s currently happening in the US when ideology comes first.
I saw it as one rogue asshole boss causing a disaster.
US tried to downplay three mile island.
Wow! That boss sure had A LOT of sway over the USSR to enforce reactor rods with graphite tips! And to have intentionall held back computer technology in the reactor!
It truly is a brilliant show, in a depressing sort of way.
Maybe they’ll do the same thing as China. Leaving their international airports functional while locking down their cities, intentionally infecting as many places as possible. And then legit Xi goes on air to scold other nations telling them they need to learn how to do international cooperation.
Everything was closed in Wuhan except outbound international flights.
People keep saying that the Fediverse is too hard to use because you need to be techy and understand instances and stuff. But here you are, happily using Lemmy without a brain.
Leaving their international airports functional while locking down their cities, intentionally infecting as many places as possible.
Are we still doing Wuhan Lab Leak Theory? Wasn’t that debunked ages ago as some Trumpie lie pushed to deflect our own abysmal COVID response?
Are we still doing Wuhan Lab Leak Theory? Wasn’t that debunked ages ago
There was an attempt at debunking the lab leak theory early on with a nature article saying we do not believe any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible. Then there was a rejected DARPA research proposal detailing exactly how the laboratory-based scenario is possible.
Lab origin has not been proven but there is no natural zoonotic path to Wuhan. Lab encouraged gain of function with in species reproduction seems most likely.
Half the US intelligence agencies support the lab origin theory.
there is no natural zoonotic path to Wuhan
How do you get from “we don’t think the disease naturally originated in Wuhan” to “China engineered a virus, released it in their own city, and then used that as a vector for malicious infection of the rest of the world”?
Half the US intelligence agencies support the lab origin theory.
They also insisted Iraq had nuclear weapons.
How do you get from “we don’t think the disease naturally originated in Wuhan” to “China engineered a virus, released it in their own city, and then used that as a vector for malicious infection of the rest of the world”?
I didn’t. You invented all of that.
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We know the EcoHealth Alliance had a gain of function research proposal that would have produced a virus remarkably similar to covid was rejected for funding by DARPA.
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We know Covid originated in Wuhan.
Accidents happen even in level 4 biolabs. The is no need for you to be sinophobic.
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This has nothing to do with lab leak theory. This is what China actually did. They think in terms of comparison with other countries and they didn’t want to be the only country with covid, regardless of the origin.
I think there’s just not enough information to say with confidence one way or the other. Biden commissioned a report that was inconclusive, in part because of non-cooperation from the Chinese government. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessment_on_COVID-19_Origins
Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins is a report of the United States Intelligence Community regarding the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was commissioned on May 26, 2021, by President Joe Biden and submitted on August 24.[1]
Biden initially ordered his intelligence services to “redouble efforts” to investigate the virus’s origin.[2] The report, which was released on August 27, noted that the Intelligence Community did not reach a unanimous conclusion on the origin of the virus, with four agencies determining that the index case was likely a result of natural exposure, with another agency considering it as the result of a laboratory incident, although the community overall agreed that it was not linked to biological warfare. The community concluded that a conclusive investigation would require cooperation with the Chinese government.[1][3] Analysts considered that the investigation proved incapable of reaching a definitive conclusion on the origins of COVID-19, and the report was criticized by Chinese officials.
Biden commissioned a report that was inconclusive, in part because of non-cooperation from the Chinese government.
The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.
Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation.
If true, that does not address the point that the necessary facts aren’t known, and therefore one can’t conclusively know whether the source of the virus is natural transmission or a lab leak.
China continues to withhold data from the WHO regarding the outbreak in Wuhan. That in itself is not proof, but now, seven years into the pandemic, I personally find it suspicious. The other indicators supporting the lab-origin theory are well known. Aside from the incompetence of the Trump I administration, it seems that some intelligence agencies still subscribe to this theory.
2019: The Sequel - 7 Years Later ☣️
WHO is still asking Russia for more details, including what actually caused the lab worker’s death and reports of a second pneumonia case.
https://twitee.co/DrTedros/status/2107591815863968121
So I guess we’re still at the “not enough information” stage.
Pneumonia is not rare. 2.5 million a year die of it.
That’s like saying MRSA is no big deal because millions of people die every year from bacterial infections.
They’re studying some outlier versions of an illness with a much worse outcome.
the people in wuhan said the same thing just before things expanded out of control
If you believe the lab leak theory.
I still remember reading reddit threads about what looked like mass incineration of human remains and the speculations thereabout.
And NY morgues had to use refrigerated trailers for over a year.
wasnt that for ebola in africa?
It was definitely some random scary bullshit on the internet that co-mingled the two. But so much of the hype in the early days of COVID ended up being FUD used by the administration to justify draconian anti-immigration policies. We had FOX News screaming about Leprosy and “Mexican Flu” being transmitted by Migrant Caravans decades before that. Any disease outbreak became an excuse to hyper-police people entering the US at the borders.
Part of the problem with all this disease discourse is that it’s routinely anti-foreigner agitprop. This goes straight back to The Spanish Flu, which originated from a Haskell County, Kansas pig farm and got spread across Europe by WW1-era US soldiers. It became major weapon of the 20th century reactionary right to ban Italian Immigrants way back then. Now we see disease scares used to freeze out everyone from Taiwan to Brazil to Afganistan. If anyone is sick anywhere, it’s an excuse to ban migrants everywhere.
Funnily enough, this isn’t even the worst leak of a disease from a lab in Russia. That honor (probably) going to the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak in 1979 which killed at least 68 people.
US military spread bacteria over the west coast in operation sea spray in 1950. 11 hopitalized. One dead.
Scientists told the military that post war nuclear testing should occur off the east coast because of prevailing winds. Military: fuck you and here’s your cancer.
who are these people?
From the HBO show Chernobyl. It’s really well made and worth watching.
I first watched it on an airplane. Swapping between the seat screen and my phone. Great show. Can’t wait to watch it again someday
Then I watched it on a big(?) ((I guess 60inch?) TV at home. Great show. Let’s make sure I’m in the right mental space before I rewatch the show…)
mild spoilers for history I guess
The hospital scenes on a much bigger screen. Seeing the (I know its all dramatised) impact of lies on a bigger screen really affected me.
I’ve never seen a more accurate depiction of my typical experience in a professional environment. “Nobody wants to speak up or handle things correctly because someone senior with direct responsibility for your employment shouted down any dissent because they want to meet a metric” is apparently a timeless experience.
The show was very well done, but it implies this was history. That mass of reactor is still burning underground, and Russian bombs have damaged the sarcophagus covering it. The remaining reactors are still in use.
Really scary to think about the burning mass in the underground…
Also very abstract to think about that.Chernobyl shut down its last active reactor a decade ago.
Whoops… they also had more fires after the meltdown, in other reactors.
sigh
I’ll get the 400 tons of sand and boron.
I dont like the sound of it
That was Ukraine though. I guess still USSR.
The Soviet management fucking everything up is eternal and omnipresent.
If something can be fucked up. The state will find a way. The bigger the state, the bigger the fuck up.
Every lie that is told incurs a debt to the truth. A debt that shall one day be repaid.
