Huh... maybe I'm getting confused but I could have sworn that my "vaccine-hesitant" friends were saying the IMF had been running (with others) simulations of a virus outbreak since 2010-ish, as part of the reason this was a "plandemic."
However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy.
It's a really sad age we live in when acting responsibly and aiming for maximum preparedness is met with cynicism and conspiracy, not to mention this is SOP for most companies with critical IT infrastructure.
So we should be weary about any company that runs disaster recovery exercises? We just saw another AWS outage take many significant services offline a couple weeks ago.
No - it's that if you talk to these "vaccine-hesitant" friends the idea is that the IMF and others want something bad enough to happen (COVID, Cyberattack) so that they can tackle wealth inequality, climate change, the like. Cyberattack simulations is because COVID didn't work as well as they thought.
Which I think is a very cynical take - but I'm not exactly thrilled with some of the statements of these organization's leaders.
I just can't understand why an organization like the IMF, which has a major financial incentives in maintaining the current system and a tremendous amount of power, would just blow it all up.
Just like most conspiracy theories, the idea just doesn't make sense once you get past the sensationalism. What kind of power are they seeking that they don't already have?
I wish I could say - you'd need to ask them, I guess. I will say that I have noticed that people care far more about the IMF and others than they did pre-pandemic.
It's mostly a rhetorical question, because the answers that conspiracy communities come up to basic questions like that often involve insane and fantastical misdirections like pedophilia.
Yeah when Alan Dershowitz says on TV that he was introduced to Epstein by Lynn R*thschild we shouldn't read too much into it right? Or when Cindy McCain says that everyone knew what Epstein was doing but no legal entity would go after him. Its fantastical really.
It was already going to blow up. Internationally, every country is in a credit hole so deep most will be unable to make interest payments in the next few years. The collapse was coming one way or the other, so the controlled demolition was chosen.
Whether you feel it was planned or not, the lockdowns did pretty much halt the velocity of money. Sure they printed a ton of social care money, but again the inflationary trap had already been set, it was the velocity that needed to be killed to buy some time.
Would you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle? We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against, because it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
As for ideological battle generally—the site guidelines make a distinction between that and curious conversation, which is what we want here. Not only are they not the same, they're not compatible—for the same reason that having a tank battle and playing frisbee in the park are not compatible, or that boxing and dancing aren't.
Many topics here have ideological and political overlap—. That's generally ok, as long as there's a basis for substantive discussion (pure flamebait articles, for example, are off topic).
But the question is how people go about talking about them. If they're just trying to smite enemies and using the usual weapons (snark, name-calling, etc.) to do it, that's clearly against the site guidelines and not what we want here.
Does every company publicly announce their disaster recovery exercises? If you read the article, they didn't come out of the simulation saying that they needed to hire more cybersecurity people or upgrade their firewalls; they came out of it saying that they need tighter policy response between banks and governments of 10 different countries and the IMF.
The IMF is not a company, it is an international collaborative institution. It makes total sense for such a body to openly describe a need for security improvements so that the people in charge can get motivated to implement them.
I am glad that systems are actively and preemptively tested so that issues can prevented. It is the duty for some body in society to do so and I would be incredibly angry if no one felt responsibility to do so.
There is a long history of taking exercises and "going live" with them. It's ok for us to be wary of these kinds of things, and they are certainly not "any company", because we are talking about
"treasury officials from Israel, the United States, the UK, United Arab Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as representatives from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements."
Whats sad to me is that entities with a vast history of conducting outright conspiracy get defended as if those of us skeptical and cautious about their true motives are just being cynical. What the financial elite have planned is not even close to just regular old corporate IT department red-teaming... so I find this framing naive at best.
"The COVID-19 crisis has since been cited as the main justification for accelerating what is termed the digital transformation of the financial sector and other sectors, which that the World Economic Forum and its partners have promoted for years. Their latest prediction of a doomsday event, a cyberattack that stops the current financial system in its tracks and initiates its systemic collapse, if it came to pass, would be the final, necessary step required to bring about the Forum’s desired outcome of a widespread shift to digital currency and increased global governance of the international economy.
Given that experts have been warning since the last global financial crisis that the collapse of the entire system was inevitable due to central bank mismanagement and rampant Wall Street corruption, a cyberattack would also provide the perfect scenario for dismantling the current failing system, as it would absolve central banks and corrupt financial institutions of any responsibility. It would also provide a justification for incredibly troubling policies promoted in the WEF-Carnegie report, such as a greater fusion of intelligence agencies and banks in order to better “protect” critical financial infrastructure." [1]
"A massive cyberattack, such as that simulated at Cyber Polygon 2020, would allow faceless hackers to be blamed for economic collapse, thus absolving the real financial criminals of responsibility. Furthermore, due to the difficult nature of investigating hacks and the ability of intelligence agencies to frame other nation states for hacks they in fact committed themselves, any boogeyman of choice can be blamed, whether a “domestic terror” group or a country unaligned with the WEF (for now, at least) like Iran or North Korea." [2]
"Ultimately, what WEF-PAC represents is a global organization that aims to neuter anonymity online, whether for financial purposes or for browsing and other activities. It is a global effort combining powerful governments and corporations that seeks to usher in a new age of surveillance that makes such surveillance a requirement to participate in the online world or use online services. It is being sold to the public as the only way to stop a coming “pandemic” of cybercrime, a crisis taking place largely in murky parts of the internet that few understand or have any direct experience with. Having to rely on State intelligence agencies and intelligence-linked cybersecurity firms for attribution of these crimes, it has never been easier for corrupt actors in those agencies or their partners to either manufacture or manipulate a crisis that could upend online freedom as we have known it, something these very groups have sought to implement for years." [3]
I certainly hope that institutions run these kind of simulations. It's one of the best ways to identify critical flaws in preparation plans that need to be mitigated.
We simulate all sorts of plausible scenarios. They're only valuable if the scenarios are realistic enough to be applied to potential real-world stuff.
The risk of a pandemic was clear enough that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) got made about the same time. It ticked pretty much all the boxes - China as origin, people thinking it's a bioweapon, contact tracing, politicians reluctant to take quarantine measures, panic buying, unrest, bat-borne virus, conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers, etc.
> However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy.
Both global pandemics and cyberattacks are plausible events. This is the true cause of both the simulations and the events occurring. It is incredibly improbable that the IMF thinking of them and simulating them had anything to do with them happening.
Not all risk mitigation measures are wise. We got to this point by willfully ignoring that, and now, unsurprisingly, the people who got shouted down don't trust anybody.
Because a "simulated cyber attack on the global financial systems" would fit so well into the fictional world of the Impossible Mission Force.
Personally, I'd prefer a timeline in which Jim Phelps isn't a traitor though, and in which the IMF operated more on teamwork than on depending on heroic acts of a single operative.
I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for this is covid. Our leaders and experts threw away the pandemic playbook and replaced it with this new strategy of using novel precision vaccine technology and having a near singular focus on getting people vaccinated. As time goes on, it seems more and more like a failure. But we are basically stuck. We are not responding to ANY signals that this is a bad strategy.
We need strategy that has the ability to be flexible. It needs to be based on outcome. These simulations incorrectly teach people that the strategy is the goal, instead of aiming towards an outcome. For example, reducing hospitalization and deaths isn't the goal with current covid policy. The goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.
What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ?
People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .
Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering.
It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
Well said! There has been near zero attention by the main agencies in power on therapeutics. E.g. even if ivermectin doesn't work, why can't we focus more on finding what does? It's only been vaccine, vaccine and more vaccine. Not even a mention for lifestyle or diet or supplements
It's quite effective at preventing serious illness and death, which is the whole point of the vaccines. It's even better if you don't get sick at all, but unfortunately not everyone has that much luck by being vaccinated.
The covid vaccine is not distinct on this. HPV vaccine, diphteria vaccine, tetanus vaccine... The point has mostly been to prevent (serious) illness. If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.
I believe that is the case for covid at least. If you don't get as sick then that means the virus didn't manage to spread inside the body as much, so there is less viral material that can be spread to others. Now I'm not saying this relationship is linear, I have no clue. We'd have to ask an actual expert.
You are right that this could be offset because there is no isolation happening in case of an unknown infection.
There are trials for various treatments being run, both with existing and newly developed medication, some making large headlines. If you haven't heard of any of this, that's kind of on you and your information sources.
Vitamin D and healthy eating is not emphasized at all by any CDC or health agency. These two things are significant risk factors for covid. Doctors have widely been prevented from using drugs with generally known safety profiles for emergency cases because Pfizer wants to develop its own new drugs.
If you didn't start healthy eating after decades of public health messaging about it, it's unlikely that you will start now and it'll make any relevant difference - and it isn't as if healthy people being better off isn't being constantly repeated. Vitamin D had it's hype phase, got looked at a bunch and it's still not clear how much it really does, although I'd agree that pushing the existing recommendations more probably wouldn't hurt.
> Doctors have widely been prevented
citation needed I guess. Again, lots of stuff is being looked at (and some integrated in treatment recommendations), not just "Pfizers own new drugs".
There are countless therapeutics in research, testing and admission. I am not sure what you are reading but this is widely available knowledge and you can dig into agency databases to find out more if you are so inclined. Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid.
Sure, and if you have a cure for obesity that works rapidly in the general population - because "please get more exercise" hasn't thus far - have at it.
Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications. I think if they decided to be honest, and call it a "pandemic of the overewight" early on, you would have seen a lot of people using their time off to walk around the block. By ignoring the data, they increased fear, and probably increased people gaining weight by locking themselves in their homes all day.
> Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications.
You said you are in the US in another comment. I took 3 minutes to google some big US news sites. They all had multiple articles on the topic from spring 2020 until now. Your criticism is false. Some random examples:
Doctors have been widely prevented from using off label drugs in literal emergency cases of covid just because Pfizer wants to sell and develop their own new therapeutic
There is unfortunately no substance to reply to. That's what I point out, so maybe you could clarify your argument without hyperbole and by contrasting it to the pandemic playbook?
The thing is many countries have their disaster management strategies for pandemics. But when it comes action, the strategiea fail. There are many reasons for this.
First of all, previous pandemics like bird flu had fast infection but it was known to the experts and easier than COVID-19 to handle. But COVID was unknown and it took more time to respond properly and actually there's still more unknown things that the responses cannot be validated. It's hard to respond unknown unknowns.[1]
Second, the strategies are great on paper but when it comes to implementing them, it is all about the politics. The politics of funding the research institutes and academic institutions, the structure of the nation's health care system, economic situation and use of state budget to support people in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the policies to allow human movement such as lock downs and restrictions... When it comes to actions, it's just the decision of the politicians.
Third, the strategies are created with stakeholders based on previous experience. And when they exercised, they are based on either previously occurred issues or predictions of the experts/participants of the strategy. You cannot be prepared for everything so you create many different feasible scenarios and exercise them. And they are limited by the capability of the participants.
Finally, strategies are already flexible because they are not binding for the states. A government can change the strategy on the go. A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda.
> A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda.
This is the crux of the current failures. Many politicians seem to be making decisions based on the consensus of the loudest in their constituencies and select experts who mirror them rather than people who have studied epidemiology.
The Great Barrington Declaration advocated more traditional responses for prioritizing the protection of those most at risk prior to the vaccines. The public discussion around this was almost entirely based on optics, and the term "herd immunity" was demonized and considered too non compassionate. It was treated like a political language exercise rather than a public safety issue. Now that term has quietly reentered discourse without much acknowledgment of what was stated by those epidemiologists because reality isn't permitting any other end state. Yet many of the original policies which the declaration advises against are still being repeated and still failing, I think in large part to save face.
Many people recognized the problems with the current policies and advocated better ones very quickly. The amount of unknowns were mostly only an issue for the first few months. Once the demographic data came in a sensible response should have been (and was to many) fairly obvious. But sensible policy acknowledges a certain unavoidable risk, and the optics of that isn't allowable in our current political climate, so we advocate delusional fantasies instead.
Those trained in fields like epidemiology and pandemic response who know what they're doing and see the failures should continue to refuse to sign their name to bad policy and publicize their issues with it. That's what the Great Barrington Declaration was and what some who have resigned from certain positions at the CDC have done.
The main justification for bad policy has been "the support of experts". Public health experts are having their field tarnished dramatically by being leaned upon in name by people that are ignoring their actual advice. They should stop allowing it. They have the most power to hold irresponsible politicians accountable, and should exercise it. The amount of good disaster management strategy that was thrown out because it had the potential to look bad and was more difficult to implement than ineffective measures (like designating certain areas safe spots for at risk people and providing spaces for them to shelter during spikes) should be more publicized.
The pandemic playbook was designed to manage and mitigate “communication dilemmas”, not execute a strategic health response — which isn’t necessarily incompetent. It’s prescient enough to recognize that our greatest danger isn’t a virus but paralysis and inertia, a struggle to digest information and propaganda, an inability to understand or engage with one another, distrust and inefficacy crippling our institutions, waning authority of media and journalism, etc.
For anyone who hasn’t read through John Hopkins simulated SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 it’s pretty interesting [0]. They discuss controversies concerning medical treatments, anti-vaxxers, and strategies to engage in propaganda wars on social media. Disclaimer: not wearing a tinfoil hat, no the report isn’t part of a conspiracy to railroad the population into vaccines, but it does reveal a certain ineptitude and bad faith.
I tend to take every theory seriously. I think it’s important to do so, to either prove or disprove. I also often find “conspiracy theorists” are the most educated on a given topic.
That’s not to say I often agree. But it’s a really interesting exercise to explore their theories. You’ll often learn an abundance yourself.
I ended up narrowing down who it was who was perpetrating the claims and validated my theory it’s probably BS.
In this case, the WEF and IMF have a lot of the same participants and have run hacking simulations. That seems reasonable to me imo. That said, it’s fairly clear why people believe there’s a conspiracy with the IMF —
There’s probably something there, but it’s not clear the cyber attack simulations are anything related to a conspiracy. China and the west’s adversaries have a pretty clear incentive to replace / destroy the IMF. They could do that via hacking.
Same here! If a cyber attack happened in a way that this simulation explored, it would mean that people have been ignoring early warnings. That would be beyond stupid of those who could have prevented it.
Have you heard of event 201? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this is quite the coincidence. They simulated a pandemic in October 2019 and one of the things they focused on was "misinformation". There are too many similarities to the current pandemic to list. The world economic forum and Bill Gates sponsored it.
"Too many to list"? It's a pandemic simulation--there aren't that many variables to manipulate. And misinformation was already a huge talking point several years ago, after the 2016 election and the Mueller report. Saying you're not a conspiracy theorist and then suggesting a conspiracy is a little discordant, to say the least.
Questioning things isn't a bad thing. I consider a conspiracy theorist to be someone who believes theories are fact. I'm just saying I don't know. I don't think the pandemic was planned but it's good to keep an open mind. I'm more skeptical about the response to the pandemic than the origins.
I know "misinformation" was being thrown around for years. The Mueller report and 2016 election are great example of the media spreading misinformation. Most of the Russia-gate stuff has been debunked by now including the Steele dossier recently. I actually believed a lot of that stuff at first because I hated Trump so much.
I assume this is like a bank stress test - they don't literally withdraw a bunch of deposits and call in a bunch of obligations, instead they just have auditors do a bunch of what if scenarios and calculations of what would happen if that happened
The military sometimes use the term 'simulate' to mean what soldiers do during training or mission rehearsal, not just in the sense of running a simulation system (although training may obviously be supported by a simulator)
Too practical. Just making the world better doesn't let you pad your resume or put your fingerprint on some recent hotness. Sadly, infrastructure work is largely ignored - until it isn't - and then the failure is all your fault!!
Those millions of vulnerable IoT devices don't have that much of an impact to strategic infrastructure, even compared to just individual separate ransomware incidents at large organizations.
Except that an adversary can use a large botnet of pwned consumer IoT devices to conduct DoS attacks against the financial system (and other critical infrastructure).
I find it amazing how so many people don't know that the IMF is an NGO made up of a few wealthy people.
I suspect the "Financial System" being referred to is the SWIFT system and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil.
No cyber attacks will be needed to bring SWIFT down, just a few too many sanctions being wielded like cudgels by over eager bureaucrats trying to impose their "Morality" on the rest of the world.
I suppose it is possible that is the point, they want to be prepared for the backlash sure to follow when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.
> and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil.
Who will they trade with? Themselves? Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them, stops selling weapons, and takes other punitive economic measures? Cryptocurrency is a much greater "threat" to these systems, but even then it's more of a threat to countries with poor quality or unstable currencies.
> when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.
It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc. are all reserve currencies too. It's not some sort of designation bestowed upon the dollar from which the downfall of America will lead to it losing such status, it's just what central banks and governments hold in reserve. If the US dollar loses market share (if you'll allow here), it'll probably drive up the value of dollars since the US federal reserve no longer has to print dollars to help maintain global liquidity. The whole RESERVE CURRENCY thing is just FUD.
>>>Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them...
The Saudis have already entered a mutual defense pact with Russia
>>>It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc...
Actually it isn't, that is why sanctions work so well, Russia and China just entered into an agreement to trade directly between themselves without converting to USD first. It wont be long before Syria, Iran, North Korea, Argentina, Cuba and several African nations join the fray. Not to mention a large number of other out of favor political leaders that are sick of US led regime change or coup attempts constantly testing them..Think Bolsonaro, Duterte, Aung San Suu Kyi.
These are the countries that hold the resources needed for a productive world and soon enough the rest of the world, including the West will be forced to follow them into an new non US hegemonic world, regardless of the number of guns and bombs Uncle Sam has.
Yeah. But who will China sell its goods to? Last I checked, Russia has 144M people and EU / US / Japan have 1B+. Of course, China has a large domestic market but exports are still ~20% of GDP for them.
The other side of that coin is who will the West buy their goods from, I would rather be in the position of having too much to sell than not enough to buy.
The EU is already dependent on Russian natural gas and middle eastern oil so they will be forced to accept the new trade rules even if under protest.
There is a possibility that the commonwealth countries along with the US might be able to put up a good fight but the current state of anti colonial rhetoric from within most commonwealth countries will most likely push the current leaders of these countries out of power and one by one they will join the rest of the world...The sun has been setting on the British Empire for a while now.
> The other side of that coin is who will the West buy their goods from
Themselves? Allied nations? Other countries around the world? Your entire discussion centers around this idea that all resources and all things are made in these non-western countries. It's a faulty assumption. China is dependent on imports as well - remember the rolling blackouts shutting down factories in China when they stopped coal imports to teach Australia a lesson and then Australia just sold the coal elsewhere? [1]
Europe is "dependent" on Russian gas but those who are in charge in Russia really like that European money and their vacation homes. Long-term Europe is just fine here because they can just build alternative energy sources (warming planet may make much of Europe even less dependent on Russian natural gas for heating). It doesn't help them today but if the costs are too high there becomes a point that it's either not worth it, or liquified natural gas products from the US become attractive. It should go without saying that the oligarchs in Russia who run these companies... like not having their villas in London confiscated due to "sanctions". There's an upper limit on the maximum pain (outside of actual war) that either will inflict upon the other.
The EU dependency on Russian gas thing is yet another overly simplified boogeyman like the US Dollar Reserve Currency status. What is actually concerning is Ukraine and how serious Putin is about invading and starting a war and whether or not he stops at Ukraine or does something drastic. I don't think the EU will be able to coordinate an effective military response which may lead to the block dissolving, especially if Putin does something crazy like invade Poland or some NATO country that isn't "important" - will the West really go to war? If Putin gambles here I don't think nukes will fly. So now Russia gets to fight a conventional war in Europe without existential risk - it's a great move for him geopolitically and strategically. EU member states such as France and Germany (the former is the only one that appears to have the ability to even fight) would basically go into a "save yourself" mode and start acting independently when push comes to shove. Outside of the UK most of the rest of the EU is far too small or useless to do anything. Americans are much more willing to fight in Europe than Italians or Spaniards are and I don't think we'd even send ground troops unless we're in an actual World War III scenario which nobody in the West wants to engage in, hence the stronger Russian upper hand here. Though I wouldn't put it past the U.S. to take a chance to really screw with Russia here in the meantime. [2]
I wonder how that happened. Interesting coincidental timing.
Interesting to see some familiar topics here, I thought I was the only one.
You may be interested to know that some time in the last decade the Russians clearly signalled they would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in Europe. Brilliant play since they know the US sentiment around preparedness to enter another conflict that isn’t theirs.
By simply signalling they forced the US to consider other options hence the decisions to deploy tactical nuclear capabilities not subject to the same rules as strategic nuclear weapons. And last I heard they were deploying these tactical capabilities to a sub class also responsible for SSG.
I’m very curious to understand whether Russian simply signalling in the way that they did has caused the US to strategically compromise their second strike guarantee. That would mean that by simply introducing the idea they have let the US take the mutually assured destruction elements off the table that made it so risky to begin with.
Yea definitely interesting to think about. A couple of discussion points:
* To your point (let me know if you disagree) I think that the MAD concept can be overcome and we'll see countries figure out strategis around it. What if you had World War III and... just nobody fired the nukes? New York City is bombed, Moscow is invaded, whatever and the countries just don't do the doomsday? What if we've taken MAD for granted and it turns out it's not even on the table?
* > Brilliant play since they know the US sentiment around preparedness to enter another conflict that isn’t theirs
Many wars and conflicts begin because of miscalculations. I think on Putin's part for Russia this could be one of those. I mentioned this in another thread but the U.S. just spent 20 years at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, people dying, IEDs, terrorists, all of that stuff and if you turned the TV off you'd have no idea these wars were going on. America spent 20 years doing this stuff in two countries and not a single American day-to-day really gave a crap. While it may be the case that America is not willing to fight in Eastern Europe, I think that this is one of those potential miscalculations and it's certainly an unknown variable. Hell, even if the American people were not being drafted the US military is certainly actively strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Russia or anyone so we could yet again have a military at war but not a people. Just some food for thought. Even with Biden (smartly IMO) actually getting us out of Afghanistan, the left and the right were crowing about it. Might be more willingness to fight then one might think and this could lead the U.S. to another direct conflict with Russia this decade. [1]
> the IMF is an NGO made up of a few wealthy people.
I was under the impression that it is an international organisation that is backed by most countries.
Wikipedia calls it "an international financial institution consisting of 190 countries" and says it "came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries"
Even though it had a few wealthy founders, one of which is John Maynard Keynes, probably one of the most well known economists, I wouldn't describe the IMF as "an NGO made up of a few wealthy people".
Fair enough, the IMF itself is an international construct funded by world governments but it's directors and governors are appointed positions held by individuals chosen by a few wealthy individuals. It is not a government organization just like the US Federal Reserve Bank which also gets mistaken for a government organization.
Russia and China both are accumulating a lot more gold than previously. They can go to a gold backed digital currency pretty reliably at this point. China's been testing digital yuan already, including some nice restrictions that will benefit socialist/communist control - restriction of what certain digital yuan can buy, as well as time-expiring money. Both would increase peoples needs on the state and their short term happiness - they'll feel "richer" able to buy nicer meals or go on vacations, but both would be able to restrict someone from saving or becoming too successful. We'll likely see these same ideas implemented in the CBDCs that roll out in the west.
The West is threatening to cut Russia from SWIFT financial transactions network. Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack. It never hurts to be vigilant and test the financial system just in case.
> Russia is threatening back with a "strong response" that, for example, could come in a form of a cyber attack.
Really not need, they will just build their own. Believe Japan is already allowing them to use their banking clearing system. I'm sure they and China already have one. All this cyber attack stuff are really not worth while when country can just build their own SWIFT type of system.
Isn't Japan also on it's own banking system? You can't use USA Credit/Debit cards most places? Makes sense they would also allow Russia's "third party" option.
Is Russia even threatening anything back on that particular matter?
Besides, it's not "the West" who wants to cut Russia out, it's only the US. European politicians don't seem to be that supportive of this idea and they are the ones who have legal power here, not the US.
Tbh, it seems to me that Russia would actually profit in the long-term from yet another US illegal abuse of SWIFT. They already provide their own ISO 15022/200022 compatible solution, cheaper and decentralized https://www.cyberft.com/
Creating further inconvenience for business would simply drive them to consider additional diversification and redundancy, given that there are alternatives.
> it's not "the West" who wants to cut Russia out, it's only the US
The US is really overplaying its hand under Biden, it's quite sad to watch such a complete mishandling of foreign policy and energy policy. This is almost certainly the US presidency that markets the tangible decline of US global order.
I'm not sure if Trump understood this explicitly, but he did implicitly: the correct way to "defend" from Russia and China is not to try to freeze them out, but to make them active participants. If the loss of SWIFT hurts Russia, Russia would have a vested interested in its protection. Instead Biden is desperately trying to force Russia to accelerate SPFS, and in these circumstances they're going to send all of Europe along with Russia.
The self-caused European Energy crisis means that the EU has to play with Russia at this stage in the game. If Biden pushes the removal of Russia from SWIFT, Russia just has to tell the EU "we only accept payment for LNG via SPFS, in Rubles, Euros, or physical delivery of gold". And that's it, Europe immediately is adopting SPFS because the alternative is freezing to death.
The US is not going to ship enough LNG to the EU to keep it going - it's not even going to be able to keep Nord 2 offline. It's such an absolute negligence of foreign policy that I'd almost think the US is intentionally playing into Putin's hand.
They were so desperate to stop Bernie and to prevent Trump again that they have backed themselves into a terrible corner with Biden because all their other plans were foiled by Bernie/Tulsi/Yang/etc. In the next cycle they will likely push Harris which is an utter disaster. Some crazy rumors point to Hillary trying yet again although I don't believe they could be that stupid. Either way if they put up anyone other than an amazing charismatic Obama like character then Trump will win. While you think Trump was better, he really botched the Huawei debacle and honestly there is nobody at the wheel because he cannot make concrete decisions. The lack of leadership at all levels in the US is embarrassing and just a massive national shame. Our only hope is that someone amazing comes out of shadows like Obama did so we get some semblance of leadership(even though Obama wasn't really progressive). Its gonna have to be a national celebrity who can sort of bring enough of the both sides together. Jocko Wilink, The Rock, some other celebrities that are charismatic maybe that wrestler from Minnesota(they won't allow him to be the nominee but one can dream). Maybe Michelle...She has all the checkmarks and can probably beat Trump but has indicated she does not want to go down that route.
Pete Buttigieg. Prediction markets have him at 15% right now, 3rd behind Biden and Harris. America is screwed if the only reason we can't have sane leadership is because a significant portion of the country has a problem with him being gay. (he lost the 2020 nomination to Biden because of the South's apprehension)
I honestly don't get why the technologist crowd seem to have some affection for this guy. He is Obama 2.0 but nowhere near as legendary. He is terrible in his speeches, he does not get people inspired about anything, and to top it off he plays ball with the DNC so there will be infighting within the party when he runs again. He is a trash candidate that couldn't really get that far ahead in Iowa without sketchy behavior and completely collapsed afterwards.
He lost the 2020 nomination because he was absolutely terrible. You are ignoring the abysmal results before the first southern state even voted (south carolina). Him being gay didn't even register given how badly he killed his chances of him just being himself.
The point of a simulation isn't for technologists to practice business continuity and recovery plans, it was for executives to determine who they align with once their primary stakeholder relationships fail.
When you think of what such a coordinated attack would look like, and by who, the only plausible scenario to me is a Russia/China axis setting up a SWIFT alternative for client states and then attacking the US network as a way to ride to the rescue with the new one and use it as a forcing function to overcome switching costs. Otherwise, the economics of mere vandalism at that scale don't make sense. They'd broadcast their intentions anyway if that were the case. (e.g. de-dollarization, China's SDRs, etc.) I don't think they're ready yet.
There is a cynical view that this was related to a trial run to determine whether retail deposits could be shifted to a U.S. Fed and ECB or other temporary* liquidity facility, but the failure of the US admin to install its favored comptroller of currency nominee, who would be supportive of the scheme, has reduced its momentum. I don't know that this was part of the simulation, but shift from a monopolar world and the vacuum it has created means we're literally in an age of conspiracies, so it's one of those 'when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro' situations. When it clicks that "cyber" just means governance, these exercises become a useful signal for overarching power plays.
Imo, the real threats to the "global financial system," aren't really to it at all, as cyber is a tactic in support of other co-ordinated activities to destabilize individual governments by undermining civilian infrastructure. I would interpret these exercises as more of a war games demonstration for policymakers who may be thinking about supporting populist national policies in their countries and deviating from the emerging hegemon.
I think you're missing something from the cynical view, which is that basically everybody has to lock down their subjects' deposits at the same time to avoid capital flight while they're overhauling the system - for example a "coordinated bank holiday...and coordinated delinking from major currencies". It's an opportunity for executives to learn exactly who to call and what types of actions they might be expected to take in a major banking crisis, whatever the trigger.
China has everything to lose to cut itself from the global market. They are not going to do this unless US forces them to do so. The cold war mindset is pretty much one sided. What China needs is time and that is what US elites won't lend to it.
>> The point of a simulation isn't for technologists to practice business continuity and recovery plans, it was for executives to determine who they align with once their primary stakeholder relationships fail.
Came to the comments for this. The simulation is being done out of fear that such things may come to pass. The number one goal is for the elite to figure out how to save themselves in such a scenario. Secondary goals are to help at various lower levels. This is always the case for every human being. In what order do you prioritize your allegiance to: Self, family, friends, company, country, coworkers, species, etc... ? These vary for each person, but typically self is near the top and some affiliations are next. I had to look at that list to see if I inadvertently put my own ordering... No, it's a mix of mine and what I suspect other peoples are.
Today we live in a world where we feel safe using the internet for financial transactions. This is only possible as long as the public feels safe doing so. A series of massive cyber attacks could also weaken public trust and bring down the major part of the economy that is growing.
People don't tend to accept rapid, life-altering changes, unless it's solving a crisis. We wouldn't have accepted lockdowns, face masks, and vaccine passports without a pandemic to justify them.
Masses of people would likely push back against CBDCs, unless they came in to fix and solve a crisis. A collapse of the electronic financial system would justify this.
"One European financial official said that in the case of such of an attack, his country would not wait 10 days to act."
Since roughly January 2020, as a life scientist, my confidence in pretty much all of the world's governments' abilities to act quickly and/or in concert, in the face of an emergency, has gone from maybe ~60% to near 0%.
I wouldn't mind if the government was slimmed down to being little more than the IRS, military, and a few regulatory bodies with either the current progressive tax system (better yet, that of the 70s) or a land value tax (at least 85%) with all of the proceeds redistributed equally among the population (i.e., UBI). Oh, and Pigovian taxes (e.g., carbon taxes). Lots and lots of Pigovian taxes.
I don't think I needed to drink any koolaid to come upon this political stance, although I may have seen a cat or two.
The super-rich don't need public health, public works, education, code enforcement and labour rights, but they do need a functioning military and property rights. And now we know the origin of the "nightwatch state" and why it's pushed so much by certain groups.
We definitely need a bit more than a night-watchman state. I should mention that I believe in the continued existence of public institutions, I just don't believe in their exclusivity. For example, I think the FDA should continue to exist. However, I would prefer it to be possible for pharmaceutical companies to align themselves with regulatory bodies other than the FDA so long as they made public their alignment. Then I, as the consumer, can choose whether I trust the FDA or its private competitor more, and buy my drugs accordingly.
Simply put, I want a government which maximizes freedom, flexibility, and opportunity for as many people as possible.
Wealthy people generally have a pretty good handle on how to efficiently allocate capital. Unless it was inherited, most wealthy people alive today were not born that way.
Government agencies and politicians have proven, by and large, to be incredibly inefficient allocators of capital. When the bloated arm of government expands into an area that's already well-served by markets, it impedes economic growth.
I’m pretty sure (but have no direct evidence at hand) that most wealth is either directly inherited, or indirectly inherited as a result of being born in a privileged setting.
This is only true if you believe in conspiracy theories that the PRC is 1) hiding millions of COVID-19 deaths and simultaneously 2) remained the only growing economy in 2020. Or you reject 2) and include the entire global economy in the conspiracy.
Otherwise, the PRC (CCP = world's largest bureaucracy) has clearly had the most successful response to the pandemic due to its decisive measures, which goes against your conclusion that less governance is needed to effectively combat pandemics.
It's a theory that there's a broad conspiracy to cover up how bad the pandemic hit China. This would require many parties (millions of people inside and out of China) to closely conspire on a singular manufactured narrative and prevent any leaks of the "truth".
This is a good example of how the anti-China rhetoric presents with a blind spot for the West (I am a westerner). Rather than learning from what they did right, folks in my country just shrug and say “you can’t trust their stats”. That may be so, and sure, there may have been a large number of specific problems and areas for improvement, but there’s no universe in which China did not display strong overall competency. You can see that even if you take most official figures with a grain of salt.
I rather thought mostly people looked how China achieved whatever success it achieved and said, "Yeah, we don't do that. Don't care how effective it is at one thing the price is too high."
Also can their stats be trusted? How would you know? Yes the west is following some very repressive and revolting media policies "Hi Julian!" But still a long way behind the PRC so stuff tends to come out eventually. Hunter Biden's laptop emails were real, not "russian disinformation" and we are now aware of that censorship which troubles us regardless of who we voted for. Most chinese in China have never heard of or seen this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man
Still some 3 decades later. These things are related, similar but their magnitude is (at least at this stage) not remotely comparable.
Yeah people never work in secrecy (or in the open) together and lie due to common interests. Especially millions of people. It would be impossible to coordinate them!
- Signed, Santa Claus, coming to deliver presents to children worldwide soon.
The fact that the Chinese numbers are fake is at this momement only at question for the extremely gullible.
Supposedly they have not had a single covid-death since March 2020, and have had 100 new cases this week, with a country that has 1400 million inhabitants.
It is starting to look like the reason Omicron appears to be less severe is because so much of the populace around the world has been infected with some form of covid already, and with reinfections complication rates are far lower. If that is the case China’s successful control of previous strains will become a devastating liability with this strain.
>If that is the case China’s successful control of previous strains will become a devastating liability with this strain.
I've been wondering about this as well, the extreme example of this would have been the European invasion of the Americas, and the thousands of years of disease evolution of common viruses around the world that the natives missed out on, which killed most without weapons.
There's a certain value in letting your population's immune systems adapt as the viruses come, instead of letting it be overwhelmed after long isolation.
We're in a constant natural arms race with viruses, isolation isn't sustainable.
China's COVID numbers are transparently fabricated. They make no sense given the size and diversity of the provinces they control, and are far to low for even a good response considering the population involved.
Especially since they didn't know that they were being hit by a pandemic in the early stages of the virus in Wuhan, and would have had a delayed response even compared to the countries that handled this well.
China's statistics are a case of some combination of lying and ignorance, not of success. They aren't telling us what is happening on the ground in China.
Yeah it is based on evidence. There is no way they can have achieved the outcome the stats are claiming.
Wikipedia says they have 100k cases in a population of 1.4 billion, or 0.007% of the population caught the coronavirus. That compares to New Zealand - a tiny, wealthy, well organised island nation with a near perfect border quarantine and easy conditions for contract tracing - where 0.2% of the country is known to have caught the coronavirus.
China did not have 1-2 orders of magnitude less cases than New Zealand (which is already going to be an outlier). The country is large and COVID is hard to control. Their stats are impossible. Having facial recognition tech and being willing to use it can't get the result the numbers claim. They got hit by a novel virus in the middle of Chinese New Year and they are having the same problem with outbreaks as literally everyone else.
Plus we know they aren't trying to publish accurate stats because they vaccinated most of the country in a few day according to the data that filtered back into the western media. They may not necessarily be malicious but the Chinese are certainly not accurate and timely with their statistics.
Here is the ideological conditioning coming into play. You have been conditioned to believing that it is impossible for the Chinese to do things better than the West. If they do, they must be cheating/stealing IP/fudging the numbers.
The best responses to the coronavirus have all been in Asia and Oceania - places that were scared by SARS and prepared themselves. South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore etc. Those are what a gold standard, world leading responses (with favourable conditions) look like.
They are reporting believable numbers for an excellent response. China is not. Singapore alone had double the number of cases that China is reporting. Singapore! It is totally incredible, impossible, not remotely plausible and a poorly conceived joke that China's confirmed COVID number represents the number of people in China who had COVID. China is not outperforming those countries on a per-capita basis in the happy reality we all live in. There is - I repeat myself - literally no way they could have achieved that. Maybe it is equalling them, though I doubt that too as a practical matter.
The Chinese work hard, are organised and have intelligent people working in their government. But what they don't have is a magic spell to make COVID disappear the way the stats suggest it has. The stats are not real.
> It is totally incredible, impossible, not remotely plausible and a poorly conceived joke that China's confirmed COVID number represents the number of people in China who had COVID.
Why is it so hard for you to accept? China is easily the least individualistic, and most collectivist, of the major Asian economies. Chinese people, and its government, generally value social harmony over individual freedoms. This makes dealing with transmissible disease outbreaks a no-brainer -- you quarantine and do whatever it takes to prevent things from spreading. Of course, executing this correctly is only possible because the CCP is the most effective bureaucracy in human history (enabled by technology, of course).
I'm going a bit further than not accepting them, I'm almost at the point of chuckling at the idea that you believe them. Your justification here for China having the most effective bureaucracy in human history is that they've lied to you with a straight face. Which is ironic since they probably do have the most efficient bureaucracy in human history. You've been suckered, these numbers are transparently divorced from reality. In the worst case they are lying to us. In the best case they just aren't bothering to report the stats that they keep internally.
"China is easily the least individualistic, and most collectivist, of the major Asian economies."? They have a population of 1.4 billion people! A full 17% of the earth's population! Sure on average they may be fairly communal, but that doesn't change the fact there will be some really huge pockets of weirdness that will get COVID (much like Singapore where the problem was ghettos and the disease was contained elsewhere). They aren't going to be enforcing any sort of uniformity over a country that big without switching on the mind-control waves in Ye Olde 5G infrastructure. Which is to say, they aren't. There has been at least one million-person COVID outbreak in China. Probably more than that.
> you quarantine and do whatever it takes
You're handwaving the part where you come up with a theory on how this is possible. Other countries tried better quarantines than China can achieve. Like Taiwan.
You clearly don't have the barest understanding about China or how its government works.
I recommended watching the American PBS documentary China's War on Poverty (which was taken off air by Washington censors) for a quick glimpse into the real China. You can find uploads on YouTube, probably.
You're basically arguing that authoritarian governments are great at wielding their absolute power towards their policy objectives, which is not a particularly controversial statement.
To suggest this means that large bureaucracies are inherently good or efficient is very strange.
Has anyone else thought about the risks of one or more national actors doing macro scale pump and dumps of cryptocurrencies combined with viral memes targeting populations of their adversaries tricking them into buying the top/selling the bottom?
However, it is apparently much more robust than traditional finance. Rapid drops of 50%+, that would be devastating if it were to happen in sp500 or bond markets, did not destroy crypto markets despite huge amounts of high leverage.
Maybe it is too small to matter still, but either way I would much rather worry about traditional finance.
The US may be overplaying its hand, but it's certainly not as cut and dry as the comments would have you believe.
Russia and China are only allied around their common enemy, the US. Don't believe for a second that these two nations wouldn't throw each other under the bus if it furthered their respective causes.
This is a view that I think everyone of us should have. The elites manipulate us by waving various flags and nationalism is one of them. Don't get me wrong that Nationalism is useful when the whole country is under invasion or something, but so far this is not happening for most of the countries out there.
I'd rather segment people by the class they are in.
Of course. Commoners have more in common with each other than the elites. But which system is better for the health of society etc? The autocratic corrupt spying apparatus gov? Or the falted, less efficient, but generally much much more open and representative gov of the US?
Lol. You must exist in a world of hyperbole. If you think the US gov is bad, wait until you see and experience a world of the CCP and Putin's FSB.
In a CCP world, probably within a decade, if you posted a critical comment on a messageboard - you would "disappear" in a week, and all mentions of you would be gone from the earth within a month. They don't tolerate resistance my friend.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 238 ms ] threadHowever, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy.
So we should be weary about any company that runs disaster recovery exercises? We just saw another AWS outage take many significant services offline a couple weeks ago.
Which I think is a very cynical take - but I'm not exactly thrilled with some of the statements of these organization's leaders.
Just like most conspiracy theories, the idea just doesn't make sense once you get past the sensationalism. What kind of power are they seeking that they don't already have?
But also you should realize that after attaining a certain level you cannot be bribed anymore and can only be blackmailed
Whether you feel it was planned or not, the lockdowns did pretty much halt the velocity of money. Sure they printed a ton of social care money, but again the inflationary trap had already been set, it was the velocity that needed to be killed to buy some time.
This idea extends the concept.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
As for ideological battle generally—the site guidelines make a distinction between that and curious conversation, which is what we want here. Not only are they not the same, they're not compatible—for the same reason that having a tank battle and playing frisbee in the park are not compatible, or that boxing and dancing aren't.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Many topics here have ideological and political overlap—. That's generally ok, as long as there's a basis for substantive discussion (pure flamebait articles, for example, are off topic).
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
But the question is how people go about talking about them. If they're just trying to smite enemies and using the usual weapons (snark, name-calling, etc.) to do it, that's clearly against the site guidelines and not what we want here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I am glad that systems are actively and preemptively tested so that issues can prevented. It is the duty for some body in society to do so and I would be incredibly angry if no one felt responsibility to do so.
Whats sad to me is that entities with a vast history of conducting outright conspiracy get defended as if those of us skeptical and cautious about their true motives are just being cynical. What the financial elite have planned is not even close to just regular old corporate IT department red-teaming... so I find this framing naive at best.
"The COVID-19 crisis has since been cited as the main justification for accelerating what is termed the digital transformation of the financial sector and other sectors, which that the World Economic Forum and its partners have promoted for years. Their latest prediction of a doomsday event, a cyberattack that stops the current financial system in its tracks and initiates its systemic collapse, if it came to pass, would be the final, necessary step required to bring about the Forum’s desired outcome of a widespread shift to digital currency and increased global governance of the international economy.
Given that experts have been warning since the last global financial crisis that the collapse of the entire system was inevitable due to central bank mismanagement and rampant Wall Street corruption, a cyberattack would also provide the perfect scenario for dismantling the current failing system, as it would absolve central banks and corrupt financial institutions of any responsibility. It would also provide a justification for incredibly troubling policies promoted in the WEF-Carnegie report, such as a greater fusion of intelligence agencies and banks in order to better “protect” critical financial infrastructure." [1]
"A massive cyberattack, such as that simulated at Cyber Polygon 2020, would allow faceless hackers to be blamed for economic collapse, thus absolving the real financial criminals of responsibility. Furthermore, due to the difficult nature of investigating hacks and the ability of intelligence agencies to frame other nation states for hacks they in fact committed themselves, any boogeyman of choice can be blamed, whether a “domestic terror” group or a country unaligned with the WEF (for now, at least) like Iran or North Korea." [2]
"Ultimately, what WEF-PAC represents is a global organization that aims to neuter anonymity online, whether for financial purposes or for browsing and other activities. It is a global effort combining powerful governments and corporations that seeks to usher in a new age of surveillance that makes such surveillance a requirement to participate in the online world or use online services. It is being sold to the public as the only way to stop a coming “pandemic” of cybercrime, a crisis taking place largely in murky parts of the internet that few understand or have any direct experience with. Having to rely on State intelligence agencies and intelligence-linked cybersecurity firms for attribution of these crimes, it has never been easier for corrupt actors in those agencies or their partners to either manufacture or manipulate a crisis that could upend online freedom as we have known it, something these very groups have sought to implement for years." [3]
1. https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/04/investigative-reports/w...
2. cinntaile ↗ I certainly hope that institutions run these kind of simulations. It's one of the best ways to identify critical flaws in preparation plans that need to be mitigated. ceejayoz ↗ We simulate all sorts of plausible scenarios. They're only valuable if the scenarios are realistic enough to be applied to potential real-world stuff. diab0lic ↗ > However, if a cyber attack does happen a few years from now that takes out the global financial system... it'll definitely make me a little queasy. hobs ↗ You never see an emergency without an ambulance showing up, did you think that the EMT's are the real villains! gjsman-1000 ↗ I never said I defended it - I'm saying that it would make me a little uncomfortable. GavinMcG ↗ Don't spread it by bringing it up here, then. mbg721 ↗ Not all risk mitigation measures are wise. We got to this point by willfully ignoring that, and now, unsurprisingly, the people who got shouted down don't trust anybody. mistrial9 ↗ "loutish" wowokay ↗ I'm still confused, is Ethan Hunt involved, Findecanor ↗ Because a "simulated cyber attack on the global financial systems" would fit so well into the fictional world of the Impossible Mission Force. crisdux ↗ I wonder if these simulations do more harm. Like it gives people a false sense of security and locks them into a strategy. I think the best illustration for this is covid. Our leaders and experts threw away the pandemic playbook and replaced it with this new strategy of using novel precision vaccine technology and having a near singular focus on getting people vaccinated. As time goes on, it seems more and more like a failure. But we are basically stuck. We are not responding to ANY signals that this is a bad strategy. cinntaile ↗ What is the pandemic playbook and how does the current response differ? crisdux ↗ Folks need to understand that our current strategy is quite revolutionary. Basically everything goes against previous guidance. We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people, lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports. Vaccinate everyone with little regard for safety or necessity. Ignore natural immunity. Ignore outpatient treatment. Impose a systematic campaign of censorship, deception and propaganda. Noble lies and dishonesty are accepted. Informed consent is thrown away. Nearly every major tenant of our current strategy is anti science and is resulting in more suffering. chana_masala ↗ Well said! There has been near zero attention by the main agencies in power on therapeutics. E.g. even if ivermectin doesn't work, why can't we focus more on finding what does? It's only been vaccine, vaccine and more vaccine. Not even a mention for lifestyle or diet or supplements cinntaile ↗ There is focus on therapeutics. Although it's better to prevent than to treat, so a bigger focus on vaccines is expected. chana_masala ↗ These vaccines don't prevent and barely treat cinntaile ↗ It's quite effective at preventing serious illness and death, which is the whole point of the vaccines. It's even better if you don't get sick at all, but unfortunately not everyone has that much luck by being vaccinated. chana_masala ↗ > which is the whole point of the vaccines cinntaile ↗ The covid vaccine is not distinct on this. HPV vaccine, diphteria vaccine, tetanus vaccine... The point has mostly been to prevent (serious) illness. If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread. chana_masala ↗ Ok, you got me there. But - cinntaile ↗ I believe that is the case for covid at least. If you don't get as sick then that means the virus didn't manage to spread inside the body as much, so there is less viral material that can be spread to others. Now I'm not saying this relationship is linear, I have no clue. We'd have to ask an actual expert. detaro ↗ There are trials for various treatments being run, both with existing and newly developed medication, some making large headlines. If you haven't heard of any of this, that's kind of on you and your information sources. chana_masala ↗ Vitamin D and healthy eating is not emphasized at all by any CDC or health agency. These two things are significant risk factors for covid. Doctors have widely been prevented from using drugs with generally known safety profiles for emergency cases because Pfizer wants to develop its own new drugs. detaro ↗ If you didn't start healthy eating after decades of public health messaging about it, it's unlikely that you will start now and it'll make any relevant difference - and it isn't as if healthy people being better off isn't being constantly repeated. Vitamin D had it's hype phase, got looked at a bunch and it's still not clear how much it really does, although I'd agree that pushing the existing recommendations more probably wouldn't hurt. trumpablehump ↗ There are countless therapeutics in research, testing and admission. I am not sure what you are reading but this is widely available knowledge and you can dig into agency databases to find out more if you are so inclined. Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid. desine ↗ >Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid. ceejayoz ↗ Sure, and if you have a cure for obesity that works rapidly in the general population - because "please get more exercise" hasn't thus far - have at it. desine ↗ Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications. I think if they decided to be honest, and call it a "pandemic of the overewight" early on, you would have seen a lot of people using their time off to walk around the block. By ignoring the data, they increased fear, and probably increased people gaining weight by locking themselves in their homes all day. trumpablehump ↗ > Here, the news has conspiciously shied away from mentioning the relationship between weight and covid complications. e0a74c ↗ It's a fact that obese people are more likely to die from a covid infection. Whether or not it's hard to lose weight is irrelevant. trumpablehump ↗ Sorry, I overread that. Obviously obesity is a major danger. Thanks for notifying me about the mistake. e0a74c ↗ > Lifestyle, diet or supplements have shown to be rather irrelevant to the effects of Covid. trumpablehump ↗ Thank you, that was a inattentive mistake on my part. e0a74c ↗ If more people reacted to facts like you just did, the world would be a better place! detaro ↗ https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/fda-gives-em... chana_masala ↗ Doctors have been widely prevented from using off label drugs in literal emergency cases of covid just because Pfizer wants to sell and develop their own new therapeutic cinntaile ↗ You didn't contrast this with the pandemic playbook and most of it sounds like hyperbole to me so there is not much to respond to I'm afraid? crisdux ↗ Maybe instead of ad hominem attacks you should develop an argument. Cheers. cinntaile ↗ There is unfortunately no substance to reply to. That's what I point out, so maybe you could clarify your argument without hyperbole and by contrasting it to the pandemic playbook? marcosdumay ↗ > We've redefined illness to now mean positive pcr test. feldrim ↗ The thing is many countries have their disaster management strategies for pandemics. But when it comes action, the strategiea fail. There are many reasons for this. didericis ↗ > A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda. jorgesborges ↗ The pandemic playbook was designed to manage and mitigate “communication dilemmas”, not execute a strategic health response — which isn’t necessarily incompetent. It’s prescient enough to recognize that our greatest danger isn’t a virus but paralysis and inertia, a struggle to digest information and propaganda, an inability to understand or engage with one another, distrust and inefficacy crippling our institutions, waning authority of media and journalism, etc. andruby ↗ are you (or your friends) confusing the IMF (International Monetary Fund) with the WHO (World Health Organisation)? lettergram ↗ I tend to take every theory seriously. I think it’s important to do so, to either prove or disprove. I also often find “conspiracy theorists” are the most educated on a given topic. nomdep ↗ You misspelled “morons” trumpablehump ↗ Same here! If a cyber attack happened in a way that this simulation explored, it would mean that people have been ignoring early warnings. That would be beyond stupid of those who could have prevented it. choward ↗ Have you heard of event 201? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this is quite the coincidence. They simulated a pandemic in October 2019 and one of the things they focused on was "misinformation". There are too many similarities to the current pandemic to list. The world economic forum and Bill Gates sponsored it. GavinMcG ↗ "Too many to list"? It's a pandemic simulation--there aren't that many variables to manipulate. And misinformation was already a huge talking point several years ago, after the 2016 election and the Mueller report. Saying you're not a conspiracy theorist and then suggesting a conspiracy is a little discordant, to say the least. choward ↗ Questioning things isn't a bad thing. I consider a conspiracy theorist to be someone who believes theories are fact. I'm just saying I don't know. I don't think the pandemic was planned but it's good to keep an open mind. I'm more skeptical about the response to the pandemic than the origins.
The risk of a pandemic was clear enough that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) got made about the same time. It ticked pretty much all the boxes - China as origin, people thinking it's a bioweapon, contact tracing, politicians reluctant to take quarantine measures, panic buying, unrest, bat-borne virus, conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers, etc.
It's a hell of a movie to watch in 2021.
Both global pandemics and cyberattacks are plausible events. This is the true cause of both the simulations and the events occurring. It is incredibly improbable that the IMF thinking of them and simulating them had anything to do with them happening.
This is a truly simian approach at pointing the finger at people who plan on preventing disaster because simply uttering its name causes it to be.
Personally, I'd prefer a timeline in which Jim Phelps isn't a traitor though, and in which the IMF operated more on teamwork than on depending on heroic acts of a single operative.
We need strategy that has the ability to be flexible. It needs to be based on outcome. These simulations incorrectly teach people that the strategy is the goal, instead of aiming towards an outcome. For example, reducing hospitalization and deaths isn't the goal with current covid policy. The goal is to vaccinate as many people as possible.
People running these simulations are obviously focused on outcomes, that's why you run these simulations in the first place. Simulations allow you to find flaws in your preparations, but it doesn't make your preparations flawless. You try to minimize your outcome downside risk .
It is not obvious that these people who run these simulations are focused on positive outcomes on behalf of the population.
Historically the point of vaccines have been to prevent transmission. The covid vaccine is distinct on this.
> If you can prevent that, then you can likely limit or eliminate the spread.
That doesn't make any sense. Mitigating serious illness puts no downward pressure on transmission.
And in fact, if someone's symptoms are reduced and they don't need to test because they aren't required for vaxxed, it may even encourage spread.
You are right that this could be offset because there is no isolation happening in case of an unknown infection.
> Doctors have widely been prevented
citation needed I guess. Again, lots of stuff is being looked at (and some integrated in treatment recommendations), not just "Pfizers own new drugs".
Lol no, obesity is one of the biggest factors in covid mortality
You said you are in the US in another comment. I took 3 minutes to google some big US news sites. They all had multiple articles on the topic from spring 2020 until now. Your criticism is false. Some random examples:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/health/coronavirus-patien...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/03/04/coronavirus-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-obesity-ri...
https://www.foxnews.com/health/study-links-coronavirus-morta...
https://www.foxnews.com/health/obesity-increase-coronavirus-...
https://www.foxnews.com/health/is-americas-high-obesity-leve...
The above statement contradicts most/all studies on the subject. A few randomly selected sources:
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/excess-weight-can-increas...
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073853/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33463658/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...
> Wide spread testing of asymptomatic people
Yes, those are very new. If the previous generations had that capacity they wouldn't think twice about doing it, but they didn't so it's new.
> lockdowns, travel restrictions, medical passports
Those are right there since ancient Rome times.
First of all, previous pandemics like bird flu had fast infection but it was known to the experts and easier than COVID-19 to handle. But COVID was unknown and it took more time to respond properly and actually there's still more unknown things that the responses cannot be validated. It's hard to respond unknown unknowns.[1]
Second, the strategies are great on paper but when it comes to implementing them, it is all about the politics. The politics of funding the research institutes and academic institutions, the structure of the nation's health care system, economic situation and use of state budget to support people in the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the policies to allow human movement such as lock downs and restrictions... When it comes to actions, it's just the decision of the politicians.
Third, the strategies are created with stakeholders based on previous experience. And when they exercised, they are based on either previously occurred issues or predictions of the experts/participants of the strategy. You cannot be prepared for everything so you create many different feasible scenarios and exercise them. And they are limited by the capability of the participants.
Finally, strategies are already flexible because they are not binding for the states. A government can change the strategy on the go. A government can also totally ignore the current strategy for its political agenda.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns
This is the crux of the current failures. Many politicians seem to be making decisions based on the consensus of the loudest in their constituencies and select experts who mirror them rather than people who have studied epidemiology.
The Great Barrington Declaration advocated more traditional responses for prioritizing the protection of those most at risk prior to the vaccines. The public discussion around this was almost entirely based on optics, and the term "herd immunity" was demonized and considered too non compassionate. It was treated like a political language exercise rather than a public safety issue. Now that term has quietly reentered discourse without much acknowledgment of what was stated by those epidemiologists because reality isn't permitting any other end state. Yet many of the original policies which the declaration advises against are still being repeated and still failing, I think in large part to save face.
Many people recognized the problems with the current policies and advocated better ones very quickly. The amount of unknowns were mostly only an issue for the first few months. Once the demographic data came in a sensible response should have been (and was to many) fairly obvious. But sensible policy acknowledges a certain unavoidable risk, and the optics of that isn't allowable in our current political climate, so we advocate delusional fantasies instead.
Those trained in fields like epidemiology and pandemic response who know what they're doing and see the failures should continue to refuse to sign their name to bad policy and publicize their issues with it. That's what the Great Barrington Declaration was and what some who have resigned from certain positions at the CDC have done.
The main justification for bad policy has been "the support of experts". Public health experts are having their field tarnished dramatically by being leaned upon in name by people that are ignoring their actual advice. They should stop allowing it. They have the most power to hold irresponsible politicians accountable, and should exercise it. The amount of good disaster management strategy that was thrown out because it had the potential to look bad and was more difficult to implement than ineffective measures (like designating certain areas safe spots for at risk people and providing spaces for them to shelter during spikes) should be more publicized.
For anyone who hasn’t read through John Hopkins simulated SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028 it’s pretty interesting [0]. They discuss controversies concerning medical treatments, anti-vaxxers, and strategies to engage in propaganda wars on social media. Disclaimer: not wearing a tinfoil hat, no the report isn’t part of a conspiracy to railroad the population into vaccines, but it does reveal a certain ineptitude and bad faith.
[0] https://jhsphcenterforhealthsecurity.s3.amazonaws.com/spars-...
That’s not to say I often agree. But it’s a really interesting exercise to explore their theories. You’ll often learn an abundance yourself.
I did that recently regarding the election hacking claims: https://austingwalters.com/mike-lindell-and-china-hacking-am...
I ended up narrowing down who it was who was perpetrating the claims and validated my theory it’s probably BS.
In this case, the WEF and IMF have a lot of the same participants and have run hacking simulations. That seems reasonable to me imo. That said, it’s fairly clear why people believe there’s a conspiracy with the IMF —
https://quotefancy.com/quote/1275693/Henry-Kissinger-Who-con...
There’s probably something there, but it’s not clear the cyber attack simulations are anything related to a conspiracy. China and the west’s adversaries have a pretty clear incentive to replace / destroy the IMF. They could do that via hacking.
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about
I know "misinformation" was being thrown around for years. The Mueller report and 2016 election are great example of the media spreading misinformation. Most of the Russia-gate stuff has been debunked by now including the Steele dossier recently. I actually believed a lot of that stuff at first because I hated Trump so much.
In case you missed this: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/analyst-...
The military sometimes use the term 'simulate' to mean what soldiers do during training or mission rehearsal, not just in the sense of running a simulation system (although training may obviously be supported by a simulator)
borrowed from...
"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." - J. Paul Getty
Also unprotected IoT devices provide ways to protect the attackers.
I suspect the "Financial System" being referred to is the SWIFT system and chances are in the next few years it will be replaced by a new Sino-Russian system backed by Saudi oil.
No cyber attacks will be needed to bring SWIFT down, just a few too many sanctions being wielded like cudgels by over eager bureaucrats trying to impose their "Morality" on the rest of the world.
I suppose it is possible that is the point, they want to be prepared for the backlash sure to follow when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.
Who will they trade with? Themselves? Will Saudi Arabia join in when it means the US abandons them, stops selling weapons, and takes other punitive economic measures? Cryptocurrency is a much greater "threat" to these systems, but even then it's more of a threat to countries with poor quality or unstable currencies.
> when the Greenback is no longer the reserve currency.
It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc. are all reserve currencies too. It's not some sort of designation bestowed upon the dollar from which the downfall of America will lead to it losing such status, it's just what central banks and governments hold in reserve. If the US dollar loses market share (if you'll allow here), it'll probably drive up the value of dollars since the US federal reserve no longer has to print dollars to help maintain global liquidity. The whole RESERVE CURRENCY thing is just FUD.
The Saudis have already entered a mutual defense pact with Russia
>>>It's just a fancy title. Dollar is the reserve currency, but Euro, Pound, Yen, etc...
Actually it isn't, that is why sanctions work so well, Russia and China just entered into an agreement to trade directly between themselves without converting to USD first. It wont be long before Syria, Iran, North Korea, Argentina, Cuba and several African nations join the fray. Not to mention a large number of other out of favor political leaders that are sick of US led regime change or coup attempts constantly testing them..Think Bolsonaro, Duterte, Aung San Suu Kyi.
These are the countries that hold the resources needed for a productive world and soon enough the rest of the world, including the West will be forced to follow them into an new non US hegemonic world, regardless of the number of guns and bombs Uncle Sam has.
The EU is already dependent on Russian natural gas and middle eastern oil so they will be forced to accept the new trade rules even if under protest.
There is a possibility that the commonwealth countries along with the US might be able to put up a good fight but the current state of anti colonial rhetoric from within most commonwealth countries will most likely push the current leaders of these countries out of power and one by one they will join the rest of the world...The sun has been setting on the British Empire for a while now.
Themselves? Allied nations? Other countries around the world? Your entire discussion centers around this idea that all resources and all things are made in these non-western countries. It's a faulty assumption. China is dependent on imports as well - remember the rolling blackouts shutting down factories in China when they stopped coal imports to teach Australia a lesson and then Australia just sold the coal elsewhere? [1]
Europe is "dependent" on Russian gas but those who are in charge in Russia really like that European money and their vacation homes. Long-term Europe is just fine here because they can just build alternative energy sources (warming planet may make much of Europe even less dependent on Russian natural gas for heating). It doesn't help them today but if the costs are too high there becomes a point that it's either not worth it, or liquified natural gas products from the US become attractive. It should go without saying that the oligarchs in Russia who run these companies... like not having their villas in London confiscated due to "sanctions". There's an upper limit on the maximum pain (outside of actual war) that either will inflict upon the other.
The EU dependency on Russian gas thing is yet another overly simplified boogeyman like the US Dollar Reserve Currency status. What is actually concerning is Ukraine and how serious Putin is about invading and starting a war and whether or not he stops at Ukraine or does something drastic. I don't think the EU will be able to coordinate an effective military response which may lead to the block dissolving, especially if Putin does something crazy like invade Poland or some NATO country that isn't "important" - will the West really go to war? If Putin gambles here I don't think nukes will fly. So now Russia gets to fight a conventional war in Europe without existential risk - it's a great move for him geopolitically and strategically. EU member states such as France and Germany (the former is the only one that appears to have the ability to even fight) would basically go into a "save yourself" mode and start acting independently when push comes to shove. Outside of the UK most of the rest of the EU is far too small or useless to do anything. Americans are much more willing to fight in Europe than Italians or Spaniards are and I don't think we'd even send ground troops unless we're in an actual World War III scenario which nobody in the West wants to engage in, hence the stronger Russian upper hand here. Though I wouldn't put it past the U.S. to take a chance to really screw with Russia here in the meantime. [2]
I wonder how that happened. Interesting coincidental timing.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/china-power-supply-crunch-re...
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10331843/New-Russia...
one of us will be eating crow soon enough.
You may be interested to know that some time in the last decade the Russians clearly signalled they would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in Europe. Brilliant play since they know the US sentiment around preparedness to enter another conflict that isn’t theirs.
By simply signalling they forced the US to consider other options hence the decisions to deploy tactical nuclear capabilities not subject to the same rules as strategic nuclear weapons. And last I heard they were deploying these tactical capabilities to a sub class also responsible for SSG.
I’m very curious to understand whether Russian simply signalling in the way that they did has caused the US to strategically compromise their second strike guarantee. That would mean that by simply introducing the idea they have let the US take the mutually assured destruction elements off the table that made it so risky to begin with.
* To your point (let me know if you disagree) I think that the MAD concept can be overcome and we'll see countries figure out strategis around it. What if you had World War III and... just nobody fired the nukes? New York City is bombed, Moscow is invaded, whatever and the countries just don't do the doomsday? What if we've taken MAD for granted and it turns out it's not even on the table?
* > Brilliant play since they know the US sentiment around preparedness to enter another conflict that isn’t theirs
Many wars and conflicts begin because of miscalculations. I think on Putin's part for Russia this could be one of those. I mentioned this in another thread but the U.S. just spent 20 years at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, people dying, IEDs, terrorists, all of that stuff and if you turned the TV off you'd have no idea these wars were going on. America spent 20 years doing this stuff in two countries and not a single American day-to-day really gave a crap. While it may be the case that America is not willing to fight in Eastern Europe, I think that this is one of those potential miscalculations and it's certainly an unknown variable. Hell, even if the American people were not being drafted the US military is certainly actively strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Russia or anyone so we could yet again have a military at war but not a people. Just some food for thought. Even with Biden (smartly IMO) actually getting us out of Afghanistan, the left and the right were crowing about it. Might be more willingness to fight then one might think and this could lead the U.S. to another direct conflict with Russia this decade. [1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american...
I was under the impression that it is an international organisation that is backed by most countries.
Wikipedia calls it "an international financial institution consisting of 190 countries" and says it "came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries"
Even though it had a few wealthy founders, one of which is John Maynard Keynes, probably one of the most well known economists, I wouldn't describe the IMF as "an NGO made up of a few wealthy people".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund
"Oil backed" makes less sense, IMO.
Really not need, they will just build their own. Believe Japan is already allowing them to use their banking clearing system. I'm sure they and China already have one. All this cyber attack stuff are really not worth while when country can just build their own SWIFT type of system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
Besides, it's not "the West" who wants to cut Russia out, it's only the US. European politicians don't seem to be that supportive of this idea and they are the ones who have legal power here, not the US.
Tbh, it seems to me that Russia would actually profit in the long-term from yet another US illegal abuse of SWIFT. They already provide their own ISO 15022/200022 compatible solution, cheaper and decentralized https://www.cyberft.com/
Creating further inconvenience for business would simply drive them to consider additional diversification and redundancy, given that there are alternatives.
The US is really overplaying its hand under Biden, it's quite sad to watch such a complete mishandling of foreign policy and energy policy. This is almost certainly the US presidency that markets the tangible decline of US global order.
I'm not sure if Trump understood this explicitly, but he did implicitly: the correct way to "defend" from Russia and China is not to try to freeze them out, but to make them active participants. If the loss of SWIFT hurts Russia, Russia would have a vested interested in its protection. Instead Biden is desperately trying to force Russia to accelerate SPFS, and in these circumstances they're going to send all of Europe along with Russia.
The self-caused European Energy crisis means that the EU has to play with Russia at this stage in the game. If Biden pushes the removal of Russia from SWIFT, Russia just has to tell the EU "we only accept payment for LNG via SPFS, in Rubles, Euros, or physical delivery of gold". And that's it, Europe immediately is adopting SPFS because the alternative is freezing to death.
The US is not going to ship enough LNG to the EU to keep it going - it's not even going to be able to keep Nord 2 offline. It's such an absolute negligence of foreign policy that I'd almost think the US is intentionally playing into Putin's hand.
He lost the 2020 nomination because he was absolutely terrible. You are ignoring the abysmal results before the first southern state even voted (south carolina). Him being gay didn't even register given how badly he killed his chances of him just being himself.
When you think of what such a coordinated attack would look like, and by who, the only plausible scenario to me is a Russia/China axis setting up a SWIFT alternative for client states and then attacking the US network as a way to ride to the rescue with the new one and use it as a forcing function to overcome switching costs. Otherwise, the economics of mere vandalism at that scale don't make sense. They'd broadcast their intentions anyway if that were the case. (e.g. de-dollarization, China's SDRs, etc.) I don't think they're ready yet.
There is a cynical view that this was related to a trial run to determine whether retail deposits could be shifted to a U.S. Fed and ECB or other temporary* liquidity facility, but the failure of the US admin to install its favored comptroller of currency nominee, who would be supportive of the scheme, has reduced its momentum. I don't know that this was part of the simulation, but shift from a monopolar world and the vacuum it has created means we're literally in an age of conspiracies, so it's one of those 'when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro' situations. When it clicks that "cyber" just means governance, these exercises become a useful signal for overarching power plays.
Imo, the real threats to the "global financial system," aren't really to it at all, as cyber is a tactic in support of other co-ordinated activities to destabilize individual governments by undermining civilian infrastructure. I would interpret these exercises as more of a war games demonstration for policymakers who may be thinking about supporting populist national policies in their countries and deviating from the emerging hegemon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Border_Inter-Bank_Paymen...
Came to the comments for this. The simulation is being done out of fear that such things may come to pass. The number one goal is for the elite to figure out how to save themselves in such a scenario. Secondary goals are to help at various lower levels. This is always the case for every human being. In what order do you prioritize your allegiance to: Self, family, friends, company, country, coworkers, species, etc... ? These vary for each person, but typically self is near the top and some affiliations are next. I had to look at that list to see if I inadvertently put my own ordering... No, it's a mix of mine and what I suspect other peoples are.
It doesn’t have to be for financial profit
Masses of people would likely push back against CBDCs, unless they came in to fix and solve a crisis. A collapse of the electronic financial system would justify this.
Since roughly January 2020, as a life scientist, my confidence in pretty much all of the world's governments' abilities to act quickly and/or in concert, in the face of an emergency, has gone from maybe ~60% to near 0%.
Bureaucracies are generally incompetent in direct proportion to their size.
Or so a particular group of wealth owners would like to have us believe.
Fortunately, not everyone is drinking this koolaid.
I don't think I needed to drink any koolaid to come upon this political stance, although I may have seen a cat or two.
Simply put, I want a government which maximizes freedom, flexibility, and opportunity for as many people as possible.
This narrative has been pushed for many decades, since the 70's.
I once saw a great post on reddit that gave tons of examples of government working. Really wish I saved that.
Government agencies and politicians have proven, by and large, to be incredibly inefficient allocators of capital. When the bloated arm of government expands into an area that's already well-served by markets, it impedes economic growth.
Otherwise, the PRC (CCP = world's largest bureaucracy) has clearly had the most successful response to the pandemic due to its decisive measures, which goes against your conclusion that less governance is needed to effectively combat pandemics.
It's a textbook conspiracy theory.
Also can their stats be trusted? How would you know? Yes the west is following some very repressive and revolting media policies "Hi Julian!" But still a long way behind the PRC so stuff tends to come out eventually. Hunter Biden's laptop emails were real, not "russian disinformation" and we are now aware of that censorship which troubles us regardless of who we voted for. Most chinese in China have never heard of or seen this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man Still some 3 decades later. These things are related, similar but their magnitude is (at least at this stage) not remotely comparable.
There is deliberate effort by that government to erase that history. Do you think they are not effective in doing so in their own house?
- Signed, Santa Claus, coming to deliver presents to children worldwide soon.
Supposedly they have not had a single covid-death since March 2020, and have had 100 new cases this week, with a country that has 1400 million inhabitants.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/
I've been wondering about this as well, the extreme example of this would have been the European invasion of the Americas, and the thousands of years of disease evolution of common viruses around the world that the natives missed out on, which killed most without weapons.
There's a certain value in letting your population's immune systems adapt as the viruses come, instead of letting it be overwhelmed after long isolation.
We're in a constant natural arms race with viruses, isolation isn't sustainable.
Especially since they didn't know that they were being hit by a pandemic in the early stages of the virus in Wuhan, and would have had a delayed response even compared to the countries that handled this well.
China's statistics are a case of some combination of lying and ignorance, not of success. They aren't telling us what is happening on the ground in China.
Wikipedia says they have 100k cases in a population of 1.4 billion, or 0.007% of the population caught the coronavirus. That compares to New Zealand - a tiny, wealthy, well organised island nation with a near perfect border quarantine and easy conditions for contract tracing - where 0.2% of the country is known to have caught the coronavirus.
China did not have 1-2 orders of magnitude less cases than New Zealand (which is already going to be an outlier). The country is large and COVID is hard to control. Their stats are impossible. Having facial recognition tech and being willing to use it can't get the result the numbers claim. They got hit by a novel virus in the middle of Chinese New Year and they are having the same problem with outbreaks as literally everyone else.
Plus we know they aren't trying to publish accurate stats because they vaccinated most of the country in a few day according to the data that filtered back into the western media. They may not necessarily be malicious but the Chinese are certainly not accurate and timely with their statistics.
Here is the ideological conditioning coming into play. You have been conditioned to believing that it is impossible for the Chinese to do things better than the West. If they do, they must be cheating/stealing IP/fudging the numbers.
They are reporting believable numbers for an excellent response. China is not. Singapore alone had double the number of cases that China is reporting. Singapore! It is totally incredible, impossible, not remotely plausible and a poorly conceived joke that China's confirmed COVID number represents the number of people in China who had COVID. China is not outperforming those countries on a per-capita basis in the happy reality we all live in. There is - I repeat myself - literally no way they could have achieved that. Maybe it is equalling them, though I doubt that too as a practical matter.
The Chinese work hard, are organised and have intelligent people working in their government. But what they don't have is a magic spell to make COVID disappear the way the stats suggest it has. The stats are not real.
Why is it so hard for you to accept? China is easily the least individualistic, and most collectivist, of the major Asian economies. Chinese people, and its government, generally value social harmony over individual freedoms. This makes dealing with transmissible disease outbreaks a no-brainer -- you quarantine and do whatever it takes to prevent things from spreading. Of course, executing this correctly is only possible because the CCP is the most effective bureaucracy in human history (enabled by technology, of course).
"China is easily the least individualistic, and most collectivist, of the major Asian economies."? They have a population of 1.4 billion people! A full 17% of the earth's population! Sure on average they may be fairly communal, but that doesn't change the fact there will be some really huge pockets of weirdness that will get COVID (much like Singapore where the problem was ghettos and the disease was contained elsewhere). They aren't going to be enforcing any sort of uniformity over a country that big without switching on the mind-control waves in Ye Olde 5G infrastructure. Which is to say, they aren't. There has been at least one million-person COVID outbreak in China. Probably more than that.
> you quarantine and do whatever it takes
You're handwaving the part where you come up with a theory on how this is possible. Other countries tried better quarantines than China can achieve. Like Taiwan.
I recommended watching the American PBS documentary China's War on Poverty (which was taken off air by Washington censors) for a quick glimpse into the real China. You can find uploads on YouTube, probably.
To suggest this means that large bureaucracies are inherently good or efficient is very strange.
This era has given mankind the license to self-organize on a totally unprecedented scale.
However, it is apparently much more robust than traditional finance. Rapid drops of 50%+, that would be devastating if it were to happen in sp500 or bond markets, did not destroy crypto markets despite huge amounts of high leverage.
Maybe it is too small to matter still, but either way I would much rather worry about traditional finance.
Russia and China are only allied around their common enemy, the US. Don't believe for a second that these two nations wouldn't throw each other under the bus if it furthered their respective causes.
Never forget that. The 99.99% of us are just humans together and we don't want to fight anyone.
I'd rather segment people by the class they are in.
replace “autocratic” with “unelected”/unaccountable and you get the NSA.
I thought you were referring to the US here until I finished reading the comment.
In a CCP world, probably within a decade, if you posted a critical comment on a messageboard - you would "disappear" in a week, and all mentions of you would be gone from the earth within a month. They don't tolerate resistance my friend.
Is this Covid's digital counterpart in making way for Social Scoring Governance to be imported to the West?