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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate I'm probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for saying this, but I feel I need to say it.

I don't think COVID-19 research should be secretive, I think it should be a global effort, and I'm perfectly happy with the idea of any nation having open access to all COVID-19 research, vaccines, results, and (anonymized) data. There should NOT be a concept of intellectual property when there are people dying in droves from a disease. Please, China, Italy, Spain, everywhere, scoop up all the COVID-19 research you can find and act upon it to save lives. Copy ideas. Copy drugs. Re-do and verify tests. Immediately. Don't mind the courts. They suck, and are sitting in armchairs killing people by delaying the effort and enforcing intellectual "property".

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Someone should profit for figuring out how to stop COVID because otherwise there is little incentive beyond the government, and they don’t typically work nights and weekends.

If China succeeds in stealing the solution, that will harm mankind because it will reduce future incentive to stop these things quickly.

Not to mention that if they find a cure before the world they will mark it as "strategical advantage" and not shared because it's of "national interest." At least based on their past history.

Are we talking about China or US?

>there is little incentive beyond the government, and they don’t typically work nights and weekends

The government certainly doesn’t pull long hours.

Beyond the military. They do pull some late nights and cold field deployments in the DoD.

And beyond local police and fire. And state troopers. Law enforcement does go late and I’m pretty sure fire departments deploy all night. But of course those are not federal.

There is, obviously, the FBI. Those agents are mostly not up at night though. Now, CBP and TSA staff air and sea ports pretty late but that’s different.

The diplomatic corps also works pretty late hours if I remember my leaked cables correctly. But again, an exception. And they get to go to fancy parties.

Obviously people in Congressional staff offices, political advisers in the executive branch, and so forth. But those folk are essentially politicians.

FEMA. Pretty sure some of them stay up.

Other than our armed forces and supporting staff (good morning NSA NSOC), police and fire departments, federal law enforcement, State Department diplomatic staff, staff for elected officials, and FEMA, no one I can think of right now in government stays up late.

Intelligence community, forgot them, other than NSA and FBI. At least some of the 14 other members probably work late, I think? NGA, at least.

But no you’re right, why would we want government scientists like those at NASA, CDC and the EPA working as leading exemplars of COVID research. Surely they are lazy. And they show good work does not happen without a profit motive.

I understand any extra data gives you an advantage, but I think I'm missing a step where they can steal a solution while simultaneously keeping that solution for themselves (assuming stealing means copying/sneaking out information others have already gathered).

Maybe a slight headstart if they throw extra research money on it.

It's not okay to keep solutions for only their citizens, but it would still be in your best interest to share what you know with their citizens so that you have a lower priority of getting infected by their citizens who may travel to your place.

Humans are humans. The virus doesn't care for the politics, it will spread without regard to human-invented political borders, so the preventative measures shouldn't stop at political borders, either. That would be contradictory to the apolitical nature of the virus.

(In any case, if you shared something with them and it is actually useful, there's a good chance you're pretty close to the solution yourself, anyway.)

Before sanctioning stealing, perhaps the problem is two fold. China wants to have the first vaccine for:

* Becoming the first to market, to try and salvage their reputation

* Using the vaccine as leverage toward the incoming sanctions for violating the Hong Kong treaty during UK handover, as well as the now-declared possible non-peaceful reunification of Taiwan

* monetary gain

* leverage against the US restricting/removing Chinese’s companies from the NASDAQ

I agree research should be open, but it’s hard to say to what degree, and how that might effect the economics of it. Whether we like it or not, capitalistic driven progress requires a reward, and one of the few reasons pharmaceutical companies will take the risk of finding a vaccine is the potential for increased reputation, and being first to market.

Without those incentives, it’s straightforward to not to take a massive monetary risk as others are all working on similar problems, thus the likelihood that your lab will be the first is slim.

Further, the crisis is a worldwide pandemic, but if the rate of natural immunity is as high as some predict, the efficacy of these vaccines may lead to less ‘sales’ than initially expected.

Oxford running out of people to test their vaccine on: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/COVID-19-disappearing-...

China report about Taiwan has “peaceful” removed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parliament-taiwan/c...

China breaking the handover treaty: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/ch...

> * to try and salvage their reputation

Really? They just recently ban Australia trades because Australia inquire about Covid19 origins.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/australia-chin...

Australia is heavily economically dependent on China, so it's not really comparable.

> Oxford running out of people to test their vaccine on: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-25/COVID-19-disappearing-....

I'm not a medical expert, but can someone in the know comment on this? Can I volunteer to get the Oxford vaccine in the US? Can I volunteer to fly to UK and get the vaccine immediately upon arrival?

The problem is not the absence of volunteers, the problem is that as the first wave of the epidemic recedes, most volunteers won’t catch the disease by themselves and thus will add no information as to whether the vaccine works. And challenge trials (deliberately infecting people) are apparently a big ethical no-no.

While that's true, it is still possible to get data by giving the vaccine to as many people as possible and seeing if the virus recedes faster than previous models predicted. If the slope of the trend suddenly buckles when people start taking the shots, there's a good chance it did something.

Although I'm also strongly against deliberately infecting people, if there is a high chance there is no danger to take the vaccine, and a strong possible upside (i.e. possibly save lives in the next 2 weeks), I don't see why we it isn't okay to volunteer to take it today, even if it isn't a fully conclusive data point. Hell, if there are 5 candidate vaccines, and they are all non-dangerous, I'd love to take all of them just to protect my own life, even if that makes me not as useful of a useful data point. There's a nonzero chance the virus will kill me in 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and I think it is only ethical to reduce that chance even if that means 5 shots (pun intended) in the dark.

Of course, I see people downvoting me and it seems HN doesn't welcome this type of discussion anymore.

There’s a few premises that are hard to get by, for one mass-testing vaccines defeats the purpose of the safety axis of trials. If we knew it was non-dangerous, then there wouldn’t be the need for small scale trials. Instead large scale trials could be done just to try efficacy, rather than both safety and efficacy.

Yes there’s a non-zero chance of death, but assuming you’re a part of the average population (assuming US or UK for example sake), then you’re more likely to die getting in a vehicle.

Personally I’m for vaccines, but I do not want to be the first 10k they try it on. I’m in good health, so I’ll wait months or longer if one where released in their hopeful expedited timeline. By nature of the pandemic, this is rushed, and the risk to reward ratio favors waiting a bit (for myself), given the low mortality rate for people with no preexisting conditions.

Further, I’m near a hot spot, so it’s highly likely I have the antibodies, given others in my household are less careful, and thus my exposure profile essentially equals the lowest common denominator.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/china-s-v...

China promised to give its covid-19 vaccine to WHO for free. If the accusation is true, it's basically Robinhood for poor countries.

> Given today's anti-free-thinker HN climate

You should champion China to be more transparent about the origins of the virus. Even if it did not originate in a lab, shining more light on its origins will help prevent future outbreaks.

China also actively prevented Taiwan from joining the WHO. This would have resulted in more free flow of information.

Curiously, I was a labelled a racist for making this statement.

> Please, China, Italy, Spain, everywhere, scoop up all the COVID-19 research you can find and act upon it to save lives. Copy

China does not do anything for free. Let us not pretend that China is angelic. Have you heard of debt diplomacy?

So we are excusing one of the most locked up countries in terms of information to hack into cutting edge research in a free society.

You didn't address what parent said at all. Parent said all COVID-19 research should be freely available to all as a matter of principle.

What China does or doesn't do has no bearing on this.

Doesn't the origin and initial spread of the virus fall under COVID-19 research?

Is it fair and ethical to ask country A to make free all research while being okay with country B hiding its own research on the same subject?

Let us not whitewash unethical behavior with broad strokes of "freely available to all as a matter of principle."

> Is it fair and ethical to ask country A to make free all research while being okay with country B hiding its own research on the same subject?

An American journalist toured the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Everyone he spoke to proudly bragged about the USSR and its accomplishments. But some things seemed off. He asked about the mass starvation, and his handler explained it was because the kulaks destroyed their food to spite the people. He questioned why newspapers would one day say one thing, and the next denounce the same as counterrevolutionary. His handler responded, there was no difference, he's just misunderstanding the context. Finally he asked about political opponents mysteriously disappearing when they stood against Stalin.

Exasperated, the handler shrieked, "And you are lynching negroes!"

How could you know that "country A is hiding research"? If its hiding it, you dont know about it, unless you are spying/hacking yourself.

FBI stance is we can hide stuff from you, and hack you, because we are the "good guys".

Given the posts earlier saying that the virus' origins are part of research and we know they weren't cooperating with the WHO in that research as of not that long ago, I think we do know at least that much.

> Is it fair and ethical to ask country A to make free all research while being okay with country B hiding its own research on the same subject?

This isn't about countries. I think it is unethical to hide research when it could save lives. If country B is hiding research, that doesn't mean country A should hide it as a revenge, and that doesn't mean the residents of country B deserve to take the brunt of the actions of their government policies. The civilians of B and the civilians of A deserve the best of science equally.

The virus doesn't care about where country borders are drawn. Even in the above situation where country B is hiding their research, if country A shares their research with B, it helps country A themselves because country B's people may be inoculated much faster and immigrants from country B to A will not be carrying the virus anymore.

The objective function that should be optimized is getting the virus eradicated from the world ASAP. There's a good chance that only some fraction of the world needs to be inoculated with a vaccine before the virus is nearly eradicated, and that will only happen if the vaccine is shared across borders. A good start, for example, would be to inoculate everyone who wants to take a flight or train, inoculate all doctors, and inoculate all service industry personnel, regardless of which of the 200 countries they are a citizen of.

> I think it is unethical to hide research when it could save lives

Why are you assuming the US is hiding research?

Are you aware that there are protocols in medical research against premature release of information as it will taint the results (placebo effects etc)?

There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted.

Also a lot of research has lag time. Experiments can take a lot of time.

You are also assuming that China is hacking to release information for the greater good. You are discounting the following:

1) Hacking to corrupt results and data.

2) Hacking to patent possible cures first.

3) Getting to a cure first to use as leverage over countries. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-c...

> There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted.

This is an interesting potential debate. In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data. But the world is apparently wanting to choose probabilistically more deaths + clean data.

> In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data

This is spurious logic.

How are you saying that tainted science + bad data will result in fewer deaths long term?

You may end up with probabilistically more deaths + tainted data.

Why is that not a possibility?

Your parent specifically already covered #2 and #3. Even if they do it's better.

Secondly, patent where? If they do it to limit the use I doubt many nations would respect that patent.

So you honestly believe that China will be more generous with a hacked cure than the US.

With #3 you are just arguing for a form of debt slavery.

Thanks for conveniently ignoring #1.

> more transparent

TBH no matter how transparent China is you won't trust it until it turns out to be what you believe.

> actively prevented Taiwan from joining the WHO

Every WHO member can formally invite Taiwan and cast a vote, why didn't any five-eyes nation do that?

> does not do anything for free

I agree. It's simply ruthless geopolitics no matter how angelic a country pretends to be.

Please stop taking HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. We've had to ask you about this before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have to decided to just stopping commenting on these kinds of threads.

No matter how objective I am it is going to piss violate some unknown law of the land here. Being logically correct in these threads usually ends up being politically incorrect.

Thanks for all your hard work moderating.

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