Hacker News Reader

> Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is.

Why does this keep coming up?

This was literally a problem at the time: a pandemic in China was resulting in a huge amount of local racism and ostracism of American Chinese descendants and expats, people who, by you know, being in a completely different country, weren't somehow magically more dangerous then anyone else.

The absolute most racist and non-sensical reaction people had to COVID-19 was to immediately decide that local asian people were immediately dangerous viral vectors.

You know what else was a bigger problem at the time? The coronavirus.

This might shock the shit out of you, but people are capable of addressing more than one issue in any given day.

No that does not shock me. But the point is that one strategy can be good for one goal but bad for another. Going around Chinatown and encouraging the populous to do the same "to combat racism" is obviously at odds with "be careful and social distance due to covid". Does that shock the shit out of you? I'll be honest as well, I think Pelosi's real motive there is to do the opposite of what Trump wants, rather than combat any racism, but that's just my personal opinion. Maybe she genuinely wanted to combat racism, I don't know, I'm not inside her head. But it's a terrible strategy to combat covid.

She did it at a time when there were zero incidents of COVID in the US and before the Republican party decided that to get ahead of the issue they'd create a racist flamewar instead of trying to handle the problem.

Doing the opposite of what reality dictates was Trump's schtick, not Pelosi's.

Yeah, the other team "decided to create a racist flamewar". They met in a room, those angry old white men, and decided, together, that the best strategy is to create a racist flamewar. Someone suggested they should try to handle the problem, but everyone else disagreed. Someone else was like, fuck it, a racist flamewar is clearly the best strategy to get ahead, and his cisgendered straight colleagues all agreed that would be the best strategy. Meanwhile Pelosi, the hero of the piece, boldly went into Chinatown to combat this. Thank you Pelosi for your sacrifice and dedicated service. Your hair looks lovely by the way. A couple weeks later San Francisco went into full lockdown of course, but it was still a good idea she encouraged everyone to go to Chinatown when she did. The incoming pandemic and racism was handled incredibly well in liberal San Francisco, and if anything did go wrong, it was because of the racist and incompetent Republicans.

Show me on this doll where the reality hurt you.

When Trump and company knew the virus was going to be a threat, they allowed air travel to maintain at current levels to pack people into airports like sardines. Their response was NOT to be responsible but instead try to pretend that the problem did not exist and to scapegoat the Chinese by calling it "China Flu," "Kung Flu", and "Wuhan Virus."

And you are so INCREDIBLY triggered that you needed to bring "cisgendered straight colleagues" into the discussion when it wasn't even warranted.

How quaint.

I love how you object to mentioning "cisgendered straight colleagues" but not "angry white men', because the latter is non-ironically relevant in your mind. I feel sorry for you that you see the world through that lens, and yeah, I'm not bothering to give you serious replies because you aren't either. "Decided to create a racist flamewar" was when I stopped bothering. We're obviously not going to see common ground at all if you actually see it that way. Nobody decided to create a racist flamewar.

Also:

German Measles

Zika virus, from the Zika forest

Spanish Flu

MERS: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Ebola, from the Ebola river.

But sure, Wuhan virus was obviously racially motivated. Bad angry white men. Very bad!

I mean, there's nothing inaccurate about what I said. Don't clutch those pearls too hard.

So they actually decided to create a racist flamewar did they? They just called it "wuhan flu" to "scapegoat the Chinese". That's all 100% accurate in your head.

Your problem is you're assuming malicious intent as fact. It's completely impossible to know what someone is thinking, so you should just assume they're not evil racists planning racist flamewars I think.

But they didn't, which is the point.

I'm not disappointed the media got Covid wrong at various points in time. Most people got Covid wrong at the beginning. And almost everyone, including me, has had a bad Covid take at least once.

I didn't see Covid coming. And if someone really saw it coming, they could have made thousands/millions shorting the stock market (and some people did).

Point is, I don't view this as grounds to attack the media. I do find it disappointing that the media is usually not willing to admit their mistakes, and usually doesn't do a good job at expressing scientific uncertainty.

>Pelosi was dancing in the streets of Chinatown San Francisco to prove how safe and not racist she is.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't find this. Can you send a link?

Not surprised you can't find it. I feel as if it would have been easier to find had the other side done it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK8P8FQWozA

Here it is: https://abc7news.com/sf-chinatown-pelosi-san-francisco-coron...

Not exactly dancing in the streets, but definitely encouraging people not to fear.

None of the articles you cite demonstrate what you seem to think they do. When the number of cases was minuscule, the threat to Americans was low and those articles were spot on: Keep vigilant, get your flu shot, but don't stress too much yet. Citing Pelosi visiting San Francisco (at a time when there were zero cases in the region, but a growing number of anti-Asian hate crimes) again doesn't make a point to any reasonable person. These claims speak only to zealots.

More critically, you have a higher standard of every random article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually responsible. Which is truly dystopian.

Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and Europe. It did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to and from the affected areas unrestrained, which thousands continued to do, even if we believed it would be remotely effective at that point. It did nothing for testing or tracing. It was the laziest, least-effort action possible. And to be clear, long after all of these things, Trump declared that the number of cases would soon be 0. He made similar "nothingburger" comments for months.

But you find issue with the media.

Incredible.

No, every bit of cynicism about the media coverage of travel bans seems 100% justified. For context, I'm from the UK where we have a right-wing Brexit-supporting government that's perceived very much as a Trump analogue - except they didn't impose travel bans on places like China early in the pandemic. Which means that over here, people blame our pandemic deaths on the supposed fact that our Government avoided placing restrictions on travel because they're evil right-wingers who were too worried about the damage to the economy that would cause. There was literally a talking point where the Guardian dug up an estimate that imposing travel restrictions on China would've delayed the outbreak here by something like a month, but it had to be a ban on all travellers who'd been in China within 14 days and not just direct travel - that is, it specifically had to be a Trump-style travel ban, an Italy-style one would not have worked. Meanwhile, their US coverage was attacking Trump for his travel ban.

Also, remember that the current US president literally went from using the idea that travel bans were dangerous, counterproductive and made things worse in his electoral campaign to reinstating them with the exact same rules as Trump used as his first act in office, and the mainstream media cheered him on every step of the way...

I love that my other comment is at -4 already. The "MAGA" side of HN is flooding in, desperately thinking this is their moment of redemption.

"but it had to be a ban on all travellers who'd been in China within 14 days and not just direct travel"

Weird to call that "Trump-style" given that Trump's travel "ban" excluded Americans and their family members which already comprised the bulk of people traveling to and from China. One critic of the ban pointed out that in a single day, 30 aircraft from China landed in San Francisco, full, during the "ban".

"Also, remember that the current US president literally went from using the idea that travel bans were dangerous, counterproductive and made things worse"

This is either ignorance or an intentional lie. Which is it?

Contrary to the shrill lies from a certain camp, zero Democratic leaders opposed the "ban". They opposed that it was the singular action taken during a very dangerous period. That quarantines or even tracing weren't put in effect. Etc. That the literal implementation of it was "only people carrying other passports can possibly be carrying COVID".

And I mean...we all know how things turned out, right? Maybe this "he was right" victory lap might be in poor taste, 600,000 dead Americans later.

The "all" part is, from what I can tell, considerably less important than the "not just banning direct travel" part... the model assumed that only most of the travel from China was stopped, and that was still enough to cause a huge delay in the outbreak. It is far better to have 30 aircraft from China landing in San Francisco than to have 30 aircrafts' worth of travellers originally China spread out across hundreds of aircraft from other destinations, such that you have no idea who the travellers are, where they are, they could be spreading it to completely unrelated travellers from different destinations - which is what Italy effectively did.

"This is either ignorance or an intentional lie. Which is it?"

Joe Biden literally got up on stage and claimed that the travel bans made the US outbreak worse - and was quoted in the mainstream media as doing so.

"They opposed that it was the singular action taken during a very dangerous period. That quarantines or even tracing weren't put in effect. Etc."

Errrm... that's not actually true though. There was definitely plenty of contact tracing in the US, it just didn't get a huge amount of media coverage. Also, I can't imagine locking up US citizens of Chinese origin en masse going down well at the time when it would actually have to have been done... especially since it ultimately wouldn't have helped all that much. The contact tracing and other indications, like genetic analysis of the Covid strains which spread in the US, suggest that the measures the US took were effective enough that spread from China isn't what ultimately ended up causing their big outbreaks. Not taking measures against spread from Italy when that country was reporting zero cases is probably what did it, and realistically that wasn't going to happen.

> More critically, you have a higher standard of every random article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually responsible. Which is truly dystopian.

> But you find issue with the media.

> Incredible.

The HN topic is about the media, so I'm talking about the media.

> Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and Europe. It did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to and from the affected areas unrestrained, which thousands continued to do, even if we believed it would be remotely effective at that point

I'm not defending Trump. I'm pointing out media hypocrisy. What did they do? Call the travel ban racist. Their behaviour has been very partisan, often at the expense of the truth. Exhibit A: the lab leak theory in the OP.

> It did nothing to restrict US citizens traveling to and from the affected areas unrestrained, which thousands continued to do

I thought the federal government does not even have the legal power to do so. Personally, though, I think giving local government more power is a genius design by the founding fathers.

> was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontrolled in NY, Washington State, and Europe.

I'm not sure if this claim is true, either. Trump did at least two things: 1. Signed a deal with pharma companies to promise that the federal government would buy their vaccines to every American so the companieswould be all in to develop vaccines. 2. Promised to give resources to state governments. Both Cuomo of NY and Newsom of CA thanked government for keeping its promises.

The federal laws on trade and immigration actually have a lot of carve outs for infection control. The executive can quarantine any vessel, demand health documentation on passengers, and turn noncompliant vessels away.

This last year alone has made me lose more faith in the democratic party and the media altogether. Not only did they push a radical agenda with retribution, they did it like religious people used to do centuries ago. Don't challenge the status quo or face reprecussions (fine, demobilization, banned). Now egg on their faces.

The media, the left, and big tech are all clearly working on the same agenda.

I can't see any other explanation for why YouTube would give its supposed competitors, the legacy media, prime spots on its site.