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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

> KORSHING: That shows at any rate that the Americans are capable of real cooperation on a tremendous scale. That would have been impossible in Germany. Each one said that the other was unimportant.

Say what you will about the US, and it certainly has its faults, but the Americans, both the private sector and public sector, have certainly figured out how to coordinate with others towards a goal.

The ability to coordinate with others seems like a more valuable quality than virtually any other in a serious project, in my experience.

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I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I do believe that Americans ability to cooperate (both with each other in general and between the private and public sectors) is not now what it was in the mid-20th century.

I’d say the COVID vaccines are an example showing what’s still possible. Not to discount the Astra-Zeneca vaccine in the UK of course.

Public acceptance of those vaccines is another story, of course…

COVID vaccines proved that if WW2 were happening today, during blackouts half the country would turn all of their lights on and set out spotlights because they believed the war was a CIA psyop.

Good at least I would be safe.

Probably not, if your neighbors have their lights on decent chance you get hit when they miss your neighbors

Eh I have the means to move.

During Covid I had neighbors who refused to wear masks and spewed nonsense. One of them now can’t go outside because their lungs got rekt, another had to take a LOA for a few months to recover. I wore a mask and never got Covid.

And would they be wrong? We know the CIA wanted to perform false flag attacks on the US to support an invasion of Cuba, and this only didn't happen because the then president refused to authorise it; is a repeat of that more or less likely than a "real" war?

Could be, could be not

But the ones with the lights on would be the ones getting bombed. Thanks for your service I guess?

When you refuse to give your trial data to third party nations and you refuse to allow public trials in other nations, the third world will not trust you. This is why many, many nations like India went with their own vaccine variants instead of trusting Pfizer.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-india-pfi...

OPs point was about internal cooperation, specifically between private and public. I think the vaccines demonstrated that, even if not internationally.

I think India went with their indigenous vaccine for a few reasons.

* They could not get enough foreign vaccines quickly enough.

* They have lots of biotech, relatively speaking.

Say what you want about GPs point, but if you're suggesting that this is something that would have been better in the 20th century, you're flat wrong.

> you refuse to allow public trials in other nations, the third world will not trust you

It was about politics, not trust.

What is politics if not trust?

Like the Pfizer mRNA vacvine, developed by BioNTech?

I mean WW2 was a particularly cooperative time for the US.

Disagree.

If you were in Manhattan the first week after 9/11 you witnessed tremendous solidarity and cooperation.

It was, in some small way, life changing to witness.

Besides large scale immigration, what changed in America? Complacency during peacetime?

Is it 'figured out' or is cooperation an emergent principle in democratically free societies? Many factors involved, but these kinds of society level observations are better ascribed to political bodies, rather than physical minds

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