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Comment by oaktowner | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

Like the Pfizer mRNA vacvine, developed by BioNTech?

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.

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?

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.

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