nopie
1yr ago
Pandering? It is offensive to talk like that. Latvia had been occupied by the Soviet Union shortly before the war with many Latvians deported to Siberia and then the war happened with all its tragedies and after the war again many Latvians were deported to Siberia.
We didn't know the history for long time until it was discovered that the USSR had a pact with Germany about spheres of influence. Germany broke the pact and people in Latvia were merely victims of two greater powers.
Latvia is not building a monument to German liberators in place of the destroyed Soviet monument either.
nopie
1yr ago
While the covid policies in the UK weren't very different from Europe, they still did some things on their own. The UK did lockdowns unfortunately and barred people going to national parks and fined them for breaking lockdowns. Also required a lot of testing and quarantine for travellers. But at least with vaccination I think the UK did much better. IT provided better information about vaccines, spaced out doses when vaccine was in short supply, abolished vaccine mandates even for healthcare professionals. It even did some human challenge studies, albeit very late. I am in healthcare and the health authorities tried to evaluate available evidence better than other countries. For example, the UK quickly understood that Paxlovid effect is limited to unvaccinated risk groups and stopped using it unnecessarily while the US gave it green light and it was just wasted money. The Europe simply skipped on Paxlovid probably due to its cost, though :)
Maybe you were lucky covid contrarians but you were mostly right.
However, I knew that the panic about covid was unjustified simply due to my healthcare training. I couldn't know how good the vaccines would turn out to be, or if covid is spread by droplets or aerosols, or if masks are effective. Those things require good studies and evidence. But for the general understanding for a disease that is so much age stratified, it was immediately clear what the upper limit of damage can be (bad for elderly, no effect on kids, variable to all others). Covid resembled exactly how other cold viruses work, kids get it several times per year, and we get constant exposure that keeps our immune system activated therefore we rarely suffer severe disease. It was immediately clear to me that kids are not in danger despite the panic. It was clear that people going outside are of very low risk. I also knew that once covid virus had spread in the country, it didn't make sense to close borders anymore (Australia was an exception due to specific geographic situation). I couldn't understand how people could support all these things despite clear evidence before their eyes about the contrary.
What Tegnell did in Sweden to me seemed like a standard textbook that I had studied at a public health course a couple of years ago before pandemic. I expected the UK going the same route because of all rationalists (e.g. Dominic Cummings) advising them, but alas, politics are so incomprehensible.
I lost my respect to rationalists due to this. I had learned in medicine that human biology is very complex, you cannot assume anything, you cannot make easy logical chains. You have to do RCTs instead. Sometimes things work like magic without our full understanding, like the most common painkiller, paracetamol (Tylenol for Americans).
I visited the conference a week ago with good presentation reminding us about the strength of evidence. The presentation showed the list of all the drugs initially approved for covid treatment (remdesivir, Paxlovid, several mabs etc.) showing the actual evidence for them. It reminded again and again that only RCTs is the gold standard, everything else is second or third class, regardless how much we want to believe. I still remember doctors who being asked about the evidence of mask effectiveness said that parachutes do not need RCTs. Ok, almost nothing in medicine are parachutes, including masks.
I feel vindicated at the end, but the damage done on all us was terrible. We had experimental vaccines made mandatory worldwide with very little evidence from RCTs. It's fine to take risks if we think the situation requires it, but don't force them on people against all medical ethics that were drilled to every healthcare professional. I still don't understand why we had so few dissenting voices from health professionals.
nopie
1yr ago
They could do all these things. My impression is that most Latvians just have an instinctive reaction – Russians bad therefore we shouldn't let them in even if they are avoiding being sent to Ukraine to kill more Ukrainians. No one really wants to think deeper because that would require one to compare which is the lesser risk – allowing more Russians into the country or risking them to be sent to Ukraine. Covid experience have taught us that such nuanced thinking is too complicated for policy makers. They operate more on the level of Idiocracy – covid bad, make lockdowns (electrolytes good, give plants electrolytes).
nopie
1yr ago
He was instrumental in the shift from COVID 'let it rip' to 'do something' and probably improved the UK's response to COVID from catastrophic to very bad.
With this he was clearly wrong. The UK results are very bad, even worse than for countries with less restrictions. Most lockdowns and school closures were pointless because it was elderly people who mostly died. If they had concentrated on protecting the elderly, they would have done better. But overall, even with that most countries overreacted.
The UK didn't introduce vaccine mandates unlike many other countries, so at least they did one thing right. But I doubt it had anything to do with Cummings.
I don't believe that the use of nuclear arms means the world is over. It can cause a lot of damage but the impact on it is overestimated. Even if one believes argameddon, we don't really know what increases the risk. People are just unnecessary panicking. We just witnessed the same happened with covid pandemic. It just led to a lot of unnecessary lockdowns, travel restrictions, useless but dehumanising vaccine mandates etc.
That said, I totally understand Elon Musk's arguments. His first poll was unreasonable because it included the condition of Ukraine remaining neutral naively believing that it was a real reason why Russia attacked. The second poll is more reasonable. Despite all the blood and everything ultimately if most people in those areas prefer to stay with Russia, then it is wrong to force them eternally. The question is only how this transition should happen? I cannot imagine that the referendum during the war is appropriate. But if given a reasonable time, like in five years when the cities are rebuilt and the scars of war are more or less healed, then people can make a choice. The poll doesn't say anything about these conditions but many people are reading it in the context of the first poll and in the context of current politics instead taking it at the face value.
I agree with you about this. My point was more about the negative attitude towards Elon Musk where he proposes "solutions" to end the war in Ukraine. I don't believe that calling names etc. is productive. I hear many people now saying that they no longer like Musk and his cars etc. as if he had joined the dark side now. I simply see a person who is a little bit too trustful to the narrative that the Ukraine merely needed to stay away from NATO and Russia wouldn't have attacked. I see in him someone who is obstinate but open to the truth and maybe an idealist who thinks that he has found a solution. We just need to explain why this view is wrong. It is difficult because the idea of Russian supremacy is harder to understand, it doesn't have that logical dimension that ”Ukraine neutrality” proposers have. But by becoming antagonistic we only make this task much harder.
This twitter sneering culture seems so wrong. I prefer dispassionate evaluations, something like this: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1577120229942910978
Something similar happened with covid. Interesting fact that most vaccine mandates were introduced after it was definitely proven that current covid vaccines do not stop the spread of infection. I thought that it was slowness and failure of institutions to percolate this information to policy makers. But maybe it was more about unwillingness to recognise the defeat. It was the refusal to believe that covid was never going to disappear and desperately trying to maintain the illusion of control.
Vaccines were hoped to be a tool for normalcy, not vaccine mandates. And vaccines had quite an effect, they were the best, I would even say, the only real intervention that worked and were cheap and least restricting. Before the introduction of the mandates, most elderly people were already vaccinated, mortality from covid among vaccinated elderly people were about 8 times less than for unvaccinated and that was the maximum what we could achieve. Omicron reduced the risks even further but it was unrelated to the measures we took.
The problem was that the vaccines didn't stop the spread and as the most common metric was case counts which still remained quite high, and some residual covid mortality remained many people were not satisfied and considered it to be a failure. Chasing the illusion of achieving nearly zero covid, different governments started vaccine mandates, reintroduced masking, in some cases even light lockdowns. In the UK Christmas 2021 events were really discouraged but other countries had even more restrictions. It was all in vain.
Interesting that the voices demanding surrender and neutrality of Ukraine are only becoming louder when Ukraine is starting to show some serious gains on battlefield. It is still not an ideal situation because fighting leaves many people dead and injured, the final resolution is no-where in sight and probably will happen only when Putin is gone which is hard to predict when it will happen. Instead of accepting the potential Ukrainian victory over Russia with NATO weapons and giving due lesson to the aggressor, they want perfect solution where people don't get killed anymore and where Putin is appeased. They don't want to accept that such a solution is impossible in real life.
nopie
1yr ago
But Russia is very dirty, much dirtier than most EU countries. That explains why Poland is so much against Russia and prefer to be aligned with the EU :)
nopie
1yr ago
I had visited Paris several times and didn't notice it. Probably true but the importance of many things are often exaggerated. While driving through Europe overall France seemed clean and orderly. Belgium was the worse and Poland indeed was clean and nice. But the climate and geography can also play certain role. Possibly that many immigrants coming from the countries without forests, have different aesthetic preferences that they don't care so much about beautiful things like Polish people do.
Funny that in Latvia since we got independence from the Soviet Union, when people rejuvenate their flats, they often call it euro repair (eiroremonts). It annoys me because what it has to do with Europe? But somehow people there associate nice things with Europe and old and ugly things with the Soviet culture.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't think that psychology is efficient at all. Most of it is not helping at all and a small part of it has moderate efficacy. That small part might even be a common sense methods. Like in medicine it would be a common sense to put a clean dressing on injury to prevent a person bleeding to death and possibly cleaning the wound first with something to minimise risk of infection.
nopie
1yr ago
Well, people in the past didn't know about germs and cleaning the wound and sterilizing bandages was not intuitive for them. And while some kind of natural antibiotics were used in ancient Greece, it was not properly understood until very recently.
Psychology is not like chemistry but I allow for a possibility that they are tinkering around things that eventually can lead to better therapies and outcomes.
nopie
1yr ago
CIA had better intel from inner circles of Kremlin that enabled them to predict that Putin will start a war. It is not that hard to predict if you have inside info. But apparently even CIA underestimated Ukrainians and their resolve to fight and their preparedness. Anyone who had talked to Ukrainians for the last 8 years would have known how serious they were to fight and resist. It is strange that CIA miscalculated so much.
Zelensky maybe didn't believe that Russians will attack exactly at this moment but as Ukraine was already in war with Russia, he already had a strategy to fight regardless when and how Russia attacked. Most likely he minimised the risk of potential attack in order to reduce panic. Had the EU accepted Ukrainian refugees before 24 February? It would have been very messy at the border.
I predicted that Russians might take over larger part of Ukraine but they won't be able to obtain compliance by locals. It will lead to terrible atrocities committed by Russians. Luckily Russians were able to only take over less Ukrainian territory but the point about atrocities remain. Eastern part has more Russian loyalists and potentially less need for Russians to terrorize the population and yet they are doing it anyway, like shooting the conductor at his home for refusing to take part in their concert. But if Russians had taken Kyiv, it would be the same as in Bucha except 100 times greater in scale.
There was an idea (and still suggested by some) that the west should not help Ukraine because that will only prolong the inevitable defeat of Ukraine. I counteracted that actually by letting Russia win, it can cause a second Holodomor. We need to provide all help to Ukraine to defend themselves. I am ambivalent about the Crimea and Donbass. Ultimately it is not that important about whether some territory is lost or gained (although it may cause a bad international precedent). Ukraine still needs more defence capabilities so that at least civilians in the rest of Ukraine don't get blown up regularly.
nopie
1yr ago
I think that the leaders perform more like PR function and due to their power we cannot really think of terms we use for common men. Zelensky definitely played a role of inspiring leader and helped a lot in this war. But I suspect that Ukrainians would have fought bravely regardless and they are real heroes.
When people resist occupation risking their lives like in Bucha or the conductor was shot for refusing to play at the occupiers' concert, they are real heroes. If a robber comes to your house and at the gunpoint demands you to give all valuables, it would be insanity to refuse because your life is more valuable. However, during the war you are defending your country and if you are a civilian who decides to resist despite torture and risk of death then you are a hero. Many many Ukrainians turned out to be heroes.
nopie
1yr ago
Zelensky is the only one standing against Putin. He might not be an ideal but then what about other leaders who only supported Putin? They must be even worse than Zelensky.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't even think that he hates Putin. He only fights against his aggression while many western leaders supported him economically.
nopie
1yr ago
Bucha atrocities have been very well documented and confirmed by several independent sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
Russian narrative about it hasn't been confirmed, that's true.
nopie
1yr ago
It might not be true but it is very believable. Extrajudicial killings in occupied areas happen very frequently on both sides.
nopie
1yr ago
I am sorry, I should have been more open and say that Russian "sympathies" are what is existential danger to Ukraine. Unrestrained "sympathies" would gradually prevent Ukraine becoming a member of the EU, would diminish the role of Ukrainian language and would gradually make it a part of Russia or maybe a vassal state like Belarus.
I think they do. They see Red Army not much different from German army in this conflict.
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