Too much "research" is tax-funded resume-buffing and policy-bolstering.
This dilemma reminds me of the "government is the word for the things we do together" thinking. Government is also the word for ways to break all sensible links between the source of money and the reasonableness of the uses to which the money will be put. You think it's bad when tobacco manufacturers crank out research on lung cancer, or fossil fuel companies produce research on climate change? Just get unelected federal bureaucrats into the mix. There are no real brakes on that car. Nothing we've ever tried works better than decentralizing the decisions and leaving each contributor as much as possible in charge of his own decision whether to keep pointing his own resources at a particular goal.
As Richard Feynman said, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Related: with interesting tie-ins to Wuhan medical research and what appears to be the standard-issue $50K/month corrupt international gig, available only to those with appropriate access to the tax-and-influence machine.
9 comments:
Speaking of related, here's a conspiracy theory.
We have, repeatedly during this latest virus outbreak/epidemic, offered to send to the PRC our CDC and other disease/epidemic experts to help them gain control over and contain the PRC's epidemic. The PRC has repeatedly refused our offers.
One reason might be as simple as a venal effort of pride protection, to save face.
Another reason might be that the PRC was working on weaponizing this particular coronavirus, and early in its development, the virus escaped confinement. The PRC doesn't want our help because they don't want us to get the intel involved.
Eric Hines
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/mystery-lab-next-to-coronavirus-epicentre/news-story/3e5a32fe77263fe8ca81b091cc8d9c42
I also noticed that $50K/mo seems to be the going rate for base betrayal.
It's a round number that fits well into a briefcase.
Eric Hines
I could imagine a scenario where they were doing non-weapons research, had material for bio-hazard disposal, and the contractor shortcut and just dumped some of it in the regular garbage collection instead of incineration (China being China). From there, animal transmission to humans. It doesn't have to be nefarious to be involved.
I proposed my conspiracy tongue-in-cheek. T99 provided a link that gave some credence to my tongue-in-cheek.
Now Wretchard has linked to a preprint paper suggesting that the current PRC coronavirus has HIV proteins artificially added to the virus. I don't know whether the paper's authors or the publisher are any good.
Hmm....
Eric Hines
Color me dubious. Two of those insertions are mighty small--I'm guessing that's random. What's the usual variation from strain to strain?
If they wanted a bio-weapon that would be easily contagious and knock out immune systems, why not start with a measles variant instead?
Agreed, looks flimsy.
If they wanted a bio-weapon that would be easily contagious and knock out immune systems, why not start with a measles variant instead?
Because everybody gets colds, and we don't have vaccines against that. It could also be the case, on the (flimsy) assumption that this is more than the tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory, that development remains in its early stage.
Still, empirical evidence is adding up (though still early in the accumulation) that the mortality rate isn't any greater than "ordinary" flu and depends heavily on the availability of even "ordinary" medical capability. Still need more data on incubation period and on time to completion once symptoms appear.
Eric Hines
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