Covid-19 (Coronavirus) - Please stay safe, y'all


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Corona actueel | RIVM

Nederland heeft voor het SARS severe acute respiratory syndrome (severe acute respiratory syndrome)-CoV
www.rivm.nl www.rivm.nl

Dutch children can go back to school again, but not all days.
 
Linux-SWAT said:
tech.slashdot.org

The Most Widespread COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Target Bill Gates - Slashdot

In a 2015 speech, Bill Gates tried to warn that the greatest thread to humanity was an infectious virus, reports the New York Times. "Anti-vaccinators, members of the conspiracy group QAnon and right-wing pundits have instead seized on the video as evidence that one of the world's richest men...
tech.slashdot.org
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Why people want to kill the messengers? Are we still traped in the dark middle ages or so?
 
Dr. λ the Typer of Terms said:
Bill Gates is more than just a messenger. He's the one paying and thus very likely also the one deciding.
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An assumption, a good one, but an assumption none the less.
I think the boards just sucks up to him to keep his money flowing in. He's, maybe, just suggesting.

edit: removed silly reply to fusion_power
 
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Breaking news from a member of my family coming back from a specialized covid unit in a hospital:
The virus can trigger a devastating attack over nerves one month after a symptom-less contamination.
 
FBnil said:
I think the boards just sucks up to him to keep his money flowing in. He's, maybe, just suggesting.
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That is highly unlikely. Money and orders almost always come from the same source. To find out who controls whom just find out who pays whom.

Either way, since Bill Gates pays the WHO, Bill Gates has the most power over the WHO. So how is he going to use that power? He was the head of a powerful organisation before so there is a precedent to him having this kind of power. Do you think that MS was a good company that mostly tried to help people back when it had Bill Gates as head?
 
It's a bit early to say that, up until now the US government had been the main contributor towards the budget of the WHO, with Gates only making a relatively small contribution by comparison. It's hard to say that the WHO hasn't been run according the US interests though historically.
 
Dr. λ the Typer of Terms said:
That is highly unlikely. Money and orders almost always come from the same source. To find out who controls whom just find out who pays whom.
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From my experience, it's a bit more complicated than that, especially with such large institutions.
First of all, you'll have plenty of people who went to work there because they want to be useful (you don't go into international public health for cash and glory). Many of them will be wary of politicians and funders trying to manipulate the organisation.
Second, these organizations will often have an official missions statement/agreements/regulations/etc. that they'll try to follow. If someone tries to make them do something that isn't in there, they should be able to refuse based on these.
Third, they are often very complex and bureaucratic institutions. This tends to make them slow and sometimes inefficient, but this has the advantage of making them very resilient to pressures: changes will take years to take place and people will keep working as they always did for a very long time. Especially when these people don't want the change (see the first point).

These organisations are often very flawed, sometimes corrupt and can (and have been) used as political tools. However, from what I've seen, most of the time such an organisation has been exploited this way it was because the organisation was made (more or less blatantly) for that purpose. For instance, the WHO has been criticized (especially by the Trump administration) because it didn't investigate the situation in China and just accepted whatever China told it. However, WHO only did what it's supposed to do. Because when WHO was created, the States that created it didn't want it to be able to report anything else than what they reported.

If you could "own" such organizations by funding them, you'd see a lot more billionaires doing it. But as it stands, it's much more profitable to fund political campaigns of candidates who'll then destroy the existing organization and replace it with one shaped according to your needs, as Trump did for the pork industry.
 
ElPoco said:
From my experience, it's a bit more complicated than that, especially with such large institutions.
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It being done via a complex process does not change the end result; it merely obfuscates it.

ElPoco said:
First of all, you'll have plenty of people who went to work there because they want to be useful (you don't go into international public health for cash and glory). Many of them will be wary of politicians and funders trying to manipulate the organisation.
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It makes no difference if the janitor or other low ranking people have good intentions. The people at the top is what it's about and they're good at gaining power and money because they deeply care about those things so they tend to be corrupt. Some are not, but most are.

ElPoco said:
Second, these organizations will often have an official missions statement/agreements/regulations/etc. that they'll try to follow. If someone tries to make them do something that isn't in there, they should be able to refuse based on these.
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And the donor should be able to refuse to donate based on the organsiation not obeying.

ElPoco said:
Third, they are often very complex and bureaucratic institutions. This tends to make them slow and sometimes inefficient, but this has the advantage of making them very resilient to pressures: changes will take years to take place and people will keep working as they always did for a very long time. Especially when these people don't want the change (see the first point).
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So the donor has to wait a long time between his first donation and him getting what he wants. That's no problem, billionaires tend think far ahead.

ElPoco said:
If you could "own" such organizations by funding them, you'd see a lot more billionaires doing it
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That is what lobbying is. Paying the government to get what you want. It's why we have laws like the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
 
Dr. λ the Typer of Terms said:
That is highly unlikely. Money and orders almost always come from the same source. To find out who controls whom just find out who pays whom.
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who.jpg
Using this reasoning the US contributes the most money so they order how the WHO works.
Stopping contribution makes China the biggest contributor, and it doesn't make sense that the US wants to hand control over to them.
 
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