We now have two cases of the US claiming that hackers have gone after US Coronavirus vaccine data — first the Russians, then the Chinese.
The Chinese hacking claim is packaged up with a slew of other allegations, mostly about hacking “intellectual property,” which is to say ideas. The US has spent much of the last 50 years making IP laws last longer and more strenuous. Ideas, which is what IP laws cover, are not diminished if more than one person uses them. They aren’t like lawnmowers. I can’t use my lawnmower while you are using it, but I can use my idea of the printing press while you are using my idea of the printing press.
When the United States was the rising power, it routinely violated IP law, primarily British and German IP law. Now that it is the falling power, it seeks to extract as much as it can from its IP.
Perhaps the problem is that IP law isn’t old enough? If the Chinese could charge everyone using gunpowder and printing presses, a lot of nonsense might get sorted out quickly.
But fundamentally, this is a matter of power: An old power wanting to extract fees and rent from a new power. There is no great moral argument here, because, no, it isn’t about artists and authors or inventors, this is about big companies and big countries and the way IP law is set up clearly strangles innovation rather than encouraging it.
The idea of Covid-19 vaccine hacking is particularly ludicrous and insane. Any vaccine for an epidemic must belong to all of humanity. There is no public interest case of any significance in silo-ing vaccine data. Perhaps some US companies want to “win” the vaccine race and then charge as much as possible for a vaccine.
That’s monstrous and stupid on public welfare terms. Vaccines need to be had by virtually everyone, and thus need to be cheap and easily available.
Every country’s hackers should hack all vaccine info if the idea is that some country or company can own vaccine info and profit from it.
The larger truth is simple: The US has draconian IP laws which it has used its muscle to force other countries to take on, generally against their interests. Some of those countries do hack IP. This is to be expected. Making a huge deal out of it is a move in great power politics, where important forces in the US (with the UK now joining) want to divide the world into two power blocs and have a new cold war.
But even if in a 1950s style cold war of “Freedom” vs. “Equality,” there is no argument from principle for not sharing a vaccine or vaccine data.
Imagine the horror of everyone being vaccinated.
What a tragedy.
It’s all very silly, as we know that the people who will pay the most for any vaccine, if any country chooses to gouge, will be Americans.
Americans don’t need to worry about China or Russia. They need to worry about their own politicians and corporate leaders.
Those are the people primarily responsible for killing and impoverishing Americans.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is either part of the killing for money, or a fool.
Everything I write here is free, but rent isn’t, so if you value my writing, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Thomas B Golladay
I think you mean 1950s cold war not 1050s.
Also IP laws need to be done away with. Only trademarks should be allowed, solely so a manufacturer can be identify for accountability and thus used for that limited purpose.
Thomas B Golladay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8GEqv_X-no
More evidence HCQ works and countries throwing roadblocks are killing people. If not for Trump pushing HCQ, the CFR would be far worse with 400,000 dead by now. Likewise France from a CFR perspective was even more incompetent than anyone else and its anti-Muslim bigotry really harmed Mask acceptance. If not for their Universal Healthcare and safety nets, they most likely would have collapsed in fairly short order, so they dodged the bullet, but need to end its anti-Muslim bigotry and really self-reflect that maybe propagandizing a non-existent Muslim threat to distract the masses is inherently stupid and counter-productive and repeal all their Ant-Muslim Laws and stop state support for the Catholic Church.
Widespread Mask Wearing would also help the US, but Fauci lied from the start and Trump listened and then his inability to admit a mistake meant he never set an example when it became clear Fauci lied. Fauci also opposed HCQ and pushed the useless Remdevsivir which he was financially invested in.
bruce wilder
in many of Ian’s essays on the degeneracy of the U.S.A., a theme with two parts emerges:
1.) an elite (and i am mostly thinking not so much about “real power” to decide as I am of salient voices and personalities — “influencers” and spokes-model politicians and pundits and talking heads on teevee) that cannot or will not articulate obvious arguments or intelligently criticize policy or even just respect facts and standards of objectivity, but instead echo the most stupid and retrograde slogans and shibboleths, often with smug self-regard.
2.) a hoi polloi who believe all of the crap they are fed, rejecting none of it and certainly never rejecting the elite who are feeding it to them.
The economics of IP law is not really all that complicated, though maybe it is too subtle. There’s a basic economic paradox and dilemma at the core of the basic idea. At that most basic level of the concept of IP as a socially beneficial policy, there is no clear “right” answer that will hold up to all the gamesmanship that will surely follow. Some, “limited”(!!!) protection for inventors and publishers is almost certainly a good thing — it’s that “limit” that’s hard to choose, apply and maintain, because it inheres a conflict of interests. That’s the nature of all politics: you make a rule, and opposed interests emerge to fight over how the rule applies to exchange and cooperation. The endless fight over the distribution of benefits and costs is part of the deal, part of living in a political society.
The sickness of American politics is that the endless fight has practically ended with “one” oddly homogeneous side selfishly triumphant. (And, yes, the “official” hostility to billionaire Trump indicates elite conflict, but damned if I could tell you what was at stake other than a fight over who gets to sit in the seats of political authority and benefit corruptly)
A symptom of the disease is that the arguments routinely aired have become so stupid. As Ian says, the “outrage” over foreign “hacking”, makes no intellectual sense. Patents were proposed in the 17th century with the notion that they would strike a balance that would overcome secrecy, not reinforce it. Inventors would disclose publicly their inventions and how they worked in exchange for legal rights to benefit economically for a limited (!) time from a temporary monopoly of sorts. Knowledge, generally, is a public good. Privatizing public goods — though it is archetypal neoliberal policy — is indefensible, but it does not even have effective critics in U.S. political discourse.
Oh, there are a variety of pseudo-left voices and platforms to be sure, but they are thoroughly untrustworthy for the most part, their integrity washing away like sand on the beach in a storm. And, even those that are not compromised by having to secure scarce resources from corporate-business or billionaire patrons in a plutocracy, are beaten down by the general stupidity insisted upon by trollish opponents into a radical simplicity or faith in fairy-tale narratives that also borders on stupidity.
And, so, every essay like this one that reminds us of the interest of the general public, of the concept of the general welfare, comes with it observations about how hopelessly corrupt and stupid the mainstream political discourse is. “Stupid” should not be an effective argument, but it is often the only kind of argument heard (on “both™” sides).
The political struggle between classes is a driver of political anacyclosis and American political history can be marked out with definite and amazingly regular cycles. The U.S. should have experienced a major political realignment and course correction round-about 2004-2008. And there were “wave” elections that brought new partisan majorities while the former Party of presumptive power humiliated itself. And, then nothing.
The present and on-going collapse under singularly geriatric “leadership” is due to the failure of realignment and course correction to secure a new generation in power with new ideologies in tow. Instead we must wait for Trump, McConnell, Fauci, Pelosi, Biden to die in harness apparently. Instead we have the spectacle of the Republicans who brought on financial crisis and the Iraq War crowding into the same Party as the Democrats who confirmed the financial corruption and endless war — the Obama Alumni Association joining hands with the Bush Alumni Association to celebrate being wrong about everything all the time — pushing for a return to the fabled “normal” of being wrong about everything all the time.
And, here we are facing a global pandemic with palsied institutions unable to test-and-trace or quarantine, arguing uselessly over face mask etiquette and the mirage of vaccines and miracle treatments, while billionaires grow richer and struggle among themselves to extract further pounds of flesh. By default, the policy is to let everyone contract this viral disease and que sera, sera. A policy that follows the same theme of corrupt incompetence that has been in place for 40 years. And, still no capacity to change course has emerged, nor much recognition that it is needed.
S Brennan
“Perhaps some US companies want to be “win” the vaccine race and then charge as much as possible for a vaccine.”
‘Ya think?
While the “blame everything that goes wrong on Trump” crowd can only blame Trump…to the exclusion of all others..the real Gollum in the Covid-19 picture is Fauci, as Galladay above stated. He has long been a bureaucratic hack who has always pursued the interests of Big-Pharma…and to the detriment of the American people.
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Holding several patents I can tell folks they are, [post Reagan], a scam useful only to those well heeled enough to use them as weapons.
Even worse are copyright law, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. So say a group of scientists, engineers and metal workers develop an inexpensive Fusion Engine, the holy grail of energy production they have seventeen years to make money on the deal right? Guess what, the NRC will take twenty years just to certify a fusion reactor, you do all the work and everybody else profits. That keeps big capital on the sidelines until they see that all the hurdles are overcome…not very useful.
But software is completely unregulated, no such hurdles, have enough leisure time to write some original code [well heeled enough to defend it?] and you are on your way to a life of luxury which you can pass down for generations to come.
Now which would be worth more to society, a clunky software that crashes airplanes, or a source of eternal clean energy…well, lawyers who write laws and who write for a living said that a scribe’s ramblings are worth protecting for the life of the scribe plus seventy years, while an industrial process that would save the globe from catastrophe has got 17 years to profit…even if all the patents exclusivity is spent working it’s way through a regulatory hell. Copyright law has stymied innovation by drawing capital away from science & industry to…entertainment and software.
The length of copyright established by the USA’s founding fathers was a short 14 years. More than enough time for a scribe to profit from his writings. What is it now…95 years and every time you remaster the work while still under copyright you an additional 95 years..WTF?
nihil obstet
As good neo-liberals and rational economic beings, we know that no one ever does anything except for personal individual profit. Therefore, we must devote all our public energies to locking up knowledge and penalizing thieves. This, of course, does not apply to all our “heroes”who do what we want for virtual subsistence wages.
Keep your eyes on freedom!!!
ttu
I am no expert but it seems to me that the substance of the claim-that is, the actual indictment-might be considered before discussing IP law if only to avoid inadvertently legitimating the claims of the current regime. Even assuming that from a Western perspective China is always a bad actor, the ubiquity of mal-information regularly pushed by the current US administration suggests, well, to me anyway, that Justice Department assertions about China are not entitled to any greater deference than Justice Department assertions about US domestic (political) matters.
Zachary Smith
The Russians already have at least one COVID vaccine, and have been testing it since April.
https://time.com/5868980/coronavirus-vaccine-russian-elite/
I’ve no idea about the effectiveness of the Russian inoculation, but I’d wager enough testing has already happened for the Elites to feel safe getting at the head of the line.
Legally, the US may or may not be on solid ground with the Intellectual Property business. I’m not a lawyer and wouldn’t know. Morally, trying to lock down the scientific progress is at the snake-navel level. If Trump & Biden & Company are trying to demonstrate the US of A is a parody of a “Christian Nation”, this is the way to do it.
If I happened to observe a Russian or Australian or Chinese trying to “steal” information which would save millions of lives, I’d turn the other way and move on. Some things are “Real World” crimes and some are not. This isn’t.
Bill
Th US stole so much intellectual and other stuff from other countries and would not support patent laws of other countries when it was building up its industries etc. It has also done much the same for traditional crops making it hard or impossible to grow crops that a US firm came and took then patented and now want royalties on a traditional variety. Spome justice.
highrpm
the ultimate captialism hack, “Vaccines need to be had by virtually everyone.” certainly not science.
Stirling S Newberry
Steal IP on the way up. Rent IP on the way down.
Plague Species
I\’m not anti-vaccine by any stretch but I am certainly, without equivocation, anti-vaccine when it comes to Sars-CoV-2, be it an American vaccine, a Russian vaccine, a Chinese vaccine or you name the country responsible for developing it.
First, I don\’t believe an effective vaccine is possible and second, even if a vaccine is developed and the propaganda is that it is effective, it will ultimately do more harm than good and they\’ll lie about that as well. There simply is no way to develop a safe vaccine, even if one could be developed for this novel virus that was effective, in such a short window of time. It will be a catastrophe and the cure will most certainly be worse than the pandemic itself. Haste makes waste.
Maybe this is how the global elite finally depopulate the planet — by making it mandatory to receive a vaccine that will ultimately cull the majority of humanity in a decade or less considering the planet is in its death throes.
The next great war will not be between America and China, it will be between China and Russia. When push comes to shove, and we\’re almost there, China\’s rapacious appetite for resources to feed its growth addiction will not be exploited by Russia. China will tell Russia its terms for Russia\’s resources and Russia will play its usual games and try to hold China over a barrel. At that point, with 1.5 billion people on the precipice of starvation and Chinese society on the verge of calamitous collapse, China will just march across Siberia to Moscow and annex Russia as its own. The only recourse Russia will have will be to nuke China and when it does, America will attack Russia on its flank. Poof. The end of Russia and the end of Putin the Great\’s reign of terror. Maybe the end of the human species as well. If so, so be it.
There are no good guys in this equation called civilization. It\’s not the NFL where a Super Bowl is held every year. The stakes are existential at this point for humanity and the living planet at large. It\’s the fate of a living planet we\’re talking about and China as much as any country is in the driver\’s seat of this death star called civilization that\’s set to destroy what\’s left of this living planet that was once a paradise before the clever ape know as human despoiled it in the name of profit and progress.
someofparts
https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-vaccines-with-minor-side-effects-could-still-be-pretty-bad/
“The risk of nasty side effects in the Moderna and Oxford trials should be made clear now, before it ends up as fodder for the skeptics.”
Stirling S Newberry
Trump Aloof
Recognizing proclaiming election
methodically unthinkable
uncertain electoral defeat
then regardless votes
powerful authoritarian
system government presupposes
peculiar institution electoral college
during the conclusion entirely convincing.
KT Chong
The situation on the ground here: the US is cracking down on Chinese espionage, HARD.
I recently ran into actual federal agents here in a Chinese enclave in America. We were at a FedEx/UPS kinda store that specialized in sending packages and parcels to China. The Chinese living here often buy baby food and nutrition products, and send those products to friends and relatives in China, due to the almost-non-existent food safety standard and endless food safety scandals in China. I’ve also seen Chinese sending gadgets and technological products, which I suspected that they were not even supposed to send to China. However, as far as I knew, no one had ever had any problem with sending anything to China.
Seems that the lax security for sending anything to China was finally over.
When I walked into the store, I saw whom I thought were “customers” but did not realize they were federal agents. At the time it did not dawn on me that it was actually very unusual to see any White person here. I saw a one of them standing before a package addressed to Hong Kong, and I assumed he was sending the package. So I made a friendly gesture: “hey, you should be careful when sending anything to Hong Kong now. China has just passed a new security law, and now the Chinese government can just open and look into anything going into Hong Kong.” The guy just greeted me back, “I know,” and waited for the store employees on the phone.
The lone store employee just looked at me with an angry and nervous stare. She was on the phone talking to a manager in another store. Then, after listening in for awhile, I realized those “customers” were actually federal agent, most likely FBI and probably custom agents. They had flashed their badges to the store employee before I came in. They wanted to inspect outgoing packages to China and a list of names who have been sending packages to China. My good sense went, “whoa, I better get outta here,” but I was too curious to leave.
I think they wanted to inspect some packages, but the store employee was not willing to let them open any packages. I thought even FBI do not have the legal authority to just open any mail or package they want without a warrant or something. So, being the busybody I was, I butted in, “You know, when customers send any package through any delivery company, we usually have to sign some paperwork with fine prints that agree to allow the delivery company to open any packages they send. I assume they have the same kind of agreements here. So, if you want to open and inspect a package, you really just have to talk to the manager and get the store employee to open the package for you.”
I did not know why I even said that. One of the agents spoke to the store employee, “let me speak to your manager.” I could see the store employee (a Chinese lady with whom I had flirted and knew still had a lot of attachment and loyalty to China) was clearly fuming at me.
So I made my exit.
That was the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the past two weeks!
S Brennan
Stirling your intense hate of Trump is known and on daily display but, had the world listened to his promotion of Hydroxychloroquine instead of Pharma’s puppet Fauci or, the chorus of “liberals” like yourself…tens of thousands of people would be alive today.
May 27 “Dr. Harvey Risch, Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale Schools of Public Health and Medicine issued an urgent call through the top-ranked American Journal of Epidemiology for hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin “to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe…Five studies,” he wrote from Yale, “including two controlled clinical trials, had demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.” Incredibly, this call for immediate action published in America’s top epidemiology journal did not appear in the mainstream news…
…On April 4, a major fight erupted at a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, when economics advisor Peter Navarro passed around file folders, pointing out that overseas hydroxychloroquine studies showed “clear therapeutic efficacy.” The government’s top infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, countered that there was only anecdotal evidence that HCQ works. Fauci was wrong*. Navarro was furious and a heated argument ensued…As the head of the $5.9 billion National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci would know better – he’d have known about the clinical trials, case reports, and observational studies in the medical literature.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/hydroxychloroquine-efficacy-suppression/5718676?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
That is quite something Stirling , people like yourself participated [unwittingly] in a manslaughter for profit scheme put forth by Big-Pharma. Yes, you didn’t know enough to speak on the subject and yes your goals were purely political, removal of Trump was/is your only priority but, whatever your level of ignorance and motivation, you [and thousands like you] helped Pharma kill tens of thousands of human beings for profit. And now you ghoulishly display schadenfreude. Hey Stirling, when they finally come for you, who will you turn to?
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*”Dr. Fauci stated categorically that the use of HCQ had not been studied in relation to the coronavirus. “unknown, unproven and ineffective against coronavirus infections”…What Fauci knows and failed to mention is that Chloroquine had been tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. Chloroquine was used in 2002 and tested against SARS-1 coronavirus in a study under the auspices of the CDC published in 2005 in the peer reviewed Virology Journal. The main conclusion of the article was that: Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread. It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.
metamars
Off topic:
duckduckgo-ing “microbiome immunity to covid-19” yields some interesting things
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-could-gut-bacteria-be-involved#The-gut-lung-axis
“A link between the lungs and the gut seems somewhat unexpected. However, as the authors discuss in their paper, this is not a new idea. The so-called gut-lung axis describes the cross-talk that occurs between gut microbiota and the lungs.
This communication travels in both directions: Endotoxins and metabolites that bacteria produce in the gut can travel through the blood and influence the lungs. In a similar manner, inflammation in the lungs can affect bacteria residing in the gut.
“This raises [the] interesting possibility that [SARS-CoV-2] might also have an impact on the gut microbiota,” the authors explain. “In fact, several studies have demonstrated that respiratory infections are associated with a change in the composition of the gut microbiota.”
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/microbiome-targeted-therapeutics-may-have-role-in-covid-19-fight/2306310/
“Long term we see the possibility for similar microbiome-focused therapeutics to treat multiple strains of influenza in addition to other respiratory viral infections which impact millions worldwide on a seasonal basis.”
I didn’t notice anybody even speculating on the idea of human to human transfer of microbiome as a prophylaxis against covid-19 infection (from recovered human to uninfected, probably vulnerable human). I’ve previously discussed these speculations in the context of what seems to me to be real ignorance regarding the mechanics of “herd immunity”. Certainly, the idea that a virus can “burn out” strikes me a not just unscientific, but laughable. Well, in the Chris Martenson video linked to by Thomas B Golladay, the T-cell immunity factors are claimed by one researcher to drop the herd immunity threshold from >50% to 20%. A recent paper from the Karolinska Institute suggest/claims “Advanced analyses have now enabled us to map in detail the T-cell response during and after a COVID-19 infection. Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in.” So, this seems quite plausible.
Fecal implants have demonstrated stunning success for some otherwise intractable issues.
Also, there was a book I read years ago called “Bacteria for Breakfast” which describes some stunning successes with therapeutic doses of probiotics. However, at least some alternative health gurus are concerned about the effect of developing monocultures of intestinal flora, via supplementation, as am I.
It seems to me that, at least for patients who are in a “Hail Mary” situation, they could try the therapeutic dose of probiotics, quickly followed by a fecal implant (preferably from a recovered covid-19 patient; preferably from a 3rd world country that has healthier microbiomes, in general). Yeah, sure, it’d be great to have double blinded studies, placebo controlled, blah, blah, but if these ever get done, it’ll be too late to help the “Hail Mary’s”.
metamars
Denis Rancourt will be debating Psychology Today, tomorrow, on the efficacy of masks. It looks like his reputation will take a hit….
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/logical-take/202007/yes-masks-work-debunking-the-pseudoscience
S Brennan
Metamars, I tried posting something earlier but, it’s blocked for the time being [perhaps since I included link support] so here’s some of it sans links.
May 27 “Dr. Harvey Risch, Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale Schools of Public Health and Medicine issued an urgent call through the top-ranked American Journal of Epidemiology for hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin “to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe…Five studies,” he wrote from Yale, “including two controlled clinical trials, had demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy.” Incredibly, this call for immediate action published in America’s top epidemiology journal did not appear in the mainstream news…
…On April 4, a major fight erupted at a meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, when economics advisor Peter Navarro passed around file folders, pointing out that overseas hydroxychloroquine studies showed “clear therapeutic efficacy.” The government’s top infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, countered that there was only anecdotal evidence that HCQ works. Fauci was wrong*. Navarro was furious and a heated argument ensued…As the head of the $5.9 billion National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Fauci would know better – he’d have known about the clinical trials, case reports, and observational studies in the medical literature.”
*”Dr. Fauci stated categorically that the use of HCQ had not been studied in relation to the coronavirus. “unknown, unproven and ineffective against coronavirus infections”…What Fauci knows and failed to mention is that Chloroquine had been tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. Chloroquine was used in 2002 and tested against SARS-1 coronavirus in a study under the auspices of the CDC published in 2005 in the peer reviewed Virology Journal. The main conclusion of the article was that: Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread. It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.
KT Chong
Apparently America is very near the “escape velocity” of the coronavirus.
Escape velocity is the velocity at which a rocket must reach to be able to escape the gravity pull of the planet.
So, when a virus reaches its “escape velocity”, that means that even if the federal government is finally willing to implements a draconian lockdown/shutdown for the entire country at that point, coronavirus infections and deaths will still continue to grow and not subside. Basically, at the point there is nothing the federal or state government will be able to do to put the virus under country… the virus will have already “escape” and is beyond any possible measure to contain it.
Smith Mitchell
Well, here from the very beginning of the pandemic, the main players the United States and China are competing, what will be the consequences, we will see later. Accusations, accusations, accusations …
S Brennan
KT Chong;
Bruce Wilder made the same point, different wording, about three weeks ago.
The “newspaper of record”, to my surprise, admitted that over 70% of the cases nationwide directly originated from the strain in New York City. Apparently, New Yorkers like to party and travel during a plague.
But if I am to believe my fellow commenters afflicted with late stage TDS, Back in late February President Trump put out secret orders for New Yorkers infected during New York’s Chinese New Year Celebrations* to travel the country spreading the disease far and wide because…well…just because.
*A significant portion of the disease nationwide can be traced to holding that week long event where, tens of thousands of partying New Yorkers were infected.
Jan Wiklund
Strangely enough, the “regular” flu vaccine is not owned by anyone but freely shared with all: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/covid19-drugs-and-vaccine-demand-patent-reform-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-et-al-2020-04?barrier=accesspaylog