现在都要付费,不是 pay as you go, 而是 pay indefinitely. 你可否转一下作为闲谈一部分?
noshock 发表于 2021-06-07 21:57
Technology & Ideas
The world’s anger will be terrible to behold.
By Stephen L. Carter
June 4, 2021, 4:00 PM MDT
If Covid Did Escape From a Wuhan Lab, Brace Yourself
Ever since President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate reports that
the Covid-19 virus might have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, commentators have
argued over what difference it makes if the theory turns out to be right. Here’s why the
answer matters: The discovery that the virus had a human origin would give the coronavirus
saga what it’s lacked: a villain.
And that’s a problem.
If a virus that has killed nearly 600,000 people in the U.S. and close to 4 million around the
world turns out to have escaped from a laboratory in China, the formless fear that has
immobilized most of the world for the last year and a half, at last given a target, might
coalesce into fury.
And fury, when widely shared, is hard to control.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to know the truth, and some degree of anger might be
good for us. One of the many tragic features of the pandemic has been the way that efforts at
public dialogue about causes, remedies, and, yes, whether the virus itself might be human-made,
were for the most part stilted and lost, the angry murmurings of a people all but
immobilized by anxiety.
To be sure, we sought villains as best we could: The whole mess was Donald Trump’s fault,
the shutdowns were a power grab by blue elites, the real problem was bureaucratic
incompetence. But this was mostly the performance of pain without adequate information.
We can include in this category the pretense that scientists were certain that Covid-19 was not
of human origin — and that those who suggested otherwise were dangerous cranks. That
fantasy was exploded by the meticulous reporting of the veteran science writer Nicholas
Wade in an article published in May in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Wade’s persuasive
case that the novel coronavirus escaped containment at the Wuhan Institute of Virology —
which was conducting research on altering viruses so they would more easily jump from
animals to humans — has reopened a debate we should have been having all along. Biden’s
order is a consequence.
But here’s where one might worry. Research on risk perception shows that we tend to fear
human-made harms more than natural ones, even when the natural ones have greater
likelihood or severity. Some research suggests that human-made harms make us angrier too.
The distinction makes sense. It’s easy to hate, say, a terrorist group like ISIS. There’s no point
in hating an earthquake.
But anger generally doesn’t do us any favors. Some people think better when they’re angry;
most think worse. Moreover, there’s a well-known finding in social science that anger leads us
to be irrationally optimistic about our ability to solve a problem.
It may be, as Ross Douthat has suggested, that a confirmation that the Covid-19 virus escaped
from a Chinese laboratory would lead to a major propaganda advantage in the geopolitical
battle over hearts and minds. Such victories matter. But they’re not likely to satisfy the all-too-literal
American mind, which, when roused to anger, invariably seeks more concrete
satisfactions: invade this, regulate that, throw so-and-so in jail. Anger seeks catharsis, often in
the urge to “do something.” Lots of bad policy is driven that way.
The Sept. 11 experience offered a catharsis because the nation was able to strike back. On the
other hand, the intensity of national fear and anger created an atmosphere in which it was
difficult to engage in serious public debate about the merits of the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq.
What about regulation? Perhaps evidence that Covid-19 was of human manufacture would
bring about international consensus that all experiments on viruses that might jump to
humans should be carried out at a higher level of biohazard safety. As Wade points out,
however, the problem is often less what the rules demand than what researchers find
convenient. (It’s not as though deadly viruses have never escaped containment in the West.)
Besides, as the British astrophysicist Martin Rees reminds us in his 2003 book “Our Final
Hour,” rules are not universally followed. No matter how strictly we regulate the handling of
dangerous microbes, Rees writes, “the chances of effective enforcement, worldwide, are no
better than current enforcement of laws against illegal drugs.” Just a single rule-breaker, he
notes, “could trigger widespread disaster.”
Which is to say that even if the Covid-19 virus didn’t escape from an improperly contained lab,
sooner or later one will.
Which brings me to my final thought.
Biden’s order to the intelligence agencies was a good thing. But the 90-day deadline smacks of
political theater. The U.S. needed two decades to figure out what went wrong at Pearl Harbor.
We had trouble tracking Osama bin Laden to a compound he had reportedly occupied for five
years. That we will uncover the truth about the origin of the pandemic in three months seems
... unlikely.
If the Covid-19 virus does turn out to have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory, even by
accident, the world will erupt in fury. The pressure to “do something about it” — to find a way
to punish China for its negligence and its cover-up — will be intense. So here’s my modest
suggestion, should that unhappy situation arise: Whatever we decide to do, let’s take the time
to think things through, rather than acting out of unreasoning anger.
To contact the author of this story:
Stephen L. Carter at [email protected]