I don't think price inputs for a product are an essential part of free markets; in the end, the Rational Consumer (TM) only cares about the perceived quality of the product and the cost. If widget maker A is selling widgets for $2, and widget maker B is selling widgets of the same quality for $2.10, but widget maker A only pays $0.10 in input costs while B pays $0.50 - you should still go with widget maker A's product, even though their margins are higher.

The point about private deals, not knowing what other people were paying for something is appreciated and correct in that sense, but it's not really applicable to retail products. If I go to Wal-Mart/Macy's/whatever, I know what other people are paying - I can see the price tag. That's how people respond to price signals. The price of my preferred brand of pasta just went up 50%? Maybe I'll try a different one.

Companies also respond to price signals; they'll try to lock in predictable prices and attempt to switch suppliers if costs get out of hand.

Do the pods have their own batteries or are they powered through the rails, like most subway trains are?

What do you think the "U" in "UBI" stands for? Most plans do give it to everyone, they just increase marginal tax rates and/or change the income levels for tax brackets to take it back later.

It's totally reasonable for the CCP to study coronaviruses as a potential pandemic, and if it turns out they were studying natural coronaviruses I will applaud them for doing the research while calling for the public execution of everyone who helped cover up the outbreak initially.

Eh, we should have taken it more seriously, but I don't think we'd have a large-scale, ready-to-deploy solution in place. Nobody wanted to fund much research, not even the CCP, and if we had done the research we wouldn't have millions of vaccine doses lying around. Not to mention, the most promising vaccine candidates now use technology that wasn't around back then, and there's no guarantee whatever we did for SARS-CoV using that tech would work against SARS-CoV-2.

I totally agree we should have taken SARS more seriously, and done more research into it, but I think it's optimistic to think that taking it seriously then would have prevented quarantine now.

I agree with most of what you said, but frankly in this situation even 6 months of immunity would be super helpful. We'd have some idea of how long-lived immunity is from the early clinical trials, and based on approval/production times we ought to know that before a substantial proportion of people are inoculated. We'd ideally then continue inoculating people while searching for a better vaccine.

Binding to the virus does not always mean inhibiting it or "defeating" it. And because normal antibody responses are so diverse, it's actually quite difficult to isolate a monoclonal antibody from plasma.

Thank you, I was just about to post that same link.

Clarity and precision are really good things to have in your business contracts. You want to know exactly what you're responsible for and what you can expect from your counterpart. Very good thing for legislature too, you want to know what you're not allowed to do and what the penalties can be.

Technically, he didn't say the virus was a hoax; he said the Democratic/media (same thing, to him) response to it was a hoax. Trump has screwed the pooch in so very many novel ways in his response to this, but the WHO and CCP also deserve a lot of blame.

It is finger pointing, but I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment ("the WHO really fucked up and are partially responsible for the mess we're in"), if not his methods. The WHO did what they did because the CCP has too much sway over them; cutting their budget from the American side will only increase that.

If Bernie got enough votes while not being the Democratic candidate, he would be elected President. However, he's pledged to support the eventual Democratic nominee, and if he does so he will pull his name from the ballot. If he's not on the ballot, it is exceedingly unlikely that he wins.

There is insufficient evidence to say Biden has advanced dementia. He's probably not quite as sharp as he used to be, but he's always had a stutter, and his speech patterns are consistent with that.

That being said, vote third party if you want to. I probably will.

Yeah, it's possible, but mouse work often doesn't translate to human results. We can be optimistic but if it ends up not working, it's not a conspiracy either.

TikTok is owned/run by a Chinese company with an extra-close relationship with the CCP. Nobody should use it, but especially not to distribute news about a pandemic the CCP is lying about.