Thread by @Saintonge235

#Correction: on 1-30, Sen. Cotton called for a shutdown of commercial air travel WITH CHINA. The next day, @realDonaldTrump shut it down.

As for the "Manhattan Project" for a vaccine, that is just a magic incantation by people who have no idea what the MP was and did.

https://twitter.com/kausmickey/status/1252111361888276481

Radioactivity was discovered in 1896. After thirty three years of world-wide research, a discovery was made that pointed to way to create nuclear power. That was fission, discovered by and Lise Meitner. After almost three years of dithering, FDR ordered the Manhattan Project.

And "dithering" is not a knock on FDR; the dithering was by scientists, who were afraid the bomb could be made, and didn't want it to be. Roosevelt's willingness to gamble on a project that might not work shows what a real leader does. I'm in awe of that decision.

Once the decision was made, it took nearly four years to build one device and two bombs, and almost a decade to have a real atomic arsenal. Yet the MP was basically engineering: almost all the critical science was done before the Project began.

If you want a real "Manhattan Project" for a vaccine or treatment, you have to do what the real Manhattan Project did: gamble on unproven technologies, and waste a lot of money pursuing everything that might work. And that means HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION. If you have something that

_*MIGHT*_ work, but might fail, or even kill people, you charge ahead with it, and you do inevitably kill and maim people. Also, eventually, you _probably_ get a cure or vaccine from this expensive and risky exercise in THE _*PRACTICE*_ OF WILD-ASSED EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE®,

but there aren't any guarantees except that people WILL DIE from this.

So, Mr. Kaus, are you willing to kill people now to save people later? Note well, any answer that consists of anything other than the word "yes" constitutes a "no."

@ThreadReader app unroll please