#there's a very high likelihood that media as we know it doesn't exist in a decade

[fratboykate]

this is perfect proof of how fans pretend to know everything and don't know jack shit. a lot of the writers who are in charge of creating your favorite shows and films that gross billions of dollars at the box office are on food stamps or also like...doing door dash on the side because we're being miserably exploited while some studio ceos make hundreds of millions of dollars a year. we're not striking tomorrow because we're fucking "activist hacks" we're striking because we need money to live. that's just the society that we exist in yet studios/networks/streamers have decided that our work is worth nothing to them. the situation is unbearable for most and unless we address this now then in 5-10 years you'll have no one but nepo babies who were born rich doing this job.

[yellowocaballero]

ORV Characters Ranked by Least to Most Likely to Commit White Collar Crime

You guys said you wanted my ORV takes, and I try not to say things unsolicited, so I'll drop the good meta-analysis and literary criticism that I'm known for. For comedy purposes please pretend that ORV is American.

Omniscent Reader's Viewpoint characters broken down by likelihood to commit white collar crime, least to most:

Lee Hyeonseong: he's convinced that he's never committed a crime in his life. Intentionally, of course not. Unintentionally, he takes shopping for groceries extremely seriously, and is sometimes so wrapped up in the fruit inspection experience that he'll leave without paying. Due to his innocent face, bulk, and sheer confidence, he's never caught. In an economically thrifty maneuver, KDJ always sends him on snack runs for parties and texts him math problems while he's there. He insists it's like couponing. It's not couponing.

Jeong Huiwon: similarly, of course she would never choose to commit a crime. Also similarly, when KDJ says, 'Hey, wanna commit a crime?' she always participates. Since the crime is normally targeted at rich people, KDJ can usually morally justify it to her. She calls this harm reduction. It's not harm reduction.

Lee Jihye: would love to commit a crime in theory, almost never in practice. She has an idealized image in her mind of the ideal high school experience and it involves grand theft auto. However, the worst she ever gets is breaking & entering and trespassing, mostly because she didn't stop to wonder if the building was abandoned or not. She can't even shoplift from Claire's.

Shin Yuseung: the kind of kid who sets the dissection frogs in the school laboratory free. Looks up illegal exotic animal trading on the deepweb and sighs in longing. But exotic pet trading isn't very Animal Rights of her, so she just leaks information to the CIA and busts the rings. Lee Gilyeong convinces her to track down shady sellers on Craigslist and bust their kneecaps. Neither of them view this as significantly different from the dissection frog liberation. KDJ gets her a rescued exotic cat for her birthday as a reward.

Lee Gilyeong: self-explanatory.

Han Suyeong: she's been pirating media since she was eleven and has never stopped. World-class expert in pirating everything. She's the unsung hero who rips the CDs and games and puts them online. Runs the pirating websites. Has never paid for a webnovel or manwha or manga in her life. Despite this, she insists that pirating books is immoral and that people should support small authors. The FBI knows she exists and has been trying to catch her for years. She brags about this constantly.

Yoo Sangah: has committed tax fraud before, will commit tax fraud tomorrow, is currently committing tax fraud. Embezzles her company's embezzlement. Insists that she's only committing victimless crimes, mainly because she doesn't view business executives as people. Her ability to evade the IRS is mythological and it's how KDJ got a crush on her.

Yoo Junghyeok: does not understand adult life well enough to knowingly commit any sort of white collar crime. He is this high on the list because he enables and helps KDJ in literally everything he does, especially using his clout as an influencer. This is because KDJ has convinced him that these things aren't crimes, and he doesn't understand adult life well enough to figure it out.

Kim Dokja: has done every white collar crime under the sun. I can't emphasize enough how much crime he does. He's currently blackmailing SYS's college tuition out of a US Senator. HSY makes the shell companies and launders so much money with him. Alternates between running a pyramid scheme and a ponzi scheme depending on the month. Started a cult that one time but we don't like to talk about that. Runs the betting ring for YJH's esports games. Fixes the games. YJH does not know he does this, but KDJ splits the profits and Yoo Mia also needs a college tuition so he decides not to think about it too hard. Big into crypto and runs every crypto scam you can possibly think of, which is normally where the the ponzi schemes come in. Steals YJH's identity often. Somehow everything he does is technically legal. The only crime he does not commit is pirating. Exclusively targets the wealthy and ultra-wealthy and has never stolen money from a poor person. Sugar daddies all of his friends and pays all college tuitions. Anonymously yet obviously sponsors huge amounts of money to YJH's Twitch streams, mostly in apology for the ID theft. Would really rather be living a quiet life in a big house with all of his friends, but that big house ain't gonna pay for itself.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

On BTS's Success Being Inorganic (Repost)

Anonymous: Hi BPP, Apologies in advance for a controversial topic but hopefully we can buckle in and have a civilized discussion.

What are your thoughts on 'organic' success? As a Dope Old Person, I am finding myself a bit nostalgic for a time when high charting singles appeared to represent current popular music. I say 'appeared' because we know payola has always been there. In the real world, though, you actually heard the song a lot, probably knew people who liked or owned it, etc. A Billboard Top 10 hit was part of the US zeitgeist and essentially 'organic'. With the advent of technology over the past 20 years, people now have the opportunity to flood the streaming and purchasing channels with numbers to support their favorites. If you can amass a decent online following, you can essentially guarantee a hit, regardless of how many people actually like the music. (Aside: What is the point of a chart? To gauge popularity and trends as of old? Or to see how fanatic a fan base is? Just count $?). BTS have made incredible music and ARMY's desire to get them noticed is warranted. It speaks volumes that they have managed #1 hits in both English and Korean (only the 23rd most spoken language). And while the music is great and the messages behind it inspiring, we should consider that some portion of that success is actually excess. People streaming 24/7 and buying multiple physical copies drive up numbers and takes away from the 'organic' growth. (Aside again: ugh the environmental wastefulness of physical sales and the shipping of the multiple copies.) As the excess has finally started to pay off over the last few years with #1s, real media coverage, and rapidly expanding fandom, I think we should start to think about easing up to let the organic growth return. I love the exposure of the #1 or another record getting smashed but if it doesn't have staying power because it is due to this excess, it doesn't feel as good. I'm not saying this retreat needs to happen immediately given the likelihood of a mainly Korean album will once again need some targeted support. But someday, I'd like to know they've grown enough to enable us to get back to casual enjoyment and watch the locals everywhere bop along to their new favorite BTS tune that they discovered organically.

***

Hi Anon,

I found your ask very interesting, because you start by acknowledging “…...'appeared' because we know payola has always been there…” but then you end your ask like this, “I think we should start to think about easing up to let the organic growth return”. You start your ask by questioning the ‘organic’ distinction even back then, but then you end your ask longing for an 'organic’ success you weren’t sure even existed to begin with.

I’ve actually written about this tangentially before in a reblog on the recent change to BB’s rules, linked here - it’s a bit longwinded but I also link in some articles that offer more insight with facts and figures if that’s something you’re interested in. But I’ll summarize my views here again and directly refer to a few statements you make in your ask.

I’m generally uneasy when people try to apply the 'organic’ or 'inorganic’ labels to minority artists. Generally speaking. Because we all know the barriers to entry are just not the same for them compared to their White/Western counterparts, in a system that has never been organic.

The way I see it, the charts and the system that creates those charts has never been ‘organic’, at least not in the last two decades (which you admit to), but what was different is that the people who determined what was popular were the ‘middle men’ i.e. record labels, radio DJs, streaming platform playlisters, etc, through their own version of ‘excess’ i.e. payola, ‘auxiliary promotions’ on radio, and opaque playlisting criteria for playlists that artists have said they sometimes need to pay money to be added on (at least in the case of Spotify). You mention how “In the real world, though, you actually heard the song a lot,” but the reason you heard the song a lot is because it was always played on radio, an industry notoriously plagued by payola, which would then boost the song or artist’s reach, and lead to people you know liking it and buying that music.

What has changed in the last two decades is that it is no longer the Middle Men who have total control over what is determined to be popular. It is now fans, the people who actually listen to the music, who have found ways to make their streams and purchases (or demand) show, to become too big to ignore, to give artists they view as having ‘organic’ demand, a real chance to actually show up on charts that are supposed to measure sales equivalent units.

Because that’s what those charts are actually supposed to measure: sales as a proxy for popularity, and as I’ve said before, outside of concert ticket sales, direct music sales are the most transparent way to actually support an artist and to determine demand or popularity of an artist. Streaming and radio are too opaque as mechanisms to weigh the most in that equation, but they’ve been given more weight by the industry because otherwise those mechanisms will be less profitable to the Middle Men. Al that's changed recently is that the demand from fans now partly determines what shows up in charts. And doesn’t it follow that it is whoever has more fans for a piece of music, not whoever has a bigger/stronger music label, that should show up on a chart that’s supposed to measure sales?

Let’s look at two different artists and I’ll speak very generally about them here: Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo. One artist is American, the other is Puerto Rican and has mostly a Latam fanbase. Both artists have ‘amassed a decent online following’, and both artists have had their songs dominate on the charts. Do you know what happened when Olivia was first announced to have a concert (with several other ‘big’ artists) for iheartsradio last year? After several weeks of near constant promoting (I was seeing ads at least twice a day), there was so little demand that iheartsradio started offering free tickets to people who wanted to bring a plus one. Think about that. They were essentially paying for people to come see an artist whose songs were consistently in the Top 5 songs on the Hot 100 for roughly a year. Bad Bunny on the other hand, doesn’t struggle to sell out concerts (though of venues smaller than for BTS). He has a somewhat grassroots fanbase and in the last year I’ve become good friends with some people in his fb, to know they’re totally grassroots, but organized (and able to get away with some illegal methods that ARMYs are under too much scrutiny to try, and most ARMYs aren’t interested in those methods anyway tbh). Perhaps contrary to Olivia’s case, for Bad Bunny it’s not a record label that’s inflating his demand, it’s actual fans who will show up to see him live, to hear that music, that are maybe multiplying their purchasing power by 2 or 4 times to beat the ‘excess’ from the other artist’s record label. Because excess is something you’ll see on the charts in any case.

Why is it more tolerable for middle-men (record labels) to control the way music is consumed and ultimately valued, rather than consumers (fans and supporters)? As I’ve said before, fans buying music is really not the end of the world though BB and other industry gate-keepers act like it is. Every artist hopes an ever increasing number of people buy their music, and BTS happens to have an ever expanding fanbase.

Personally, I use concert showings as a good rule of thumb to determine how ‘organic’ an artist’s demand or popularity is, and it’s a fact that no artist on the planet right now is doing as well as BTS in that area. Literally the only person in recent history who has done better than BTS’s recent concerts has been Bruce Springsteen, and even then he’s only above BTS because he had a longer tour period than BTS’s four-night shows. And you can recall how back then, you’d hear Springsteen‘s music all over. Heck he’s now hailed as belonging to the canon of classic American pop/rock. BTS should technically have as much if not more recognition today, and in a sense they do (I sometimes hear BTS's songs in the gym, cafe, random spots all over my small Western city), but BTS sing primarily in Korean, not English and not Spanish (that American radio tolerates more), but in Korean, and the charts ding them significantly for it.

As I said, I use concert showings as a sort of rule of thumb or litmus test, so the day I see BTS concerts lose demand, is the day I’ll start to think maybe ARMYs should ‘retreat’ a little, as you say. Because I suspect the reason you’re sending me this ask in the first place is because you’re concerned people buying/streaming the way you think they do, is unsustainable, and that people will burn out in some way. And if this is true, it would necessitate a “retreat”, as you’ve put it. You’re not wrong. If people were indeed putting in labour to levels you seem to imply, it would be extremely unsustainable and tiresome. My issue with this point is that people have been saying this about BTS and ARMY since 2017… and the fandom has only grown, the boys’ reach only further expanded… the complete opposite of any signs of burn out or unsustainable consumption of music and art. And maybe it’s only coincidence that BTS’s concert showings have only increased as well, more than tripled in fact, all the things that would happen if their popularity, demand, and success was actually… wait for it…

*

*

*

Organic.

*

Even with all this said, many of the the things you mentioned as indicative of 'organic’ success (“you actually heard the song a lot, probably knew people who liked or owned it, etc. A Billboard Top 10 hit was part of the US zeitgeist and essentially “organic.””), actually apply more to BTS than to many Western artists and certainly more than to any k-pop group, period. Whatever we think about the Pandemic English Trilogy, what it certainly accomplished for BTS was that it did exactly that - I heard Butter in my gym yesterday almost a year after its release, My Universe still gets ridiculous airplay in Germany, France, and Japan according to the radio charts, and I’ve seen more than one reactor mention how they’ve heard Dynamite before without knowing it was a k-pop song. BTS is now at least as mainstream (or part of the US zeitgeist) as Bad Bunny is, if not more. BTS is now more of a household name in more countries in the world than any k-pop group ever, and in some cases are even more known (and loved) than some Western artists even in the US. BTS is now the reason most people have even heard of something called k-pop.

Payola in all its forms, is excess. But the only excess being obsessively hunted down and punished by the industry, is the excess generated by fans or the people actually consuming the music. And the reality is that though ARMYs aren’t doing anything other fandoms aren’t, there’s disproportionate scrutiny on ARMYs because a lot of people (k-pop fans, Western music fans, k-pop record labels and agencies, Western music producers and labels, etc) are sick and tired of seeing BTS on the charts even though concerts and sales show there is at least as much demand for BTS as there is for Bruce Springsteen and Drake. And these other parties think it is in their best interest for BTS and ARMYs to be rendered obsolete. That’s not meant to sound alarmist, it’s just what it is. So even if ARMYs continue playing by the rules, people will continue to characterize ARMYs and BTS’s efforts and success using the most uncharitable language, selectively applying the rules, and basically the industry will give ARMYs a hard time this particular comeback, and probably many more comebacks in the future. It doesn’t matter that the ‘mass’ applied to ARMYs is more a consequence of huge absolute numbers of fans sharing, listening to, and buying music, than relative effort per fan in streaming/buying a shit tonne of music, as it is for most k-pop fans. And it’s not like BigHit is paying a huge amount for payola either when compared to agencies that boost MV views with paid ads/playlisting and mediaplay, which continues to place BTS at a disadvantage compared to labels that have been under investigation for payola in an industry notorious for its practice.

The core of the fanbase will probably always support BTS, regardless of the medium. They have adapted to changing rules over the last six years and will try to keep adapting, despite a changing music landscape for BTS and a new influx of fans who might not really understand why ARMYs support BTS nor see the need to. I don’t know how successful the fandom will continue to be in this regard, but I think for most fans, the placement on the charts hasn’t ever been the primary goal. The main goal for ARMYs has always been to make the artists they love feel seen and supported by the people they make music for.

Originally posted: May 8th, 2022 7:33am

[dzpenumbra]

11/22/22

Big wrench in the works today. It turns out that driving your car once every 2 months for like a year... or 3... is not good for it. After all the shit to get to this point, my car did not pass inspection. And the bill will be very pricey. And the parts will take time to be delivered and installed.

I lucked out that they had one rental car. I have it in my driveway now. I'm going to have to go to the new place tomorrow for the move-in appointment, it's going to be a big day. I'm really hoping I can get good sleep, I have not been sleeping well at all the past few days and I've been nodding off the past few hours just trying to stay awake long enough to get my cat her night time meds.

I'm realizing that moving is going to be a much more complicated process than I was really processing. Mostly because of the cat medication thing. I managed to reassure my mom that she was capable of giving my cat the medication, and had her come over and do a test run just to reassure both of us. It's an ointment in the ear, it's actually really easy, Max really doesn't mind that much. It took a bit of a fight to get there, she kept trying to pressure hiring movers on me... but I just... I just really don't like the idea. I've talked about it on here before. Once we got over that hurdle and boundaries were clearly explained, things started to level out. She came over to dry-run the meds, saw it was pretty simple and checked out my new arsenal of polished stones and handmade beads. She was genuinely impressed, it was a good feeling.

But this set in another complication. Though she made herself available to help, after a week of silence recovering from major fights, now... she is going to be out of town for the holidays. At least, that's the plan. So... she won't be able to cover me for the cat meds. So I get to drive up tomorrow, move some stuff in... probably musical instruments I don't use, I don't really know what else, maybe just etc art supplies and shit. Whatever I can throw in my car quickly in the AM because there aint no way I'm packing my car right now. Probably not much. Then I'm coming back home... then I'm chilling here for another 2 days... Then I get to try to start moving again.

I'm going to have to check with my old landlords to make sure me staying extra time is going to be okay. Taking that week for mental health and recovering from fights and packing and all that was vital but completely fucked my timeframe. I was supposed to start moving in on the 15th. It's very hard to not be upset about that. The "could have been's". (Thank you for that one, Flex)

So... since I'm running on fumes... I'm trying to just not stress and just take my time. I don't think I have as many possessions as I fear I do. My mom offered to help me drive stuff up and even help move some stuff if there is an elevator. I'm not going to get into how confusing it is when she goes back and forth, but... yeah. The more important offer was some (at least temporary) storage space in her basement, so if there's anything I don't want to be wasteful and throw out... I can at very least just get it out of this place and decide what to do with it later. That option is awesome.

So a big new weight dropped, and another lifted. I'm just taking it one step at a time and seeing where things go. I did check out this portal thing that they have for the building, and they have like... profiles you can fill out for your apartment... like a social media profile or some shit? So I browsed out of curiosity and yes, the people who live there actually look like civilized human beings and not demonic hell-beasts who want to steal my shit and eat my cat, so that's pretty reassuring!

My anxiety has been at an all-time high lately, like... lifetime all-time high... in that it's hard to discern between anxious threats and real threats. They both exist, but the likelihood of both seem equal. Like... the likelihood of me accidentally hitting a curb because I don't know how the new rental car drives, and the likelihood of me having some kinda of Final Destination car accident feel like... on even standing, equal likelihood. And that's just flat-out wrong. So I guess that's just a survival-mode thing, so if you're going through that too, just like... be nice to yourself, try to gather a bit more information, try to get perspective from someone you trust not to judge you, and try to recalibrate a bit. That's what I'm trying, it's not easy work but it does pay off.

And my nighttime safe place routine thing is going pretty damn well. Falling asleep is still pretty easy. It's just the super vivid dreams that are fucking with me. Screw it, I've got some time, I'll share today's dilemma.

The end of my second dream last night was me in a workshop of some kind with Devin Townsend. A mentor figure. We were working at stations next to each other, no clue on what, and I was praising him for a really interesting box set concept piece he came up with. He reciprocated by getting to know me a bit. He said I struck him as the "athletic type", which... kinda took me aback. I started to tell him, "no, not really, I mean I just started skating again, and I barefoot hike a lot, like... a lot. But athletics are definitely not my thing." And I started to tell him I was a creative, an artist... Big pressure because, you know, he might have some work for an artist...

And it just pulled me out of sleep. Big adrenaline surge. I started doing diaphragmatic breathing - I legit seriously recommend this to anyone that gets physical symptoms from anxiety or panic attacks, it really helps calm down physical panic responses and quickly too. I was totally fine in like less than a minute, but my sleep-deprived ass was like... explaining to the ceiling what I do. And I really identified that this is a really big point of social anxiety for me. I would have so much more peace in my social interactions if I just had one fucking title and that's all I did. Me name Bob, me plumber. Done. GG. Simple. But nooooooo...

"Well, I am a multimedia artist, I specialize in pencil, colored pencil and ink, but I'm not limited to traditional mediums. I do music and poetry as well, in fact some would consider those my primary mediums. I have a degree in... Acrylic Painting, for some goddamn reason. I am a former tattooist... kinda... And despite all the above, I am currently working on wood-carving, stone-carving and jewelry making with locally sourced materials." Literally every time I try to nutshell this for people, their brains start melting out of their ears by the second sentence. So I started nutshelling it to condense it, but I always end up leaving stuff out. So now... when I meet new people... the first question I get is: "What's your name?" (sometimes I don't even get that, sometimes it's "How long have you lived in the area?") Which really doesn't have a simple answer when you currently go by 4 different names, and no one says any of them out loud to you. Then the second question, like clockwork, is: "What do you do?"

My remedy for this from now on. I'm going to do what my tattoo teacher taught me, with a twist. She said "get a tattoo of your own design in a visible location." So I inked my own wrist. It was the hardest tattoo I have ever done. But instead of doing that, for this... if someone asks what I do... I'm just going to point to my jewelry, or my custom clothing. And just add in the addition: "I do a lot of other shit, too."

Hopefully that will let me sleep at night!

[rimouskis]

Ohhhhh no poorly researched and extremely one note ‘already made up my mind’ outside observer YouTube essay about sports rpf ABSOlutely not no thank you

like I am very much aware that YouAreNotImmuneToPropaganda.jpeg and that is true for myself as well; I have a weak spot for youtube essays—I like the format, I like being Hip and Knowledgable about internet culture—and I've certainly watched plenty of videos about Pieces Of Media I know nothing about.

...that being said usually the ones I like to watch are indeed about pieces of media and not, like, fan communities.

I've tried to watch some of the ones about fandom (because I get very leonardo-dicaprio-pointing-meme about it since Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written and all), but even if I find them initially entertaining, there ends up being a lot of really understandable/valid/important critique of those videos since Unless You Are In The Community there are so many nuances and Things That Happen that you simply won't know about!

and I think it's doubly sticky for RPF fandoms because... like, listen. unless you do RPF, there's a very high likelihood that it will weird you out. that's understandable. I even get the "what, why?" reaction in myself sometimes when I see RPF for stuff I'm not into. that's normal and okay if you don't like, interject yourself into the convo and get into someone's grill and get all nosy about why they like what they like.

THAT BEING SAID, an internet culture commentator who claims to have been on tumblr since ye olden days should not be THAT surprised that sports RPF exists, and specifically with sports RPF I really don't want someone out-of-community discussing it/presenting it to other out-of-community people. sports rpf-ers are overwhelmingly women and/or LGBTQ+ people and we are all pretty actively aware that we're performing our fandom in a deviant/nontraditional way that puts us at odds with ~mainstream~ sports culture.

to have someone who doesn't really understand the position we're in present us to people just feels wrong and like we're being paraded around as like "wow! look how strange and quirky! and weird! look at them!" and it's just... invasive and also invites ridicule from potential assholes. no one needs/wants that!

[xtruss]

Biden Poised to Repeat Mistakes that Led to COVID Pandemic, Biosecurity Experts Say

— By Fred Guterl | 08/18/21 | Newsweek

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY NEWSWEEK; SOURCE IMAGES BY GETTY

The COVID-19 pandemic may have made a future pandemic more likely. In a terrible irony, nations eager to get a handle on the virus and its variants are building high-containment laboratories at a brisk pace, ensuring that more scientists continue to experiment on dangerous pathogens even after the current threat fades—increasing the likelihood of future lab accidents that could release dangerous pathogens. Regardless of whether the current pandemic got its start in a laboratory in Wuhan or in animals—a mystery that may never be resolved—the mere fact that it's possible is reason enough to take precautions against any future occurrence, biosecurity experts say.

"Without a doubt, COVID-19 has changed the threat landscape," says Peggy Hamburg, former FDA commissioner and now vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan think tank on global security.

Yet despite the rising risk of a new, future pandemic caused by a lab leak—or one that emerges from a bioterrorist attack or even natural causes, for that matter—the U.S. government, under the leadership of Joe Biden and Congress, seems on course to repeat the mistake made by nearly every one of its predecessors for the past several decades: failing to take all possible steps to strengthen America's response to a future pandemic or prevent one from happening in the first place.

One year ago, as SARS-CoV-2 raged through an unprotected population and vaccines were still months away from authorization, workers were wondering how they'd protect themselves through the long winter months and parents were fretting over how they'd hold down a job while their kids stayed home all day learning in front of a laptop. Now, despite the widespread availability of vaccines, the surge in COVID cases due to the Delta variant is raising fears and uncertainties about the prospects of a second pandemic winter among a war-weary public.

The upside of a nation of people bummed out about new mask mandates and public health restrictions for another school year is a rising understanding of how much pandemics suck and how important it is to prevent them. With the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still in full swing, public awareness should be at a historic high. One poll, by the progressive group Data for Progress, shows that 71 percent of the public—including 60 percent of Republicans—supports a $30 billion pandemic-prevention plan recently floated by President Biden.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with senators earlier this year to discuss the infrastructure bill, which did not contain funding for the president’s pandemic prevention plan. DOUG MILLS/POOL/GETTY

The White House's plan hits the right notes. It would improve response time to develop therapeutics and vaccines, beef up the national stockpile and tighten regulations on risky lab research. But just because Biden proposed it doesn't mean Washington politicians are tripping over themselves to implement it. The bipartisan infrastructure package did not include funding for the plan, and it's not clear the $3.5 trillion spending bill that Democrats hope to pass without Republican support will include that money, either—Democrats are reportedly considering paring down funding to 20 percent of the original proposal. On this omission, Biden has so far been silent.

Having resources to regulate hazardous research may be critical. "The discussions about the Wuhan lab underscore that this is a theoretically plausible risk—that there could be a global pandemic that emerges because of work going on in a laboratory," says Dr. Hamburg. "We may never know the origins of this particular virus, but it shines a very bright light on the need to address some broader, very critical biosecurity concerns."

Former FDA Commissioner Peggy Hamburg, who says, “COVID-19 has changed the threat landscape.” ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG/GETTY

Slow Learners

Keeping the world safe from deadly pathogens isn't something the U.S. can do alone. But the top levels of the executive branch need to ride herd on the disparate departments and agencies of the federal government to prevent a crisis and respond when one occurs.

Past presidents have learned and unlearned this lesson many times. President Bill Clinton appointed a team headed by Kenneth Bernard, a medical doctor and rear admiral, to the National Security Council in 1998. Bernard's office helped coordinate the response to the HIV/AIDS crisis and was instrumental in establishing a national stockpile of vaccines against smallpox, neutralizing the smallpox virus as a potential bioweapon. But George W. Bush eliminated the office early on, only to reverse course after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when anthrax-laden envelopes started arriving in the mailboxes of prominent politicians and media organizations. A year or so later, Tom Ridge, head of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, brought Bernard back as part of a five-person White House biosecurity team.

The H1N1 influenza pandemic arrived in the early days of the Obama administration, before Kathleen Sebelius could be confirmed as head of HHS. As a result, it was criticized for being slow in developing a vaccine and for its public health messaging. The mildness of the H1N1 virus let the Obama administration off the hook.

Still, when the Ebola crisis arrived in 2014, the Obama White House was caught flat-footed. After being criticized for a slow response, Obama tapped Ron Klain, former chief of staff to vice-presidents Biden and Al Gore—and now to President Biden—to take a high-profile role coordinating the U.S. Ebola response.

A plan is vitally needed to stave off another epidemic, like Ebola (pictured), experts say. JOHN MOORE/GETTY

Klain coordinated the disparate departments and agencies of the federal government. The White House ultimately sent thousands of troops to the front line of the epidemic in West Africa to help contain the outbreak. "I was brought in not because I knew about public health or pandemics but because I had experience in making the different arms of the government work together and making them work effectively and quickly," Klain told Wired in 2015. "That really was the challenge—coordinating between the different agencies.

That lesson was codified after the crisis was over by a junior member of the White House staff named Beth Cameron, who helped draft the Obama playbook for use in future pandemics. Among its recommendations: Create a permanent pandemic office in the White House's National Security Council—a pandemic czar who would sound the alarm about a biological threat long before most White House officials, distracted by myriad day-to-day problems, would typically notice, and then wield the enormous power of the office of the president to force the vast federal bureaucracy to focus on an invisible threat and take swift action.

Obama followed this advice, appointing Admiral Timothy Ziemer, a veteran of AIDS and malaria programs in Africa. Ziemer stayed through the first half of the Trump administration only to be fired in 2018 by John Bolton, the new national security adviser. Bolton disbanded the staff and shifted responsibility for coordinating pandemic response to HSS.

When news of COVID-19 started coming in from China in early 2020, there was no pandemic czar on the White House staff to galvanize the pandemic response or point out how important it was to push China to be more forthcoming with information on the outbreak's origins. "The problem with Bolton eliminating the office was not so much that he disbanded the team but that he fired the pandemic czar," says Bernard. "If you can't advocate for an issue with the boss with a walk-in-the-office mandate, then you are, by definition, lower priority."

Ziemer insists that Bolton's reorganization made sense but allows that a pandemic czar would have helped. "Had I been there," he says, "I'd have been pounding on [chief of staff] Mick Mulvaney's desk saying I needed $8 million to fund this team."

Biden acted quickly upon taking office to correct this omission. He appointed Cameron, the author of the pandemic playbook that Bolton ignored, as head of the National Security Council Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense. Cameron is charged with establishing a U.S. center that will act as an early-warning system for disease outbreaks, reduce the time that it takes the government to respond to new biological threats and to review "the existing state of our biodefense enterprise and [determine] where gaps remain," according to a senior government official at the White House. "We must urgently prepare for and ultimately try to prevent the next pandemic by strengthening biopreparedness at home, bolstering health security in every country, and building the international pandemic architecture we need to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to emerging biological threats." (Cameron declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Biden gets high marks for his appointment of Cameron from Bernard and Ziemer. "It shows that the Biden administration gets it," Ziemer says. Gerald Epstein, a physicist who worked in national security in the Clinton administration, says "the White House has hit the ground running and has great people." He calls the Biden plan "ambitious."

The pandemic czar now faces a daunting task. She will have to find a way to effectively regulate the most risky research performed in the U.S. labs and those financed by the U.S. government, many of which take place abroad. And she will have to push to get the commitment of other nations to follow suit and to agree on international mechanisms to monitor for outbreaks and investigate them once they occur.

What to Do About Risky Lab Research

Scientists and policymakers have been issuing warnings of the risk of a pandemic starting with a lab accident for many years. The history of accidents in U.S. labs that perform research with dangerous pathogens, with poor safety practices and minimal oversight, has been well documented.

Cracking down on this research will be tricky, not least because the federal government is not in the habit of policing the work of research virologists, who in turn are understandably reluctant to be policed. For the vast majority of research, this is not a problem. For a tiny portion of research, it is—and all it takes is one incident to start a pandemic.

In recent months, the argument over whether the pandemic started with a lab leak or arose naturally from animals has taken on the characteristics of a schoolyard shouting match—two sides each insisting they're right on the basis of little or no evidence. We may never have clear evidence either way.

Settling the matter would require the discovery of compelling new information—either a genetic trail from bats to humans via some intermediate mammal—a so-called zoonotic origin—or lab notes and interviews with researchers and other employees of the Wuhan laboratories, which could happen only in the event that those records have been retained and that China chooses to cooperate, or copies of those records exist at the Wuhan lab's U.S. collaborators, funders or publishers and that the U.S. chooses to investigate. The 90-day intelligence report that President Biden has requested is not expected to reveal a smoking gun or even anything profoundly new.

A security guard stands by as WHO officials visit the Wuhan lab earlier this year. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/GETTY

What's needed are standards of biosafety for the research on pandemic viruses that could result in trouble if a lab leak occurred—not so much a ban on risky research as an effective system of regulation that would require a consideration of benefits versus risks at the outset of research, says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers and an expert in biosafety. "This would be put in place for high-consequence research—research that increases the transmissibility, or pathogenicity, or ability to overcome immune response, or ability to overcome drugs or vaccines of a pathogen," he says.

The current structure of oversight is inadequate, says Ebright, mainly because the funding agencies police themselves. After a moratorium on research that involves increasing the infectiousness or virulence of potential pandemic pathogens, in 2017 the federal government required the HHS to establish a committee to review proposals for such "gain-of-function" research to determine whether the benefits outweigh the risks. It also required the NIH and other funding agencies to flag such proposals to the committee. The committee cleared three proposals, says Ebright, after which no further proposals were flagged for review, essentially nullifying the policy.

Instead, analysts say, oversight should fall to an independent group that can assess the benefits and risks objectively. "It has to be carried out by a federal entity that does not perform research and does not fund research, with expertise in national security issues, biomedical research and formal quantitative risk-benefit assessment," says Ebright. "And it has to be carried out by an entity that is open and transparent in its membership and its proceedings."

The process would be similar to what now occurs with research involving human test subjects. If risks are found to outweigh the benefits, the research is not simply denied funding. It isn't allowed to proceed at all.

Processes are also needed to deal with the pandemic threats posed by bioterrorism—and by nature, which has shown itself perfectly capable of delivering diseases even nastier than COVID-19. For proof, one need look no farther than smallpox, which kills 30 percent of its victims. Inexpensive genetic tools have made it relatively easy and cheap to manipulate viruses like smallpox to resist vaccines, and even manufacture new viruses from scratch.

An International Response

To prevent an accidental pandemic, it's not enough to get a grip on U.S. research. The Biden administration will have to use its leadership abroad to establish international biosafety standards. It will also have to get other nations to agree to standards of behavior in a crisis, including sharing information about outbreaks and agreeing to allow international inspectors to gather information in the early days of an outbreak.

A COVID-19 patient on a ventilator in a Minneapolis hospital. AARON LAVINSKY/STAR TRIBUNE/GETTY

Cameron is well aware of the need for such agreements. Prior to her appointment in the White House, she was an organizer of an exercise held in 2019 in Munich designed to identify shortcomings in the world's biosecurity. For a few days, she and a broad range of experts from several nations held war games that focused on "deliberate high-consequence events"—in a word, biowarfare. The group wanted to assess how well the U.S. and the rest of the world would fare if, say, a terrorist group were to release a dangerous pathogen on an unprotected population.

The group started with an outbreak of a respiratory ailment in the fictional country of Vestia, riven by civil war. Medicines turn out to be ineffective against the pathogen, Yersinia pestis, a plague bacteria engineered by a terrorist group to resist known antibiotics. The outbreak spreads to Europe and the U.S. The director-general of the World Health Organization declares a public health emergency.

It's not exactly how the COVID-19 pandemic transpired a year and a half ago, but it's similar in many respects. It makes little difference whether or not SARS-CoV-2 was natural or engineered or whether it was deliberately or accidentally released. In both the tabletop scenario and the real event, the pathogen was novel, meaning the nearly 8 billion people on Earth had no immune resistance to it, and there were no known treatments or vaccines against it.

The other similarity between the game and the reality is that the world was woefully unprepared and cumbersome in its response. Having lived through the current pandemic, it's not hard to understand the reasons why: Nations are unwilling to share information and forced to cobble together an ad hoc response and governments lacked transparency and consistent messaging. One prominent obstacle the tabletop exercise didn't foresee was the hyper-politicized environment of public health measures, but two out of three ain't bad.

When the pandemic struck in late 2019 and early 2020, the international scenario played out as poorly in real life as it did on the tabletop. China snapped shut like a trap, silencing clinicians who sounded the public health alarm and destroying early samples that could have helped trace the origin of the virus. The World Health Organization, which the Trump administration had recently abandoned, was left to deal with a situation that was beyond its capacities and its mission.

What the world needed at that moment was a "joint assessment mechanism to investigate high-consequence biological events of unknown origin," says Jaime Yassif, a senior fellow for global biological policy and programs at NTI, who worked for Cameron at the time. That would be an independent agency of the United Nations similar to the International Atomic Energy Commission, which oversees agreements on nuclear proliferation, including supplying inspectors to police the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Had China, the U.S. and other nations put such a group in place prior to early 2020, a team of investigators with the ability to explore the "naturally emerging" and "lab accident" hypotheses would have been at the ready, along with international agreements and protocols to smooth their way in gathering information, working with a network of labs to evaluate samples and conduct a thorough investigation. They might have explored, in a scientific, evidence-based way, all the open questions about origins. The U.S. would have had a way of rapidly deploying an investigative team to get more reliable information about the origins and try to understand the cause.

As it was, the void was filled by the WHO, whose mission is to investigate natural outbreaks. Any notion that the WHO was equipped to investigate the possibility of a lab leak is belied by the fact that it took a year to send a team of investigators, who came to the dubious conclusion that no further investigation into the lab-leak theory was warranted—a claim later contradicted by the U.N. Secretary-General.

Had the outbreak clearly been a biological attack or other deliberate misuse of biological agents, the responsibility for investigating could have fallen to the Secretary-General, under the auspices of the bioweapons convention. Because the origin of the outbreak was ambiguous, it fell through the cracks.

With no responsible organization in place to take action at the moment of crisis, a yawning information gap opened up. It was quickly filled with finger pointing, racism and conspiracy mongering, particularly in public exchanges between the U.S. and China. "If we had had a mechanism in place," says Yassif, "perhaps we could have avoided a lot of the uncertainty and politicization of this question, and perhaps we could have gotten a higher confidence assessment of the origins early on."

That assessment, of course, is hypothetical: There's no guarantee China, even were it to sign on to such a mechanism, would honor it at the moment of crisis. But even so, it would have had to commit a clear violation of a standard of behavior that it had agreed to. The fact of noncompliance would itself have been useful information.

Now that the world has seen what havoc can result from a nasty bug, says Yassif, "they may be more interested now than they were in the past of exploring the prospect of using biological weapons to advance their strategic or tactical aims. It's getting easier and easier for malicious actors to theoretically carry out a biological attack deliberately. COVID has highlighted these risks and may even have exacerbated them."

A Question of Leadership

To have a chance at getting all this done, the pandemic czar has to have a laser-focus on the issue of pandemic preparedness as well as the full support of the president of the United States. The key question is, will Cameron get the support she needs to shake up the administration?

The role of a pandemic czar is as much about national security and policy as it is about science. Questions about closing schools and airports, implementing mask mandates and closing businesses are political decisions that can only be made by somebody who has the ear of the president, as Ron Klain did during the Ebola crisis. It's not clear, says Bernard, that Cameron has that kind of authority.

"Before they named Klain during Ebola, it was a disaster," recalls Bernard. "Our response was disjointed and stovepiped. Defense wasn't talking to Health and Human Services. USAID was arguing with CDC. It was a mess—and then Ron came in and pulled everybody together. That's what's needed. That's what's missing even today at the White House."

Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who won high marks for overseeing the Obama administration response to the Ebola crisis in 2014. RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY

The task requires a leader who can act in the president's name and get senior people from all departments of governing to come to the table. The lack of clear authority has hampered pandemic responses not just during COVID-19 but in other outbreaks as well. A pandemic response requires high-level-policy meetings with the Defense Department, State Department, Health and Human Services, USAID, the Treasury and Commerce.

"They all have to be in the room because if they're not, you miss something because they're all interrelated when it comes to a global pandemic," says Bernard.

Cameron's rank in the White House is Special Assistant to the President. This sounds impressive, but it's lower in the hierarchy than Press Secretary or National Security Adviser, who are Assistants, and lower than Deputy Assistants. Bernard says it is "not senior enough for running a U.S. government-wide process."

The highest ranking science adviser in the White House is not Cameron but Eric Lander, the first science adviser to hold cabinet rank. Lander has a reputation as a brilliant scientist and administrator and has assembled a highly-regarded staff. As the former head of the Broad Institute in Boston, Lander knows as much as anybody about the science and is known to be pushing for better oversight of research on risky pathogens. But as head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, his responsibility is far broader than preparing for the next pandemic, which means he lacks the single-minded focus a pandemic czar needs.

Eric Lander, being sworn in last June as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, making him the administration���s highest ranking science adviser. ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY

Even if Cameron gets the full backing of Biden, Ziemer worries that COVID-19 has been so politicized that it will be difficult for the Biden administration to get anything done. "The current government bureaucracy, the inability to move money quickly in response to a changing landscape, will keep the government handicapped on where we need to go in the next five years," he says. "We need to depoliticize COVID and have an adult discussion about how to plan, fund and remain agile in preparation for the next pandemic."

So far, Biden has taken few steps to address the next pandemic. He made public statements calling China to task for its lack of transparency over the origins of the virus. He signed an executive order to create a center for epidemic forecasting and outbreak analytics that would track viruses and watch for early signs of an outbreak in the U.S. And Cameron is reaching out to other governments to talk about cooperation.

If history is any guide, now is the moment of maximum political will to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic.

The failure of the U.S. government, and those of other nations, to prepare for the possibility of a sudden, catastrophic pandemic—something scientists had warned about for years before the coronavirus struck—arguably cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars in lost wages and ruined livelihoods, and immense human suffering. It would be unthinkable to allow that to happen again.