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God be with you till we meet again (1918)

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Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#51

Post by gjm11 »

draw_down wrote: post #22

Outrageous that they called it the Spanish flu- as we all now know, it is an act of violence to name a viral outbreak after a place.

Your meaning is presumably the opposite of what you say: that since the 1918 influenza was and is commonly called "the Spanish flu", it's unreasonable to complain at certain politicians calling the current pandemic something like "the Chinese virus".

I agree with the analogy, but I think it goes the other way.

The "Spanish flu" was, so far as anyone can tell, not originally from Spain, nor was it especially bad there. It got called "the Spanish flu" because Spain was more honest than other countries about how much of it they had (there was a lot of deception going around on account of there being a war). And a hundred years later it's still being called "the Spanish flu" as if Spain were somehow to blame for it.

That's a really bad outcome.

(Obviously, its badness pales in comparison with the badness of the thing itself and the suffering and death it caused. But, as merely terminological things go, it's really bad.)

It would be much better if everyone didn't call the 1918 influenza "the Spanish flu", but obviously it's too late for that now. And it would be much better if we didn't spend the next century calling today's pandemic "the Chinese virus". The Chinese have handled it better than a lot of other countries, after all.

(It's slightly less unreasonable to call this one "the Chinese virus" than to call the 1918 one "the Spanish flu", because it does seem as if it did in fact originate in China, and an initial bad response by the Chinese authorities may be one reason why it wasn't better contained. I still don't think it's a name China should be saddled with for the next hundred years.)

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#53

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gjm11 wrote: post #51
draw_down wrote: post #22

Outrageous that they called it the Spanish flu- as we all now know, it is an act of violence to name a viral outbreak after a place.

Your meaning is presumably the opposite of what you say: that since the 1918 influenza was and is commonly called "the Spanish flu", it's unreasonable to complain at certain politicians calling the current pandemic something like "the Chinese virus". I agree with the analogy, but I think it goes the other way. The "Spanish flu" was, so far as anyone can tell, not originally from Spain, nor was it especially bad there…

Yet we call Ebola that name, because of a place. Lyme disease, same thing. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever - obviously.\

This isn't some condemnation of the place, and its pretty silly to think of it that way. Doctors go to pains to have diseases named after themselves, proudly.

Folks are over-thinking this.

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#54

Post by twomoretime »

SCHiM wrote: post #39
whatshisface wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most evenhanded answer would be to use the correct names (SARS-CoV-2 for the virus, Sars 2 for short, COVID-19 for the disease, Covid for short) while freely reminding people that China's initial cover-up was a necessary condition for the present global crisis.

While I think that's a valid point to make. My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response in the total state space. Hindsight and all that. I think a much more powerful complaint is pointing out that, despite numerous warnings, studies, SARS, and having successfully isolated the root cause of the SARS…

>My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response

You can fault an authoritarian, oppressive regime for covering up the virus and suppressing whistleblowers. Now the world is paying for the CCP's SOP.

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#55

Post by CaptArmchair »

i_am_new_here wrote: post #44
Merrill wrote: post #34

> It is salutary to remember that we do not really understand why the devastating pandemic of 1918-19 was so severe, and that we cannot therefore be confident that our modern medical measures would succeed against a similar future challenge. From the introduction to the letter in the British Medical Journal published 1979. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599810/pdf/brm... This still seems to be the case…

Could it be that very dangerous viruses emerge more often, but only when they fall on "(very) fertile ground", that they then spread? The WW1-circumstances (a lot of men together on small space and harsh conditions) have contributed a lot, that the "spanish flu" spread, while others did not spread and so never became known to us ?

Here's a study that exactly goes into your question:

https://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/epi/oxford05.pdf

The conclusion of that article is that the basic lessons we learn today, were - in part - learned in 1918...

Back then, researchers had already traced the emergence of outbreaks to an encampment in France where men and animals were living in close quarters and unsanitary conditions.

As to the first part of your question, the answer is that more people encroaching on the animal and wildlife territory while not adhering to basic sanitary practices will increase the chance of new strains appearing and making the jump to humans.

Vox did an excellent video on how this works for Corona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54

Such events do not only happen in China in particular but they can happen virtually anywhere in the world.

Another ongoing pandemic is HIV/AIDS. Well, it is generally accepted that the jump to humans occurred in West-Africa in the 1920's. But it took time and globalization - increasing mobility - before HIV finally spread across the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#56

Post by at_a_remove »

Waterluvian wrote: post #30
Tade0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well this approach is going to survive the current pandemic? I mean, is it me, or the amount of posts calling to get someone cancelled subsided?

The canary I'm watching is the whole "Chinese" or "Wuhan" vs. "COVID" virus naming issue. I think it is very clearly not the right time to point fingers. But when this is all past us, a post-mortem and finger pointing is probably warranted. I don't think we need to resort to name calling, but I'm curious to see how much people bend over backwards to absolve China of responsibility.

Amusingly, if you look at the talk section [1] of the Wikipedia article on the Spanish flu, some folks really (suddenly, recently, completely by coincidence) want to call it the 1918 flu.

There's no con job like a retcon job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spanish_flu

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#57

Post by throwaway894345 »

SCHiM wrote: post #39
whatshisface wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most evenhanded answer would be to use the correct names (SARS-CoV-2 for the virus, Sars 2 for short, COVID-19 for the disease, Covid for short) while freely reminding people that China's initial cover-up was a necessary condition for the present global crisis.

While I think that's a valid point to make. My perspective on that is that, given contradicting reports and initial confusion, you can't fault any organization or person not picking out the correct response in the total state space. Hindsight and all that. I think a much more powerful complaint is pointing out that, despite numerous warnings, studies, SARS, and having successfully isolated the root cause of the SARS…

As an American, I was really disappointed in the CDC response. Even in the initial confusion, it's their fundamental job to prepare for and monitor these crises. Despite SARS and MURS, they still weren't prepared on a basic level to confront a respiratory disease (no meaningful stockpile of N95 masks or ventilators nor plans for ramping up production of the same) and then the whole debacle with the CDC vs WHO tests. The experts seem to be saying that tests are the most important aspect of the response and we botched that royally; only recently has our testing capacity begun to trend toward adequate (failing to address this sooner means the loss of life is exponentially greater). Note that these failures are independent of whatever initial confusion there may have been about this particular disease.

And I don't think this is a simple case of hindsight: we've had several respiratory epidemics in the last couple of decades and we were still caught unprepared.

I'm no expert and perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for all of this, but I suspect it was really negligence to the tune of thousands of American lives and who knows how much economic damage.

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#58

Post by rootusrootus »

gowld wrote: post #40
Waterluvian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The canary I'm watching is the whole "Chinese" or "Wuhan" vs. "COVID" virus naming issue. I think it is very clearly not the right time to point fingers. But when this is all past us, a post-mortem and finger pointing is probably warranted. I don't think we need to resort to name calling, but I'm curious to see how much people bend over backwards to absolve China of responsibility.

On our priority list, containing the virus is way higher than making sure China takes responsibility (how is this even a debate?), but the US Executive branch leader (and everyone who follows that lead) has a major priority inversion.

The virus will be contained at some point, and then we can talk about responsibility. If China's policy on wildlife led to this pandemic, then they absolutely deserve to be shamed into changing their policies (permanently this time). They knew better.

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

at_a_remove wrote: post #56
Waterluvian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The canary I'm watching is the whole "Chinese" or "Wuhan" vs. "COVID" virus naming issue. I think it is very clearly not the right time to point fingers. But when this is all past us, a post-mortem and finger pointing is probably warranted. I don't think we need to resort to name calling, but I'm curious to see how much people bend over backwards to absolve China of responsibility.

Amusingly, if you look at the talk section [1] of the Wikipedia article on the Spanish flu, some folks really (suddenly, recently, completely by coincidence) want to call it the 1918 flu. There's no con job like a retcon job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spanish_flu

Seems fair enough:

> To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit. This gave rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish flu". Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin, with varying views as to the origin.

It's not like we call syphilis "French pox" any more.

Re: God be with you till we meet again (1918)

#60

Post by ceejayoz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #58
gowld wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On our priority list, containing the virus is way higher than making sure China takes responsibility (how is this even a debate?), but the US Executive branch leader (and everyone who follows that lead) has a major priority inversion.

The virus will be contained at some point, and then we can talk about responsibility. If China's policy on wildlife led to this pandemic, then they absolutely deserve to be shamed into changing their policies (permanently this time). They knew better.

Sure, but that shouldn't be used to dodge responsibility in other areas, like the abysmally slow response in many countries including the USA.
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