71–80 of 120 posts
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Ebola is actually named that to avoid naming it after a specific village, to reduce the stigma. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22704633 Lyme disease was around in humans long before its identification in Old Lyme, CT, so it too is an inaccurate name. (We've also learned a few things since the 1970s, let alone 1918. Now, we have a standard: https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadl... )
Marburg.
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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.…
There was a stockpile, but it was allowed to be depleted. There was a pandemic response team, but they got laid off. Hell, the Obama-Trump transition teams even wargamed this exact scenario but it wasn't taken seriously.
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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.
No one has any issues saying that the US bungled the early stages of response for coronavirus.
The Spanish flu from Kansas.
There was a respiratory disease outbreak in China in 1917 that had symptoms identical to the Spanish Flu.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...
The Spanish flu from Kansas.
I wonder if, like with the 1918 pandemic, we'll find later that the first cases were somewhere other than China, but that place was better at keeping it under wraps.
2. China is probably the country best equipped at "keeping it under wraps".
3. There's many reports and tweets of it outbreaking in early December and the CPC covering it up for over a month.
Mid January they were still saying it wasn't transmissible and refused to shut down the market. They let at least 5 million come and leave the city.
They let a doctor die from it that blew the whistle on them.
Then they tried to blame it on US troops.
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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.
The Chinese government needs to be called out, but specifically and unambiguously the government.
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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 f…
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"Marburg virus was first described in 1967."
And shall we rename it?
There are two separate issues here: Place-based names cause a stigma (an issue for new diseases, less so for historical ones) and that "Spanish flu" is actually completely wrong on the origins of that specific disease.
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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 f…
I demand we stop naming hurricanes after people. I don't know how to handle a reality where my first name is associated with a bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retired_Atlantic_hurri...