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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)

#101

Post by yingw787 »

favorited wrote: post #83
yingw787 wrote: post #27

So, going beyond the depressing, I think one good thing that will come out of all this since this situation isn't experienced in any of our lifetimes (including our elders) we have to reach back to history to find comparisons. Maybe this will spark a curiosity in history! There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube; I particularly like "The Armchair Historian".

An historian on Twitter suggested people should keep journals of how COVID-19 affects their everyday lives. I've been doing it as a method of self-reflection, and found it really valuable. I end up not just enumerating the changes to my life, but exploring how I am responding to them, trying to describe how they're affecting me emotionally, etc. It's just for me, so I don't worry about missing days or being dramatic,…

I'm doing something similar too! Morning / afternoon / evening pages on my personal blog: https://blog.yingw787.com

I don't think I've ever shared my personal blog before, it's my personal scratchpad as opposed to my professional content on Bytes by Ying, but if it helps people understand how one rando on the Internet processes emotions during this time, maybe I can do some good.

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

#102

Post by aaron_m04 »

bobbydroptables wrote: post #82
aaron_m04 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not give racists any opportunities here. Calling it China virus or similar does exactly that, while confusing people with yet another name for this virus. The Chinese government needs to be called out, but specifically and unambiguously the government.

The government can only do so much to change culture, though, right? It needs to be made unambiguously clear that you do not eat or recreationally touch bat or pangolin. Government needs to outlaw it yes, and culture also need to shun it. As another example the Chinese slaughter of endangered species and sharks is a failure of both government and culture. I'm not sure there is a totally PC way to express that. All of…

Yes, that's true. There is a cultural element that is to blame as well. My point is that the term "China virus" is not the right way to place blame where blame is due. There will be a lot of collateral damage if it becomes popular.

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

#103

Post by robocat »

yingw787 wrote: post #27

So, going beyond the depressing, I think one good thing that will come out of all this since this situation isn't experienced in any of our lifetimes (including our elders) we have to reach back to history to find comparisons. Maybe this will spark a curiosity in history! There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube; I particularly like "The Armchair Historian".

> There's a number of really great history channels on YouTube

I really rate Drunk History (I generally don’t like Hollywood humour, nor American history, but somehow it is done brilliantly and is super informative).

Typhoid Mary episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12wh0lfHb2U

PS: Typhoid is a bacterial infection, so only somewhat relevant.

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

#104

Post by stevula »

daotoad wrote: post #95

Just a usage note for grammar/spelling obsessed. Is the usage of till correct? Yes it is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%27til

Indeed. “Until” is originally a compound of “till” (prefixed), so “till” came first.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/until

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

#105

Post by at_a_remove »

ceejayoz wrote: post #93
at_a_remove wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why the timing to rename it? Why now? I am asking that because you did not address it in my original comment, so I am going to harp on it again. Why now ?

Why not ? It was a global pandemic that didn't even start in Spain. We happen to be paying a lot of attention to it because it's the last really global pandemic of similar severity/spread to the COVID-19 outbreak. The increased attention to this little bit of history has us asking whether we should correct the inaccuracy in its name. Even the CDC calls it the "1918 flu pandemic". https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-reso…

That isn't what I was asking. I asked, why now. What about this instance in time has prompted this? Also, I was talking about Wikipedia. Please do not move the goalposts on me.

I guess the Socratic method isn't going to work here.

Bluntly put, some folks are full Ministry-of-Truthing away at Wikipedia to help justify their attempts at erasure of the "Wuhan flu," China connection. That's why it is happening now. "See, we don't call it the 'Spanish flu,' so why should we call it ..."

It's terribly skeezy.

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

#106

Post by favorited »

ceejayoz wrote: post #90
favorited wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, we do still name individual species of ebola by where breakouts were discovered. Ebola Zaire & ebola Sudan were the first species identified after their respective outbreaks. There's even ebola Reston, because of a breakout in Reston, VA. Reston infects humans (we develop antibodies), but does not cause Ebola virus disease in us.

All of these predate the policy change. https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-has-a-name-the-deadl... > In 2015, after a few decades of what came to seem in hindsight like culturally insensitive missteps, the World Health Organization issued a policy statement on how to name emerging infectious diseases. Part of the point was to help scientists generate names before the public does it for them. So there are rules.…

Correct, I was speaking more in the context of Ebolavirus itself. As you pointed out, Johnson suggested naming it after the river in the 70s – but every Ebola species named (the last one in the early 2010s) still had a local name attached.

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

#107

Post by cardiffspaceman »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #99
ceejayoz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And to be frank, if this virus was in fact generated by the markets in Wuhan (like so many other flu viruses over the years?) then maybe they should own it. The US currently has the worst infection curve and the most cases, despite months to prepare. Should it be called the American virus because of our fuckups here? (No.)

Red herring? Flu viruses are created by irresponsible livestock management, costing billions in lost work every year. Now, possibly millions of lives. All avoidable at the source, and well-know for decades.

Call them carnivore viruses?

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

#108

Post by ceejayoz »

at_a_remove wrote: post #105
ceejayoz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not ? It was a global pandemic that didn't even start in Spain. We happen to be paying a lot of attention to it because it's the last really global pandemic of similar severity/spread to the COVID-19 outbreak. The increased attention to this little bit of history has us asking whether we should correct the inaccuracy in its name. Even the CDC calls it the "1918 flu pandemic". https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-reso…

That isn't what I was asking. I asked, why now . What about this instance in time has prompted this? Also, I was talking about Wikipedia. Please do not move the goalposts on me. I guess the Socratic method isn't going to work here. Bluntly put, some folks are full Ministry-of-Truthing away at Wikipedia to help justify their attempts at erasure of the "Wuhan flu," China connection. That's why it is happening now. "See…

You’re reading a lot of malice into “let’s call it what the CDC called it two years before all this”.

The timeline doesn’t work.

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

#110

Post by holler »

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 ?

There's a hypothesis that the Spanish Flu originated in China and was brought to North America with the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

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