If there’s anything the current debacles in Europe and the U.S. has taught us, it’s that selfish and/or irrational jerks abound, and asking nicely doesn’t work at all.
Maybe it takes time to adjust after they were told for weeks it was a hoax? You're blaming the wrong people.
The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
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Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#92South Korea has virtually no new active cases daily, only 100 deaths after 4 months of exposure and hasn't brought in any laws even close the authoritarian stuff that is going on elsewhere across the planet in the name of covid-19/sars-cov-2 Buyer beware. Undoing laws and measures is a lot harder than enacting them in a "crisis". "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deser…
People always quote that Franklin thing but please remember that was wartime propaganda. Franklin himself was later heavily involved in creating the United States Constitution and governments are essentially trade offs between safety and liberty so it's clear he wasn't an absolutist.
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see you're being downvoted, but I don't sense any malice in your post. You're also not incorrect in your assessment, but your scope is a bit limited. There are far more than just undocumented immigrants who can't afford to stay home and will have to do whatever they can do to keep life going for themselves. This is true everywhere, not just the US. The last to comply won't be holding out due to malice or ignorance,…
But the OP is misguided and targeting a beaten down population. What difference does it make if you’re making $7.25/hr as a natural born citizen or an undocumented immigrant? Either way this thing is hurting you hard, and people are going to act like people. It’s really, really misinformed to think that undocumented immigrants are the only ones suffering, and that “good natural born Americans” can all afford to sit i…
One difference is that the government is planning to give money to citizens, but not to undocumented immigrants.
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#94There is one harsh reality I see in all this: World screwed itself by being over reliant on China. At least Canada did. Big time. Big percentage of things here in Canada is 'Made in China' - yup, you name it -- Masks, gloves, and items such as syringes, etc. heck even plastic cutlery and tooth brushes are made in China.
Now that Chinese economy got shutdown and people in Canada went into panic mode, we have severely decimated supply of essential items such as hand sanitizers, masks, gloves, etc even for the health workers!
I know this pandemic nor future pandemic/wars would change anything because humans are just collateral (and sometimes even treated as adversary) for the mega corporations, but my wish is each Country (or atleast Geographical region) learn to become self sufficient when it comes to making items such as Clothing, medical and sanitary supplies, etc. This may mean that in places like the West where Corporations have to hire local workers at higher cost to produce the same clothing items being produced by $1/hr workers in Bangladesh, but so be it -- in times of emergency, you need local production of items to save you.
No need to put so much reliance on countries like China (manufacturing, assembly, electronics, clothing, plastics), Germany (Manufacturing, machinery), South Korea (Electronics, appliances), India (textile, assembly), Mexico (assembly) and Bangladesh (textile).
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#95I find it incredibly hard to believe that China has stopped community spread within the country - I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’re getting PRC propaganda when we hear about “all new cases we’re imported”.
Right. You cannot stop this virus unless you somehow tag who is "clean" and who is "infected" I.e. a solution to this issue would require: 1) Massive testing of everyone. This can be done via a mobile lab or "at home" kit. 2) Issue a clean certificate 3) Division of all areas to "clean" (you can prove that you have been tested) and "infected". For example, you can board a flight or a train only if you are "clean". In…
Wait, what, just right?
First we laughed at China, downplayed it, now we ignore them again? (And if not China, why not look more at Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, there seem to be ways to keep the load for the health system reasonable enough .. but what I also miss too much is how we go forward, not just flatten the curve, but also rump up hospitals, and masks for everyone, and what else it takes to get into some reasonable state as before).
Just translating http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a089a4d9 from someone who claims to be China insider via his wife:
The reason why China thinks it can lower its shutdown is because they believe they control it now well enough. What is not clear to us in the West is how draconian but efficient they did the lockdown and quarantine:
- Immediate true and complete lockdown of whole China. They do not agree what we understand as lockdown in Italy and other European countries.
- In Shandong (80.000.000 inhabitants) they started tracking by licenses plates, train tickets and mobile phones all 70.000 persons that were in Wuhan and sent them to quarantine. That is like if Germany would have sent anyone who was in Italy on vacation into quarantine start of February.
- Every known infected case had 5 people working on it that via big data, tracking and interviews identified every contact person and put these into quarantine.
- As there was an infection case in a block, the whole house (30 flats) came for 14 days into quarantine into a hotel, they disinfected the whole house, and everyone else in the block (500 flats) were fever checked daily by security.
- Patrols in Wuhan arrested everyone breaking quarantine.
- Fever checking at every checkpoint.
But there was not only force, they are getting daily SMS to their chinese SIM:
- current state of epdemics
- state of food stocks of the province and there is no reason to hamster
- inform that all health costs due to corona will be paid
- how many face masks are produced each day
- that any price gouging is strictly forbidden, with a hotline you can call to report violations
- and general tips for behaviour
They partly paid people also a month wage if they went into hospital for testing/reporting their corona. What we don't understand in Europe is that Chinese government looked at Wuhan for few weeks and then decided that the cheapest way out of this will be this dramatic complete lockdown. Everyone travelling into China btw must go into 2 weeks quarantine. Thus they feel safe from a second big outbreak wave.
--
Let's see if that works (keep in mind everyone there is wearing masks, while not perfect, they likely have a huge impact on reproduction coefficient on large scale).
I believe we should have learned much earlier when everyone was reporting that they e.g. build a hospital ultra quick, and then sent everything into complete lockdown, that they maybe had known what they have at their hands.
By doing our small steps, and also not having massive testing and good behaviour available like South Korea, I'm afraid, it will just take longer for us and the pain will be much larger. In Italy it already is :(
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#96I do not believe the US nor any of its states have made it a goal to stop the virus. Please give me links if this is wrong. Everything I have seen from government sources talks about "flatten the curve" or "slow the spread" or similar. The end result of any flatten the curve effort is 40-80% of the population is infected until the combination of herd immunity and social distancing stops the spread. Please can anyone…
There's more to the world than the US. Quite a few Asian states are aiming for zero, and so are some subnational entities like Tasmania in Australia.
We may well end up in a world where corona-free islands float in a sea of infection:
https://gyrovague.com/2020/03/20/islands-in-the-sea-a-simple...
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. Maybe because of the second sentence? Mutation is a very real problem. After all flu goes through it all the time. That is the main reason why we get flu regularly. Second reason is that the immunity may be temporary.
So how do you fight mutation? By avoiding further spread of the virus. So really, this "danger of mutation" talk does not add anything to the discussion. In fact, it could equally well happen that the virus mutates to something less lethal.
I disagree that the danger of mutation does not add anything to the conversation. If it is real, then it just shows how important it is to act now swiftly and to not rely on developing herd immunity.
And you are right, mutations can go both ways.
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#98If there’s anything the current debacles in Europe and the U.S. has taught us, it’s that selfish and/or irrational jerks abound, and asking nicely doesn’t work at all.
This. I'm terrified by the number of utter idiots violating the restrictions and putting so many vulnerable people at risk. Or those people recorded while spreading their spit all over a train cart. Where is this coming from? What is those people's end game? It can't be due to stupidity; there must be some malice in this behaviour as well, right?
This is classic attention seeking behavior by people who have suffered trauma (neglect, physical/emotional abuse, etc) themselves. Their brain is wired differently than a "normal" brain due to the trauma.
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#99Mass testing, and quarantine is very simple. Tell me why what some countries in Africa managed to do to reverse trends in their countries early, cannot be done in the West. Instead, the West went to listen to bizarre "management" theories, over something clear, and obvious.
Did you mean Asia? The jury is still very much out on Africa, but it's not looking great at the moment:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236760-we-dont-know-wh...
Re: The Virus Can Be Stopped, but Only with Harsh Steps, Experts Say
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wait until the virus mutates. Then things will really be fun.
I don’t know why you were downvoted. Maybe because of the second sentence? Mutation is a very real problem. After all flu goes through it all the time. That is the main reason why we get flu regularly. Second reason is that the immunity may be temporary.
What we understand under "mutation" consists of 2 basic facts:
* During replication of cells, DNA changes happen by accident and random chance. This yields random new traits. * A random trait might be useful to survival and reproduction, or it might be a hindrance. Maybe a trait that was once beneficial becomes a hindrance when the environment in which an organism lives shifts (i.e. higher Ph values of a pond of water will cause a shift in which bacteria will thrive, and which won't)
Regardless of what you do, you can't stop mutation as long as cells are living and replicating. You don't control the appearance of traits directly as replication is basically a roll of the dice. (Technically, you can through genetic engineering, but we're talking about what happens outside the lab).
Finally, viruses are arguably life. They are envelopes with genetic material. They aren't a hive mind following a conscious strategy. Their emergent behavior is dictated by the traits they happen to have, and a gazillion environmental factors. Nothing else.
So, when we say "The virus is spreading", we are really saying "More people are infected and infecting others as well." a virus doesn't willfully jump between hosts.
Lethality isn't a good trait either. The goal of a virus is to spread genetic material, killing its host is an inadvertent second order effect of replication. Viruses that are inadvertently too lethal will run out of hosts rather quickly.
This SARS-Cov2 is a perfect storm because (a) of the properties of the virus itself - very contagious in 1-1 contact, low lethality, it's entirely new - and (b) because of environmental circumstances: 7.75 billion available hosts and globalisation / massive mobility.
While we don't control mutation, the best case scenario is that quarantines, lockdown and eventual treatments will subdue that people keep spreading this strain. But replication might yield other traits and less harmful cousins of this virus might spread instead.
(edit: lest we forget, homo sapiens sapiens is the net result of many mutations over the course of millions of years. So, beware of inadvertent value attribution!)