Manic of a panic is geopolitical

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kriesel

It takes a very virulent kind of stupid stubborn irrationality to take the position that "leader' did.

There's been a lot of it going around. The Chinese have also been peddling the nonsense that the US Army brought the virus to China.

In response, the Administration has taken to calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," which is irritating the Chinese no end.

The "Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilize Muslims" insanity has kept that disease going for decades in areas where it could be stopped.

It probably qualifies as ancient history now, but not long after the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami, I read an account by one of our diplomats of his having had to spend hours explaining to the authorities in Turkey (IIRC) that, no, the US had not caused the earthquake.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Prime95

IMO, cold, maybe wrong, but not horrifying. ...
What is the right balance? I think that is an unanswerable question.

It comes down to what are the tradeoffs, and what are the values in the moral and ethical sense. There have been some small attempts to determine the outcomes in different scenarios, and thereby the tradeoffs, of disruption and cost versus lives. (College of London study)

There is little agreement about what the values ought be. You can see that, in this thread, where Johnson's or any sober rational or blunt statement about it is objectionable, and horrifying to some, or mention as a point of comparison germane to this discussion, of how our society accepts in case law deliberate elevation by nearly 20% fatality rate, of the mortality of the very young, is discouraged here, diverted to a distant corner of the forum.
If you believe your own survival and that of others you care about is important, it's important we're able and allowed to be honest about the details.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by LaurV

This reminds me of ~35 years ago when they didn't want to host the paralympics olympic games because "What? We have no disabled people in Russia!"

Ha! That reminds me of the myth of the Red Army's soldiers all having perfect vision.

And it's true that you could watch them marching by during, say, a May Day parade, and not a single one of them was wearing glasses.

But perfect vision? Er, no. None of them were wearing glasses because glasses were not available! This circumstance was also largely responsible for the fact that radial keratotomy was invented in the Soviet Union.

Around Thanksgiving one year during the first term of the Reagan Administration, Ed Meese (I don't remember whether he was yet AG) made the observation that there were no hungry people in America. In response, one cartoonist portrayed Ed Meese and another man bundled up in winter coats, looking at a thin figure of a man in threadbare clothes, huddled over a grate. The other man is saying, "No, Mr. Meese, he's not hungry. He's dead."

EDIT: Meanwhile, back at Ranch COVID-19 (nominally the subject of this thread), I've already posted a selection of our own Great Leader's attempts to happy talk the virus out of existence.

In more recent days, he has been touting chloroquine as a magic cure.

Yet, despite promising test tube results, Dr. Fauci stubbornly insists on testing this drug, used to treat malaria, on Coronavirus patients to see whether it's safe and effective before approving its off-label use for this disease.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

There's been a lot of it going around. The Chinese have also been peddling the nonsense that the US Army brought the virus to China.

In response, the Administration has taken to calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus," which is irritating the Chinese no end.

Indeed.
Even though it's been customary for a very long time to name such things for where they're first identified. Lyme disease, Ebola, etc. Calling it Wuhan SARS2 is accurate. The Chines have good reason to be defensive, having botched the early response, and either through culture or leakage from their BSL4 lab, created the problem in the first place. They also gave us SARS, MERS, and swine flu repeatedly. Will they ever address the underlying issues that breed new pathogens like clockwork?

There seems to be a steady supply of ignorance in leadership, "Idiocracy" style. The dolts out-reproduce the bright. Dunning-Kruger gives the woefully incompetent, ignorance of their own ignorance, and thereby unjustified confidence, while competence supports reason for questions and doubts.
Maybe this is the answer to Fermi's paradox; intelligent life is self-limiting.
I sometimes regard the question of intelligent life anywhere in the universe including earth as unsettled.

Long ago I took an optomechanical design course. The instructor, from Arizona State's prominent optics lab, had a tale about a US general who thought that since a huge glass optic was made of transparent material, it ought to be as low weight as an equal volume of air! Part of the instructor's course notes, subsequently published as a book, included an illustration of a supercharged V8 engine, to convey the amount of mechanical power required to maneuver that optic at the acceleration rates an early version of the space defense initiative ("Star Wars") specifications would have required. Pretty tough to operate an internal combustion engine like that in orbit.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

It's pretty easy to think of solutions to all of these problems, but fortunately I wouldn't even need to do that considering that it's already been done.

Yet there is no toilet paper to be found in the last 3 retail stores I visited. Other household supplies such as cleaning supplies are lightly stocked. Test kits for the Wuhan SARS2 virus in human patients are in short supply and so are the reagents with which the next millions of them would be built and processed. Test kits for the epidemic after that are not designed yet, since the next epidemic's pathogen has not been identified yet. Ventilators and hospital beds and gowns and masks ...
Nobody wanted China's latest export, but here we are. And we can anticipate the probability of more such pestilence, originating from China in the future, at least until parts of its culture are changed.

[kladner]

More from the Contemptible Scumbag Department:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...navirus-crisis

Using power and privilege to exploit the weak and vulnerable in the face of a common threat is morally repugnant. Call it ‘Burring’ after Richard Burr’s stock sell-off.

Societies gripped by a cataclysmic wars, depressions, or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to power and privilege.

Weeks before the coronavirus virus crushed the US stock market, Republican senator Richard Burr apparently used information he gleaned from his role as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee about the ferocity of the coming pandemic to unload 33 stocks held by him and his spouse. They were estimated at being worth between $628,033 and $1.72m , in some industries likely to be hardest hit by the global outbreak.

While publicly parroting Trump’s happy talk at the time, Burr confided to several of his political funders that the disease would be comparable to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic.

Then the market tanked, along with the retirement savings of millions of Americans.

Even some pundits on Fox News are now calling for Burr’s resignation.

When society faces a common threat, exploiting a special advantage is morally repugnant. Call it “Burring.” However tolerable Burring may be in normal times, it isn’t now.

[Till]

Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


Btw. the worldometer corona pages update faster than John Hopkins, great site I think.

[retina]

Originally Posted by Till

Is it that New York takes testing much more serious than other US states, or do they really have so many more cases?

I think that question is a good illustration of how meaningless the current figures are. The values we have now can't answer that sort of question.

Wait until there has been testing of everyone, or a proper randomised proportion of everyone. Then the figures will mean something.

[kriesel]

"According to an announcement from the school on Saturday, the five students were traveling together with other UT students during spring break. One of the students did not return to campus after their trip and the other three returned to campus, according to UT." https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/c...or-coronavirus

[LaurV]

Take the electronic engineer's advice here, related to coronavirus:
"Better insulated than grounded."

(sent by a friend, haha)

[Till]

Originally Posted by retina

I think that question is a good illustration of how meaningless the current figures are. The values we have now can't answer that sort of question.

Wait until there has been testing of everyone, or a proper randomised proportion of everyone. Then the figures will mean something.

Actually I question all the numbers. First and mainly because I think that in many places, testing capacities are too limited. Second thought is that the will to show up "bad numbers" is limited; just think of forthcoming elections.