Death Is A (Corona)Virus

[sealchan]

As we are encountering the latest probable pandemic with the spread of the new coronavirus many questions have been raised in my mind but especially whether the visibility and consequent (perhaps skewed) publicity of a newly discovered flu-like virus is creating more hype than it would were it anonymous.

To what extent is this recent scare actually anything different than what has always happened? Have the ability of international cooperative organizations to detect, report and broadcast knowledge of a new strain of flu/virus lead to unprecendented awareness in global human civilization that these things happen? Are we now putting a name to an avatar of Death who we can now see, identify and warn about in one of its evolutionarily generated manifestation and consequently creating an excess of anxiety? Have we not survived readily for centuries carrying about our business amidst what has always occurred but in our ignorance has gone unidentified as such?

Understandably I appreciate that governments and hospitals and citizens do respond to such things but I have to wonder what the statistics show for people who have died from other flus and viruses and whether the newness of this one is really what is driving the global attention?

I heard that 80% of people who contract the virus will never experience any symptoms.

Inquiring minds want to know...

 

[Cooky]

As we are encountering the latest probable pandemic with the spread of the new coronavirus many questions have been raised in my mind but especially whether the visibility and consequent (perhaps skewed) publicity of a newly discovered flu-like virus is creating more hype than it would were it anonymous.

To what extent is this recent scare actually anything different than what has always happened? Have the ability of international cooperative organizations to detect, report and broadcast knowledge of a new strain of flu/virus lead to unprecendented awareness in global human civilization that these things happen? Are we now putting a name to an avatar of Death who we can now see, identify and warn about in one of its evolutionarily generated manifestation and consequently creating an excess of anxiety? Have we not survived readily for centuries carrying about our business amidst what has always occurred but in our ignorance has gone unidentified as such?

Understandably I appreciate that governments and hospitals and citizens do respond to such things but I have to wonder what the statistics show for people who have died from other flus and viruses and whether the newness of this one is really what is driving the global attention?

I heard that 80% of people who contract the virus will never experience any symptoms.

Inquiring minds want to know...

Apparently, even if you do show symptoms, and are fairly healthy, it only lasts two weeks and you're back to normal again.

 

[Howard Is]

As we are encountering the latest probable pandemic with the spread of the new coronavirus many questions have been raised in my mind but especially whether the visibility and consequent (perhaps skewed) publicity of a newly discovered flu-like virus is creating more hype than it would were it anonymous.

To what extent is this recent scare actually anything different than what has always happened? Have the ability of international cooperative organizations to detect, report and broadcast knowledge of a new strain of flu/virus lead to unprecendented awareness in global human civilization that these things happen? Are we now putting a name to an avatar of Death who we can now see, identify and warn about in one of its evolutionarily generated manifestation and consequently creating an excess of anxiety? Have we not survived readily for centuries carrying about our business amidst what has always occurred but in our ignorance has gone unidentified as such?

Understandably I appreciate that governments and hospitals and citizens do respond to such things but I have to wonder what the statistics show for people who have died from other flus and viruses and whether the newness of this one is really what is driving the global attention?

I heard that 80% of people who contract the virus will never experience any symptoms.

Inquiring minds want to know...

Here we are suffering a worsening overpopulation problem, which is a huge threat to human security, sustainable energy, food security, our ecosystems, and millions of other species....and we think a few hundred thousand human deaths is a nightmare.

We are all going to die ! Boo hoo ...

Get a grip people ! Sooner or later something will kill you.

I think the main reason for governmental panic is the effect on Wall St.

 

[Cooky]

I was in a discussion once on smallpox, and was talking to some people who hate anti-vaxxers, and come to find out, all smallpox does is give you a fever for a few days and it's gone...

...Really, we humans have evolved to defend ourselves against most common illnesses. I think most of the panic is overplayed.

 

[Windwalker]

The true pandemic is denialism. It attacks the reasoning centers of the mind first, then infects the rest of reality from there, quite often leading to death.

 

[sealchan]

I deeply suspect that this virus is potentially a casebook example of what happens in the cycle of:

• release of specific, even scientific data about something potentially (even remotely) lethal
• media broadcast of information
• public and governmental response to out-of-context information

I suspect that this cycle is also at play in a lot of political conversation. Taking this dynamic out of the political context and looking at it here might simplify our understanding of how we should report and respond to reports of information about new or newly discovered causes of mortality.

Death is given a new name and all of our defense mechanisms kick in including the un-useful ones like angry blaming instead of evaluating the facts and determining if one is taking their own proper precautions. Is the blaming sourced in our own laziness about our sanitation or the resentment we have for postponing travel or having to stay home from work due to illness more than we had in the past?

 

[exchemist]

Here we are suffering a worsening overpopulation problem, which is a huge threat to human security, sustainable energy, food security, our ecosystems, and millions of other species....and we think a few hundred thousand human deaths is a nightmare.

We are all going to die ! Boo hoo ...

Get a grip people ! Sooner or later something will kill you.

I think the main reason for governmental panic is the effect on Wall St.

Actually I don't think that's right. The effect on Wall St is the result of the exceptionally stringent measures adopted to slow down the spread of the disease, while we try to develop a vaccine.

If government were motivated by preserving the stock market, they would insist this disease be treated as normal 'flu', i.e. business, land and air travel etc all as usual. That in fact is the tack Trump tried to take, until his health advisers - or more likely the pollsters looking forward to November - pointed out to him it would bite him badly in the ar5e at the polls.

 

[Howard Is]

Actually I don't think that's right. The effect on Wall St is the result of the exceptionally stringent measures adopted to slow down the spread of the disease, while we try to develop a vaccine.

If government were motivated by preserving the stock market, they would insist this disease be treated as normal 'flu', i.e. business land and air travel etc all as usual. That in fact is the tack Trump tried to take, until his heath advisers - or more likely the pollsters looking forward to November - pointed out to him it would bite him badly in the ar5e at the polls.

You may well be right. My opinion is still fluid on this one.

 

[sealchan]

Actually I don't think that's right. The effect on Wall St is the result of the exceptionally stringent measures adopted to slow down the spread of the disease, while we try to develop a vaccine.

If government were motivated by preserving the stock market, they would insist this disease be treated as normal 'flu', i.e. business land and air travel etc all as usual. That in fact is the tack Trump tried to take, until his heath advisers - or more likely the pollsters looking forward to November - pointed out to him it would bite him badly in the ar5e at the polls.

I've been suspicious about the whole political narrative around this...Trump doesn't have a clue about this stuff so he is just restating what others have told him through the lens of his own personality. Democrats stoke the fear that Trump is clueless but really he is probably listening to advisors on this because his personal stake in the topic is minimal (from his narcissistic point of view).

On this issue there is, IMO, equal blame to be had on both sides politically. This virus might not even be the most deadly virus out there for all we know.

In my line of work there is the opportunity to notify customers about potential security threats. How that is done requires experience and wisdom because information presented out of context can generate a lot of customer calls and concern which is unwarranted. How you present information about potentially newly calamitous or newly understood calamitous factors is very important.

There is a fine line between over-sharing and under-sharing which easily translates into blaming in the form of "fear-mongering" or "deep state conspiracy". There is, of course, a strong note of responsibility on the part of the audience to act responsibly to information provided and to do some of the work of understanding the context properly for themselves.

 

[Polymath257]

I was in a discussion once on smallpox, and was talking to some people who hate anti-vaxxers, and come to find out, all smallpox does is give you a fever for a few days and it's gone...

...Really, we humans have evolved to defend ourselves against most common illnesses. I think most of the panic is overplayed.

OK, that is simply false and dangerous misinformation.

Smallpox did a LOT more than simply give a fever for a few days. It killed. It killed a LOT. It is estimated that an average 400,000 died in Europe *per year* and over 500 million in the last 100 years it existed. And, in those who got over it, it was frequently disfiguring, producing blindness in 1/3 of the cases and leaving scars on the face and other places.

Smallpox - Wikipedia

 

[metis]

The death rate for those affected appears to be around 2%, which is more than double of most flus. But what is also so nasty about it is that one can be contagious for up to two weeks prior to even knowing they have the symptoms, plus one may still be contagious even after all the symptoms leave.

 

[Mock Turtle]

The only flu that I seem to have caught was the 1957/8 one, whilst in the last year of primary school. I managed with a week off when most others it seems had two or three weeks off. The morning assembly was more a group meeting, with it seems, whole years missing - us being the oldest at the back. Not looking forward to this particular nasty if I do catch it, being in my 70s, and missing out on all the intervening flu epidemics, although I'm as healthy or better than many my age.

 

[Howard Is]

A Global Threat
Tuberculosis (TB) is a global disease, found in every country in the world. It is the leading infectious cause of death worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.8 billion people—close to one quarter of the world's population—are infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the bacteria that causes TB. Last year, 10 million fell ill from TB and 1.5 million died. TB is an airborne disease that can be spread by coughing or sneezing and is the leading cause of infectious disease worldwide. It is responsible for economic devastation and the cycle of poverty and illness that entraps families, communities and even entire countries. Among the most vulnerable are women, children, and those with HIV/AIDS. There is growing resistance to available drugs, which means the disease is becoming more deadly and difficult to treat. There were more than half a million cases of drug resistant TB last year.
A Global Threat

Is anyone here worried about tuberculosis ?

One in four humans are infected. The disease can remain dormant for a lifetime, nevertheless 1.5 million people died from it last year.

Covid-19 is small bickies in comparison. But do you worry about TB ?

I predict - this is your future, one way or another...

 

[Cooky]

OK, that is simply false and dangerous misinformation.

Smallpox did a LOT more than simply give a fever for a few days. It killed. It killed a LOT. It is estimated that an average 400,000 died in Europe *per year* and over 500 million in the last 100 years it existed. And, in those who got over it, it was frequently disfiguring, producing blindness in 1/3 of the cases and leaving scars on the face and other places.

Smallpox - Wikipedia

My mistake. It was measles, not smallpox.

 

[Polymath257]

My mistake. It was measles, not smallpox.

Once again, and perhaps even more dangerously because it hasn't been eliminated, this is false.

Measles *killed* 2.6 million people in 1980. It is a dangerous disease.

Measles - Wikipedia

 

[Cooky]

Once again, and perhaps even more dangerously because it hasn't been eliminated, this is false.

Measles *killed* 2.6 million people in 1980. It is a dangerous disease.

Measles - Wikipedia

Those 2.6 million were likely malnourished people in Central Africa and only rare strains of hyper-mutated measles lead to panencephalitis, which is the main cause of the fatalities.

...Still I wouldn't want it, and I vaccinate all my children..

 

[sealchan]

The death rate for those affected appears to be around 2%, which is more than double of most flus. But what is also so nasty about it is that one can be contagious for up to two weeks prior to even knowing they have the symptoms, plus one may still be contagious even after all the symptoms leave.

That's good comparative info...however, we have to wonder how much we know about who has this virus...but, then again, I suppose those statistics might be equally accurate compared with other strains.

I also seem to recall that potentially lethal viruses tend to dissipate while less lethal strains propagate...perhaps because it doesn't pay for a virus to kill its host.

This is all not to say we shouldn't sit up and take notice...but I have to wonder if we are all staring at this one wave and over-reacting given that there are so many other waves out there. Really we should be taking some quarantine efforts but we should all be revisiting our own habits to ensure we don't unnecessarily expose ourselves to infections, viruses and flus.

 

[exchemist]

I was in a discussion once on smallpox, and was talking to some people who hate anti-vaxxers, and come to find out, all smallpox does is give you a fever for a few days and it's gone...

...Really, we humans have evolved to defend ourselves against most common illnesses. I think most of the panic is overplayed.

I sounds to me as if someone you were talking to was confusing smallpox with measles. Smallpox was a serious killer.

Even measles can have nasty complications, which is why everyone should be vaccinated against it nowadays (MMR).

Oh sorry I see it WAS measles indeed. My mistake.

 

[sealchan]

I wonder, to what extent, we are able to take such information about a new pandemic and relate that to our historical knowledge of the plague and the black death and such...I suppose many people don't know how to understand the difference.

I have to wonder how hard this particular virus is hitting people who don't have access to medical care...

If the facts about tuberculous are correct as presented above...how would people react if they knew this comparative to this latest virus?

 

[Polymath257]

Is anyone here worried about tuberculosis ?

One in four humans are infected. The disease can remain dormant for a lifetime, nevertheless 1.5 million people died from it last year.

Covid-19 is small bickies in comparison. But do you worry about TB ?

Yes, absolutely, I worry about TB, especially drug resistant TB. I am far, far more concerned about TB and even the flu than I am about coronavirus.

I had a girlfriend one time whose microbiology homework was to dream up the ultimate killer infection. TB was her starting point.