People are focusing on the "he saw it coming" aspect of the title.
I would encourage folks to read the article with an open mind as the "he saw it coming" is not really the point of most of what is said here.
This is is an expert who understands the realty of zoonotic spillover, and how it is going to become a more prevalent threat over time, and how to deal with that threat.
And he understands the word zoonotic, which I didn't before reading the article. Since no one ever reads the article, it means transmission of diseases from animals to humans. Non-human animals.
> I’m stunned by the absolute absence of global dialogue for what is a global event. In Europe right now, you would never believe that there was a European Union.
This is my key takeaway. A lot of the damage is in the end self-inflicted. People seem not to be able to act cohesively at an inter-national scale, not even within a country group that is supposedly designed for that.
Whether it's pandemics, global warming or nuclear weapons this lack of cooperation shows up again and again.
This is happening on the individual level too. The panic buying of items like toilet roll + pasta in places the virus hasn't even taken hold yet is a stark reminder of how utterly selfish some people can be. Sadly the people that will end up with difficulties are the less selfish people who now can't get essential items even when there is zero need for them to be scarce.
Edit: As an example: I would like one bottle of hand sanitiser. That should last quite a while (nobody needs boxes and boxes of the stuff) and it would be very useful. I cannot buy it anywhere either IRL or online. As a last resort I just checked eBay. I found a 500ml approx bottle of Purrell for £17. Insane but given it would be very useful to have I almost bought it. Then I noticed the postage price was £100. The crazy part is that this person has sold quite a few of these according to eBay. You can claim this is the free market and supply/demand etc.etc. all you want but that doesn't make it ok. It's still incredibly selfish behaviour.
Edit 2: Any explanation for the downvotes? I almost self-censored my comment on the free market as I thought it might lead to downvotes - decided to go ahead with it anyway. If you disagree with anything I've said starting a discussion is much more productive than hiding something you don't like.
> The panic buying of items like toilet roll + pasta in places the virus hasn't even taken hold yet is a stark reminder of how utterly selfish some people can be.
I disagree… "before the virus has even taken hold" is the perfect time to do long-term shopping. Avoiding crowded areas (read: THE MALL and the public transports to get to the mall) is key to reducing infection.
Yes, hand sanitizer/face mask markets are ridiculous right now, but that's to be expected. It's not people being selfish, there's clearly genuine needs for it. When there's a fuckton of needs and not enough being produced… how is it people being selfish that you can't find hand sanitizer at a decent price? All those have been bought.
If everyone buys only what they need (e.g., if it’s a small personal sanitizer bottle, keep 1 in use and 1 in inventory), demand could be spread out and crowds avoided.
The problem appears to combine habitual shopping for long term (not many have a 24/7 convenience store within 3 minutes of walking), panicked distrust in infrastructure reliability, and good old tragedy of the commons.
Some countries fare better on first two, but still have the last one (e.g., Hong Kong).
The thing is, normally most people done have ANY hand sanitizer, let alone two, as you describe.... so when suddenly everyone wants to buy them, there isn't enough for everyone to have even two. That doesn't make the people buying them selfish.
But that’s not what they do, try to buy two or whatever reasonable number. A few people literally fill a shopping cart with toilet paper, water bottles, and hand sanitizer, and it’s gone. The problem is one of capacity to match demand within such short time frames.
I went to Costco and saw people buying up to the limit on random stuff, and they end up with 6 months of toilet paper, 1 year worth of pasta, etc. I wanted one box of diapers (one lasts over a month), and there were only 4-5 boxes left when there's normally 20+, even when there's a good sale. I have never seen them be out of baby wipes, but they were out when I went (which is a shame because we just ran out). In fact, they had to shut down a local Costco because people are fighting over toilet paper.
COVID-19 isn't going to be some world ending thing, it's just going to put some supply pressure in the short term until production and distribution can ramp back up, but people are treating it like it will be. It's really frustrating.
I believe the implicit assumption here is distrust in reliability of supply, other people’s behavior and infrastructure in general. Some cultures are more resistant to this kind of stuff.
>> I disagree… "before the virus has even taken hold" is the perfect time to do long-term shopping. Avoiding crowded areas (read: THE MALL and the public transports to get to the mall) is key to reducing infection.
While I agree that being prepared is important people are stocking up for much longer than necessary + not considering other people. This all depends on your ethical/world view I suppose but we don't have enough of certain items yet. The options are to think of only yourself and buy as much as you can as quickly as you can (while leaving other people with no options at all) or buy what you need now so that everyone has what they need and hopefully production can increase of the in demand items so we can all stock up before (worst case scenario) production has to cease entirely for a period of time. It's interesting to see how quickly our progressive societies can become every person for their self (to an extent).
To my recollection (corrections welcome), the covid19 virus has been reported to live on hard surfaces for 8 weeks, have an incubation period of up to 4 weeks, and live 5 weeks in vitro after confirmed infection ... if you're sanitising several times a day then that's a need for quite a long stretch of sanitiser.
Do you have sources for those figures? The ones I find are suggesting up to 2 weeks incubation (but more typically about 5 days) and surviving on some surfaces for 3 days (less for others).
You might read up on the Bullwhip Effect. these demand fluctuations can have very disruptive effects on supply chains and availability of things, even if nothing else happens.
Doig the kind of shopping right now is extremely disruptive if happening at scale. Which it does. Long-term availability of all kind necessities will suffer from it, for you, for everyone. It is the opposite of reasonable right now.
So... what exactly are we all supposed to do? Taking reasonable precautions is extremely disruptive. Not taking reasonable precautions is extremely disruptive (when everyone gets sick and overwhelms the medical system). It seems like pretty much any reaction is going to result in extreme disruption. Which really isn't even that surprising given the extremely disruptive nature of a global pandemic.
First thing would be to mentally disconnect the supply of people in quarantine from the spread of the virus. Even under lockdown, quarantined people will be supplied and grocery stores open and supplied.
Then, follow the guidelines (washing hands, ....). Avoid big groups, keep a certain distance. Regarding shopping, buy normal volumes of stuff. That always works, the system is used to this. If there are things missing, buy small volumes. Spread shopping over multiple shops of multiple chains. Ideally over multiple days. This keeps peak small, reducing the risk of supply disruption.
And keep away from things medical professionals would need as well.
If push comes to shove, accept shortages of luxury stuff and certain products. But we are very far from that.
>Even under lockdown, quarantined people will be supplied and grocery stores open and supplied.
From an American perspective, that is not immediately clear to me.
>Avoid big groups, keep a certain distance.
...
> buy normal volumes of stuff ... Spread shopping over multiple shops of multiple chains
These two things are not compatible in my view.
>If push comes to shove, accept shortages of luxury stuff and certain products. But we are very far from that.
Maybe where you are. My grocery shopping trip this morning ended with me re-planning meals for the week in the supermarket based on what was available. A wide range of staple ingredients were completely out of stock.
We might see shortages for stuff coming from China, inventoires will slowely be depleted and the replenishment from China severly hampered by the situation in Europe and the US. Stuff sourced / produced on the same continent won't hit nearly as hard. As long the production doesn't break down there shouldn't be to hard impacts. And since quarantine measures only started a couple of days ago, we can rule out those impacts as causes for the shortages you saw. Leaves short term and mid term disruptions caused by, what I might call, panic shopping, which outpaced replenishment.
The downvotes is for calling panic buying selfish. You can't simultaneously tell people to stay at home for long periods of time and tell them to not stock up for that.
Google the "Bullwhip Effect" to get an idea of how disruptive this bahiour can be, for everyone. And if individual behaviour has negative impacts on others, yes it's selfish.
Supply will be kept open, quarantine or not. Italy and China are the best examples, groccery stoes and pharmacies remained open. It is much harder to do that, so, if everybody goes panic shopping before. So please, don't do that.
>> You can't simultaneously tell people to stay at home for long periods of time and tell them to not stock up for that.
Nobody is telling people to stay at home for long periods of time. If you think you have the disease you need to quarantine for a couple of weeks. That doesn't require a lot of stocking up. In Italy, where they are in 'lockdown', grocery stores remain open along with other essential services. So panic buying is unnecessary, causing shortages that are unnecessary and causing problems for people who aren't panic buying.
Companies are _requiring_ people to work from home, childcare options are closing, schools are closing, businesses are cutting staff and hours, and there are public bans on large gatherings and urgings to stay home so that even if you are asymptomatic or healthy, you don’t risk accidentally contributing the spread to immunocompromised or elderly people.
If you think you only need to budget supplies for two weeks, you’re just wrong. You need to budget for _months_, and likely need to budget many supplies you otherwise wouldn’t have needed, like increased food for daily breakfasts and lunches for a whole family who otherwise would have been at school / work drawing those supplies from elsewhere.
While I agree the panic buying is harmful & we could ration and space it out with less shock to supply chains, I also think the behavior of everyday people facing the sudden prospect of a large family consuming toilet paper, 3 full meals, soap, medicine, etc., for an indefinite number of weeks ahead, it’s totally understandable and not even remotely “selfish.”
>> If you think you only need to budget supplies for two weeks, you’re just wrong. You need to budget for _months_
Can you back this up at all? As I explained in my comment, Italy, one of the worst hit countries globally (and on 'lockdown') has grocery stores still functioning. The idea that people will be required to not leave their homes for months is fear mongering , impossible to enforce, and even in the worst case scenario people simply won't do it - they'll go stir crazy and give up a lot quicker than they think.
Saying “can you back this up at all” in response to this is just glib rhetoric. There’s no published standard of evidence for this, by very definition of the type of event (panic).
When you buy a stockpile of supplies, it is for contingency, not immediate threat. You are not accounting for this.
If the probability of being home quarantined is, say, 1%-5%, that’s huge and requires stockpiling at least some supplies. The grocery stores functioning today has literally nothing to do with it. That’s not fear mongering.
In the absence of hard data on the probability of home quarantine, then what do you recommend people do? Prepare for a worst case scenario? Act like nothing will happen? Somewhere in between (but where exactly, and why?)
I’ll reiterate, your responses so far are just glib rhetoric. Unless you can provide a reason why people shouldn’t prepare for a worst case scenario (knowing it’s unlikely to get that bad, but better to have the supplies if it does), it’s extremely disingenuous of you to brandish such moralistic grandstanding judgment towards people trying to prepare for an emergency.
Ideally we would all have our own stocks of essentials that we build up gradually over time during normal circumstances. Unfortunately this is both difficult for some people, and antithetical to the modern trend of urban minimalism.
I believe that the panic buying is primarily a leadership problem. Especially in Europe, the governments have, for the past decades but even more so in the past 5 years, retreated and said "we can't do anything anyhow, so you'll just have to deal with it". People have learned and do whatever they have to to protect themselves, because the society at large is falling apart and losing cohesion. If you have no leadership, you can't expect people to behave orderly.
The US population is historically suspicious of the government and it's ability to get things done, so individuality is much more pronounced there.
Secondly, I think the government, media and experts just haven't thought their communication strategy through. They've told people "you might need to get isolated in your home for a few weeks, and remember to wash your hands a lot". What, besides stocking up on food, soap/sanitizer and toilet paper, would you expect them to do in response?
>> What, besides stocking up on food, soap/sanitizer and toilet paper, would you expect them to do in response?
I would have hoped people would keep in mind that staying home for a few weeks doesn't necessitate buying all that much more than a lot of families do in a "big shop". Take toilet paper as an example. The amount of it that's being bought by most people will last them 6-12 months. I know there's a lot of factors pushing people to make these decisions but it's certainly altered my generally optimistic/positive view of people as a whole.
I've seen some pictures of people walking out with mountains of toilet paper as well, but I don't think that was the norm. It's not three guys making off with a truckload, it's a lot of people buying and extra package or two, enough for the next six weeks which will quickly deplete the aisles, since stores are operating without storage space (because storage is expensive, and stored goods are dead capital), so they have no reserves.
Also, from my personal experience, it's a distribution problem. There is enough toilet paper, but it's sold out at some stores while others have more than enough. Can't level that out though, because margins are thin and the companies would lose money.
It necessitates that all of those families buy twice as much this month so that they're prepared to spend a few weeks staying home starting the day before they would have gone shopping again. It also necessitates that I (a single person living alone who normally goes grocery shopping every other day or so) buy way more than I ordinarily would. Most people are not out there buying truckloads of TP. Everyone buying twice as much TP (and everything else) as usual is more than enough to create shortages.
I agree. These people are not just selfish, they're idiots - I've seen purchases of years worth of toilet paper. My local shop had empty shelves for about a week but now has stacks on the floor as well as full shelves. The sanitiser stocks will soon arrive too - cash in on the nutters.
Agreed, the only reason I was after the hand sanitiser was that it would be useful the use when I get off public transport + am not going somewhere I can easily wash my hands with soap and water.
Re: down votes. HN isn't a forum for people to disagree and discuss.
It's a hive mind where dissenters are punished via down votes for hurt feelings.
Regarding people being selfish... There is nothing selfish about self preservation. The problem is we have a negative view on "price gouging" which is just economic triage.
There wouldn't be a run on toilet paper if it cost 10x the normal price. It costs you nothing to stock up, so people do.
>> Regarding people being selfish... There is nothing selfish about self preservation.
No, but purchasing much more of an item that you are ever likely going to need (at the cost of everyone who isn't doing that) is selfish. Stock up on enough essentials to get you through a self-quarantine period (2-3 weeks). Don't buy enough to last the next 12 months because a) it's completely unnecessary and b) you're preventing other people stocking up enough to cover a self-quarantine period.
China did it to themselves in the first place. They silenced the early warnings about the epidemic, and did not acknowledge anything until it was already too late in Wuhan. It could have ended right there had they been more serious to begin with.
Weeks after the total shutdown in Wuhan, the President of the United States went on TV to say that it was little more than a flu. Same with the leaders in Europe. I'd say they absolutely dropped the ball.
As far as I can tell, the only way to contain this would've been if every county on the planet had cut off travellers from China in January and tracked down and quarantined those already in the country - something China actively campaigned against with the support of the WHO. All of the countries that have contained this relied on that combined with contact tracing and testing once one became available, even China itself. Just testing and tracing alone hasn't worked anywhere. So it's less "wasted all the time China gave us" and more "trusted what China was saying, not what they were doing".
Except the country that handled it best (South Korea) didn't ban travel from China and the president even publicly declared it won't ban travel from China saying things like "If Korea bans China then other countries may ban Korea" despite mass protests.
South Korea hasn't contained the virus yet. They've done a good job at squashing the big cluster in Daegu, partly due to luck (the index patient didn't meet the criteria for testing but got tested anyway), and their numbers look promising. However, Italy's numbers looked good right up until they didn't. The fear is that there are a bunch of other clusters spread throughout the country that are slowly bubbling away, too many to apply contact tracing to, and it looks like there's evidence that is becoming the case: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/10/8128651...
There's a huge difference between looking good with small numbers because you haven't done testing like in much of Europe or NA vs looking good because you've blanketed the country in tests and are seeing recoveries outstrip infections.
Italy also wasn't testing. Their signal was hospitals overflowing with dying patients. So it's unlikely that SK is missing significant numbers of cases. If they were their hospitals would be overflowing.
Living in Germany I don't really feel there is a lack of leadership. So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them. And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US). On top of that we have paid leave, so people who are showing symptoms can stay at home without worrying about money.
This is a very different story in the US of course — but is it really only a leadership problem? Isn't it more of a systemic issue in the sense that now the weaknesses of e.g. certain centralized testing structures, not having universal healthcare etc come to light.
Trump might be the worst president the US could have at that point in time, because he acts actively destructive on top of a system that hasn't that much ressilience anyways.
>So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them. And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US).
And with all of that Merkel still said that 60% to 70% of the population will end up infected with the virus. It doesn't sound like Germany's going to be much better off than most other European countries.
Isn't Germany one of the slowest countries to respond to the epidemic? Aren't schools still open in Germany, with thousands of cases and quite a few deaths already?
In my country (Romania), our normally horribly inefficient government has closed schools the moment our 25th confirmed case was announced, it has banned events of more than 100 people, has encouraged people to work from home, and encouraged those who can't to change their work schedule so that people come in at different times to avoid mass transit overcrowding (and enforced this in public institutions). Many large shops have started limiting the number of people allowed in at once, preferring to firm queues outside. Flights to several countries have been canceled. And all of this in addition to screening travelers, putting everyone coming in from Italy/China/France/Germany/Spain in isolation for 14 days, as well as anyone who came into contact with a confirmed case, and of course tracking everyone who came into contact recently with an identified patient.
And all this is before we saw our 100th confirmed case, with 0 deaths so far. How can you say that the German response was efficient?
>And to oir luck the testing infrastructure in Germany is much better than in nearly every other nation (which also means the numbers are closer to reality than e.g. in Italy or the US)
I don't know what's actually happening in Germany, but here's one reason one might think that:
You can use the number of deaths to reason about the true infection rate, independent of the testing strategy. (Until something happens that changes the death rate, like the health system getting overwhelmed.)
For example, Germany and France started seeing cases at about the same time and have found about the same number of cases. But France has 10x the deaths. This suggests that Germany has found a larger proportion of their cases, i.e. they've got better test coverage.
> So far the politicians listened to expert advice which is precisely what I expect from them.
This is simply not true. The response of the Merkel administration is one of the slowest and inconsequential in whole Europe. Very probably accompanied by deliberately playing down death cases and infection numbers in general if anectotical information and comparison with the numbers of surrounding countries has any value.
I think they have handled it pretty well. I'm pretty sure they spent some time talking to experts. I've worked in a research project on crisis management before and have a very high opinion of the Robert Koch Institute which was one of the partners (and am generally quite critical of government organizations).
Given the political infrastructure (states can make the decisions in many areas), I think the reaction was pretty good so far. One of the major concerns is always avoiding panics. I'm pretty sure they are balancing all official statements against that.
Tbh. the most important thing for me is that you listen to experts and don't overreact.
In retrospect I think three things could have been handled better. Screening for fever at airports and clearer rules for self quarantining of people after traveling. Third point is control of medical and hygienic supply chains.
Otherwise okish response I would say. Also no indication for dow playing. Maybe a bit reluctant with shut downs of Carnevale, clubs and ski vacationing
Trump is part of the problem, for sure, but it seems to me that a world that is strongly divided into nation-states is just not able to effectively tackle pan-national threats.
Even at an individual level we're so used to thinking in terms of 'our country vs. the rest' that our ability to empathize with people from 'far-away' is impeded.
But it makes sense to think that way. The ones who know the local situation best are the locals, not bureaucrats thousands of miles away. And when it comes to empathy, then those bureaucrats tend to have little of it towards the people affected by essentially any problem that doesn't affect where they are.
I don't get why coordination is equated by many people with centralization. You can agree on a set of measures that should be taken by everybody under certain circumstances and then let individual countries apply those measures.
Any "pan-national" effort implies massive transportation of goods/specialists.
All this will let the virus thrive.
Moreover such pan-national tackling will let the apparently most adequate response be adopted, therefore if it fails too badly we may be all wiped out because it will fail everywhere.
Such a major pandemic is only possible thanks to our current population densities, massive transportation of persons/goods. Our central administrations were, as usual, patently totally unable to cope and even in some cases their very actions amplify the threat (cops in Wuhan silencing the local doc who early understood the threat, grotesque CDC actions in the US...), and are always pushing towards more densely populated huge territories for them to 'administer'.
... and further transportation of persons/goods and centralization of control should be in order?
In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets. They've done such a good job of providing robust and affordable healthcare in the US, markets can surely handle an international viral outbreak simply by maximising efficiency and ROI.
>In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Because of economies of scale and specialization? It's often cheaper for one place to produce a lot of a narrow list of goods and trade that for the goods they're lacking rather than every place making everything they use. This means that a lot of goods need to be moved around and a lot of people too.
>Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Like what? Shut down international travel? Test every person coming into a country for a new disease? Both of these are very expensive, especially the former.
> In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation"
Mirioron answered.
> Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive
The very reason why the virus spreads like it does February is because it is difficult and expensive.
> Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets.
The current state of affairs in the US, as in most countries, is crony capitalism, which has nothing to do with 'leaving it to the markets'.
Isn't 'maximising efficiency' the very raison d'être of the 'pan-national effort' you proposed?
Isn't it also the reason why huge amounts of humans live in giant and dense cities, with strong central government powers? From an organizational standpoint those are the main causes of the present crisis: total failure at detecting it early (the Chinese doc was censored), then at devising and implementing adequate measures (the faulty CDC coronavirus test is a prominent case, there are many others), and now at managing a major crisis (in most European countries the reality is that nearly no new potential case can be tested). And just wait for such a Supa Dupa Central Mega Pan-National Gov decision, applied everywhere, which will prove to be an error...
Centralization and transport are sure ways to enforce the pandemics. We may be reckoning that high population density and centralized power not only aren't usefully efficient because the efficiency gain they induce is mainly used to produce nearly-useless (at best) products, and that they are extremely dangerous. We may, instead, appeal to moar of all this.
The man leading the richest and most powerful country on earth is a unilateralist and a physical embodiment of the Peter Principle. He’s doing an awful job and not reaching out globally to solve a global problem. How is this derangement syndrome? If anything it seems your inability to see criticism of him beyond shallow catch phrases exhibits a form of “derangement syndrome”
Although this wasn't exclusively about the US: Most issues the US now has, indeed existed before Trump became president — so much is true. Yet Trump still is the worst president you could have at that point in time. Nearly a month into the whole thing he decides it would be a good thing to call the virus a hoax, disregard expert advice and ultimately acts (as he usually does) purely on symbolical plane by blaming it on foreigners and closing the border. Closing the dissease control unit Obama built in the white house is only the cherry on top. Nothing to adress the issue of not beeing able to test people, there is no real oversight what is going on in the US.
And quite frankly: if your leader's decisions are worse than throwing a dice, why even bother having him? Because it is more entertaining?
In times of a pandemic you want to have something in leadership who does the unpopular thing, that ultimately stops the spread and saves the lives. Not someone who only thinks about themselves and changes their stance on the topic with every turn of the wind. But feel free to argue otherwise, if you know how the poststructuralist ways of trumpian confusion somehow help in times of a pandemic.
We have leadership in the state governments. Colorado and even health officials in my county are taking this seriously, have closed schools, all big events canceled etc.
Often I feel that Europeans forget wet have state governments that have more local authority than the federal Gov.
Trump isn't some dictator. I'm perfectly happy with how my state officials are dealing with this virus.
The U.S. federal government had a significant amount of control and formerly had the sole resources to deal with issues like this. Ironic that the sole raison d'être one of those resources was in mitigating and coordinating responses to events just like the one we find ourselves in.
Destroying that resource is squarely on turmp.
We've been watching the tearing down of the federal government since the Reagan years. We've witnessed the slow evisceration of everything outside of the department of defense.
The federal government could have and should have led a coordinated response to this. But now that the conservative dream of having a federal government big enough that it could be drowned in a bathtub is in reach, it's nearly impossible to.
This is the consequence of forty years of coordinated effort to hollow out the federal government from within.
States have very limited resources at their disposal. There's simply no way that they can coordinate the kind of response needed for an epidemic that knows no borders.
The US is probably doing terribly because of the CDCs absolute fumble of the test kit debacle; but assessing Trump's response as good or bad will take a lot of time. His border closures, believe what you will, were totally in character and probably good ideas for this specific crisis.
"During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." "
So while he didn't exactly, it doesn't show a person who cares for reality. Snopes says "mixture" on it's veracity.
> he's happy to have people on his task force who will publicly contradict him
You mean he doesn't care enough to put out the right information in the first place, and relies on being 'cleaned up afterwards' by his staff (who he keeps sacking)? He's made a mess of this primarily. The buck stops with him. The CDC does seemed to have fouled up badly but that doesn't exempt Trump's bizarre and dangerous response to a real crisis.
The Snopes article is perfectly clear; the answer to the question "Did Trump call the coronavirus a hoax?" is no and atoav was precisely wrong on that point. There is a Hoax hoax afoot here.
Trump banned travel from China in early February, and the hoax comment is late February. It is pretty obvious from his actions that he takes Coronavirus much more seriously than the flu whatever his public message.
> He's made a mess of this primarily. The buck stops with him.
Yeah, but we don't know how this plays out. There are a bunch of drugs against Coronavirus starting to complete clinical trials, so this may actually get nipped in the bud as far as the US is concerned. It is a real test of the Trump administration though, no argument there.
Depends what standard you hold 'ready' to. There are a bunch of things that by rights should help treat COVID-19, the clinical trials are due to start finishing in late March through to May and - depending on the drug - production might be fast or slow.
I've read patchy reports (eg, https://www.hngn.com/articles/228138/20200223/coronavirus-cu...) that the Chinese have started marking out specific drugs as effective for treatment. And of course Remdesivir is getting positive sounding press although I havn't seen any actual data.
It isn't really a question of whether we have something that works against COVID-19 because we surely do. The tricky part is figuring out what so it can be systematically delivered, and working out manufacturing. With a bit of luck (eg, chloroquine working out) the risk profile of the pandemic looks very different.
It could be. I did my own research on that a couple of weeks ago. If you look at the latencies involved with developing antibodies they're not that high, especially if you get lucky and are willing to throw money around. Humanity is right at the start of the whole protein design revolution - I don't think our regulatory infrastructure is set up for it yet. But where there's a will ...
Trump deliberately sabotaged efforts to protect the American public at almost every step along the way. He fired the team tracking pandemics and tried to gut their budget, and when the virus broke out he stopped the implementation of large scale testing in order to reduce the numbers of people who tested positive, and forbade use of the UN tests. This past week his CDC has completed 77 tests, as compared to Obama, who had completed one million tests in the month after H1N1. He’s also classified information regarding the disease in order to hamper the spread of vital information, and has actively lied and shifted blame regarding the availability of testing, the timeline to a vaccine, and even the efforts of private companies.
Acknowledging that he is the single worst person to lead America through the crisis isn’t partisan, it’s objectively considering reality.
This administration's handling of this pandemic is absolutely atrocious as you point out, perhaps that is where we have a silver lining. Coming close to a US presidential election perhaps Americans will consider their penny-wise, pound foolish healthcare policies.
The fact that the richest nation on earth permits about 10% of its population no access to decent healthcare is morally repugnant. But even if one is not persuaded by the moral argument, perhaps the economic impacts can change views.
With no national sick leave policy, potentially infected uninsured citizens will have the incentive to go to work, raising the risk for all. Children of uninsured whose parents are unable to take sick or medical care leave may be shunted to older care givers who are most at risk. Uninsured families are acting rationally for their own economic circumstances, but creating a larger risk profile for all.
Let's hope Americans are sobered by this experience and consider a more sensible healthcare policy.
Do you believe most of the issues at the CDC are due to Trump? The development of their own kit, refusal to allow independent testing, a lack of any stockpiles (is this their job? Well, whoever), etc. Did someone from the administration throw out all the stockpiled masks in medical institutions across the country for example?
Also, we have similar issues with testing and shortages of obviously critical supplies here in Canada, as do many other countries. Can one man do that much damage?
I don’t really care to debate strawman arguments- I never blamed him for lack of masks, so we can summarily move past that. Acknowledging that he is the cause of many actual issues is not fantasy. In reality, the United States has the worst testing capacity and infrastructure of any developed nation - this fact has to be specifically trumps fault. Obama was not caught unprepared during H1N1, and it’s impossible to imagine that the CDC is the most powerless among every major nation to secure critical supplies.
Yes, I believe most of the issues at cdc are due to trump - so far he has fired the experts who can best work with the CDC to implement policies needed, and has censored and classified their attempts to spread critical information. He rolled back Obama’s executive directives regarding pandemic response simply to spite democrats, and now is rushing to reimplement those same directives, with much less effectiveness. It’s literally a government agency under his sole control - by definition the failures of the cdc are his failures. That’s how accountability works.
I know that he specifically said that it’s not his fault and that he doesn’t stand for anything, regardless it’s still his fault. This crisis is the most current proof that he is utterly incapable of being an effective leader.
> I don’t really care to debate strawman arguments
Straight to rhetoric. One can characterise this as a strawman argument I suppose, but is it true?
I asked very specific questions, that can be answered. If you accuse me of framing, well...guilty as charged. In fact, I'm the one bringing this up.
> I never blamed him for lack of masks, so we can summarily move past that.
I never said you did, so we can summarily move past any insuation that I in any way made that assertion.
Please, argue against my words, not a distortion of them. And especially not while accusing me of using a strawman argument.
> Acknowledging that he is the cause of many actual issues is not fantasy.
I am not disputing that. Again, please argue against my words.
> In reality, the United States has the worst testing capacity and infrastructure of any developed nation - this fact has to be specifically trumps fault.
For you to know that is true would require some specific evidence, much of it quantitative. I've seen absolutely nothing even remotely resembling this, have you? Please note: the current lack of this data in no way proves anything one way or the other, and me asking such questions in no way requires that I believe it is false, or am making a suggestion - had I not written this disclaimer, that would have been a common rhetorical escape route. It is now closed.
> Obama was not caught unprepared during H1N1
Can you define "not caught unprepared" in more explicit detail? Specifically, can you provide a reference to inventory levels of critical care supplies over the last 20 years?
I have seen no such data, therefore I will continue to classify this as ~"Inconclusive - significant non-evidence based news that is highly narrative-based; numerous stories across independent media outlets all point back to the same 2 or 3 "fundamental" media stories (also narrative based). Biased reporting highly likely, even though their hearts are probably in the right place."
And again, none of this is to say I'm suggesting Trump has handled this well. He's handled it atrociously. I have zero doubt Obama would have handled it way better. But I suspect what really has gone on, is no one was prepared, not really. Beyond doing the standard "fund this 2500th "obviously a good idea" bill", I doubt anyone did too terribly good of a job.
If they did, but then this finely tuned, incredibly robust system fell apart in the span of 3 years under one rogue leader, with hardly anyone noticing....may it not be fruitful to investigate and discuss the actual events that occurred here? Is looking at reality, to the best of our ability to discern it, a bad idea?
I would support a full investigation into this. I welcome the full exposure of Trump's sins with open arms. Do you feel similarly unattached about Obama, or other parts of "the system" as it is? Are you willing at all times to reconsider everything you hold to be true?
And as for investigations, I think random members of the public need to start being on these investigations, like a variation of jury duty. I can pick out obviously misleading stories in the media as easily as finding cigarette butts on the ground. There is ample evidence that many fishy things are going on (think: reefer madness, racism, sexism, war propaganda & rationing), and the public's trust of media, government, and experts is unsurprisingly low as a result.
Did the US actually do widespread testing for H1N1? Or do anything at all?
My memory of the H1N1 outbreaks are that it was downplayed heavily in the media, and doing nothing was our response. It's pretty easy to do nothing. The way I remember it is that Asia did all of the heavy lifting by quarantining anyone with a fever.
I see 1 million estimated in June 25, then by september we had done 1,000 test kits (which I assume have many samples).
> Your memory seems to be quite selective.
It was 11 years ago. Most of us don't remember what actually happened.
Edit to add: The biggest original difference in testing seems to be that the existing influenza tests worked for H1N1, then were easily modified for H1N1, while producing the corona virus test and running it appears to take far more time + we have shortages in sourcing chemicals because everyone is trying to get those chemicals atm. That 1 million number may be correct since existing tests that everyone can perform may have worked. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with who the president at the time was, or their actions though. I don't see any regulations being lifted/waived to make that happen. Do you remember that being a big deal at the time?
Trump didn't create this but all signs indicate that he and his merry band of luddites will continue to exasperate the situation.
Where's the international cooperation? As the article mentions Bush and Obama were regularly on the phone with world leaders to coordinate their responses to the Avian Flu and Ebola outbreaks. This administration has done none of that and has effectively taken it's hand off the wheel.
Believing that all international communication must be routed through the United States government is a very U.S. centric way of looking at things. Other nations are free to cooperate with each other without first checking in with the U.S. president for his blessing.
Believing that the US somehow isn't a part of the international community is definitely a strange take that I haven't heard before. I don't really see the advantage to the US taking action completely separate from the rest of the world.
No US airports until a few days ago screened arriving passengers. They were not asked if they came from regions with large outbreaks.
After a month from 1st infection, less than 2000 tests was conducted in the US. Right now, it's 12,000+ tests which is the lowest tests per million in the world.
Schools, theaters, theme parks are closed. Sports events are suspended.
What other evidence do you need that there is lack of leadership?
They've got it via Germany apparently. The decision to suspend all flights from China should have been taken earlier at EU level. Either that or we go back to border controls, which is what has actually happened at least in countries that still have operational checkpoints.
My key takeaway, too. I am not worried we will pass NCov19 - we surely will. I am afraid we won't learn anything from it.
We surely need to invest more into health policies and reaction to pandemics. We need to be more conservative about spending resources. We should communicate and coordinate better.
Right now I feel like a lot of actions just prevent the spread (good), but not so many measures for the long-term play are being instantiated. Let's hope I am wrong.
Personally, I think the current situation could be the beginning of a new and better era. It could strengthen remote work, less travel, less global dependencies, digitalization, local economies, and the environment. The next virus could be a lot more harmful ...
Let me put your mind at ease: we will learn nothing.
I’m sure epidemiologists and other scientists will learn a lot about the spread of pandemics and coronavirus. As a society though...
For an institution to learn there have to be consequences for failure. The US is so hyper-polarized that these won’t materialize for anyone involved. You can already see the circling of wagons and history being re-written in real time (on this site even). Investment in healthcare (including pandemics) will continue to follow party lines.
Well, if it were reasonably run, why not? Imagine a world where the trillions going into the military were spent in other ways? Where people weren’t arbitraged across artificial boundaries? Would that be so horrible? So much more terrible than what we have now?
Of course, it will never happen. See earlier poster’s point about people not being able to cooperate.
> Where people weren’t arbitraged across artificial boundaries?
The boundaries aren’t arbitrary; they reflect ethnic differences between groups.
Homogenizing people is an abhorrent suggestion — and without that, large governments don’t really work.
> Well, if it were reasonably run, why not?
This is extremely unlikely, because history has shown us that remote, centralized governments are generally both arbitrary towards citizens and ineffective at addressing regional needs.
Big, centralized government has killed 100M people in the past century.
> Imagine a world where the trillions going into the military were spent in other ways?
There’s basically zero chance that would happen, as a central world government would need a lot of force to keep regions following their edicts.
That you even suggest it shows that this isn’t a serious proposal.
> Would that be so horrible? So much more terrible than what we have now?
Yes, absolutely.
You seem to have a fantasy, not a serious view of how that would operate or the consequences to human well-being based on historic precedent.
It’s not that people don’t cooperate, it’s that what you’re proposing is dangerous and harmful, so people cooperate to oppose it.
> The boundaries aren’t arbitrary; they reflect ethnic differences between groups.
no they don’t. they’re the result of a lot of wars and invasions. just look at a map of the middle east or Africa. or of china for example. low correlation between border and ethnies.
> The boundaries aren’t arbitrary; they reflect ethnic differences between groups.
> Homogenizing people is an abhorrent suggestion
Ok, just for the sake of throwing gasoline onto the fire, why do you think that boundaries are a natural thing, and why do you find the mixing of ethnic groups abhorrent?
Boundaries are an expression of each tribe exerting an area of influence. A boundary forms where two areas of tribal dominance collide. You can watch animals pee and poop on things to mark theirs, among other signals.
I didn’t say boundaries should be completely non-porous (as your comment implies), but rather that we don’t want to eliminate human ethnic/cultural diversity and that requires boundaries which enforce rate limited exchange. To borrow an analogy, there’s a reason cells have membranes.
Intermingling at a rate which allows each tribe to maintain its integrity is natural, and has evidence going back longer than writing. As does outbreaks of violence at exceeding that rate.
For example, Brexit was an act of political violence because the UK immigration exceeded the rate at which the society could naturalize immigrants leading to horrific events like “grooming gangs” of immigrants raping native children. Typically at the point gangs of migrants are raping natives, we drop the word “immigration” and talk about “invasion” or “colonization”.
Similarly, other lurches towards nationalism in Europe and the US.
Homogenizing everyone into a single global culture, which would be required to have a single government without boundaries that rate limit migration, would be verging on genocide.
Your comment assumes a very negative interpretation of what I said.
> leading to horrific events like “grooming gangs” of immigrants raping native children. Typically at the point gangs of migrants are raping natives, we drop the word “immigration” and talk about “invasion” or “colonization”.
I didn't notice this sentence before. Did you edit your comment to add in this part? If so you should mention it.
In any case, given the tone of this particular statement as well as that of your previous comments I really don't think we can have a productive conversation, so I'm gonna stop replying.
> Your comment assumes a very negative interpretation of what I said.
Not sure that it does :D
I'll address your points one by one:
> Boundaries are an expression of each tribe exerting an area of influence.
Modern boundaries, like modern nation-states, don't really work like tribes did. Prehistoric tribes tended to move around, didn't build fences or patrol them with armed guards and usually had a relatively vague concept of ownership.
In many places around the world boundaries were drawn by colonial powers according to their own interests and not by natives themselves. For that reason borders very often actually split cultures and lead to ethnic tensions (e.g. in the Middle East).
> we don’t want to eliminate human ethnic/cultural diversity ...
Fully agree.
> ... and that requires boundaries which enforce rate limited exchange
I really don't understand why you think this is the case. It seems to me you're operating with a mechanistic/thermodynamic model about how cultures work. It's simply not true that you need borders to allow diversity to survive.
Take for example the concept of linguistic continuum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum. This actually ante-dates modern borders and shows how you can have cultural diversity and cultural mixture at the same time.
> Intermingling at a natural rate which allows each tribe to maintain its integrity is natural, and has evidence going back longer than writing.
Again, tribes and cultures used to mix all the time and modern states are not like tribes (or ancient kingdoms or empires for that matter).
> Brexit was an act of political violence because the UK immigration exceeded the rate at which the society could naturalize immigrants.
While I agree that Brexit was caused by a perceived flood of immigrants, the act of violence is mostly self-harm. The public's belief that immigration is excessive and harmful was encouraged by certain political and economic interests and is not an objective fact.
> Homogenizing everyone into a single global culture, which would be required to have a single government without boundaries that rate limit migration
I wasn't arguing for a global government to begin with. However, again, I don't see why you think administrative unity requires cultural uniformity. We can, and do, have institutions that oversee multiple diverse cultures, both across nation-states (e.g. UN, EU, NATO etc.) as well as inside them (many countries are federations that oversee ethnically diverse populations).
> Well, if it were reasonably run, why not? Imagine a world where the trillions going into the military were spent in other ways? Where people weren’t arbitraged across artificial boundaries? Would that be so horrible? So much more terrible than what we have now?
These trillions would be spent oppressing you for a change. A "world government" cannot be anything but a complete bloody dictatorship.
Where's the evidence? This thread is decrying the response of
one of the world's largest governments. Good thing the rest of the world doesn't depend on the US CDC or we'd all have a big problem.
One world government doesn't look like some utopian committee of experts making perfect decisions each time. It looks like Trump and Xi but multiplied by a million.
I am not saying it would generally be a good idea. Obviously it could be a terrible thing. However, considering the best possible option out of all possible futures as a theoretical exercise it would look like something else.
Yeah, you wouldn't spend that on the military. It would be spent on "the world police" that require rifles, APCs, tanks, jet fighters, and carriers to "enforce the law". The larger you make your administration the greater the chance of corruption and the less individual people matter to the leaders.
How would you make a government of 8 billion people reasonably run? I mean the mechanics of it - if your definition of "reasonably run" includes being democratic, and the arrangement is the usual representative democracy, it's not going to be very representative in practice, because a single person can't meaningfully represent millions.
This shouldn't be a surprise really, the human brain does not have the capability to coherently reason and act consistently over long time and distance horizons.
We're just not designed to be able to take third and fourth order effects into consideration in our day to day decisions at scale.
Just look at the current pandemic and this toilet paper stuff. We smoke, we drink alcohol, we don't count externalities in our consumption etc... The best thing we can do is build systems that nudge us to making better decisions in the longer term.
All problems of this scale are coordination problems. Inability to coordinate effectively on a large scale is the fundamental problem of humanity. If we could coordinate then there’d be no poverty, war, or famine. Disease outbreaks like this one would be slowed dramatically as well.
However lack of cooperation has been solved in the past. We are not killing each other anymore (a backstab/backstab outcome of prisoner's dilemma). We coordinated cooperation here for shared values. It's time for better values. A good, simple set of values that everyone recognizes could spread very quickly in today's era of global light-speed communication networks.
It is very tempting to be drawn into these kind of articles. But they are always worth a little caution. Counting successful predictions post hoc is dangerous.
If there had been no pandemic this year, but California had suffered from an overwhelming earthquake, this article would read "A Wo/Man Who Saw the Earthquake Coming." If a catastrophic series of diplomatic failures had led to a nuclear strike: "A Wo/Man Who Saw the Nuclear War Coming." 20 years ago there were plenty of "A Wo/Man Who Saw the Terror Attacks Coming."
And I'm not suggesting these people are crazy or out there on the fringe. Experts working in an area might agree what a worst case situation is, but disagree whether it is likely. If we took every worst case scenario entirely seriously, we would do very little else.
Learning from the past is important. But estimating the probability of things that have occurred is really difficult and counterintuitive.
If someone saw it coming, and acted early, there would be no pandemic and the action would have been seen as an overreaction. There were at least two cases during the Cold War which could have caused nuclear war, but some people made the right call.
The article is focused more on future viruses. A bad thing happened now which was preventable.
We've got no nuclear plant meltdowns and no nuclear wars, because we applied security procedures learned from the past to the present. We have less killer quakes because buildings are built to withstand earthquakes now.
Most of these things aren't totally expensive to fix. They're a chain of bad events and all you have to do is break the chain at the weakest point. The Spanish flu was so deadly because people tried to bury it with propaganda and no quarantine measures were in place. At least today, we've panicked and taken action early.
> If someone saw it coming, and acted early, there would be no pandemic and the action would have been seen as an overreaction.
I admire your optimism, but I don't share it. Many are right now (and have been for decennia) foreseeing catastrophic effects of climate change (floodings, mass migration, disruption of ecosystems) and yet we fail to act. Health experts have apparently warned for years that we're not prepared for a pandemic (I believe they recently discussed this in NYT Daily https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/podcasts/the-daily/corona...). An additional problem is, like the other commenter points out, that many people see many crises coming all the time and there's no objective way to tell who's right and who isn't.
We don't have to focus on every crisis. The context here is zoonotic spillover, which has killed millions of people historically, and it keeps happening again and again.
It's still okay that we didn't listen to experts like this last time. But this serves as a good wake up call. Avian flu didn't wake us. Swine flu didn't wake us. We were distracted when Spanish Flu came around. But let's not have this repeat too many times.
This line of reasoning is really just silly for a number of reasons.
For starters, preparing for every crisis that could potentially eventuate, even for just a single category of crisis, would still come at the opportunity cost of doing anything else at all.
Also, what’s so special about spillovers? People suffer and die from all sorts of things every day.
Finally, what lessons do you expect people to learn from past spillover events? To not have contact with any non-human organisms? Spillovers happen all the time. Most human viruses come from other animals. Is it reasonable to expect we can predict which infections, out of the millions of spillover infections that occur ever year, are going to cause a crisis? Or predict when a typically self-limiting spillover infection is going to unexpectedly pick up a new transmission route? Or should all sickness be treated as if it were ground zero for the next pandemic until proven otherwise?
You get these with everything. The "man who predicted the stock market crash", "the man who predicted the world series winner", etc.
If person A predicts a stock market crash each year, person B predicts stock market boom each year, person C predicts stock market would remain level each year, then someone is always bound to be right.
Those who predicted peak oil was "right" when oil spiked in the late 00s, but then fracking happened and now we laugh at the peak oil crowd.
> The most troubling thing is that a lot of leaders dismissed this information.
This is nonsense! Global pandemic was literally at the very top of many countries' national security risk registers! Everyone has been saying for decades that this was the biggest threat!
Trying to rewrite history to say that only some fringe celebrities saw it coming is bizarre.
I think about a gazillion people identified exactly this type of situation as a problem, and we’ve had plenty of other outbreaks. It is completely unsurprising. The UK has done a lot of modelling and prepping for such an event, as I’m sure have other governments, but that doesn’t give you magic powers when it happens.
It's also worth bearing in mind that there's precisely one country which could possibly have done what he suggested and stopped this by preventing the spillover in the first place - China - and, well, good luck with that.
I think the problem is that the virus is so mild. You can't spot a lot of cases, so e.g. someone gets on a plane and is not showing symptoms and a few days later in Italy they get sick or infect others without realising they're ill.
Another scenario is drastic measures are taken but the threat fizzles out on its own. With infectious diseases it can be quite difficult to know until it is over just how real the threat was. President Ford pushed for a widespread inoculation program for a swine flu epidemic that seemed threatening but never came. The vaccine caused more health problems than the flu itself. Ford was heavily criticized and lost credibility for his level of response but there was no way for him to know it would fizzle out on its own. Had he not acted and it became an epidemic, he also would have faced political consequences. Sometimes the best response simply can't be known ahead of time.
People did listen. But the general population - and most of their politicians - are too complacent, decadent even, to change lifestyles.
The West is addicted to lifestyles. Its near impossible for many people to consider changing their lives in any way - why should they? Nobody else does.
If anything, I hope that after this event is over, the survivors take a long hard look at who and what they are, in relation to each other. I hope we get over our decadence and realise that our 'safe' cultures are anything but safe, and that we all address the need to build better societies.
Fine words that mean nothing. What sort of "decadent lifestyle" do you have in mind, given that pandemics have existed for as long as humanity, everywhere in every society.
It's fair to say that a LOT of people saw it coming. Just in recent history we've dealt with Ebola, MERS, SARS so that they are viruses looking to become best buddies with us is not new, and it doesn't require a visionary to notice.
If china allows those wet markets again I hope there will be international efforts to sabotage those markets, and even have sanctions on china if they do nothing to fight against those practices.
I've heard those farmers who breed those animals lobbied the chinese government to allow those farms. So in the end, they will not prevent those practices entirely. So it might happen again in a region where the government have less control. That's the scary part.
It's eye-opening that unscientific beliefs are actually endangering lives. It was true for anti-vax, but now we have reached a stage when ignorance reached a new stage of dangerosity.
It's more than wet markets, although those are obviously dangerous. It's the continued expansion of human population into rainforests and other wildlife areas:
> Yes. EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO, and others, looked at all reported outbreaks since 1940. They came to a fairly solid conclusion that we’re looking at an elevation of spillover events two to three times more than what we saw 40 years earlier. That continues to increase, driven by the huge increase in the human population and our expansion into wildlife areas. The single biggest predictor of spillover events is land-use change—more land going to agriculture and more specifically to livestock production.
This is not going to be fixed easily. Everything from the deforestation of the Brazilian rainforest to Chinese population growth is driving it.
I think the most important part in the article is that with the wave of populism and nationalism sweeping the world it's evident that this mindset is incapable of solving any real problem on any scale. Even if the virus goes away and the economy bounces back we've learned nothing and climate change and another wave of pandemics is upon us.
It's clear that market capitalism isn't resilient or robust. Our engine must always run on red and sooner or later it's going to brake down.
You're interpreting things through the prism of your pre-existing ideology. Someone else could see current world events as evidence of the exact opposite of everything you say here. Indeed one headline I saw lately was something like "the nation state is back"!
For instance the fact that different countries are trying different tactics let's us compare between them to see what works best. Without nations we'd presumably have the same response everywhere, so we couldn't look to e.g. South Korea to learn anything. Singapore's previous experience in combating SARS wouldn't have gone anywhere because it wouldn't have reflected global priorities.
As for your last paragraph, that's just bog standard Marxist catastrophism isn't it? He was claiming capitalism's inherent contradictions would cause global collapse in the mid 1800's but he was wrong. It's been a standard refrain for centuries but where did this outbreak start? A communist country, that oppressed the doctor who tried to raise the alarm. Not great evidence for your case.
I'm not sure what ideology you are alluding to but that statement is correct, it's impossible for me to not see things through my lense, it's the only one i've got.I'm not by any means saying that countries should do away with their sovereignty in the name on internationalism but the article does state that the cooperation between countries and sharing of knowledge is also being closed with the borders.
Marxist catastrophism? Never heard of it, but it very clear that the dogma of modern neoliberalism calls all other ideologies or opposing thoughts marxist. Is it not possible to critique our current system without being called a marxist? Marx wanted the means of production in the hands of the workers. I couldn't care less, I just want to be able to live in a society that has the ability to address problems that or not profitable in the short run. What should I call myself?
The article states a lot of things that don't make any sense and should certainly be ignored. In a time of instant electronic communication, in which the primary way scientific findings are broadcast are PDFs of journal pre-prints, why would travel restrictions be ending cooperation between countries and sharing of knowledge? That's something the author wants to be true because they're a leftist globalist, but when we do a quick reality check it sounds completely wrong. We're not sending couriers with letters anymore.
Marxist catastrophism is a very specific thing. It's not a fancy placeholder for "anything that's not neoliberalism" (a term which is arguably itself poorly defined).
Marx is famously known for a few slogans, but he spent his entire life writing. Marxist catastrophism refers to his written vision of the future in which, roughly speaking, capitalism would collapse into catastrophic anarchism due to its internal contradictions (as he saw it) and eventually be replaced with socialism. Interestingly this vision of his came to him as a young man, before most of his other ideas were well formed, and stayed with him his entire life. There's a good description of it in this biography of his life (starting page 52):
Johnson argues that his vision was primarily a poetic vision, that is, he saw the poetic vision of a society in flames and then worked backwards from that to derive his political ideas, which is one reason why they don't hold water and why he had to rely on various kinds of intellectual fraud to support them (like manufacturing quotes, using very obsolete sources, etc).
When you argue that "market capitalism isn't resilient or robust. Our engine must always run on red and sooner or later it's going to brake down." you are, whether you know it or not, walking a well trodden intellectual path. It's all been heard before but kind of like peak oil, didn't actually happen. Capitalism proved very robust, at least compared to the proposed alternatives. There have been quite a few collapse of communist regimes, but no collapse of any capitalist country. Even blowups like the GFC were over within two years and back to business as usual.
Very robust, if we just ignore the irreversibel damage done to pretty much every ecosystem in the world in the name of profi or billions of people living in the waste of the wealthy.
Apart from that I agree. We forgot the ‘enlightened’ self interest part of capitalism. My wealth means nothing if the planet has to die for me to get it.
Capitalism is the best we've got. It has no responsibility in this unless you consider authoritarianism a better outcome. This hysteria and panic is way overblown. We know this is a possible effect of travel and it's still worth it.
> I think the most important part in the article is that with the wave of populism and nationalism sweeping the world it's evident that this mindset is incapable of solving any real problem on any scale.
Less globalism, less ability to freely travel == less risk to spread the virus from country to country. If anything, nationalism does the contrary of what you claim it does. In fact, by closing their border right now, countries are insuring that no foreign traveler is going to bring now CORONA cases to their country.
If nobody could travel to and from China, the global pandemic would not have happened.
"Viruses live on a delicate balance, don’t they? They have to be able to thrive without killing their host.
Right. The ones that kill off their host quickly will disappear. With the SARS virus, it’s no surprise that killing 10 percent of its host, it wasn’t able to establish itself as a pandemic virus on this planet."
a virus could kill 100% of its host, as long as it took a long time to do so while the host was still able to go around and infect others.
I don't think the 10% virulence is the reason (or the only reason) that SARS didn't make it to pandemic scale, I think it was everyone working against it and succeeding that time, which of course had the result of people thinking "hah, see it wasn't a problem, all those eggheads overreacting"
on edit: I think my main irritation is with the governments that did not put the proper preparation in the health systems (enough ICU preparation for example) for what was a foreseeable event.
We have much more mobility and contacts with other people than in past, therefore it may be more efficient for viruses to evolve into having longer incubation period than becoming less lethal.
I wonder if the end result of informing people that wildlife is swimming in potentially deadly viruses would be the attitude that the wildlife should be exterminated, not preserved.
Yes, that's the headline. But the article is specifically about Corona and quite detailed:
> Coronaviruses are a genus of bugs that cause respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, sometimes mild and sometimes fierce, in humans, other mammals and birds.
...
> Another reason is that coronaviruses as a group are very changeable, very protean, because of their high rates of mutation and their proclivity for recombination: when the viruses replicate, their genetic material is continually being inaccurately copied — and when two virus strains infect a single host cell, it is often intermixed. Such rich genetic variation gives them what one expert has called an “intrinsic evolvability,” a capacity to adapt quickly to new circumstances within new hosts.
...
> Bats, though wondrous and necessary animals, do seem to be disproportionately implicated as reservoir hosts of new zoonotic viruses...
Sounds reductive. This person seems to be as good an expert you can ever get on zoonotic spillover events as you can ever get, and if you read the Q&A, you'll see that he clearly lays out what is probably going to happen and what should rather be happening in an ideal world.
This is not some armchair philosopher spewing racist things about Asians eating random animals being the root of all evil, but a clearly objective look at what probably causes things like this.
The three major groups of saw it coming are the "saw it coming from China" which only the most rational and steady-minded people were able to achieve, the "saw it coming once it spread to Italy" people (I fell in to this group because I fell prey to the "China is a different planet" fallacy), and the group you have a chance of joining today, the "realized American hospitals were going to get overwhelmed after seeing it happen in two other countries" group.
I think lots of people predicted it as a risk, especially after the original sars, which didn't turn into a massive thing but was still a wake up call. I mean, canada created an entire new agency for being prepared for a pandemic after the sars thing.
Plenty of us saw this coming as soon as news came out of China - even me [0]. The problem was none of us were able to do anything about it, either on a social or individual level beyond stocking up on food and other essentials in January before the masses panicked.
It's been a very difficult, helpless feeling watching this all happen. A lot of people were watching from afar what occurred in Wuhan, then saw it spread to SK, Japan, and eventually Italy. When Disney and Starbucks shut down in China it was extremely concerning, and when FoxConn shut down it was terrifying.
I've been telling my friends and family that they should be gathering extra food, medications, etc. if for no reason other than the coming supply chain disruptions. At first they laughed, but at this point they seem like they're actually mad at me, and in some senses blame me for the currently bare shelves in supermarkets. It sucks.
I’ve been told I’m inciting panic just for dispassionately commenting on friends and acquaintances Facebook posts.
Because of the distrust in our government and institutions, people won’t believe anything until it’s way too late.
I’m also frustrated with the “happy talk” people, who think if we just stay positive, everything will be fine in the end.
I’ve must have explained a dozen times the difference between what happens when a virus has a mortality rate of 0.1% like the flu vs. Covid19 (on average) at 1–3%, which means it’s 10–30 times more deadly.
I was typing it so often that my iPhone was autocompleting chunks of my sentences!
I’ve already been invited to a less public discussion group on Facebook for people who get it and are sharing tips, strategies and information on getting through this.
I’m thinking about getting my cousins on a conference call to check where their heads are at.
Same.There are people quite furious at me for having warned them in January when this was just a Chinese blip on their screens.
I have fallen out with colleagues over nothing more than taking banal, sensible precautions which don't harm anyone. Eyes are rolled, I am a hysteric. That's going on even now, after my country has gone on unprecedented lockdown. (I am in Denmark, public sector shut down, borders closing today at noon).
It's the same from me. I've been trying to talk people into worrying & caring about this for the past 3 weeks in my social group. From the standard "This is just a flu" to the brainless "I don't share your opinion" to now people not caring because they are not in the age bracket that gets affected the most.
We're at "just" 2 deaths and slightly over 30 confirmed cases, but we had the gates open for way too long and just this week people coming from Europe is "asked" to quarantine themselves, but the government doesn't want to suspend classes.
The feeling I have is like being tied to the railway line and watching the train coming around the bend.
Nobody has started to blame me for the situation, but plenty laughed at me at the time when I tried to warn them what is coming. They have stopped laughing.
The problem is probably that they lumped you up with all the doomsday predictors.
I have a certain friend who, for years, have been trying to tell everyone that normal food is bad and imported "superfoods" are the way to go.
Same goes for scaremongering of every other kind. I feel for everyone who warned about the corona virus in January there are 5 or 10 who warned about everything else which turns out to be a significantly smaller problem.
I'm honestly a bit surprised about the amount of people that are stocking up on food.
What is your motivation for doing so? Is it because you assume essentials will be unavailable because of other people stocking up, or because of eventual pandemic related supply chain issues?
Maybe I'm naive, but I just can't imagine that because of the pandemic society will be collapsing to a point that it becomes hard to obtain the food I need for me and my family.
1. To avoid the grocery store and other busy social places. Social distancing.
2. To avoid buying food from the grocery store that may have been coughed/sneezed on and still have live virus on it. Stock up on non-perishables while they’re still more likely to be clean.
3. Anticipate shortages due to other people stocking up.
4. This virus came from an animal and can also infect animals. So maybe the outbreak infects animal feedstock and reduces our food supply. Or the outbreak infects Ag workers and reduces our food supply. Or the outbreak disrupts supply chain between farms and table. That kind of thing.
I can't speak for others, but I stocked up simply so I could isolate my family if the virus becomes common in our city. It's about 2 weeks of food for 4 people (me and 3 kids).
I don't anticipate the need to isolate but I figured I'd play it safe. I thought this was what others were doing, but now that I think of it I'm just assuming people think as I do. I personally didn't buy 40 rolls of toilet paper.
Expectation of supply disruptions due to both panic and supply chain breakdowns. I don’t see things getting totally out of control, but what is available might be limited. Everything I have bought I will use up over the next 6 months anyway so no loss.
You might read up on the Bullwhip Effect. these demand fluctuations can have very disruptive effects on supply chains and availability of things, even if nothing else happens. So I highly disagree with the "no loos" statement. Not you personally, but as group behavior these stock ups caused probably more mid term supply issues on everyday stuff than the Corona virus so far.
If you are quarantined, your food selection may be severely restricted. I'm sure you'll be able to get food, but it may not be the food you normally like to eat.
Additionally, if the virus is rampant in your area, you may not wish to go to grocery stores and risk exposing yourself.
Social distancing. Last week I had a Trader Joe's cashier blow his nose and immediately start scanning my items. Today I had an old woman behind me in line who couldn't stop touching her face and scratching all over.
There are already enough "it's just a flu" people out here I don't really want to wade into that any more than I have to.
Well, the related question though is not whether it was possible, but would happen (one metric being can you consistently estimate probabilities better).
Would most of the people who predicted COVID-19 escaping also have been able to predict SARS would have minimal effect outside of Asia?
(Don't forget that China had pretty aggressive lockdowns going on during SARS -- schools closed, gatherings limited, etc. -- though not to the level Wuhan got to).
Yes. I initially thought it was another SARS until I saw the R0 numbers. As soon as I saw that I knew that only the most aggressive containment policies would prevent this getting out of control.
At this point the only issue is how much we can delay the peak and minimise the time we are above the capacity of the medical system.
Sure, I've spent months being the funny doomsayer guy at work and everyone hah, it's like a flu. no problems. But the difference between me and this guy is he's an expert who saw it coming.
You don't think precautions in North America are sufficient? I'm not totally clear on how much we're mirroring Italy right now. I'm hoping we're doing better to isolate and prevent, and we're less dense in population, but... I'm still worried.
We don't have nearly enough isolated ICU beds or ventilators on hand if we take what happened in China and Italy as a warning.
The sad thing to me is that there is at least one American company that still makes ventilators here in the states, but they reported that they haven't been asked to ramp up production.
They even make a simplified and hardened version of a ventilator specifically aimed at meeting surge demand during a pandemic, so the engineering effort has already been done.
NPR did an interview with the owner of one of the last companies to make surgical masks in the US. He said that during the last panic they ramped up production and just as the new machines started coming online demand evaporated. It very nearly destroyed his company. Ramping up production is not an instantaneous thing and doing it without a clear customer for the increased product is an incredible business risk.
If I'd hazard a guess, it might be because someone still has to operate the ventilator, and hospitals are expecting a drop in healthcare workers (since you don't want a sick person treating patients).
A couple things being done to help reduce pressure on medical personel here in Czech Republic:
- elective surgeries being canceled, hospitals cleared as much as possible
- medical students were ordered to stay in their residence area and are taking disaster medicine courses
- teaching students are volunteering to take care of children of medical personel (as all schools are closed, someone needs to take care of childrens & students are free to do so)
But the question is whether the social distancing being implemented across the US will reduce the rate of growth. There’s been drastic action taken this past week.
I mean it's very state by state right now and in disarray. In NYC they've tried to ban public events and large gatherings; no public schools are being shut down and it's pretty much whatever each entity decides. It's a hard choice to make in a city like this, but I feel we are on the "not doing enough" side of things. I think for the US they are definitely trying to weigh the economic cost so that's just competing with the heath cost. I guess time will tell.
Different major cities are likely to experience different outcomes, by chance and by actions taken. Maybe we’ll hear of overwhelmed hospitals in some areas of the country. But I’m hopeful that the US has enacted social distancing measures at an earlier stage of the spread than did Italy.
I am not seeing much social distancing. People are talking about it, but I don't think people are really doing it. I see pictures of other countries where people are visibly standing 3-6 feet apart, everywhere. Here people are standing in groups in the supermarket telling jokes as they're stocking up, as if they're involved in a light-hearted roleplay of a pandemic.
The precautions that would be needed to prevent hospital overloads would be things like nearly shutting down cities. We are seeing some time-buying measures enacted by local governments (event cancellations for example) along with some from the Federal government (border closing). However these measures buy us at most a few days of replication time. Factors like average age and population density slow it down, but that only delays the wall-hitting.
Other countries (mine included) are in almost complete shutdown, with only super markets and pharmacies open. Any other place where people congregate (schools, night clubs, cinemas, cafeterias, restaurants) are closed. This is with fewer than 200 cases country-wide, and it's still probably not going to be enough.
A big part of the problem here in the US has been a complete lack of national leadership from Washington, which has left all the various states to come up with policies on what should and shouldn’t be closed on their own. The results are (predictably) all over the place.
All sporting events in the US have been suspended (read: effectively cancelled) or outright cancelled, multiple states are enacting bans on congregations larger than 100/200/etc. people, many colleges and public schools are going on 2-3 week breaks, tech employers are starting to roll out mandatory work from home policies, etc. This is about as extreme as its ever been in recent memory.
> I think there’s more the US should be doing.
If you want more to be done, then politicians need to be honest about what we’re dealing with. Everyone, and I’m not talking about just Trump here, has been giving a lot of wishy-washy “well it’s not really bad, but it kinda is, but not really, we just want to prevent the spread of disease is all” answers but the actions we’re seeing seem to imply that this is some super-virus that’s gonna wipe out 20% of the population. And maybe that’s the case, but if you want people to treat it that way, we need to hear that.
All I’ve been hearing from foreign and domestic leaders is “this is basically a really nasty flu.” Well guess what, the flu is background noise to everyone. Yeah it kills people but it’s just not perceived as some massive ongoing threat. Meanwhile you’ve got entire countries locking themselves down like it’s 28 Days Later over this particular virus. But again, nothing but “eh nothing to worry about, just like, quarantine yourself for the next couple weeks” talk from our leaders, how is anyone supposed to take this seriously if no one will admit that this virus is “something different this time”?
I have had a couple of physician friends describe it as “just a really nasty flu” as well. However, I couldn’t square it with the seriousness with which I was seeing th authorities address it. That’s when I realized, that the comparison is misleading. For example, you could describe a lion as “just a really nasty cat”, but that wouldn’t be doing it justice.
If the 2% fatality rate is accurate, compared to the flu’s 0.1%. That is 20x worse. The other scary part is that we don’t yet know if this virus is going to be seasonal like the flu.
1) people selfishly reason from their point of view: "there is a 2% chance I'll die". But it is more than 10% for those aged 70+.
2) people don't think systemic and forget second-order effect s. If the health system can't handle everyone being sick at the same time, it's not 2% but much more. Moreover, anyone requiring intensive care will be subject to triage, not just Corona cases.
3) people forget the health impact after healing (diminished lung functions due to fibrosis, etc)
That's if those stats are even relatively accurate. The testing kits are lacking to say the least and the qualifications to use them seem very unrealistic in preventing it from spreading.
Expected the US to have 100k tests per day in February and a coordinated response but watched in horror as we bungled the early days in every imaginable way.
They came to a fairly solid conclusion that we’re looking at an elevation of spillover events two to three times more than what we saw 40 years earlier. That continues to increase, driven by the huge increase in the human population and our expansion into wildlife areas. The single biggest predictor of spillover events is land-use change—more land going to agriculture and more specifically to livestock production.
It was avian influenza in the 2000s. What you saw with avian influenza was a direct consequence of how much poultry was being produced to feed people
So meat eating is not only a big driver in climate change and antibiotic resistance but is also dramatically increasing the likelihood of these crossover pandemics. It's time for us to quit our toxic addiction to meat.
meat eating is pretty low on the things causing all of our problems. for example, population growth, which is directly mentioned in the quote you provided, is a serious issue.
It doesn't have anything to do with the planet carrying capacity. This is only about the speed of viruses to spread, which is higher in dense and connected areas (and the quantity of meat we eat since diseases often come from meat).
In TFA, there's the argument that human invasion of more and more wildlife habitat has increased the risk for zoonosis:
> Yes. EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO, and others, looked at all reported outbreaks since 1940. They came to a fairly solid conclusion that we’re looking at an elevation of spillover events two to three times more than what we saw 40 years earlier. That continues to increase, driven by the huge increase in the human population and our expansion into wildlife areas. The single biggest predictor of spillover events is land-use change—more land going to agriculture and more specifically to livestock production.
And about meat, there are two issues. One is about impacts of livestock production, and the other is about wildlife consumption.
We are overpopulated but that's not changing any time soon so we all need to find ways reduce our ecological footprint now. Cutting way back on or eliminating animal products from your diet is one of the best and easiest ways to do this.
How does one do so without missing essential nutrients that are only found in meats, if we're requiring realistic quantities for daily consumption, and not an absurd volume of food.
For instance, there are certain things you find in large quantities in meat or fish, where the non meat aubsistute would require completely unrealistic amounts to be consumed to receive anywhere near the same amount.
If this could be concretely addressed, I think that'd convince a lot of people on the fence to switch.
The only nutrient that can not be found in plants is B12 which is easily supplemented. The official position of the American Dietetics Association is that diets completely free of animal products are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases:
We are not killing the planet, but we are putting ecosystems under pressure.
And evolution has given us tastes for things that are highly nutritious but were difficult to come by. Shall we deny ourselves these pleasures because they become problematic at scale? If so, what else should we ban by the same logic?
Perhaps the main problem is that there are too many of us. Or maybe we should be putting more effort into growing meat in vats.
Whatever we end up doing, I doubt it'll end in some kind of sustainable balance. Rather, we'll continue to multiply and consume as much as our technology allows and the environment can bare.
What gives meat the taste are the spices and the way we prepare it.
We now have great plant based alternatives (Impossible Food, Beyond Meat, and more coming on the market) that are getting better and better and which are less harmful to our biosphere. But even without those alternatives, there are so many great dishes that don't require meat and they are delicious and nutritious. Just have to have an open mind and explore what's out there.
RE: Shall we deny ourselves these pleasures because they become problematic at scale?
There are so many studies (some of which I posted further above). Science confirms that our current way of life is not sustainable.
So what is more important?
A) That we don't put our ecosystem under immense pressure as we are doing now
B) The pleasure you derive from eating chopped up animals
>>> Shall we deny ourselves these pleasures because they become problematic at scale? If so, what else should we ban by the same logic?
Yes.
Anything that has an environmental externality. Not necessarily ban, but definitely reduce the use, possibly by making it more expensive, or just stop subsidizing it.
You do need to take care in having good diet, like taking care of protein intake, B12, omega-3. I personally prefer a flexitarian diet, where meat is rare, mostly vegetarian and vegan when I want to.
Thing is, you don’t need meat every day, and just halving it makes a great difference already with minimum effect on your health.
Livestock production is far more efficient use of land than agriculture to feed vegans which requires far more land to feed the human population far less efficiently. We can use low quality land for livestock grazing or feed. Something that you can't use for human vegetation.
> So meat eating is not only a big driver in climate change and antibiotic resistance but is also dramatically increasing the likelihood of these crossover pandemics.
The human population grew from 250 million in the 1800s to 7 billion today thanks to meat consumption, oil, etc. Blaming meat, oil, etc isn't going to get you very far because facts and reality are hurdles that you just can't overcome.
> It's time for us to quit our toxic addiction to meat.
The only truly toxic thing is vegetation because plants release toxins to prevent being eaten.
This is really interesting. Do you have any source to back up what you wrote or is it just your opinion?
From what I read giving up our meat heavy diet is going to be necessary to reduce GHG emissions. And not only that - the heavy animal agriculture industry also contributes to biodiversity loss and pollution.
This researcher[1] from the Oxford University conducted a 5 year study to understand the impact our current food choices have on the environment. He gave up meat & dairy as the conclusion of the study was that adopting a more plant based diet is the single best thing an individual can do to reduce their own carbon footprint.
The UN released a similar report and recommended the same - to heavily reduce or give up meat completely.
And then there is the water usage required for animal agriculture [2].
This is just laughably incorrect. You couldn't come anywhere close to meeting current demand for meat with free foraging animals. If that were the case why do we have CAFO farms?
The level of delusion and misinformation on this issue is tragic and mindboggling but go ahead and enjoy your selfish tech bro lifestyle.
> You couldn't come anywhere close to meeting current demand for meat with free foraging animals.
Where did I say this? I'm used to straw man arguments from vegans but not this blatant.
> The level of delusion and misinformation on this issue is tragic and mindboggling
You are just using talking points that you just use when you are confronted with reality.
> but go ahead and enjoy your selfish tech bro lifestyle.
The most selfish, privileged people I've come across are vegans. A vegan diet is a wealthy privileged diet and an unnatural one at that. A diet that relies on globalism and can't be sourced locally. People can eat an omnivore diet from local sources. Nobody on earth can eat a vegan diet from local sources. Not a privileged swedish vegan, not a privileged brazilian vegan or a innuit vegan if there is such a thing.
The worst diet for the environment is the vegan diet. Think about it or go learn a thing or two about agriculture. Instead of delusional vegan propaganda. The worst diet for humans is a vegan diet. Ever notice why there has been no vegan society in human history? Because humans aren't herbivores. We aren't cows.
But privileged and selfish vegans can exploit globalism to get vegetation from all over the world to feed their selfish privileged existence and of course pop them pills to poorly sustain yourself as you cling on to your faux moral high ground.
One cow feeds a bunch of people. One vegan dish has thousands of dead animal parts in it. You might want to read about how many insect, rodent, etc parts is in your salad. You might want to read about how many poor farmers are killed to get you that avocado and how many animals are killed to sustain your selfish privileged diet.
A person eating a steak knows one animal died for his meal. A vegan eating a salad knows thousands of animals died for his meal but instead pretend to be the moral superior.
> Again really interesting claims you make, but please provide credible sources to back it all up.
It's called reality and human evolution. Do me a favor and find me a single vegan society that has existed anywhere on earth? You won't because a vegan diet in nature is a suicide diet.
> The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine[0] recommends a more plant-based diet, the opposite of what you claim
How is that the opposite? A more plant-based diet isn't a vegan diet. Otherwise, it would say an "all plant-based diet". Typical sneaky vegan m.o. I'm for eating veggies, fruits, etc. I'm also for eating meat. Because humans are omnivores and that's the best diet for humans. No amount of vegan paid propaganda sources is going to change that reality.
> Livestock production is far more efficient use of land than agriculture to feed vegans which requires far more land to feed the human population far less efficiently. We can use low quality land for livestock grazing or feed. Something that you can't use for human vegetation.
This argument makes no sense at all. We should start listening more to science and less to random comments in a forum.
Reduction of meat production is needed to reduce global warming. Miss-information and under investment in clean energy, health care, education, and other basic necessities put all us at risk.
Sustainable grazing can lead to carbon sequestration — so it’s a better alternative to factory farming — but what really needs to happen is a mass conversion of pasture back to natural forests.
The argument that meat is somehow a better use of land is incorrect however. Most calories are currently grown to feed animals. Typically in mono crops. These are usually drenched in petrochemicals.
Vegan food is currently more of an “edge” product of a food system geared towards animal agriculture. So no, it’s not very sustainable either. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Regenerative farming practices and agroforestry can produce sufficient vegetable crops, including perennial staple crops, to feed the world. It just requires an attitude change.
People get angry when you talk about reducing meat consumption. I get it — I went through a difficult few weeks when I stopped 5 years ago. It was like giving up cigarettes, alcohol, or sugar.
But during WWII when all the good meat was going to the front lines, the government ran a massive campaign to get people to eat liver. People didn’t like liver. But they successfully changed people’s habits. If we were able to do that, I believe we can convince people to eat less meat.
Sources: “The Carbon Farming Solution”, “The Power of Habit.”
> The argument that meat is somehow a better use of land is incorrect however.
Actually it's a fact.
> Most calories are currently grown to feed animals. Typically in mono crops.
Yes calories that we can't otherwise access is fed to animals who can use it and in turn we eat the animals. Magic. Also, those "mono crops" are grown on poor quality land and in harsh environments where we can't grow avocados, oranges, almonds, etc. You get the idea? If we went vegan, we'd have to level many times more land with richer and warmer climates to grow enough to barely, inefficiently and poorly feed the population.
> These are usually drenched in petrochemicals.
Petrochemicals are fertilizer, so yes, they are "drenched in it" like all farmed products. Of course if we turned to veganism, we'd had to use many times more petrochemicals, pesticides, etc. Really great for the environment. /s
> I get it — I went through a difficult few weeks when I stopped 5 years ago.
Me too. Sounds about right, around the time of the social media propaganda led vegan craze. I got caught up in that nonsense too and even went around with others downvote brigading and spewing lies and misinformation and all sorts of vegan propaganda online. Hopefully you wake up before you do lasting damage to your health.
> It was like giving up cigarettes, alcohol, or sugar.
You mean it was like taking up smoking, drinking, etc. Your health, energy, mental ability, etc all decline.
> But during WWII when all the good meat was going to the front lines, the government ran a massive campaign to get people to eat liver.
Great. Liver is a great nutritious piece of meat and everyone should eat it. I don't know why we primarily go for muscle meats and disregard liver. A bit of butter and onions with liver can be as tasty as a ribeye steak.
> But they successfully changed people’s habits.
Considering how cheap liver is, no they didn't.
> If we were able to do that, I believe we can convince people to eat less meat.
Actually we should convince people to eat more meat ( or more kinds of meat ). It's sad that we mostly go for steak/roast and ignore offal, tail, tongue, etc.
> Sources: “The Carbon Farming Solution”, “The Power of Habit.”
Seems familiar. Sounds about right. I hope one day you wake and realize how silly it all is and how you wasted so much of your life on nonsense.
If you care about the environment and people's health, then veganism is your enemy. If you want globalism, virtue signaling and feeling superior then veganism is the right cult for you. Veganism is like a virus. Once you've been infected, you either die or develop an immunity to it. That's why I encourage more people to try veganism and learn about farming and your food. Most sane people will come to abhor veganism like the cultish virus it is. The remaining few will either die from poor diet or cheat like the "healthy vegans" who eat meat on the side.
There's at least one study that disqualifies the market as the epicenter. I think the reason people want it to be the market is then it's obviously an accident or ignorance, not a malicious act.
> The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report.
[snip]
> Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019—if not earlier—because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan—and perhaps elsewhere—before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December.
> There's at least one study that disqualifies the market as the epicenter.
Yeah, that's basically what I'm asking. There's a seemingly-obvious candidate that's just right there, that I remember hearing of a month or so ago, that's not even offered as a possibility now.
> Wuhan Center for Disease Control is ~900 feet from the market
Could you source that please? My understanding was that the Wuhan Level-4 facility has several locations and they ranged from roughly 10-20km away from the market.
Asking for a source as ~900 feet is not my past understanding.
It’s a disease control medical centre, not a bioweapons lab. They’re not ‘developing’ new viruses.
I’m not saying China doesn’t have bioweapons labs, I’ve no idea, but the Chinese CDC labs collaborate with international medical agencies. It’s hard to believe they would conduct bioweapons research at a centre that collaborates internationally with exactly the experts that would immediately be able to spot that sort of activity.
Whether they accurately predicted the future, or made a huge lab error is up for debate in my book, and is something that should at least be investigated.
Lab mistakes happen all of the time, and we're talking about something that has a subsantial ability to spread itself.
Here is an expert's unbiased analysis of whether this could be man made:
What you are saying is theoretically possible, but the sibling comment that's getting downvoted right now invoking Occam is, I think, spot on. Why hypothesize a detour through a biomedical lab if we know that people can get these diseases from animals, it's happened countless times before and it's exactly the scenario epidemiologists have been warning about for a long time?
Beside, there's another point that makes it implausible in this particular case: BSL4 labs are absurdly annoying to work in, with personnel wearing overpressure suits. Coronaviruses are BSL3 pathogens [0], you wouldn't choose to arbitrarily work with them at a higher safety level lab.
Of course it makes sense for scientists to worry about and prepare for that scenario, but in this particular case scientists have already rejected that this is a recombination event.
If you look at the last link I posted, the Harvard epidemiologist points out that the mutation rate suggests the 2019-nCoV came from just one recent source in single jump (as opposed to several mutation sources)
Combine this with the fact that: the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome, with no close genetic relationships to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbecovirus
It paints a picture that this did not come from nature.
To me occam's razor is leaning the opposite direction, as a scenario to create something like this in the wild doesn't seem plausible.
I would love for this to be proven false, and encourage any counterpoints addressing why human error should be ruled out.
The preprint you have quoted shows that the novel virus genome is very similar to a different Coronavirus (RaTG13) in some parts, and less similar in others. We have only a small sample of all the Coronavirus genomes that are out there in animals, so that's not particularly surprising.
From there to jump to a conclusion involving human involvement does not follow.
What exactly are you suggesting? That scientist have a bank of unpublished viruses collected from the wild that they play with and accidentally release? That makes little sense, particularly since it implies that people would be collecting viruses in the wild, at which point they would come into contact with animals and could get infected directly. But we already know that people collect bats for food, so that explanation only adds unnecessary complexity.
Alternatively, are you suggesting that scientist worked on specifically modifying an existing virus, e.g RaTG13? If that is what you're saying I suspect you are not familiar with how hard it is to engineer proteins for specific functions. It's a herculean basic science task, not something that is commonly done in biomedical labs.
Even in the Twitter thread that you linked, the only thing that Eric Feigl-Ding actually states is that the origin of the virus isn't well understood.
Even the article states that the fear of their research is:
>“If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”
I'm sure engineering viruses is a difficult task, but we know that they were doing this sort of thing already via funded public projects.. and they also don't necessarily have to have developed it in the Wuhan Institute itself, but it's not unreasonable to think that a samples that were created elsewhere and being stored there for research.
Regarding: >the only thing that Eric Feigl-Ding actually states is that the origin of the virus isn't well understood.
He does also state definitively that the market was not the origin.. despite that everyone else in the world seems to accept this as fact.
You are correct that this is not my area of expertise, which is why I am hoping that people more knowledgable than myself can tell me why this thought process isn't worth pursuing.
> I'm sure engineering viruses is a difficult task, but we know that they were doing this sort of thing already via funded public projects.
Yes, but what they did is different from (and much easier than) engineering a protein for a new function, because what they did was combine parts of different known virus strains together.
If that was the origin of SARS-CoV-2, you would see precise matches to the different origin strains for the different viral proteins. Now of course, the origin might be different secretly collected wild viruses, but at that point the only reason why that's a compelling story is that it sounds exciting...
In the comment I replied to where you suggested a disease center could release a new bioweapon.
A disease center would study known diseases. A disease center could only release a new bioweapon if it was secretly a bioweapons lab — there’s your conspiracy theory. Which you’re putting forward on the internet.
Disease centers often study known _pathogens_ in lab conditions/through methods that absolutely can lead to said pathogens mutating into a previously unknown strain.
You're overly focusing on _bioweapon_ as though all pathogens that developed via human influence were due to maliciousness.
No, actually, the comment you responded to specifically said "You don't need it to be a bioweapons lab to have a virus accidentally leak out."
It's just you (and one other poster I think?) that read "it's possible this virus has an [accidental] artificial origin" and jumped straight to "these people are accusing China of making bioweapons".
Based on my expertise from watching the movie Contagion, one possibility is that a sick bat flew out of the jungle into an open-air pigpen. The bat dropped a food scrap. A pig ate the scrap. A chef later handled the butchered pig. He shook hands with Gwyneth Paltrow during a kitchen tour. She then mingled with many people in the restaurant.
My original mental picture of the Wuhan market was that something weird was happening there, like people swallowing snakes live or doing a ritual with boar tongues. The movie scene demonstrated how a sequence of unremarkable steps could also do it.
This only fuels conspiracy theories and it's quite counterproductive, just like the recent US/China row about the virus being planted by the US and other BS.
We have similar transmission vectors as in the case of SARS, Ebola, Lyme, AIDS and other zootonic pathogens. This is exactly what the researcher in the article also states if you've read it. The writing is on the wall in capital letters. Stop disturbing wildlife, ban wildlife trade, unchecked wild game.
Early stories had all of the initial patients being staff at that centre, iirc. Although I thought recently they determined that the actual source was a pangolin?
Wow how did you find that? Did you just Google around until you found the latest one? The latest map I knew was this one, which is slightly behind but has zooming capability: https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/
I started running at this full tilt on Jan 23rd, for the record. Making progress. The main problem was our information systems were taken over, but I fuxxed it pretty good I think. It was all about making the positive feedbacks.
I think the appearance of this virus, was only a matter of time. It’s not a question of if, but, when.
The virus had existed in bats for millions of years, evolving and stabilizing itself symbiotically with the bat, and it took just the right combination, the right spark, to set off a chain of events that would allow it to eventually hunt down the human race.
End all meat agriculture and urban sprawl globally, and the risks of developing novel pandemics would fall precipitously. They are the major sources and they are entirely deliberately chosen.
I would encourage folks to read the article with an open mind as the "he saw it coming" is not really the point of most of what is said here.
This is is an expert who understands the realty of zoonotic spillover, and how it is going to become a more prevalent threat over time, and how to deal with that threat.