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C & C: Coronavirus #4

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

You'll recognise the writer, d_w:

That leads me to Mark Twain, a.k.a. Samuel Clemens. The obscure 'etymology', however, forebodes white-washing it.

. . . on an indirect tangent, can you help unravel: why not, whYkNOT?

Edited by dream_weaver
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Ha, yup. The common contraction of my first name reversed, and the wh added for fun. Suggested by a friend, for use on Skype at the time; it was apparently the query I often asked: Why not...?

Same for the Louie here I guess.

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On 4/4/2020 at 2:37 PM, dream_weaver said:

I wonder what the contractual agreement might be that is not being disclosed here in the story that may exist between the parties.

To follow up on this, I was reading an article in the NYT recently about other farmers allowing their crops to be destroyed or not bothering to sell a lot of their crop. The issue the farmer see is a reduction in the workforce that they would have used for distribution. If they had more people, they would have an easier time adapting and then changing their distribution methods. So since they can't find a solution to the drop in the workforce, their crops are going to waste anyway.

Maybe they're just used to handouts. US industrial farming industry is basically just corporate socialism anyway.

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WHO reported (previously) that

'Lower respiratory infections remain the most deadly communicable disease, causing 3.0 million deaths in 2016'.

So, what's new? Will the figure be 3.1 million this year? With better care and awareness being taken by people, and who doubts it's rational to be self-protective - but never self-sacrificial - the over all numbers could be less (factoring in better hygiene on other viruses).

What has changed since previous epidemics, is the greatly increased secularists around. They don't have a materialist solution to human mortality - like religionists with their afterlife, and who can handle the idea of death, fatalistically and with greater equanimity.

Truth of the matter, the morbid panic and dictatorial controls are caused and promoted largely by secularists. They are the New Age mystics who wish to transcend mortality by 'defeating' this, one, single, virus. And science/medicine/technology must somehow accommodate their wish.

They are why this totalitarian upheaval which brought us to a universal standstill - and compromised our futures, our economic way of life.

This last fact, and that they are generally anti-capitalist, Leftist, socialist, provides them the cherry on top.

Edited by whYNOT
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2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

What has changed since previous epidemics, is the greatly increased secularists around. They don't have a materialist solution to human mortality - like religionists with their afterlife, and who can handle the idea of death, fatalistically and with greater equanimity.

Truth of the matter, the morbid panic and dictatorial controls are caused and promoted largely by secularists. They are the New Age mystics who wish to transcend mortality by 'defeating' this, one, single, virus. And science/medicine/technology must somehow accommodate their wish.

Something that is personally frustrating to me, an explanation was clarifying. I introspect and say that others should be able to personally arrive at that conclusion by comprehending the same thing. Instead, conversations become like hunt and peck to a typist. Or another way to express it in a similar fashion . . . standard keyboard to a typist sitting down to a keyboard that wasn't configured by conventional means. Who want's to learn how to type from scratch over and over?

Edited by dream_weaver
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1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

Something that is personally frustrating to me, an explanation was clarifying. I introspect and say that others should be able to personally arrive at that conclusion by comprehending the same thing. Instead, conversations become like hunt and peck to a typist.

I've eventually learned to my amazement that many individuals do not introspect - unwilling or unable.

Knowing of this has saved me from a lot of frustration.

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I look at the leaves on oak trees, and notice the similarity early enough in life, at some point I knew they shared the same basic shape, i.e. their nature. The introspection is just baffling how anyone can function without it . . . I know she wrote how most don't, and now it ties in better with the observations.

(It's almost as if there is a rampant fear of what might be discovered.)

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On 4/13/2020 at 8:44 AM, whYNOT said:

What has changed since previous epidemics, is the greatly increased secularists around.

No idea what a secularist is supposed to be. The issue you're talking about probably nothing to do with religious views. You forget that many people desire the government to enforce controls you are speaking of, and the people who are extremely religious with almost no secular attitude don't even care to protect themselves because they think god will protect them. 

Anecdotally, the strongest dictatorial controls I've heard in general about anything come from people who say they support individualism. Even here (throughout my entire history on the board). The problem is that people forget what dictatorial actually is. 

Edited by Eiuol
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On 4/13/2020 at 6:23 PM, dream_weaver said:

I look at the leaves on oak trees, and notice the similarity early enough in life, at some point I knew they shared the same basic shape, i.e. their nature. The introspection is just baffling how anyone can function without it . . . I know she wrote how most don't, and now it ties in better with the observations.

(It's almost as if there is a rampant fear of what might be discovered.)

The "extraspection" or identification of a leaf, you tell of is matched by the (volitional) capacity of introspection, equally, the identifying of what particular emotion you feel, in response to ... something (and contemplating why you felt that way).

Right, the fear:  a clue to the cause of anyone's loss of introspection. Those identified feelings can be unpleasant and hateful, or inappropriate to one's pretended values (even feelings recovered from far memory) or destructive of a carefully guarded self-esteem - and as result, any further introspection is to be feared and avoided by such a person. Who can tell what dark things lurk unexamined under those subconscious stones...? 

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17 hours ago, Eiuol said:

No idea what a secularist is supposed to be. The issue you're talking about probably nothing to do with religious views. You forget that many people desire the government to enforce controls you are speaking of, and the people who are extremely religious with almost no secular attitude don't even care to protect themselves because they think god will protect them. 

Anecdotally, the strongest dictatorial controls I've heard in general about anything come from people who say they support individualism. Even here (throughout my entire history on the board). The problem is that people forget what dictatorial actually is. 

Certainly, I won't go so far as to think of any religious people as being as crazy as that. (God will protect them, come what may, they don't have to protect themselves). All religious individuals I've known have a pretty healthy regard for physical harm/health. I was considering why there's such a significant difference between the fear generally displayed during past crises and this one now. Here we are seeing and surrounded by unbelievable panic. There seemed a much greater stoicism in major pandemics (and wars) back then. One can reasonably point to the highly concentrated nature of the effects of this coronavirus, all at one time, and more intensified social media and - of course, MSM - attention. I think there's more and added my observation that while the religious majority not many decades ago could always afford to be more sanguine or fatalist about mortality, for obvious 'reasons', their numbers and the influence of Faith have been in decline for some time. Those agnostic-atheist-secularists who are replacing them have no metaphysical "answer" to death. With their evasion of the absolute fact of mortality, will logically arrive an existential dread. Such pervasive fear and subjectivity and self-sacrifice is what will open the door to control and dictatorships. I.e. I'm scared! the state must take my fear away! Further, it seems to me that the media deliberately has a hand in propagating mass fears, and one wonders why.

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52 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

All religious individuals I've known have a pretty healthy regard for physical harm/health.

You said secularists. These type of religious people are probably secular where it counts. At least to the extent that religious teaching doesn't dictate the way they think about their health. If you didn't realize, there are plenty of people in the US will actually think that way even about this virus - that god will protect them, that god will take them when their time comes so there is no point in acting safely or unsafely, and so on. 

You missed the most obvious difference between this pandemic and the ones of the past 20 years. Severity. 

Edited by Eiuol
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

You said secularists. These type of religious people are probably secular where it counts. At least to the extent that religious teaching doesn't dictate the way they think about their health. If you didn't realize, there are plenty of people in the US will actually think that way even about this virus - that god will protect them, that god will take them when their time comes so there is no point in acting safely or unsafely, and so on. 

You missed the most obvious difference between this pandemic and the ones of the past 20 years. Severity. 

Excerpted below is how severe it was -way back- in 2009. N.B. - 1.4 Billion infected.

(Previously, 1957 - '58, the Asian Flu took 1.1 million lives... Not "cases", lives).

"The 2009 swine flu pandemic was caused by a new strain of H1N1 that originated in Mexico in the spring of 2009 before spreading to the rest of the world. In one year, the virus infected as many as 1.4 billion people across the globe and killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people, according to the CDC"

.

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That was after one year. It hasn't been a year yet. It hasn't even been half a year. You can't compare numbers that way. 

It is also a concrete fact that hospitals are reaching full capacity and even overcrowding. That didn't happen during swine flu. People are reacting to greater severity, and acting in a predictable manner. Nothing new is going on here, there is no new pattern emerging. 

 

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The numbers are probably being influenced by the measures being taken.

The hospitals are being inundated because it reduces the oxygen levels so severely, where as most influenza ride the course of the illness out at home. If a ventilator makes the difference between life and death, the measurements become more difficult to quantify.

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4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

"The 2009 swine flu pandemic was caused by a new strain of H1N1 that originated in Mexico in the spring of 2009 before spreading to the rest of the world. In one year, the virus infected as many as 1.4 billion people across the globe and killed between 151,700 and 575,400 people, according to the CDC"

That quote is from https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-pandemic-vs-swine-flu.html.  The included CDC link states there were between 151,700 and 575,400 people global deaths, but it does not state any number, let alone as many as 1.4 billion,  of infections globally.

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3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

That was after one year. It hasn't been a year yet. It hasn't even been half a year. You can't compare numbers that way. 

It is also a concrete fact that hospitals are reaching full capacity and even overcrowding. That didn't happen during swine flu. People are reacting to greater severity, and acting in a predictable manner. Nothing new is going on here, there is no new pattern emerging. 

 

 I don't take fatality comparisons as my guide, and I remarked on that. "Statistics". But the "pattern" now is one of wholesale, irrational fear and you can't deny it.

The severity of x billions whose lives will not be the same again, at minimum, and worse, ruined - because of the world wide lockdown (i.e. house arrest) - should also give you pause for thought. We're already being told of the predictable effects, financial, psychological, mental, social, and naturally experiencing, seeing and hearing many. "Nothing new is going on here..." Yeah sure..

2 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

The numbers are probably being influenced by the measures being taken.

The hospitals are being inundated because it reduces the oxygen levels so severely, where as most influenza ride the course of the illness out at home. If a ventilator makes the difference between life and death, the measurements become more difficult to quantify.

"Additionally, CDC estimated that 151,700-575,400 people worldwide died from (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated".

The numbers are glaringly imprecise, let alone causes of death, in 2009. A look at the range given (151 - 575,000) shows how uncertain the criteria were, and are, for cause of death by way of a virus. .

[Ed: merjet, easy enough to check the 1.4bn figure in the excerpt]

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6 hours ago, whYNOT said:

The "extraspection" or identification of a leaf, you tell of is matched by the (volitional) capacity of introspection, equally, the identifying of what particular emotion you feel, in response to ... something (and contemplating why you felt that way).

Right, the fear:  a clue to the cause of anyone's loss of introspection. Those identified feelings can be unpleasant and hateful, or inappropriate to one's pretended values (even feelings recovered from far memory) or destructive of a carefully guarded self-esteem - and as result, any further introspection is to be feared and avoided by such a person. Who can tell what dark things lurk unexamined under those subconscious stones...? 

Where the reality of it is the benefits one would likely acquire cultivating it as a habit.

I was indicating something else, and I couldn't recall the key-word search to find it in the searchable CD. It amounts to the view one has of man's nature comes from introspection, the only source available to any individual. Without a proper filtering of the data, the conclusions one walks away with are how they view and assess themselves 'secretly' while projecting their conclusions onto mankind at large.

This is accomplished by noting in things, the similarities and how they extrapolate to the group, be they species of rock, trees, dogs. Essentially how we draw the conclusion that all dogs bark, or all deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall. The ability to apply knowledge of the few, or the one, to the category.

Anyhow, this is starting to diverge from matter at hand. It seemed the point I intended may have been obscured by imprecision on my initial attempt to articulate it.

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15 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

The numbers are glaringly imprecise

COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

Michigan's numbers. (as I've jotted them down over part of the course of this.)

10Apr2020 - 22434 - 1.043% inc. 1276 dead - 0.05687% (= 1276/22434)
11Apr2020 - 23605 - 1.052% inc. 1384 dead - 0.05863% (1.052% = 23605/22434)
12Apr2020 - 24244 - 1.027% inc. 1479 dead - 0.06100%
13Apr2020 - 25635 - 1.057% inc. 1487 dead - 0.05800%
14Apr2020 - 27001 - 1.053% inc. 1768 dead - 0.06547%
15Apr2020 - 28059 - 1.003% inc. 1921 dead - 0.06846%
16Apr2020 - 22651 - 0.807% inc. 1512 dead - 0.06675%

- 409 people came back to life? It's a miracle!
- 5408 people finally recovered so well, . . . oh well.

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4 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Where the reality of it is the benefits one would likely acquire cultivating it as a habit.

I was indicating something else, and I couldn't recall the key-word search to find it in the searchable CD. It amounts to the view one has of man's nature comes from introspection, the only source available to any individual. Without a proper filtering of the data, the conclusions one walks away with are how they view and assess themselves 'secretly' while projecting their conclusions onto mankind at large.

This is accomplished by noting in things, the similarities and how they extrapolate to the group, be they species of rock, trees, dogs. Essentially how we draw the conclusion that all dogs bark, or all deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall. The ability to apply knowledge of the few, or the one, to the category.

 

Okay, that's absorbing. Many from the one? Specific to general? I have always thought for certain that a philosopher like Rand depended on her introspection to elicit man's nature. And any of us can observe the same method, while perhaps not to that depth. However, there is a danger that some and many people who are much less true, rational and rigorous, "project themselves onto others". So to speak. By subjective use of introspection, then there'd be justification, they'd feel, for enacting variously vile things on others.

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3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

"Nothing new is going on here..." Yeah sure..

My point isn't that this virus is not new. I'm saying that the pattern of response is exactly predictable because of perceived extreme severity. It is more severe, so people will respond to that increased severity. But the perceived degree of severity is so far beyond the pale yet people use it to justify measures to fight the virus. There is not some new zeitgeist about how to deal with threats. Dealing with terrorism has been the same way - diminishment of rights in the name of security. 

You could say that secularization in the sense of "the death of God" is a reason for seeing life this way, but that has been the case for over 100 years, and it is still the case. That's what I mean by not new.

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

[Ed: merjet, easy enough to check the 1.4bn figure in the excerpt]

No idea where you got that number. It's 25 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_by_country

 

 

Edited by Eiuol
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You ought to check your sources - H1n1: 60.8 million cases in the USA alone. Your table shows per capita in 10 smaller countries. Swine flu had 575,000 deaths worldwide. So far the world fatality with Covid  - 147, 500 approx..

The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic: A New Flu Virus Emerges

The (H1N1)pdm09 virus was very different from H1N1 viruses that were circulating at the time of the pandemic. Few young people had any existing immunity (as detected by antibody response) to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus, but nearly one-third of people over 60 years old had antibodies against this virus, likely from exposure to an older H1N1 virus earlier in their lives. Since the (H1N1)pdm09 virus was very different from circulating H1N1 viruses, vaccination with seasonal flu vaccines offered little cross-protection against (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection. While a monovalent (H1N1)pdm09 vaccine was produced, it was not available in large quantities until late November—after the peak of illness during the second wave had come and gone in the United States. From April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (range: 195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (range: 8868-18,306) in the United States due to the (H1N1)pdm09 virus.

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5 hours ago, Eiuol said:

My point isn't that this virus is not new. I'm saying that the pattern of response is exactly predictable because of perceived extreme severity. It is more severe, so people will respond to that increased severity. But the perceived degree of severity is so far beyond the pale yet people use it to justify measures to fight the virus. There is not some new zeitgeist about how to deal with threats. Dealing with terrorism has been the same way - diminishment of rights in the name of security. 

You could say that secularization in the sense of "the death of God" is a reason for seeing life this way, but that has been the case for over 100 years, and it is still the case. That's what I mean by not new.

No idea where you got that number. It's 25 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_by_country

 

 

You have to define "more severe".  For whom? By what standard?  Calling it so doesn't make it so. That's where one looks at previous epidemics for comparison.

And you've avoided my point. A commonly known fact: Societies in the West have become more secularized, irreligious, in recent decades. With that, a distinct advance of philosophical skepticism. So, more extreme Leftism and socialism rearing up. Are you going to dismiss this fact? I should not have to point out the philosophical trends.

 

Edited by whYNOT
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10 hours ago, Eiuol said:
13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

[Ed: merjet, easy enough to check the 1.4bn figure in the excerpt]

No idea where you got that number. It's 25 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_by_country

The 1.4 billion is here: https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-pandemic-vs-swine-flu.html.  The number is attributed to the CDC, but the CDC link does not show it.

Edited by merjet
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