BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

From a local perspective:

Funny how the Chinese immediately started screaming racism when various countries put travel bans in place. They're free to lock down Wuhan but the world can't lock down China.

The current 14 day 'quarantine' is inadequate, never mind symptomless carriers. Students mostly are circumventing it by staying in a third country, eg Thailand for 14 days then travelling to Australia. Australia's first outbreak will almost certainly be in a university.

Haven't most of the recent plagues come from eating meat we shouldn't be eating? AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS now COVID 19?
The pursuit of excess protein may be the end of us, that and radical individualism which brought AIDS to the wider community.

But yeah, diseases are like the free market, we shouldn't interfere, let them run their course and they'll weed out the weak from the herd. Plus there are all the business opportunities - mask makers must be making a killing, soon there'll be whole new business models, whole building sterilisation systems to link up with the HVAC, home cremation kits, its win win.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-28 14:55:24)

No I'm making swipes at radical individualism. Students demanding to break the quarantine for example.

"rampant individualism brought AIDS to the wider community"

Rampant individualism caused AIDS to rip through the gay community and into the wider community, there's not much doubt about it.

Lets see how this works:

Although I'm Chinese, recently visited Wuhan and directly know many people with COVID-19 I demand the right to travel where I like, attend unprotected orgies with strangers in saunas and lie when donating blood.
You can't stop me because that would be sinophobic, you have to accept whatever I want to do is part of my culture or you're a bigot.

looks like that correction will take out the corona drinks brand. weep.

i'm sorry but saying that AIDS spread because of 'rampant individualism' is a pretty crass moral judgment. making it about individual choice, supposedly selfish individual choice, is kind of missing the whole background of social and sexual habits at that time. it was a permissive era. post-Pill, post-contraceptive. people didn't know it existed.

you really would have been a much happier soul with a briefcase and a crewcut in the buttoned-down 1950s.

Although I'm Chinese, recently visited Wuhan and directly know many people with COVID-19 I demand the right to travel where I like, attend unprotected orgies with strangers in saunas and lie when donating blood.
You can't stop me because that would be sinophobic, you have to accept whatever I want to do is part of my culture or you're a bigot.

where has anything like this happened anywhere in the world? china complained about countries imposing blanket bans on chinese citizens' travel in the very early stages of the outbreak. fair enough, things changed on the ground. where have the chinese demanded the right to let their infected do what they want? they are already living under incredibly harsh and disciplinary quarantine conditions. as usual, you are talking complete u t t e r bollocks.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-28 15:43:16)

my point wasn't arguing over whether AIDS was spread in the gay community, which it obviously was from an epidemiological perspective, but that by framing it as 'rampant individualism' you were weirdly making it a matter of political or moral judgment. that's like saying that syphilis and gonorrhoea spread rampantly around georgian england because of 'rampant individualism', i mean, OK, that's one way to put it, i guess. it would be better to talk about these things in terms of education/awareness, prevention, protection, cure, etc., you know, the language of epidemiology, rather than talking derisively about 'people wanting to have sex with strangers'.

certain strains of hepatitis, like herpes and HPV, are incredibly common in the adult population, and have developed similar immunities to cure. they don't have to be associated with 'unprotected sex with strangers' or 'rampant individualism'. very weird take. hence my comment about you sounding like someone from the 1950s preaching abstinence.

also don't you literally pay to have sex with strangers? with the benefit of hindsight, four decades after the outbreak, it's easy for you to judge when you know to use protection.

The pursuit of excess protein may be the end of us, that and radical individualism which brought AIDS to the wider community.

it's amazing how much dilbert has come to sound like a fascist ninny. this could be a Hitler-the-vegan quote.

so there should be a blanket ban on all flights into and out of china, is that what you're saying? international students, foreign workers, tourists, etc, shouldn't be repatriated? just to be clear, here. most countries have tried to localise their travel bans to hotspots/clusters of identified transmission, rather than banning an entire country.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 02:52:57)

the main worry has always been the elderly and vulnerable, and for it to break out uncontained in the middle-east or africa. look at the death rate in Iran after a relatively small breakout.

of course jay thinks it’s over-rated because it will disproportionately affect brown people far away. this is a guy who keeps flattering himself on his social status after killing little girls in iraq for a job.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ … oronavirus
first-person account from a 21-year-old in china. it sounds pretty horrid to me. i had flu last year and would not wish to repeat it.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 02:43:28)

jay doesn't know how viruses work. it's almost cute.

two engineers who both harbour deep insecurities about china. we're really onto something here. you're being replaced, fellas.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 05:45:53)

3500 In South Korea, 1100 in Italy, I'd say its escaped now and has the potential to be very bad indeed.
Right now quarantine requirements - be out of an infection zone for 14 days and you're free to travel anywhere - is wholly unsuitable in the circumstances.

Disinfectants and medicines are barely the issue, its going to rip through populations and kill people.

two engineers who both harbour deep insecurities about china. we're really onto something here. you're being replaced, fellas.

Its no fun being disrupted, ask any bookshop owner.
Apart from that China is a threat to the Western world on many levels, military, economic, environmental.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-29 18:05:40)

I had secretly been hoping for the Thanos solution.
Maybe this is it.

We probably don't have a lot of choice but to ride it out until a vaccine is developed.
It would make sense to limit contagion as far as practically possible in the meantime, not sit back and assume it will be other people dying.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-29 23:03:18)

I have read a book on it, And the Band Played On. I recommend it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ … ra-spinney

tl;dr:

• previous worst-case pandemics like spanish flu, when out of control, killed 50-100 million and set humanity back decades in terms of development and economy.
• the death-rate of covid-19 looks to be less than SARS but 20x higher than seasonal flu.
• we may still be underestimating the incubation period and its contagiousness/degree of transmissibility.
• for e.g., a 2018 simulation that the Gates Foundation conducted of a flu pandemic estimated that there would be 28,000 cases after one month, 10 million after three months, and 33 million after six months.
• still quite a while off a vaccine, even as a top priority; and further interesting facts, like how 20% of millennial in america now believe vaccines 'cause autism', and how even checking yourself into hospital in the states for precautionary measures carries a heavy financial burden.
• outbreak of novel pathogens are inevitable, it's no use promoting militant veganism or waging war on the chinese. according to global guidelines, their response and communication has been good though not perfect (and no one country has a system in place that is perfect).

lots of fun. but hey, jay knows the score. apparently we should just 'ride it out' and viruses peter out over time when they go far away from their source, and don't mutate.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Funny how the Chinese immediately started screaming racism when various countries put travel bans in place. They're free to lock down Wuhan but the world can't lock down China.

by the way, the only country in europe who instated a complete flight ban from china was ... italy. maybe there's something to their complaints of it being unreasonable and ineffective? and are you actually comparing the quarantining of a heavily infected area, which all governments globally do in response, according to the accepted protocol, with complete travel bans for entire countries, which many public health officials, the head official in the UK among them, advise against doing? seems legit, dilderp.

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 05:37:18)

first US death a man in his mid-50s? let’s hope jay has been hitting the treadmill regularly and has excellent respiratory and cardio fitness.

total quarantine of an infected area, yes, to control it. obviously. but that quickly went out the window, didn't it? there could have been a month before the virus even started manifesting in human beings. that's a lot of transmission before you can throw down a quarantine in response.

quarantining an entire country and cancelling all flights is a great act of economic self-harm; epidemiologically speaking in these circumstances, it hasn't done anything. italy had the strictest measures on china and yet quickly developed the biggest breakout in all of europe. so those were clearly great tactics dilderp. you should tell the public health chiefs what they're doing wrong.

this whole discussion is meaningless, anyway, as the australia–china comments were made at a very different stage. every few days the situation has changed and become more complex. complaining about the 'racist' stuff at this point is so much blah blah blah

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 15:31:29)