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From Gregory Cochran’s West Hunter blog:
What is to be done?
Posted on March 12, 2020 by gcochran9We need enough lockdown and social distancing to drive the R0 below 1.0 – that doesn’t require much more effort than the intensity required to ‘flatten the curve’ and it has an enormous payoff – new cases fade away instead of growing! Like I said, there is no substitute for victory.
But we don’t want that lockdown to persist forever – it’s incredibly expensive. I estimate that China has lost >hundreds of billions of dollars in their current freeze. We will too …
All this must be paired with a crash program to develop effective therapies and/or means of prevention. If someone has an idea for a new drug, or a new method of treatment, he should rethink it and ask if it could be accomplished in half the time with twice the money, or for that matter with ten times the money. We should fund every plausible approach, a bit like the Manhattan project. Some would be surprising: for example, there is evidence that already having one viral disease (say influenza) can reduce your chances of catching another – true at both the population and individual level, perhaps because your interferon is revved up.
But the benefit supposedly only lasts during the 2 weeks or so you have the flu, so it’s not a permanent preventive.
Old-fashioned approaches (like serum therapy ) might be revived. We can scan the existing pharmacopoeia for something useful: we can mine HMO data to see if some common drug is already having a positive effect.
The US has the world’s strongest biomedical research community. We can do this – and we won’t be alone.
There are many different ways to create vaccines. It’s a little like the famous WWII code-breaking efforts, which looked for tiny weaknesses that could be exploited in different ways. It’s time to fund a wide range of attempts and perhaps pay for multiple efforts on each way.
We have a lot of smart people with skills that could be quickly repurposed to help in this quest. For example, I’m a big fan of fields like genome-wide associations studies in the social sciences and paleogenomics, but if those disciplines get set back for a year while their brightest lights pitch in on The Effort, I can live with that.
When we succeed, the lockdown will soon end. With a treatment or some form of prevention, we won’t have to worry about the ongoing cases in other parts of the world – and we could then help the rest of the world, which is no bad thing.
Cost is no object: there is no way to spend money on biomedical research that is in any way comparable with the cost of lockdown.
The US GDP was $21.4 trillion last year, so almost $2 trillion per month. If you lockdown half the economy, that’s almost a trillion dollars per month.
One advantage: we can cut some corners, because coronavirus is so dangerous. We thought vaccination against smallpox too hazardous (a disease extinct in the wild, and a vaccine that killed 1 in a million of those vaccinated and made about 1 in 100,000 seriously ill). In today’s situation, facing coronavirus, that level of side effect could perhaps be tolerated, at least until we came up with something better.
Careful analysis and simulation can minimize the cost. China has cut the R0 down to 0.3, but that’s overkill: at this point a relaxation that allowed some business to operate and pushed the R0 up to 0.8 would be fine. The rate of new cases would not increase from the current low level. If we relax a bit too much, R0 might creep a bit above 1.0, but with lots of testing and monitoring we could fix that before it caused much trouble.
Read the whole thing there.
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Keep in mind that even a dramatic triumph over this virus does absolutely nothing to prevent another one–just as virulent or even worse–coming out of Asia or Africa next year.
The hideous ways they treat animals in the third world are just one ingredient, as is rampant overpopulation. But are we even thinking of addressing causes, or just effects?
*this comes straight from my epidemologist friend who used to work at the CDC. She was initially unfazed by this and still is by coronas overall impact but concedes her latest best information is that the older crowd are at some non-negligible risk to this pandemic.
Too many of the people complaining enough isn’t being done, will complain that Mr. Cochran’s strategy is too dangerous.
This whole epidemic thing is starting to feel like the Great Plague of London.
Funnily enough, I sort of like this atmosphere. It feels oddly warm and homely. Like everyone in the world is in this together.
I am going to start reading Samuel Pepys diaries from that period (1665-66).
Samuel Pepys on the Plague:
“It struck me very deep this afternoon going with a hackney coach from my Lord Treasurer’s down Holborne, the coachman I found to drive easily and easily, at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me that he was suddenly stuck very sick, and almost blind, he could not see. So I ‘light and went into another coach with a sad heart for the poor man and trouble for myself lest he should have been struck with the plague, being at the end of town that I took him up; But God have mercy upon us all!”
God have mercy upon us all indeed!
If this was Ebola stern measures would be needed but for this we should do-nothing.
Sounds reasonable. – Now – who’s gonna make it happen?
Wow, a lot of work. I’m not sure that Americans care that much about each other.
I mean, I don’t want Hondurans to suffer, but I don’t get too worked up about storms hitting there. “Americans” are becoming foreigners to each other.
And then there’s the Mañana Syndrome which we’ve imported. Maybe see how things are doing in a month? LOL
I’ve been out there watching people travel and recreate just as usual, and it’s leading me to the conclusion that this thing is going to get a lot worse here. The irony is that the people who are most blase about the virus are the ones most likely to be killed by it. The over 60 crowd is going around like it doesn’t even exist.
I have seen a marked reduction in travel among families, young people and business travelers, but the old are not having it, and don’t seem to care.
Maybe this is why Italy has been hit so hard by the virus. Italy is evidently a geriatric society (as is Korea increasingly), and the old have a lot more wealth and time to travel and socialize than the young.
If there are to be emergency measures, someone is going to have to tell the old people with spare cash and time on hand to cool it, and trust me the travel and hospitality industry is not going to do that.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/young-people-capitalize-cheap-coronavirus-flights-if-i-die-i-n1154326Replies: @Bill P
The hideous ways they treat animals in the third world are just one ingredient, as is rampant overpopulation. But are we even thinking of addressing causes, or just effects?Replies: @Houston 1992, @Polynikes, @gate666, @Mike Tre
I agree. We are not even seeing an emerging realization—or at least not expressed — to reverse globalization of pharmaceutical and medical supplies. Maybe we should rename the Deep State the Dumb State. The DS , in its dumbness , has allowed so many industrial ecosystems to be transferred abroad that it still boggles my mind. China’s leaders must be acutely conscious of the leverage that they possess if the sixth fleet cuts of their energy supplies viz. they can shut off drugs , medical masks, as well as most of Walmart…
People who like travelling a lot tend to be more optimistic and extroverted, and they tend to think nothing’s going to happen to them.
Wide spectrum antivirals exist and have been proved to work on lab animals for different types of viruses, and should have been developed, but inexplicably did not receive any funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO
Maybe the above compound is strategically too important for countries such as the US, so only top secret development was allowed?
Or simply venture capitalists are afraid of lawsuits if it turns out such drugs are not safe long term?
Would broad spectrum antibiotics have got any funding had they been discovered in 2015 in the US?
After thinking about it, if enough people get sick in the next 2 months, we’ll begin to build up enough herd immunity that Covid-19 may become more rare, though the most vulnerable will have died from it by that time After this process is over, Covid-19 may begin to have a kill rate that’s closer to seasonal flu.
However, for that scenario to happen, a significant percentage of us HAVE to get sick to develop the immunity. Quarantine slows down the process of developing herd immunity, and it will hurt the economy badly. So we either have quarantine, hoping to save patients at the hospitals, but tolerating more severe economic damage while we hope to get a vaccine developed.
Or, we don’t quarantine, recognizing that we’re going to have to sacrifice lives at hospitals, but hoping to develop herd immunity fast, and end up with the least amount of damage to our pocketbooks.
Frankly, no option is a good one. I suspect what will actually happen is a fumbling in-between the two options that gives us the worst of both. Too late a response to quarantine properly, meaning hospitals are crushed, but responding to that by starting a lengthy quarantine that delays herd immunity and wrecks everyone’s finances pretty badly.
If the average person is facing financial ruin–assistance won’t last forever–most people are going to demand to go back to work, because most people know they’ll survive. But the dropping of quarantine at that time will just wipe out the remaining people who have are most likely to die, in one final upswing of the death rate.
Once our rulers think the death rate has become ‘tolerable’ I suspect no country is going to quarantine any longer.
Oh I get a lot of eye rolls about the virus from young people though. Some of are taking advantage!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/young-people-capitalize-cheap-coronavirus-flights-if-i-die-i-n1154326
It's already past time to shut down Vegas, but who's going to do it?Replies: @Anonymous
Some interesting ideas but not much visibility as to whether current US political leadership has the state capacity to implement much of this.
Funding a Coronavirus Manhattan Project would be a much better use for billionaires’ money than the usual “Fix Black People” projects (education reform, workplace “discrimination,” and anything related to Africa, whether economic or medical), where 95 percent of charitable money goes.
However, for that scenario to happen, a significant percentage of us HAVE to get sick to develop the immunity. Quarantine slows down the process of developing herd immunity, and it will hurt the economy badly. So we either have quarantine, hoping to save patients at the hospitals, but tolerating more severe economic damage while we hope to get a vaccine developed.
Or, we don't quarantine, recognizing that we're going to have to sacrifice lives at hospitals, but hoping to develop herd immunity fast, and end up with the least amount of damage to our pocketbooks.
Frankly, no option is a good one. I suspect what will actually happen is a fumbling in-between the two options that gives us the worst of both. Too late a response to quarantine properly, meaning hospitals are crushed, but responding to that by starting a lengthy quarantine that delays herd immunity and wrecks everyone's finances pretty badly.
If the average person is facing financial ruin--assistance won't last forever--most people are going to demand to go back to work, because most people know they'll survive. But the dropping of quarantine at that time will just wipe out the remaining people who have are most likely to die, in one final upswing of the death rate.
Once our rulers think the death rate has become 'tolerable' I suspect no country is going to quarantine any longer.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Charon, @LondonBob
Blogger Arguably Wrong has a model of deaths at various R0s: at January in Wuhan level 3.5 R0, the total deaths in America are predicted to be 5 million.
The good news is that the outbreak then dies out.
Good point. Tucker Carlson was saying something like this the other day. I was surprised at the quote from “China’s official news service” so I went looking for it and Google turned up nothing but Tucker’s citation. (Naturally I don’t trust Google to present the facts when it wants to obscure them, which is often.) Where did he get it, I wonder.
More relevant Tucker quotes below the fold:
He even channels Enoch Powell, and not for the first time:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-coronavirus-pandemic-terrifying-situation-china-drugs
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-the-coronavirus-will-get-worse-our-leaders-need-to-stop-lying-about-that
It’s what Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson – Peterson explicitly with regard to viruses (!) etc. – have been writing about for years now: Modern western societies suffer from neglecting that conservatism has its reasonable side too.
Optimism and extroversion rule like absolute kings in our modern mentality/ mindset, and that is a big mistake with huge consequences – not least concerning borders of all kinds – and therewith restrictions of – – – individuality & freedom – the almost undisputed superpowers of our times.
To paraphrase, if the glorious multicultural future that the left believes in doesn't arrive, well then we be completely fucked.Replies: @Dieter Kief
I think I’d rather hear from Johnny Cochran … at least the brutha has a real track record. There are reasons why thereis no viable vaccine for other Coronavirus strains, like SARS
and MERS, much less the less lethal ones.
This is a strain of what is otherwise a family of the viruses that cause the common cold, and since we have no reliable indication of how many people might actually have contracted it, therefore no reliable denominator upon which to base our death rate calculations, locking down the world because a few thousand people have died may very well be a severe overreaction.
Your relativism implies you're as numerically illiterate as Johnny Cochran was, and while this may not hamper one's performance in court proceedings, it can be deadly in the real world. We desperately need more Greg Cochrans and fewer yous.Replies: @The Alarmist
However, for that scenario to happen, a significant percentage of us HAVE to get sick to develop the immunity. Quarantine slows down the process of developing herd immunity, and it will hurt the economy badly. So we either have quarantine, hoping to save patients at the hospitals, but tolerating more severe economic damage while we hope to get a vaccine developed.
Or, we don't quarantine, recognizing that we're going to have to sacrifice lives at hospitals, but hoping to develop herd immunity fast, and end up with the least amount of damage to our pocketbooks.
Frankly, no option is a good one. I suspect what will actually happen is a fumbling in-between the two options that gives us the worst of both. Too late a response to quarantine properly, meaning hospitals are crushed, but responding to that by starting a lengthy quarantine that delays herd immunity and wrecks everyone's finances pretty badly.
If the average person is facing financial ruin--assistance won't last forever--most people are going to demand to go back to work, because most people know they'll survive. But the dropping of quarantine at that time will just wipe out the remaining people who have are most likely to die, in one final upswing of the death rate.
Once our rulers think the death rate has become 'tolerable' I suspect no country is going to quarantine any longer.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Charon, @LondonBob
Given the complete absence of a vaccine, exactly how do you expect this “herd immunity” to develop? Hasn’t it been shown that there is a statistically significant rate of reinfection?
Reminder if you haven’t read it yet
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now: Politicians, Community Leaders and Business Leaders: What Should You Do and When?
by Tomas Pueyo
“Choice. The problem is choice.”
The real question is this: does President Trump have the moral courage to sacrifice the economy, and his chances for re-election, in order to save lives?
I think everyone knows the answer to that question.
The policy solution to this problem – as usual – can be found in other countries. All the US needs to do is have a bit of curiosity and search the world for proven, effective solutions. Here is one: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/what-taiwan-can-teach-world-fighting-coronavirus-n1153826
The hideous ways they treat animals in the third world are just one ingredient, as is rampant overpopulation. But are we even thinking of addressing causes, or just effects?Replies: @Houston 1992, @Polynikes, @gate666, @Mike Tre
There already is another epidemic in Africa. Fever epidemic that kills at a 23% rate.* It’s killed almost a thousand so far. There’s an uptick in leperacy in Brazil. In other words, this stuff happens. Corona is a bit different because it is hitting the West. It’ll pass too. Question is how effectively will we manage it?
*this comes straight from my epidemologist friend who used to work at the CDC. She was initially unfazed by this and still is by coronas overall impact but concedes her latest best information is that the older crowd are at some non-negligible risk to this pandemic.
Those are good points. I’d add naked aggression to that list, at least financially.
Funnily enough, I sort of like this atmosphere. It feels oddly warm and homely. Like everyone in the world is in this together.
I am going to start reading Samuel Pepys diaries from that period (1665-66).
Samuel Pepys on the Plague:
"It struck me very deep this afternoon going with a hackney coach from my Lord Treasurer's down Holborne, the coachman I found to drive easily and easily, at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me that he was suddenly stuck very sick, and almost blind, he could not see. So I 'light and went into another coach with a sad heart for the poor man and trouble for myself lest he should have been struck with the plague, being at the end of town that I took him up; But God have mercy upon us all!"
God have mercy upon us all indeed!Replies: @Anon
The only difference between this epidemic and historical plagues is that in this one infinitesimally few people are infected and almost no one is dying. Other than that… bring out yer dead.
We are hoping there isn’t.
"Just fine. But I'll tell ya,those two weeks battling that corona were pure hell!"
"Important thing is you're back now. So get to work on the Fleigelman file,OK?"
"You got it. I'll just look at these figures and-cough-go through 'em and-cough-cough..."
"Uh Frank,you're sweating quite a bit there..."
"I'm fine,-cough-just a little weak,and not breathing so good..."
"Let me just scan your temperature...104!"
"Oh no! Not again! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
Ha ha.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/young-people-capitalize-cheap-coronavirus-flights-if-i-die-i-n1154326Replies: @Bill P
Not many from what I’m seeing, and I’m in a position to know. Old folks going to casinos, OTOH, really don’t seem to care at all. It’s kind of shocking, but I can’t deny what’s right in front of me.
It’s already past time to shut down Vegas, but who’s going to do it?
It has spread across the world so it can’t be kept out.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Herd-immunity--will-be-vital-to-stopping-coronavirus
Herd immunity is the realistic choice.
However, for that scenario to happen, a significant percentage of us HAVE to get sick to develop the immunity. Quarantine slows down the process of developing herd immunity, and it will hurt the economy badly. So we either have quarantine, hoping to save patients at the hospitals, but tolerating more severe economic damage while we hope to get a vaccine developed.
Or, we don't quarantine, recognizing that we're going to have to sacrifice lives at hospitals, but hoping to develop herd immunity fast, and end up with the least amount of damage to our pocketbooks.
Frankly, no option is a good one. I suspect what will actually happen is a fumbling in-between the two options that gives us the worst of both. Too late a response to quarantine properly, meaning hospitals are crushed, but responding to that by starting a lengthy quarantine that delays herd immunity and wrecks everyone's finances pretty badly.
If the average person is facing financial ruin--assistance won't last forever--most people are going to demand to go back to work, because most people know they'll survive. But the dropping of quarantine at that time will just wipe out the remaining people who have are most likely to die, in one final upswing of the death rate.
Once our rulers think the death rate has become 'tolerable' I suspect no country is going to quarantine any longer.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Charon, @LondonBob
In theory you could infect every young person and isolate them for two weeks from the rest of society, none will die and they will then cease to the main source of spread that they inevitably will be otherwise.
You’re probably right about that. But that just makes it better, since I can get the experience of living during a pandemic, without fearing for my life.
And still, the atmosphere now feels very different than it was before the virus came along.
This is definitely an experience I will cherish forever (if I survive!)
The hideous ways they treat animals in the third world are just one ingredient, as is rampant overpopulation. But are we even thinking of addressing causes, or just effects?Replies: @Houston 1992, @Polynikes, @gate666, @Mike Tre
china is no longer third world.
Though some disagree:
https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-Switzerland-a-member-of-the-Non-Aligned-movement
By that standard, yes, China is definitely still a Third World country.
Anybody who says they are "just seeking a better life" is by definition a Third World moocher.
Access to White people is not a human right.
The hideous ways they treat animals in the third world are just one ingredient, as is rampant overpopulation. But are we even thinking of addressing causes, or just effects?Replies: @Houston 1992, @Polynikes, @gate666, @Mike Tre
It’s almost like these viruses are a form of natural population control.
Any attempt to instill a protocol as suggested above will immediately be frozen by the insertion of identity politics. It’s already happening. Schools can’t shut down because where will the negroes get the lunches?
I wouldn’t myself hail victory in China until everyone is back at work and there are believable figures on no further substantial spread of the virus.
How would I judge “believable”?
I’m not equipped to judge so I’d probably ask expat Chinese in private.
and MERS, much less the less lethal ones.This is a strain of what is otherwise a family of the viruses that cause the common cold, and since we have no reliable indication of how many people might actually have contracted it, therefore no reliable denominator upon which to base our death rate calculations, locking down the world because a few thousand people have died may very well be a severe overreaction.Replies: @Something positive, @Pincher Martin
Luckily you’re not in a position of power so you don’t have a lot of influence, otherwise you wouldn’t be commenting anonymously here.
Your relativism implies you’re as numerically illiterate as Johnny Cochran was, and while this may not hamper one’s performance in court proceedings, it can be deadly in the real world. We desperately need more Greg Cochrans and fewer yous.
The problem will take care of itself, one way or another. Maybe it will get a bunch of geriatric politicos and hedge fund types. Since they will not retire voluntarily and we lack the societal will to kick them out, this could lead to new growth and progress.
The problem is that when you get them all together they possess a terrible lack of diversity.
Since diversity is our strength, any group which lacks diversity isn’t competent to do anything of import and should be disbanded in favor of a diverse group, which will possess the strength to accomplish the stated goal.
Sometimes we find out that when great goals were achieved there was a lot of latent diversity. For example, all of those white guys with crew cuts, horn rimmed glasses and pocket protectors at NASA in the 1960s couldn’t do any math. We know now that they needed the diversity power of some sassy black ladies to perform the arithmetic necessary to get the space rockets up there. What did the white guys do? No one is really certain, except for taking credit for the work of sassy black ladies.
Your relativism implies you're as numerically illiterate as Johnny Cochran was, and while this may not hamper one's performance in court proceedings, it can be deadly in the real world. We desperately need more Greg Cochrans and fewer yous.Replies: @The Alarmist
Noted, another anonymous commenter.
Well, I was kind of hoping that Corona-chan would, you know….help out….with the World’s Most Important Graph.
China never was. They were by definition Second World. The original Third World country was Switzerland.
Though some disagree:
https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-Switzerland-a-member-of-the-Non-Aligned-movement
1. Isolate nursing homes. Consider deploying mobile homes to the area and have workers stay on site for the next 30 days without outside contact. Have the NG drop off resources in timed intervals. Offer workers overtime compensation.
2. Don’t close down schools. Children are immune. Let the virus pass through the population there, eliminating a viral reservoir. At-risk teachers can stay home. Use younger substitutes in high risk areas.
3. Aggressively vaccinate older and “at risk” populations with a pneumococcal vaccine. All healthcare workers, regardless of age, should be vaccinated immediately. The risk of dying for younger healthcare workers is low, but it might be wise to avoid as many deaths as possible regardless (which would inevitably show up on social media and cause a panic).
— Consider producing more vaccine and lowering FDA vaccination guidelines to age 50 if there is the stock available. The vaccine is harmless anyway to anyone between 20 – 65. Also, consider removing available stock from pharmacies and triage acquired stock to critical personnel and “at risk groups” — heavy smokers, obese patients, the elderly, immunocompromised.
4. Search the country for old, discarded ventilators that have yet to be thrown out. In theory, they could be serviced and put into action during an emergency. Honestly, this should already have been done as part of the nation’s strategic reserve. Instead of discarding critical, but old medical equipment, they should be stored in a strategic reserve for some period of time — maybe 10 years.
5. Expedite “last resort” usage of anti-viral medications. Use on seriously ill patients.
6. Tell Americans to go on a diet and exercise. Many of the 20 – 40 yo serious cases I’ve seen in the media have one of two things in common — gross obesity and/or heavy smoker. Some people might benefit from a crash diet.
7. Old people stay indoors. Same for some federal employees.
8. Pay young people 21 – 30 to get a trial vaccine, which may be available at the end of the month before safety trials are conducted (alternative: pay them to get sick, stay in quarantined areas for 30 days, then go back home). Start with a few individuals as a crash safety precaution, and then ramp up if everything looks okay. Give this group some special access to anti-viral medication as a sort of safety net. Offer to wipe their student loan debt in return. This will speed herd immunity, protecting “at risk” groups.
9. NG should work with the Post Office to deliver a high-calorie MRE to every resident (or “at risk” groups) in a major quarantine zone at their mail boxes. This may help avoid some exposure if the NG/post office does not have to come into direct contact with residents and vice versa. Residents in apartment buildings can be advised to check their mail at odd hours when people aren’t around — middle of the night and early morning.
10. Ramp up production of sterilizing agents. Postal workers should be told to wipe everything down if delivering to a population-dense area like an apartment building (i.e. spray the outside of mail boxes with a disinfectant after delivering the mail). Same or similar for other workers.
11. Elective surgeries and other medical procedures should be postponed in order to save resources and avoid making otherwise healthy people “at risk”.
12. Ramp up testing in coordination with research universities. Many faculty members and graduate students have experience with rt-PCR (or similar techniques) and the necessary equipment. Since classes across the country are being cancelled, we have an available pool of semi-experts willing and ready to work. They could conceivably be trained and supervised by an expert on location to help process some of this testing stuff in a timely manner. Patients could be emailed results just after from the university. Basically, recall all graduate level biology students and faculty in research labs and put them to work — maybe offer some kind of special credit as compensation.
–It’s better to have a false positive than a false negative. Worst case scenario: the guy self-isolates, hurting no one and protecting himself anyway. Therefore, “deputizing” students in this manner shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
13. Put those grounded 737s to use? I’m not an aviation expert, but I wonder if we can’t — perhaps in an extreme emergency — put some struggling patients who lack a ventilator or compressed oxygen into these planes, seal them inside on the runway, and turn up cabin pressure as high as it will go. Maybe also consider altering the planes to ramp up internal O2 pressure even higher if necessary. Those planes could be refueled continuously on site, and they are pretty good at containment by the nature of their design. Use them as makeshift hospitals? Trained pilots could fly them to airports across the country and local hospitals could make use of them. But, like I said, I’m no expert on the subject. Just spitballing ideas.
The majority of people who are recovered from Covid-19 apparently are indeed recovered and not going to be reinfected anytime soon as long as their antibody levels are still high. The problem is, there is more than 1 strain of Covid-19 circulating around, and you can still be reinfected by another strain. It’s like all the different types of human respiratory viruses. You can get a cold from one virus, then influenza from another virus right after you recovered from the first, but they’re from different strains of virus.
The functional definition of “Third World” these days is: Are you constantly, desperately, relentlessly trying to sneak into my country by any means available, in order to avoid the horror of just living in your own country among your own people?
By that standard, yes, China is definitely still a Third World country.
Anybody who says they are “just seeking a better life” is by definition a Third World moocher.
Access to White people is not a human right.
“Welcome back,Frank. How you feeling?”
“Just fine. But I’ll tell ya,those two weeks battling that corona were pure hell!”
“Important thing is you’re back now. So get to work on the Fleigelman file,OK?”
“You got it. I’ll just look at these figures and-cough-go through ’em and-cough-cough…”
“Uh Frank,you’re sweating quite a bit there…”
“I’m fine,-cough-just a little weak,and not breathing so good…”
“Let me just scan your temperature…104!”
“Oh no! Not again! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Ha ha.
and MERS, much less the less lethal ones.This is a strain of what is otherwise a family of the viruses that cause the common cold, and since we have no reliable indication of how many people might actually have contracted it, therefore no reliable denominator upon which to base our death rate calculations, locking down the world because a few thousand people have died may very well be a severe overreaction.Replies: @Something positive, @Pincher Martin
Greg Cochran has been ahead of the curve on this issue since the beginning. His blog should be required reading for policy makers. It would give them a comprehensive approach on how to combat this virus.
Ahead of the curve how? So far the impact of the disease has been in the prevention. Not saying he is wrong this time and not saying that a guy with a string of false positives doesn’t deserve for calling one right but shouldn’t be at least be vindicated first
He’s written many posts on the virus dating back to early February. It’s not just this post.
He pointed out early that it was not just the flu.
He pointed out early (in mid-February) that the U.S. government should be funding every possible therapeutical approach to combating the virus.
He argued (before it became apparent in Italy) that we should expect the death rate from the virus to increase as our hospitals became saturated with the infected.
These things seem obvious to most people now. But he pointed them out when many, including some in the government, were arguing that this was just a new flu that would perhaps kill a few more elderly, but otherwise wasn’t something to get fussed about.
Lol they had signs warning about cornovirus in LAX in late January. So if Cochran’s big claim to fame is saying in February that this isn’t the flu then im going to have them hold off etching his name into the presidential medal of freedom.
We have a MUCH MORE POWERFUL weapon than a Manhattan Project.
The U.S. and other “advanced” countries has spent decades building fences, walls, moats etc. to protect medical “providers” from even a hint of competition. Inside these monopoly behemoths, we see the usual infection of unionization, “diversity” hiring of ethnic incompetents while white males are pushed out, etc.
PROPOSAL: Set loose REAL MARKET FORCES.
EXAMPLES:
(1) Allow physicians (from FIRST WORLD countries only) to come to the U.S. for a limited period (6-12 months) to provide specialized ICU-type services for COVID-19 patients with respiratory issues, including full intubation. They may bring their own equipment, again limited to First World items.
The foreign physicians get to charge a maximum of, e.g. $1,500 per day per patient, PROVIDED the patient survives. Survival statistics are captured and published in real-time, perhaps using YELP.
(2) Allow impromptu clinics to be set up in national or state parks, subject to strict hygiene rules based on military field hospital standards.
(3) Allow free importation of test kits, masks, chloroquine, other medication etc. and free DISTRIBUTION through non-pharmacy channels, e.g. convenience stores as was done in Taiwan.
A generic warning doesn’t really tell you anything though, does it? I mean, did the LAX sign tell you to wash your hands for twenty seconds? And did you time yourself as you scrubbed away?
Presumably you have a mind that is capable of absorbing an argument that has just a little more detail than that you need to keep up your hygiene during flu season or that you’ll be screened in the airport for a new disease in China if you are a flight from Shanghai or Beijing.
If you have that kind of mind, then Cochran’s blog is for you. If not, then you need to find your own level – and perhaps constant reminders to wash your hands and not pick your nose is the level you are at.
There is one great benefit to this Corona virus scare: schools closing, i.e., our children not getting brainwashed.
If only we could make it permanent.
Here’s a retarded article from National Review:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-constitution-isnt-suspended-because-of-coronovirus/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
Basically, we shouldn’t restrict large gatherings or false claims about Corona because Constitution. (I bet this guy also believes the unregulated free market would figure out how to deal with Corona just fine).
These libertarians are too much.
China has small pockets of first world civilization (most countries have at least that), but for the most part it’s hideously filthy, primitive and barbaric, and the poverty and destitution remain grinding and widespread. Until the floodgates of third-world migration were opened, the USA was the exact opposite. Now we’re trending in the wrong direction. Since you’re not American, this may not trouble you.
Douglas Murray makes that point repeatedly in his book, the Strange Death of Europe.
To paraphrase, if the glorious multicultural future that the left believes in doesn’t arrive, well then we be completely fucked.
China, Albania and Taiwan have a different history and act differently: Collectively locking down society and rigorously testing and qurantaining those at risk (the test part might be bit weak in Albania, but neverthelass - they set up harsh fines for thos who do not properly quarantine, they send the police to control the CO-19 rules etc. pp.).
It's already past time to shut down Vegas, but who's going to do it?Replies: @Anonymous
I’m inclined to say something that might sound harsh regarding vegas-goers (and cruise-takers too), but I’ll let everyone say it in their heads instead.
To paraphrase, if the glorious multicultural future that the left believes in doesn't arrive, well then we be completely fucked.Replies: @Dieter Kief
I’ve read the Strange Death of Europe too. Multiculturalism is no alternative to the core ideas and – sigh, this might turn out to be the weakest point – the mindsets of the west.
Here too Murray, Haidt and Peterson are right: Our core values have already suffered to a point where it hurts badly.
Trump – he’s pretty liberterian. – Liberterianism is no problem, as long as it is part of a value system, that encompasses – reason and rationality as well. And that’s whre I hesitate, if I think of him, I have to admit.
Cummings, Preston and Johnson have a strategy against the virus, which suffers a lot from too much individalism. at leats that’s my fear. They think they outsmarted people like Gregory Cochran. Thing is: What Cochran proposes has worked already. What they propose is new. New things are by there very nature – – – risky.
China, Albania and Taiwan have a different history and act differently: Collectively locking down society and rigorously testing and qurantaining those at risk (the test part might be bit weak in Albania, but neverthelass – they set up harsh fines for thos who do not properly quarantine, they send the police to control the CO-19 rules etc. pp.).
Yes, we need more like him to think inside the box. Too many are thinking outside it nowadays.