WHO Raises Coronavirus Threat Assessment To Its Highest Level (cnbc.com) 236
World Health Organization officials said Friday they are increasing the risk assessment of the coronavirus, which has spread to at least 49 countries in a matter of weeks, to "very high" at a global level. From a report: "We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program. The group isn't trying to alarm or scare people, he said. "This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready." The world can still avoid "the worst of it," but the increased risk assessment means the WHO's "level of concern is at its highest," he said at a press conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva. World leaders still have a chance to contain the virus within their borders, Ryan said. "To wait, to be complacent to be caught unawares at this point, it's really not much of an excuse."
I'm not particularly worried (Score:4, Funny)
The US has the best health care system in the world, and just this week Donald Trump put the VP, Mike Pence, in charge of managing the situation. If you look at Pence's history, you'll see he has dealt with outbreaks before, even compromising his strongly held beliefs to ensure that appropriate measures were taken.
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Science makes no distinction between every living human dying, and nobody dying.
If you want some reason for action on that, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Or, just go with what you've already socially assimilated, theism, as you attack yourself.
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Science makes no distinction between every living human dying, and nobody dying.
If you want some reason for action on that, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Or, just go with what you've already socially assimilated, theism, as you attack yourself.
Survival is not mandatory. - Edwards Deming
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Well, actually science does make a distinction, but it doesn't specify actions to be taken in response. If every human dies, then you just evolve something else. If people act wisely and survive, then you don't. It's a distinction.
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And just to avoid further problems:
*: The s is short for super serious.
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I said it was satire. Are you saying it was not? I'm confused as to your response, because it sounds like you think I did not use the phrase "this is definitely satire" in my response.
Did you simply not read the entire post?
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Re:I'm not particularly worried (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to bother to respond to a troll, at least make it something ridiculous and amusing like:
Mike Pence will totally be super effective. After all, he managed to pray all of the gay away which is why Kanye West is straight now.
It's still utterly pointless response, but at least someone might get a hearty chuckle out of it.
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Re:I'm not particularly worried (Score:4, Informative)
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Pence is one of the best of all the bad possible Trump "czars". If only because he has nearly as much authority as Trump and a lot of access to Trump, and Trump can't get rid of him easily, especially with the election next year.
Is he kind of an idiot and not really the right person? Sure, but he can clear the deck for the CDC as well as anybody in Trump's Washington these days.
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Also, he's a much better fall guy than someone without as much name recognition.
The job he's been appointed to is impossible to succeed at. It can be done as well as possible, or poorly, but it can't be done successfully. So pick someone to do it you can successfully blame.
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haha, you almost had me there but this is definitely satire.
Uhh no shit?
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Poe's law in action. I'm literally arguing right this very second, on this very site, with a person making very similar claims, who is absolutely, completely, 100% serious about it.
Re: I'm not particularly worried (Score:2)
Please share how you would limit HIV given that it is primarily transmitted through consensual transactions where government has no business being involved.
Unless you want to chemically castrate those with HIV, I'm not sure there's a way of quarantining those infected or limit their actions.
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It's not difficult. Free condoms, for example. Education. There are many ways that a creative, intelligent person could help deal with the problem. But they would have to want to. Pence obviously did not want to, and was quite happy with gay people dying. It's what his twisted version of Christianity says is right.
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You can get cheap / free condoms today, if you want them.
The issue isn't the availability of condoms, it's that no one likes using condoms.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Is this satire?
If it's a troll, it's a good one. If not, then very sad. Very very sad.
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You seem concerned about not getting laid, has that been a problem in your life? Do you consider yourself an "incel?" Have you been "red-pilled" or "black-pilled?" Are you a member of the group known as "Men going there own way?"
Re:I'm not particularly worried (Score:4, Funny)
Chill, you're making the 4-digits look bad.
Note to self (Score:3)
Perhaps it's time to get that airline ticket to Madagascar before they shut down everything.
Captain Trips? (Score:3)
Perhaps it's time to get that airline ticket to Madagascar before they shut down everything.
If the great oracle, Mr. King, is accurate, we might need a little more distance than Madagascar [youtube.com].
And Elon Musk is right, too: "[which do we want,] Lipstick or a colony on Mars?" [youtu.be]
This virus is bad, but it's not Captain Trips. This is a wake-up call to remind us that extinction-level events remain possible and arguably become more likely as our technology reduces our individual isolation.
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Ok. But I prefer an more dispersed solution at an ultimate goal. Living on Mars might be a useful intermediate step, though.
That said, we really need to disperse well beyond the solar system to be approximately safe (for a reasonably long time). And planets are not the right place to hold an industrial civilization. (But we probably need controlled fusion to do it properly. Fission is too hard to refuel.) I think a dispersal rate of about 0.1C, or possibly a bit slower, is optimal...which means the ha
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Ok. But I prefer an more dispersed solution at an ultimate goal. Living on Mars might be a useful intermediate step, though.
That said, we really need to disperse well beyond the solar system to be approximately safe (for a reasonably long time). And planets are not the right place to hold an industrial civilization. (But we probably need controlled fusion to do it properly. Fission is too hard to refuel.) I think a dispersal rate of about 0.1C, or possibly a bit slower, is optimal...which means the habitats need to be durable and maintainable, and able to survive on stuff harvested in passing. So we've a ways to go before that becomes possible. And Mars might be a good intermediate step. (OTOH, if FTL is possible, all bets are off. But I don't expect that, or we'd have believable visitors.)
All well and good, but you have to master crawling before you can walk, and master walking before you have any chance of becoming an Olympic sprinter.
Youtube is gonna ban this (Score:3)
Youtube already banned a video of a US senator explaining the current state of the coronavirus, supposedly for inciting panic. You can bet they'll ban this announcement too.
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Naw, that senator and a certain fixed income website got banned because they didn't follow the script.
The WHO is playing by the official playbook. Folks are already past the point of being shocked to the level that they will cause excessive social and economic disruption, so it's OK to be a bit more open now.
Note that it is actually probably a good and necessary thing to keep the machine that is society running when this sort of black swan event hits. Folks get so shell shocked by what's happening that th
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The thing is, it's not that severe a problem. It's less bad than traffic accidents. But it's a problem that is new and could become persistent and mutate into something worse.
I notice that WHO still hasn't called it a pandemic. That would just mean it's all over the place, it wouldn't say anything about how serious it was. And it preferentially afflicts those whose health is already failing with the worse cases. (IIUC, it's the secondary infections that do the real damage.) This could be a full pandem
Re:Youtube is gonna ban this (Score:5, Informative)
It currently has around a 2% fatality rate, which is devastatingly high if it infects a significant fraction of the population. Swine flu (aka H1N1) is estimated to have infected around a billion people (but only killed a fraction of a percent of those infected: this is about 50 times more lethal). If this takes a similar path, that means 20 million people dead (or 16 years of traffic accidents worth of deaths). And a staggering impact on the health systems of every country (no country in the world has the health care system to handle 10-20% of it's people getting sick at nearly the same time), so the mortality rate might be even higher if it spreads too fast. Panic might kill even more people. So even if the probablity that you, as an individual, will die from it is very low, it's still potentially a really, really big deal. We're probably past the point where it can be contained entirely, so that means minimizing the spread rate so it doesn't infect everyone all at once. That gives the health care systems time to deal with it, and minimizes panic (and hopefully the total infected population).
Re:Youtube is gonna ban this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm somewhat more concerned about the White House censoring the CDC than anything senators and Youtube do. The people who are actual experts on infectious disease and knowledgeable about what is going on are not allowed to inform the public. All statements go through a political process whose agenda is to make Trump look good at the expense of our safety. Just like China, only less competent.
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If you take a look at the CDC's own materials, they say straight out that there's a balancing act they take on to maximize effectiveness while minimizing economic and social costs. Don't need a White House bogeyman.
Their "Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza â" United States, 2017":
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]
Re:Youtube is gonna ban this (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they do. They have had many years to plan for such events and come up with reasonable protocols for keeping the public informed without causing harm. The White House has nothing going for it except for Dear Leader's whims, and those whims are now in charge of communicating to the public about the pandemic. It's not a "bogeyman" when it's official policy. All the actual experts are prohibited from communicating with the media without first clearing their statements with the White House.
For real? (Score:2)
All the self appointed geniuses on slashdot keep telling me the flu is worse.
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I have to admit I was in that camp, mostly, for a while. But I've now upgraded my worry a bit. Definitely worse than flu in terms of impact on my life even in the best case (what we see now). The likely case is considerably worse, and the very worst case (which I still think is unlikely) is pretty fucking bad.
As of now my main expectation is economic pain.
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I've got my month supply of canned goods and a WFH job. These basement-dwelling mouthbreathers saying all is well or the flu is worse can go suck a fuck, since they're gonna die anyway. Actually not a bad thing as most of them are lolbertarians too, so there will be less of them around.
Um... those basement-dwellling mouthbreathers never get out of the house. They're the last people who will contract the virus.
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Oh, for a funny mod point. Nicely done. :)
But but but RAHH said (Score:3)
RAHH ( 5900166 ) said: "That being said, this coronavirus is being blown way out of proportion and the fickle sheep are going crazy because of media fear mongering."
But WHO says: "We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact," said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program.
Let me think, who's more likely to know what the fuck they're talking about- a random slashdot poster named "RAHH", or Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's health emergencies program?
Yeah, that sure is a puzzler....
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So you think The Riddler is behind all this?
Everything is gonna be fine (Score:2)
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"It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
Like he and everyone in his Administration will, just not nearly soon enough.
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I'll put you on the survey for "opposed to a miracle", then.
Miraculous multiplication is not math (Score:2)
Exactly! Well, except for the fact that quantum events actually happen. And that we've derived consensually experiential, repeatable theory for them that survives attempts at falsification quite handily. Oh, and that we're able to manipulate those events to our own benefit in technology. I almost forgot — also that we're learning more about the quantum aspect of things all the time. Plus, our understanding of other aspects of reality are hugely bene
Does it go to eleven? (Score:4, Funny)
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Damn you, Spinal Tap!!!1
I'm kind of curious why Pence? (Score:5, Interesting)
When:
"The U.S. Surgeon General is the Nation’s Doctor, providing Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury. The Surgeon General oversees the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps, an elite group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals. The USPHS mission is to protect, promote, and advance the health of our nation."
"
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It's an election year. The responses to coronavirus from both Republicrats and Fingerlickans has been mainly concerned with political posturing ahead of the election* - any actual health concerns are far, far secondary.
*so pretty much like it's been with every other issue.
Oh good (Score:2)
Just in case you were not panicky yet, this should do it.
So we have highest threat level. In other words, we should do... umm... well ... beats me...
WHO flu (Score:2)
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Because China would shut down half of their economy for months over an "ordinary flu" during a trade war. Pull the other one... it's got bells on.
The CDC has done its job well in terms of controlling panic, keeping societal stability, and markets operating (and therefore, goods, including food and medicine flowing).
But now that the coronavirus has gone global, the real numbers can't be hid by the CCP anymore. So, everybody's shifting gears from "controlled release of information" to "active measures".
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Ordinary flu (Score:4, Interesting)
What was that saying about understanding exponential functions?
We won't know what the real death rate (case fatality rate) until this pandemic peaks. However, even at this stage we know that the fatality rate is higher than that of the the flu.
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No, we actually don't. Most cases appear to be sufficiently mild that they never come to official notice. So the actual death rate is unknown, but saying it's about the same as the flu probably isn't unreasonable. Of course, this means also that the infected population is a lot higher than the officially acknowledge counts.
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We won't know what the real death rate (case fatality rate) until this pandemic peaks.
I agree with what you're getting at, but—technically—we actually do know what the CFR is, though we won't know what the final CFR value will be until the disease runs its course. As of today, the CFR is sitting at about 3.4%, but it will continue moving until all confirmed cases conclude. Among confirmed cases that already have concluded, the fatality rate as of today sits at 7.2%, which gives us a better idea of what we might expect the final CFR to be for COVID-19.
For others' reference, a typi
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That rate is greater than or equal to the death rate, so the death rate is your floor.
Start worrying. Start prepping.
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Indeed. At the very least preppers won't overburden "the system", or whatever remains of "the system" during this pandemic. Help others by getting yourself prepared.
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Influenza has a death rate of .1%. While the error bars are probably larger for COVID19, its death rate seems to be around 2%, 20 times GREATER (i.e ordinary flu has a much LOWER death rate, not a higher death rate.
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2% in China, where people don't have access to hospitals.
Re: Ordinary flu (Score:3, Informative)
Try watching something besides fox "news".
Going off feb 21 data:
https://jamanetwork.com/journa... [jamanetwork.com]
Corona virus- 75569 infected, 2239 dead. 2.95% death rate. It is not known how it spreads and there are no treatments.
Flu- 29,000,000 infected, 16,000 dead. 0.05% death rate. There are vaccines and cures.
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Corona virus- 75569 infected, 2239 dead. 2.95% death rate.
Based on what we've recently learned from the Diamond Princess, about 1/3 of infected don't show symptoms. [nbcnews.com] The "infected" definition coming from China appears to actually mean "shows symptoms". Once you account for that, the death rate drops down to ~2%.
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I don't understand why everyone is using infected rate to deaths, rather than recovered rate to deaths.
Right now numbers at https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info] are:
84176 infected
2876 deaths
36884 recovered
So, death rate should be approximately (there could be unreported cases, etc, and you could argue that serious cases should be accounted):
2876 / (36884 + 2876) = 2876 / 39760 = 7%
I am not trying to raise panic, but using deaths to infected does not seem correct to me.
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There are a number of ways to define the fatality rate. If the rate at which the number of peopel who are infected grows quickly, there can be a big difference in the results. I'm not sure either is "correct".
The most interesting question I think is if you are infected, what are your chances of dying. I think that is bounded by the two statistics. Of course there is a larger uncertainty that we don't know what percentage of cases are not counted at all because they are not serious enough to be noticed.
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I agree, probably need to edit my comment. It would be better guess that death ratio is somewhere between 2% and 8%
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Agreed- though there is also the uncertainty that I don't know how to quantify about how many people have gotten the disease and recovered but didn't know because it manifested as a normal cold.
The other huge unknown is how effective and how long lasting is any developed immunity. Hopefully once you get it and recover you are immune.
Re: Ordinary flu (Score:4, Insightful)
until the remaining are either dead or recovered, you can only calculate a minimum and maximum death rate
also, since the infected count continuously increases, you can never get a final, exact, ratio, only progressively narrower min-max range
Re: Ordinary flu (Score:4, Informative)
Mortality rate in Wuhan was 4.9%.
Mortality rate in the Hubei Province was 3.1%.
Mortality rate nationwide was 2.1%.
Fatality rate in other provinces was 0.16%.
more than 80% are elderly over 60 years old, and more than 75% had underlying diseases present such as cardiovascular and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and, in some cases, tumor.
Asked why Wuhan was so much higher than the national level, the NHC official replied that it was for lack of resources, citing as an example that there were only 110 critical care beds in the three designated hospitals where most of the cases were sent.
Looks like it started off more lethal due to circumstances around local hospitals being very limited in resources. 110 critical care beds is pretty pathetic for the population size. 11.8 million people, 3 hospitals.. yeah... Local city of 600,000 has nearly 30 hospitals.
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Your Flu figures? USA.
Your Coronavirus fugures? China (mostly)
Who do you think has better healthcare? Might that skew the numbers?
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I'd also go so far as to say that in China they probably don't or can't handle how many people are infected therefore more people die from it.
That plus apparently it comes on slow enough that one might think it's just a cold or something more common, initially. Then when it gets bad enough that you think you need a doctor, it's already too late.
Death toll, not death rate (Score:4, Insightful)
The death rate for regular influenza is about 0.05%-0.1%, versus about 2.5%-2.8% thus far for COVID-19.
The death toll for regular influenza is a lot higher, simply because it has infected tens of millions of people in the U.S., while COVID-19 has only infected on the order of 100,000 people worldwide. If COVID-19 becomes endemic, and you extrapolate the number of infected to 1 in 10 same as influenza, its expected death toll for the U.S. alone would be around 8-9 million. Substantially more than the 20k-50k deaths from influenza.
That is why the CDC, WHO, and other heatlh organizations are trying everything they can to stop this before it becomes endemic. Because the only time you can stop it is while its death toll is still low (before it has spread to lots of people). If we wait until its death toll approaches that of regular influenza before acting, it'll be too late. Its natural rate of propagation will exceed the rate at which containment and isolation measures reduce that propagation.
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extrapolate the number of infected to 1 in 10 same as influenza, its expected death toll for the U.S. alone would be around 8-9 million.
Math check time. 309 million population times 10% infection rate times 2.6% mortality rate equals .8 million. Nothing to sneeze at (dreadfully sorry for that) but you appear to have slipped a decimal point. That said, the infection rate could be higher, likewise the mortality rate.
WHO already knows the pandemic is unstoppable, now it's just a question of skewing the percentages as favorably as possible. The exact opposite of what the Trump administration is doing.
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How is COVID affecting healthy people? Another factor is influenza is a lot more likely to kill people with compromised immune systems, and healthy people have very little risk.
Fortunately people in the US have great health care, so they'll be quick to visit the doctor if they suspect they're sick and handle the situation promptly to prevent outbreaks.
Oh, wait..
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We see a lot of news that people are scared...
However I haven't ran into any one person who is really taking it as a problem that should affect them, and they are not as scared as the media has it.
That being said, it is wise to have a treatment and containment plan in effect.
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I haven't ran into any one person who is really taking it as a problem that should affect them
So you don't know one person who is on a cruise, at a conference, or travelling in an airplane.
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Influenza kills at a rate of 0.1%. Early reports put Coronavirus at 2%. Granted, it's hard to tell because some people might not see a doctor and recover, some people might be misdiagnosed, and some countries (e.g. China) are actively trying to downplay how bad it is. So you can get non-fatal as well as fatal incidents under reported. Even if Coronavirus winds up having a 1% death rate, it'll still be 10 times worse than the flu.
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In the US, death rate from common flu is 0.05%, just from the numbers in that article you linked to. By the way, you can not trust that web site, it is a borderline conspiracy theorist site, the sort that panders to "everyone in the world is a moron except you dear reader who has the truth!"
I don't see how they jump to their conclusions. WHO says 650K deaths from respiratory illnesses related to the flu, whereas that anti-globalization screed claims 5M "severe illness" cases; You don't divide those two nu
Not true (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Not true (Score:4, Informative)
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Because in today's world where racism is alive and rampant and growing, it's kind of important to realize a name matters. Calling it a Chinese virus will only serve to stigmatize just like islamophobes out there who think everyone who prays to Allah is a terrorist. Calling it Wuflu or whatever is similar - you're basically branding a good 20% of the world's
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That's just the official name. They do that so people don't assume that a) anyone from that region/town is infected and b) only people in that region/town are infected.
For example, if a new disease was first spotted in London and it was named "Londonitis", you might wrongly think "I'm safe because I'm not in London, but Jim from accounting comes from London. He's infected!!!" (Obviously, I'm using London rather than locations with people that are more likely to wind up discriminated against.)
As it is, some
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if we've started pandering to the mentally subnormal, we're fucked beyond belief.
Oh, pandering... (Score:2)
Oh no, we haven't started. At least, not in any recent timespan. We're simply continuing down that rabbit hole.
Surely you've noticed... reality TV? Fox "News"? Religion? Country and rap music? The two Dear Idiots in the white house and their hand-picked crew of bewildered sycophants? Pretty much the entire Republican side of the senate and the lower house (oh yes, and a goodly number of the Democrats)? Homeopathy? Chiropractors
Not true (Score:2)
I'm not going to watch a 30 minute youtube video to argue with you, but the World Health Organization does all sorts of things other than politics. You can start on this page, if you'd like: https://www.who.int/data/gho [who.int] They study things and report things. That's what they do. If you don't understand how or why that's important to the world, then that's on you.
To be fair it's got a mortality rate 20x (Score:4, Insightful)
Also I mentioned this elsewhere [slashdot.org] but the US Healthcare system has been left to rot for nearly 20 years. Approximately 1/7 of the population has little or no healthcare access, or about 50 million people (give or take). It could spread like wild fire here.
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That's a common myth. 100% of the U.S. has access to health care, even people in the country illegally. Hospitals are prohibited from turning away emergency room patients. No matter your income, your insurance status, your immigration status, your employment status, your housing status, if
ER != Healthcare (Score:2)
Coranavirus victims, especially those over 60, often need hospitalization or they die. People also need to be able to get treatment from places other than the ER or our ERs can't handle the load. Try to imagine of 50 million folks showed up all at once to the ER. What do you think would happen?
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If you're over 65 it borders on a death sentence.
Wow, hyperbole much?
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Your typical type of racism or discrimination is erring on the side of not hurting anyone who doesn't deserve it. e.g. The stereotype that women are weaker than men is in general true. And if you needed to hire people to do heavy physical labor, you're statistically more likely to get better workers hiring 10 random men than 10 random women. But that's unfair to any woman who might be strong enough to do as much heavy lifting as a man, so you d
How many fingers have ye? (Score:2)
Well, to be fair, (mainland) China would argue that only 47 of them are not China. Otherwise, yeah. :)
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Well, to be fair, it'll be us boomers who take the brunt of the mortality rate, so there's that. And, BTW, not all of us are so sanguine about this.
oh, boomers (Score:2)
Yes, this. There are plenty of smart boomers around. It's just a low percentage of them made it into politics, and so here we are.
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No it's not. It's a reciprocating saw.
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They aren't all wasted!
(Eye in pyramid winks inscrutably)
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You know, everything Trump says and does makes him look bad. After a while, even stupid people have to start realizing that maybe it's because he actually is bad.