Quote from: Astargath on March 17, 2020, 05:00:20 PM

''How long are we meant to self-isolate for?'' As long as we have to mate. 'Is this going to happen everytime a new form of SARS appears?' Yes if it's serious enough, quit crying about it, not everything has a good solution.

Youre the one who should quit crying. Or else, good luck, um, eating. As a practical matter, your proposed rule is a most excellent plan for totally imploding a fragile, technocratic globalized civilization based on centralization and long supply chains and... (why do I even bother?)

Quote from: nullius on March 16, 2020, 07:31:36 PM

Quote from: infofront on March 16, 2020, 06:25:15 PM

It's a pretty crazy situation. If the virus doesn't recede significantly over the summer, will we stay on global lockdown for 1 year+, while waiting for a vaccine?

A technocratic, industrialized, globalized international economy based on massive centralization and long supply chains cannot survive such a scenario as global lockdown for 1 year+.

That is why I accuse headless-chicken governments of destroying the world in a futile attempt to save it from a virus that is not being significantly slowed by all the lockdowns.

My concern is distinct from theymos and hilarious concerns about the economy. I dont share the general worldview of economic thinkingalthough I think that they are evaluating this situation rationally, for the most part. Stop panicking!

Between the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I fear Famine. I do not fear Plague (at least, not in this instance). I do fear War. I have never feared Death; and I do not intend to start now.

The Earth is ridiculously overpopulated. A long-term global lockdown proximately causing deindustrialization and famine could help to knock off a few billion talking apes. Maybe it is not such a bad idea after all?

Quote from: TwitchySeal on March 17, 2020, 05:48:15 PM

Quote from: TECSHARE on March 17, 2020, 05:32:29 PM

~

I agree with TECSHARE on this. Who would've thought.

I hope not with this part of the international quotation that I just snipped:

Quote from: TECSHARE on March 17, 2020, 05:32:29 PM

The issue is not that this disease is just so fatally dangerous, but that is is just dangerous enough, and mostly debilitating with many requiring long hospital stays to treat. This disease has a unique combination of long viability on surfaces, being airborne, long incubation periods, passive carriers, and high rates of infection that is basically like a checklist of all the things you would put into a disease you intend to cause a pandemic.

Cf.:

Quote from: TECSHARE on March 16, 2020, 05:34:02 PM

I have a high level of confidence that this is a bioweapon, and will lead to open war. Even if it isn't, it looks like it, and that might be enough to ignite tensions.

Those who habitually spew twisted illogic, quack junk, and extraordinary claims on the basis of merest speculation (not to mention lies about other people) do not suddenly start making sense, unless they radically change their worldviews. That is psychologically difficult, almost impossible; and it requires an extraordinary mind which would be unlikely to believe nonsense in the first instance. TEChSHARE remains the same artless Techy as always; and the probability approaches one that he always will. That is why I distrust him as a person.

Quote from: TwitchySeal on March 17, 2020, 05:48:15 PM

We're gonna run out of beds, doctors will have to decide who dies and who doesn't, it's going to suck.

People are going to die. Yes. Thats life.

I find myself arguing against each and all of:

Panic.
Fantastic dolts who suppose that SARS-CoV-2 must be somehow of different origins from the 200203 SARS-CoV. Wow, a zoonotic jumped speciesas has doubtless been the origin of countless diseases throughout the whole history of all living creatures on Earth. It is closely related to another zoonotic that also jumped species. Clearly, the most likely explanation is that this is a genetically engineered bioweapon!
Panic.
Destroying all that remains of civilization, for the purpose of failing to save it.
Panic.
Tyranny. The naïve, fallible mortal human in me is shocked that nobody notices we have instantaneously entered an era of global dictatorship, without any significant resistance or even protest. The dispassionate scholar knows human nature, and is therefore not surprised. The new normality is that every government everywhere can issue any emergency order they want, and nobody will even complain! WTF. Are you awake? (Nice question.)
Panic.

My own perspective: Humans endured plagues for all time before modern history. There are now two significant differences:

Technology makes plagues spread much faster. I shudder to imagine the Black Death in the era of aeroplanes and automobiles. Could happen somedayis not the coronavirus situation. Many coronavirus-type incidents have probably occurred over the centuries, but remained local, minor, barely worth remark.

Indeed, I would suggest that Chinese scholars should probably examine the question of whether there is any evidence of previous SARS outbreaks, before modern times. My hypothesis: Variants of this virus have jumped to humans many times within the five millennia for which at least some historical record may exist. Minor local outbreaks may have burned out without leaving any historical evidence that would be extant today (especially after the last centurys upheavals destroyed much historical evidence in China). Thus, a negative cannot be proved (as is oft the case with historical hypotheses).

I do think thats an important question; and it is just the type of question that nobody thinks of.
Modernity has made humans soft and weak. Soft, weak creatures do not survive. In this context, I mean that collectively, in the long run. Sooner or later, humans have a high risk of going extinct due to having degenerated into wimps who are totally maladapted to the harsh conditions of life in this world. Evolution is blind: It does not always progress or advance a species with godlike intentions, as commonly assumed and implied by pseudoscientific liberals.

I never said that the virus is not bad (although I think its level of badness is much exaggerated, whereas people have faced much worse historically).

I never said that people will not die. Actually, I am of the opinion that everybody dies someday.

I said and say, stop panicking. If the current trend does not soon change, then a relatively moderate global epidemic of coronavirus will have ushered in a new era of mass starvation. It has already inaugurated global tyranny, the full extent of which has yet to be seen.