01-27-2020, 11:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-27-2020, 11:46 AM by David Horn.)
(01-26-2020, 02:33 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(01-25-2020, 09:42 AM)David Horn Wrote:(01-25-2020, 01:39 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: We already know what stupid thing the CCP is going to do with the coronavirus: they are quarantining whole cities. This will intensify epidemics within those cities due to interference with supplies needed for food, water, and medicine. This will be at least as bad for the Chinese government as the plane shootdown was for the Iranian government....
I don't see any other choices, in a country as populated and concentrated as China. Yes, the affected cities will have additional cases, and would have in any case. Keeping the disease confined (if that's even possible at this point) is a net plus. Ebola is addressed in a similar manner every time it arises.
Flu - just regular old flu - kills tens of thousands of people in the US every year. The coronavirus has killed only 26 people in China, a country with much larger population and worse public health infrastructure. There's no indication that coronavirus is a bigger problem than the normal annual global flu pandemic, let alone such a big problem that it justifies disruption of the lives of tens of millions of people. The Chinese quarantine is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, and the Chinese people are not going to thank their government for it.
The coronavirus has already escaped Wuhan, and is now present in several countries. Unlike the conventional influenza outbreaks, we know very little about this disease vector. We do know that it is passed by indirect contact, mostly by aerosol. And unlike influenza in general, it is still reasonably well contained. We could never contain Influenza strains -- even with Herculean effort. So the real issue is this: is the "right" of people to move about freely more important than the potential loss of life they may cause if they do? Sorry, but that one answers itself. Allowing a pandemic to explode is idiotic in the extreme.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.