Many specialists have talked, for years, about how a major virus pandemic is the most dangerous threat facing mankind. The current situation is hardly an ELE, but has raised awareness of the threat. For those who want a few more technical details: What should we do about the threat of a virus as deadly as Ebola, that is transmitted like Covid-19? This is actually a very realistic scenario; we don't have to get into ideas about something that came from aliens (à la "Andromeda Strain") or purposely developed by genetic manipulation as a biological weapon (à la "Contagion"). It could happen naturally. What would be the result? Would we just have to settle for letting half the world's population die (the intended outcome of "Inferno", for example)? What steps could we take now, based on what we have learned from Covid-19, to deal with a threat like that? Or should we just hope it doesn't happen and go our merry way?
Wait what? Contagion was a bat virus hybridized in a sick pig that jumped to humans in a Macao kitchen. Edit: or was there a book version I don’t know about?
There are two missing factors in the mortality rate analysis, and rather important ones: treatment effectiveness and treatment capacity. COVID’s later stages are 60%(?) effectively treatable, but capacity for treatment is low. A virus that has 100% mortality untreated and an R_0 of 10 would be rather unthreatening if it could be cured by a few doses of Tylenol. Something with an R_0 of 3 and a mortality rate of 5% that didn’t respond to any attempted treatment would be devastating. And both are things the institutions of the world can actually do something about.
I confused it with "Outbreak". I've seen too many movies lately, with so much time on my hands in the evenings...
The truth is you kiss your ass goodbye because we do not live in the conditions capable of stopping a highly contagious mostly fatal disease from spreading. The human race is also not paranoid enough to live with the sacrifices needed to possibly prevent something surprisingly deadly to spread. In prder to react fast enough to something like that we would have to do without a lot of freedoms and live in a jail like society during times when the virus was not present. Seeing as how we have never had something that deadly and contagious hit us that would never get enough support to be effective. Humans simply cannot live that way despite the chicken littles who are afraid of everything. In movie terms, we do have a few rules that work. 1. Be pretty and attractive. This is your best possible chance to survive the initial outbreak. 2. find an orphan child to take care of. This seems to make survival much more likely in the aftermath. This is especially effective if you are the pretty female in love with the male protagonist, but not always good for the male protagonist in the end. My suggestion for the men is when you are called to make a choice to sacrifice yourself for the woman and child you sacrifice the orphan kid instead. Sure the woman will hate you, but you can make more kids. 3. Be able to live with the infection. Being lucky to form a symbiotic relationship with the infection seems to ensure survival along with your presence in sequels, and has the side effects of super human powers. 4. Be really intelligent but not the person doing the research to save the human race. If you are the doctor who is creating the cure you will often have to sacrifice yourself in some heroic way after you find the cure. 5. Crazy seems to help. You want to be crazy, but not quirky. 6. If you are white you want to be bland. This is especially true if you are a white male. Being entertaining in some way normally means you are fucked. 7. avoid military and medical facilities at all costs. Going into these facilities often leads to casualties, and they always get infected or overrun. These solutions do include highly infected zombie viruses.
pretty much sums it up! With a little tweaking this template can be applied to all styles of movies, from a Hallmark Channel sappy love story to an epic Michael Bay blow-em'-up violence wankfest! Netflix cranks out these gloom & doom movies in their sleep that's for sure!
We do need to crack China open like an egg when it comes to just what exactly they are doing on the biological front. Did Covid19 come from the market? Maybe but it's also highly likely that it accidentally got out from the Wuhan lab. It's also possible that some scientist at the lab sold infected animals to the meat market as it has happened before. The lab is a couple thousand feet from the market where China claims the virus got its start. China has also tried to smuggle viruses out of and into countries. In Feb 2018 the FBI caught one Chinese national with SARS and MERS coming into America. There was a second case involving flu strains and a third case involving E. Coli. In 2019 a lab in Canada shipped shipped samples of the henipavirus family, which includes Nipah and the related Hendra, and of Ebola to China. Chinese nationals worked at that Canadian lab and they got the boot out the door after this incident. Nipah has a death rate between 50% and 100% and currently has no known treatment or cure. A John Hopkins study showed it could be modified and if released kill 150 million people world-wide. China is a dictatorship, lies on just about everything, has looser ethics when it comes to using CRISPR gene-editing technology and other technology, and at the same time is incompetent when it comes to saftey. They have had accidental releases from other labs of SARS. It's believed that China has an active bio-weapons program going on even though they deny it. China is believed to be making not only weapons but also looking for cures that it holds onto so when something does happen it alone has the cure and can use that as leverage with other countries suffering an outbreak. China has to be dealt with before they accidentally do something that makes Covid19 look like a blip.
You imagine they'll give you access to a secret weapons programme? Turn this around, what reaction would you get to a similar demand for transparency about the US nuclear programme?
Obviously they aren't. Especially when they deny they have one. That's why you have to crack them like an egg. Economic sanctions need to be done by America, Asia, and Europe. Locking down all bank accounts outside of China preventing them from accessing the money. Travel restrictions on military and civilian leaders. Also on company leaders. Also on their family members. Restricting and denying Chinese nationals from studying abroad. Especially in critical sectors like biology. And that's just to start. If they really get fussy just cut off food shipments. And our nuclear program is transparent in comparison to the Chinese bio-weapons program and the Chinese nuclear program. You can find a lot of stuff on the American nuclear program. Certain stuff is of course classified but there is plenty out there and discussions of nuclear weapons is public. You don't see the Chinese talking about their nuclear weapons in public settings. Here's an interesting video you'd never see made in China. It's two parts but both are worth watching.
Ummmm, calm down you are acting like assyclown. We are not going to war with china. That is not happening. I am pretty sure Trump is too busy sending love ketters to NK to write a strongly worded letter to china over this. Even if he does, no one listens to his strongly worded letters aside from faux news, and faux news does not control china. This is not a biological weapon. This was not developed by the chinese in a lab and released. Those are things said by stupid people. This is a naturally occurring event, and viruses mutate all the fucking time. It is one of the things they do.
No one said anything about a war. You don’t need to make war to crack an egg. Read the follow up post.
Okay, this sounds crazy, but hear me out. What if the US were to spend 8 years working with the other 11 largest non-China economies in Asia and the west coast of Americas to create a deep economic/trade/geo political partnership that would then force China to either adopt international norms or be frozen out of trade with these nations? We could call it the Across Big-ocean Alliance or something.
Wouldn't work. China already ignores deals it signs on to. China also ignores international laws. (See the islands they are building.)
This is the problem with assyclown making zombie right in small areas. Then he thinks he is right about all of his crazy ideas.
The horrific truth is that I am going to have to fuck the virus into submission. This will require lingering camera shots of my pasty, flabby white ass pumping away in defence of humanity. And a lengthy shot of my cum face, which has been accurately described as "a close up of Hillary Clinton's rusty starfish after 13 pints of Guinness and half a kilo of meth".
China is much too powerful to he bullied into submission using the same playbook the US normally uses, as @Zombie's sub-Dayton rant would have it.
Economic sanctions don't work, let's get that out of the way out of the blocks, especially when you consider this isn't some junior nation on the world stage. Sanctions didn't stop Putin rebuilding Russia as a major power. Secondly, there's no way the US or anyone else would declassify mattes of national security if pressured by a foreign power so let's not be silly here and expect it from China. Why should they accept your expectations for openness in their classified material? How would you react to them attempting to dictate to you? How is the US biological weapons research going by the way? Top secret at one point then abruptly ended. Allegedly. Your wild finger pointing is really no different to the conspiracy theories which had HIV as an American bioweapon gone rogue. Could actually be true. Perhaps China are already being more transparent in admitting the existence of a programme at all? After all several days ago we saw evidence that smuggling was a two way process, perhaps more goes on on home soil than you'd care to believe?
So does the US, look at the countries it keeps invading. Look at the Paris Accords, Iran Nuclear Deal, extraordinary rendition....
We absolutely have the technology and money to create an effective pandemic response -- or any emergency response, for that matter. Problem is, as gloriously illustrated by COVID-19, we don't seem to have the willpower nor do we want to spend the money. Most Americans are perfectly fine with spending $750-billion per year on kewl toys that are used primarily for killing brown and yellow people. But god forbid you actually want to deliver quality healthcare to everyone or put a bit of that money aside for a rainy pandemic day. Also, the guns. Don't forget the guns. And that's just America. Other former and emerging superpowers (Soviets, China, UK, etc.) always seem more interesting in spending money on killing people than investing in saving lives. But pretty much every country has done a piss-poor job of pandemic planning. I'm pretty sure it's safe to extend that assumption to other global emergencies. Humanity is not looking good right now.
Kellyanne Conway is one of the few people so ignorant that she would be worse, as president, than Donald Trump. Maybe...
