Coronavirus Craziness

[Sculptor]

Stores here have been packed for the past few days with people shopping for supplies. Toilet paper is apparently in high demand and is hard to come by. Hand sanitizer and paper towels also. I wonder how long this is going to go on and if the disease will go away when the weather warms up. My biggest worry is my parents who are in their 80s and dad is not in the greatest health. I'm hoping this passes us by without incident.

Best wishes to all the people posting on Philosophy Now. I hope everyone here is doing OK with all the craziness going on.

The craziness is the best hope your parents will have to see out the crisis alive.

[Sculptor]

Economic collapse is immanent.

One way to mitigate it would be to declare a comprehensive property tax, Rent, and Mortgage jubilee. Making it illegal to gather rents of mortgages for say the month of April, whilst the lock down is in place. It would be as if the month did not exist for fiscal and monetary purposes.
This way people would keep their homes, and no one vulnerable would suffer.
Its the vulnerable hand to mouth people that work the hardest and keep the economy going.
Rent seekers would moan, but it would only represent a small hiatus in their income, which for others could have meant real hardship.

[Sculptor]

* If this should be the one, then once again it will be United States to the rescue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

Salk lived in a very different time when the vaccines were offered freely to anyone who could make it.
When Flemming (not American BTW) discovered penicillin he gave it to the world for free.

These days things are different with patents being drawn up on things found in nature and drugs made so that those that are in need can be exploited for maximum profit.
There has already been a hostile bid to sequester Germany's best virologists by the USA to win the race to make cash.

[Dontaskme]

why wasn't there this hysteria over swine flu, which is far deadlier? Many people have covid-19 and don't even have symptoms! The only people it has killed have been the very old and the very sick. Even the flu kills a broader range of people. Yet they shut down New York? None of it makes any sense.

This particular virus is different in many ways in it's capacity to be an extremely virulent virus. People can have it without showing any symptoms or getting ill from it,and that's why it is able to spread at such a rapid pace going undetected, millions and millions of us are probably infected with it right now.. Covid 19 is not like just any commonal garden flu and is thought to be uncontainable because of it's stealth like capacity to thrive. The more we suppress viruses with vaccines the stronger and more agressively determined they become.

All we can do is just suck it up. As this outbreak could last years and years. This is now everyones problem and we need to work together to finding a solution, not isolating ourselves off from one and other by closing borders.

It's also unnatural the way we are living out our lives right now, all this over consuming etc...so maybe in natures wisdom, the reset button is being pressed, and it's now the time to rethink how we could live our lives in a better way, one that does not completely overwhelm us via stress which is the biggest threat to our lives more than we realises, stress causes more harm to our natural immune systems, more than anything else..

We don't need to be locked up in schools and offices all day, battling the daily commute to get to our jobs and places of learning ...we have the internet which contains all the knowledge we ever need to know. Times are changing, there is a huge paradigm shift going on right now and it's about time people stopped sleeping walking through their drudgery excuses for a life and wake up and say to themselves, perhaps there is a better way to live.

But the strange thing about this virus is that it is harmless to some people and very dangerous to others.

There is no solution to any problem while there is a them verses us mentality. Those that work together stay together. Else the alternative is we all lose the game because we're all in this same tapestry together, and like all tapestries, there is a rough inchoherent side and a smooth coherent side ..we have to stop favoring one side over the other.

.

[commonsense]

So, to you, those humans who do actually have an immunity to covid-19 do not exist?

Those humans who have recovered from Covid 19 will have a natural immunity to the virus that made them ill.

So, this would mean that there is SOME humans who do actually have an immunity to covid-19, correct?

Yes.

[commonsense]

why wasn't there this hysteria over swine flu, which is far deadlier? Many people have covid-19 and don't even have symptoms! The only people it has killed have been the very old and the very sick. Even the flu kills a broader range of people. Yet they shut down New York? None of it makes any sense.

This particular virus is different in many ways in it's capacity to be an extremely virulent virus. People can have it without showing any symptoms or getting ill from it,and that's why it is able to spread at such a rapid pace going undetected, millions and millions of us are probably infected with it right now.. Covid 19 is not like just any commonal garden flu and is thought to be uncontainable because of it's stealth like capacity to thrive. The more we suppress viruses with vaccines the stronger and more agressively determined they become.

All we can do is just suck it up. As this outbreak could last years and years. This is now everyones problem and we need to work together to finding a solution, not isolating ourselves off from one and other by closing borders.

It's also unnatural the way we are living out our lives right now, all this over consuming etc...so maybe in natures wisdom, the reset button is being pressed, and it's now the time to rethink how we could live our lives in a better way, one that does not completely overwhelm us via stress which is the biggest threat to our lives more than we realises, stress causes more harm to our natural immune systems, more than anything else..

We don't need to be locked up in schools and offices all day, battling the daily commute to get to our jobs and places of learning ...we have the internet which contains all the knowledge we ever need to know. Times are changing, there is a huge paradigm shift going on right now and it's about time people stopped sleeping walking through their drudgery excuses for a life and wake up and say to themselves, perhaps there is a better way to live.

But the strange thing about this virus is that it is harmless to some people and very dangerous to others.

There is no solution to any problem while there is a them verses us mentality. Those that work together stay together. Else the alternative is we all lose the game because we're all in this same tapestry together, and like all tapestries, there is a rough inchoherent side and a smooth coherent side ..we have to stop favoring one side over the other.

.

Along with the internet and personal computers came the promise of working from home. Perhaps Covid will give this overdue arrangement a much needed push in the right direction toward en masse implementation.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

What I don't understand is why Govts. are collectively destroying the world economy and risking sending humans hundreds of years backwards for something that essentially only kills old people--and even then they have an 86 percent survival rate. The resulting chaos will ensure the death of hundreds of millions of people (conservatively) including all the old people the shutdown has supposedly 'saved', because they will be unable to get their massive supply of medications. Same with those in all the 'at risk' groups and anyone else who depends on medication for their survival.
Is it because so many of the world's 'leaders' are in the 'at risk' age group ahem Trump ?

[henry quirk]

What I don't understand is why Govts. are collectively destroying the world economy and risking sending humans hundreds of years backwards for something that essentially only kills old people--and even then they have an 86 percent survival rate. The resulting chaos will ensure the death of hundreds of millions of people (conservatively) including all the old people the shutdown has supposedly 'saved', because they will be unable to get their massive supply of medications. Same with those in all the 'at risk' groups and anyone else who depends on medication for their survival.
Is it because so many of the world's 'leaders' are in the 'at risk' age group ahem Trump ?

Simply: the power-hungry will never let a crisis (real, inflated, or fake) pass without takin' advantage of it.

If, in scarin' populations, one can get a better grip on folks, well, scare the hell out of 'em.

Carona is perfect for this: pernicious and novel, it's a boogeyman to frighten the rabble and, in democracies, get folks to agree to restrictions and limits and controls which, once in place, will stay in place, crisis or no crisis.

End of April can't get here fast enough.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

What I don't understand is why Govts. are collectively destroying the world economy and risking sending humans hundreds of years backwards for something that essentially only kills old people--and even then they have an 86 percent survival rate. The resulting chaos will ensure the death of hundreds of millions of people (conservatively) including all the old people the shutdown has supposedly 'saved', because they will be unable to get their massive supply of medications. Same with those in all the 'at risk' groups and anyone else who depends on medication for their survival.
Is it because so many of the world's 'leaders' are in the 'at risk' age group ahem Trump ?

Simply: the power-hungry will never let a crisis (real, inflated, or fake) pass without takin' advantage of it.

If, in scarin' populations, one can get a better grip on folks, well, scare the hell out of 'em.

Carona is perfect for this: pernicious and novel, it's a boogeyman to frighten the rabble and, in democracies, get folks to agree to restrictions and limits and controls which, once in place, will stay in place, crisis or no crisis.

End of April can't get here fast enough.

The world's economy and so-called 'civilised' society is extremely fragile at the best of times.
Politicians are putting everything at risk for something that is little deadlier than seasonal flu. Many people get no symptoms at all. If they send us hundreds of years backwards then all those elderly will die anyway. No one in the 'at risk' groups will be able to get their medications.
if a truly deadly plague comes along then there will be nothing we can do because humanity had played all its cards over this. Hundreds of millions (at least) of people will die in the resulting chaos. It simply makes no sense. And when you complain you get jumped on as 'insensitive' and 'immoral' towards the sacrosanct elderly. More fucking PC and a result of the stupid, short-sighted, shallow world of social media. No one is capable of thinking things through any more. I hope you are right about it 'blowing over' by April, although it doesn't seem likely. Blown UP perhaps.

[Lacewing]

And as far as I can tell, the fuckwits who are stockpiling are not the elderly. Women can't get baby formula or paracetamol. No wipes for their babies. For fuck sake! People are stockpiling that stuff when they don't even have a baby!

How is it so easy for you to hate absolutely anyone for anything?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Speaking of stupid, shallow, virtue-signalling PCturds....

[henry quirk]

Sure it does.

As I say: If, in scarin' populations, one can get a better grip on folks, well, scare the hell out of 'em.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Sure it does.

As I say: If, in scarin' populations, one can get a better grip on folks, well, scare the hell out of 'em.

And we could end up with a 'tighter grip' on us than we ever would have thought possible.

[Lacewing]

Again: Wash your hands, stop bein' so touch-feely with others, consult your doc if you're worried, stop lookin' to gov for solutions and calm down.

Ah yes... simple words and simple thoughts you repeat over and over like your hero Trump... as if you're saying so much more than you actually are, and as if you are the voice of profound reason among everyone else.

[commonsense]

What I don't understand is why Govts. are collectively destroying the world economy and risking sending humans hundreds of years backwards for something that essentially only kills old people--and even then they have an 86 percent survival rate. The resulting chaos will ensure the death of hundreds of millions of people (conservatively) including all the old people the shutdown has supposedly 'saved', because they will be unable to get their massive supply of medications. Same with those in all the 'at risk' groups and anyone else who depends on medication for their survival.
Is it because so many of the world's 'leaders' are in the 'at risk' age group ahem Trump ?

Yes, look what could be done for the purity of the race, er species!