You forgot the stashes of timber under everyones house!!
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You know, I see an upside in this.
I'm not old, but I'm not young... 50.
I've lived a lot, made some (i.e. "lots") hideous mistakes, experienced great joy, unique experiences and permanent happy memories. I've tried to be a good man.
I've known about this since December 18th. A lot longer than most.
One thing that has wrapped me, like a warm blanket, are a few thoughts and parables I remind myself of frequently.
First is the old Greek, Gnothi Seauton or for those Latin fans out there, Temet Nosce.
It's ancient, but so hard to do. Its like Ikigai.
The others are.....
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference - Serenity prayer
Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how, but what we can decide is how we meet that end, in order that we are remembered as men - Proximo
This is interesting
Attachment 469398
What are the x and y axes of that graph?
Lots of discussion else where about how contagious it is. R0 is the symbol that is used and currently its anywhere between 0.45 and 3.5. Anything over 1 is not great as it implies that it will keep spreading.
Another (worldwide) perspective.
The WHO COVID19 daily report says that on March 1, 53 persons died from COVID19
On average across the year on every day during 2019;
~26,000 died of cancer
~25,000 people died of hunger (~20,000 were kids)
~24,000 died of heat disease
~ 4000 of diabetes
~ 3700 of motor vehicle accidents
~30X more people very sadly took their own lives
~2700 were killed by mozzies
The ordinary flu kills somewhere between 800 and 1800
~1300 were killed by fellow humans
~140 were killed by snakes
Interestingly at my grandsons birthday party in a park yesterday a kid spotted a 1m long tiger snake in a clump of bushes near the main car park about 50 way from the main playground. We all just kept an eye out to stop the kids from heading over that way and to warn newly arriving people in the car park to not walk that way. About 30 minutes later we could no longer spot the snake and we reckoned the hoards of screaming kids drove the snake away.
... and 35,000 people starve to death every day. 16,000 of which are children.
.... 3.1 million children under five every year
(sources are wikipedia on Starvation)
Yet, our focus is on ourselves.
The influenza virus kills up to 60000 Americans a year. Every year. There's a vaccine for that, but of course people are afraid of catching autism :rolleyes:.
This little virus will spread, no matter what. It will kill mostly elderly and infirm, and some young and healthy. There should be a vaccine in 12-18 months, but beware of catching autism instead of dying.
The main issue for those of us dealing with it is going to be overwhelming demands on limited resources. My advice would be to go out and catch it early, while there are still ICU beds available.
(This is tongue in cheek if you haven't worked that out and caught autism from a vaccine. Point is, these respiratory viruses aren't new. This won't be the last either. Keep calm, live healthily, and make sure you've spent the kid's inheritance).
Drifting off topic but reading about vaccines I remembered this little gem.
I can just hear the sound of the mind breaking every time I read it.
Attachment 469424
BoneInspector - today, you win One Internet.
I'm keeping that!
Haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere but 2 useful outcomes of COVID19 are a massive reduction in industrial air pollution over China (and hence the whole northern hemisphere) and a significant world reduction in high altitude dust from reduced air travel could produce some global cooling. At some point I wonder if the benefit of these could outweigh the death rates from COVID19?
We’ve stocked up our pantry ( or to be truthful my wife has).
I had a look at my medications and guess what, two had ‘Packaged in China’ on them.
The other had nothing so it probably is also.
So I bought two months worth, just in case.
H.
Apparently a lot of our meds come from India and are just repacked here in OZ.
I currently take 14 pills a day (8 different types) for kidney (yes I only have one) heart, blood pressure, diabetes, hypercalcemia, sarcoidosis and now possibly osteoporosis! At the rate I'm going buying meds this year I look like I will finally make the $1600 safety net that means I can get scrips for $6 (as opposed to up to $44) for the rest of the year.
BUT
if you buy more than 1 of the same med at the same time the subsequent ones don't count towards the safety.
I figure I'm a prime candidate for a COVID19 casualty anyway so I'm not worrying too much about it.