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"Fear and Panic and Coronavirus"
2 Comments - Show Original Blog
My politics are leftist, but I have to admit I feel doubtful about the numbers. Confusion arises between number of cases and number of deaths. A city like New York has 8.5 million people and, as of this date, 1000 have died in about two months. When you look at statistics, on an average year, 30,000 to 60,000 people die in the entire US every year from the flu. Are they covering up a financial crisis? Like they did with 911????
Most interesting observations, Ian. Particularly regarding Neil Fergusson's prognostications concerning FMD, which is of course a small RNA viral agent in the Picornavirus group of biologicals (a cluster that contains at least 80 or more other species of disease with potential for infectious syndromes, such as paralysis, meningitis, hepatitis and poliomyelitis).
I recall an outbreak of FMD in the Republic of China in 1997 that proved an economic disaster to the economy of Taiwan (a toll of in excess of roughly 25 billions of US dollars).
As Eric Croddy notes in his book, Chemical and Biological Warfare (ISBN 0-387-95076-1), the rapid spread of that disease provides a timely warning of the often unforeseen potential outbreaks of contagion can pose, especially in the case of 'added-value' experimentation carried out by research laboratories.
FMD has a long biological half-life 'in the wild' and is also highly infectious. Virtually every nation with a Level-IV biological research facility (certainly the Wuhan Viral Institute and corresponding counterparts at Porton and at Ft. Detrick, to name just three) has investigated, at one time or another, the feasibility of genetically modifying FMD in such 'added-value' efforts to weaponise biological vectors.
In short, virals are, as one might be tempted to state things, "nothing to mess aqround with casually."
I agree with you, by the way, that media doesn't shoulder exclusive blame for amping up the general level of anxieties and hysteria among the public, since as you note, pols quite often do exploit these states of heightened public arousal to exploit for their own purposes, but as I tried to state it recently myself, needless emotionalism, as practiced notably by commercial American broadcast media, stands out clearly (and censurably) when contrasted to corresponding 'foreign' media reporting (such as France's, Germany's and the UK's far more restrained coverage of events).
Thanks for adding some meaningful insight to the present ongoing colloquy on SARS-CoV-2. -K2
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