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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 23, 2020 22:00:38 GMT -8
Of course not. It is amazing how a few zealots can gain their ends by influencing those with no morals by the use of money. As Lenin said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
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Post by timothylane on Jan 24, 2020 6:51:49 GMT -8
And Reason observed that the bankers would loan the Communists the money with which to buy the rope.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 10:17:16 GMT -8
The corona virus which has spread in and out of China is having a very negative effect on the PRC. Bad Year AheadBetween the trade war with the USA, Hong Kong protests, Swine fever and now the corona virus, things are not looking great for China. The New Year Celebrations have been cancelled. This is a big deal.
This is when things can get dangerous for the rest of the world, particularly Taiwan.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 12:07:33 GMT -8
This site a list of the words pandemics in history. The 1968 Hong Kong flu killed 1 million worldwide. The 1919 flu had 20 to 50 million deaths attributed to it. And careful about flu shots. A client told me his wife (against her better judgment) got a flu shot recently and she’s been suffering over a month now from the ill effects of it.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 12:27:34 GMT -8
I am no expert, but I tend to agree with this article. I recall the panic created by the SARS outbreak, which was blown all out of proportion due to the 24-hour-news cycle. Don't panic yetI especially agree with his point about closing down live-animal-food markets in China. The Chinese eat all sorts of rubbish and have a fetish about "live" food. I can recall seeing all manner of animal for sale when I travelled in China during the 1980s and early 1990s. Pangolins, civet cats and other strange and exotic things. Hell, they eat scorpions. A species doesn't want to get on the list of things which Chinese eat or use for traditional medicine. Like they say, "The Chinese eat anything on four legs as long as it isn't wooden, and anything that flies as long as it isn't aluminum."
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 12:51:04 GMT -8
Here’s the part of that article that bugs me: Since when has “science” revealed that there cannot be major pandemics that are indeed worth worrying about? This is exactly the use of “science” that is not logical and is simply using “science” like an idol. Some threats (flu or otherwise) might be more serious than others. But until there is a very high body count, we can’t know that ahead of time.
So perhaps “science” should admit that it’s more than possible for some bug to spread out of China (or elsewhere) that could be as devastating as the Black Death. Even if it were 1/8 as bad, that would still be serious. More “scientific” horse shit: It’s quite likely that some harmless things (AIDS, the Black Death) “mutated and evolved” from relatively harmless bugs into very nasty things. Again, more baloney with the label of “science. The fact is, we can’t put a halt to trade and lock down borders for every flu scare. But the potential remains that some nasty bug will make this a requirement. And the very real possibility remains that by the time we understand how serious some bug is, it will be too late to do much about it but let it run its course. The one thing in that article that made sense is that these live-animal markets are problematic.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 13:01:48 GMT -8
I agree completely, which is why I qualified my agree with "basically." Nobody can know for sure how this will play out so we need to keep an eye on this. But I do believe it is being played up by the press for business reasons. If we can believe what is being reported by the Chinese (which I think is a questionable proposition) only 26 people have died. That would work out to about 2-3% of those infected. A somewhat alarming percentage, but not yet the end of the world.
My initial feeling was that this guy is trying to help keep people from panicking. To do this, he made some questionable broad-brush statements, but nothing insane. I wondered if he had been in contact with the local health authorities to help keep things calm.
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Post by timothylane on Jan 24, 2020 13:12:55 GMT -8
It's true that, evolutionarily speaking, a virulent disease spreads more when it doesn't quickly kill off its victims. But the bacteria (or viruses, fungi, protozoa, or whatever) don't have the minds to care about that, so that's relying heavily on evolution. If a disease dies out because it kills everyone, that may not do it any good evolutionarily, but that won't matter to our corpses.
One might also note that mutations and other changes to the genome can also make a disease more harmful by causing human defenses (such as antibodies) to no longer recognize. Being immune to cowpox (vaccina, hence vaccination) also makes you immune to smallpox (variola) because the two viruses are so similar. But it doesn't work with other viruses, including probably other such poxes. The same thing can happen to flu. In fact, Stephen King's Captain Trips in The Stand was a rapidly mutating flu. Anyone who caught it (there were a few naturally immune people) would die because the changes defeated the immune system. I don't know if that could work (I doubt it) -- but I don't know that it couldn't, either.
The article is right that we don't need to panic now. Coronavirus hasn't yet hit that many people, much less killed that many, even if we assume that it's worse than the Chinese admit. But we've had pandemics before and another could come again. Just imagine someone with very early pneumonic plague (barely symptomatic but contagious) going to ComicCon and spreading it among participants -- who then go back home all over the place.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 13:14:29 GMT -8
Be very skeptical of the "facts" presented at that site. When talking about the Hongkong flu, it states that
This is simply false. The 500,000 figure is the number of people who caught the flu in Hongkong, not the number of people who died from it.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 13:29:24 GMT -8
Schemes within schemes. I find that very easy to believe. I was at a small hall listening to some folk music a couple weeks ago. One of the women there (now single) noted to me the reason she left her husband was because he was cheating on her. One night he turns over in bed and says something like “Honey, this has been bothering me a lot lately.” And then he told her of his affair. It was an ongoing affair. Was he going to stop it, she asked? No. He would continue on with it. The main point was that it was bothering his conscience keeping it a secret from her. I’m not making this up, and the way she told it, I don’t think she was either. So, yeah, the duplicity and perfidy of mankind is endless. You won’t knock me over with a feather, Mr. Kung, relating that someone might be making more of this flu outbreak then it warrants, and strictly for business purposes. I'm glad I could insert a little soap opera into this thread.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 13:35:30 GMT -8
Oh, I completely agree. But public relations is not “science.” This is one of the craw-stickers for me. We all have them. I can put up with enormous amounts of nonsense on some subjects. But this one is my bugaboo. I can’t help myself. I had bad parents or something, although neither was a scientist.
And, yes, this means I might have warmer feelings for Hillary Clinton than I do for Bill Nye the Science Guy. Barely. I'm not sure that can be scientifically measured.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 13:46:11 GMT -8
Are you telling me that all facts and figures on the internet can’t be trusted. I’m shocked, shocked. But thanks for the corretion.
While watching that lecture series on the Black Death, it filled my little fact-craving head will all kinds of details. One of them is that it’s possible that the Yersinia pestis bacterium did mutate in some places to a different form, but not necessarily a lesser form.
And to intersect on the present topic of the danger of being around live animals, there is a correspondence between the uptick of the Black Death in China with an explosion in the gerbil populations. No one know if this is correlation or causation yet.
Standard evolutionary theory about bugs is that those bugs which kill their hosts tend to die out for logical reasons. But world history seems to be full of bugs that are just fine will killing all they can, like it or not. Typhoid, cholera, flu. And although I don’t have a head count on it, surely there have been cases where some virulent bug mutated into something less deadly. One would have to do an enormous amount of reading of the research (assuming it exists) to have an informed opinion on this, which I don’t.
What is remarkable about the Black Death is that is was so deadly and spread so easily. Even today, if you were to contract the Black Death, here is what one site notes is the typical treatment:
Why the plague is so rare now, I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound on par with polio which has been all but wiped out by vaccines. The Black Death (or something like it) could strike again. Where do these things really come from? We can say they “evolved.” But that’s such a catch-all term it tell us nothing other than that, for all we know, we are living in between plague eras.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 14:03:18 GMT -8
I truly do wonder what motivates people. Why tell his wife this very important and disturbing news in an intimate situation before going to sleep? What a nut or bastard. Probably both.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 14:06:06 GMT -8
It is very often like TV history. I constantly tell people not to get their history from TV or the movies. But do they listen? I doubt it.
This is one of the basic problems with the internet. It can spread true and lies faster than anyone can keep up with. And to determine which is which, one has to have a basic education and put some time into confirming much of what one reads or hears.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jan 24, 2020 14:11:06 GMT -8
A little skepticism is always appropriate in such cases, if for no other reason that infectious disease has probably killed more people in history than anything else. So it is always worth being concerned about.
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Post by timothylane on Jan 24, 2020 14:34:04 GMT -8
The plague is a disease of animals (mostly rodents) which can spread to people. So it can be common in an animal population (such as in New Mexico today, the main North American plague site) without necessarily spreading to people via fleas that prey on both. But every once in a while someone gets it. Fortunately, as noted, bubonic plague can be treated, and when this is done most people will survive. (Even if untreated, I believe only about a third are killed. In a pandemic, of course, that can be millions.)
The big danger, of course, is someone getting pneumonic plague and spreading it. I read a novel on the idea (The Black Death by Gwyneth Cravens, if my memory is accurate) a few decades back. A girl comes back from a trip out west with a little something extra. As she arrives on a bus, a pimp tries to pick her up until she coughs on him. Later she goes to her upscale apartment house, where the disease really picks up and she coughs on the doorman and perhaps others. She dies in the hospital, but they do find out what she was infected with, and realize the danger -- a pneumonic plague outbreak in New York City could be disastrous.
Of course, it can take a little while to establish that someone -- especially a pneumonic plague victim, with symptoms that could be any number of diseases -- actually has Yersinia pestis. It can be more obvious with the bubonic version because of the buboes.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 15:25:41 GMT -8
Her opinion of him didn’t seem very high either.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 24, 2020 15:43:23 GMT -8
As was explained in that lecture series I watched, the flees apparently are not killed by Yersinia pestis. What apparently happens is that the bacteria clogs up the snout of the flees. The flees, in clearing its snout (a technical term, I’m sure), spits this bug into whatever host it is trying to feed on. I think we have an established principle that bugs that don’t kill one species (although they may still be quite deleterious), might be devastating for other species. What is interesting from an evolutionary point of view (and I think this is decisive, although I haven’t done the math) is that given the nature of pathogens (they are out there, and however they do so, new ones come along), there is about zero chance that a one-small-change-at-a-time paradigm for the evolution of life could ever even remotely keep up with the bugs. That is, if your vehicle was made to run on rails, if the road was changed to asphalt, your locomotive isn’t going anywhere. Thus we have, for one thing, this remarkable immune system that can adapt to, and defeat, bugs it has never seen before. It has 4-wheel drive, and then some. The obvious intellectual question is this: Although it is conceivable that, say, a one-small-step-at-a-time process such as that proposed by Darwinism might stumble upon a mousetrap. That is, it might accidentally cause one to form randomly (big if).
But it’s difficult to understand how this one-small-step-at-a-time process could make a mousetrap that could look ahead and work for other animals it knows nothing about, who might require different bait, etc. — if mice were not much in abundance. That’s a very rough analogy. But I think the principle is key: Although the Neo-Darwinian mechanism strains credulity for creating complex structures, its ability to create a system with the forethought and adaptability of our own immune systems seems logically out of reach. Still, the proof will be in the pudding…if we can every find the recipe for that pudding.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 17, 2020 17:31:02 GMT -8
Here is an article in Frontpagemag. com which claims Iran is beginning to cut and run in Syria. One can only pray that it is true.
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Post by artraveler on May 17, 2020 17:53:41 GMT -8
I saw the same article. My son related to me that Iran is indeed pulling back but only in the most exposed positions. They are still supporting Hezbahla with funds and technical support. Israel has been conducting operations against Iranian forces in western Syria for years. In recent years the new Israeli F-35 has been a center of the action. Israel and Russia have an agreement to no conflict in Syria and Russian troops have orders to stand down.
The problem is that Iran, like all regimes of this type, only has limited support of the people unless they are at war. There are massive demonstrations in major cities over the increasing prices of every thing from gas to nuts. Like NK, China, and the dissolved USSR economic pressure is a powerful tool. We need, however, to hope that pressure does not start a war if we are not ready to fight one. For rather then strike Israel, Iran will strike at American interests even knowing that losing is almost a certainty.
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