Coronavirus Could Break Iranian Society: The government has refused to impose quarantines and is encouraging people to visit the city of Qom, the center of the outbreak.

The Atlantic ^ | February 27, 2020 | Graeme Wood

[C19fan]

Picture the following sacred but unhygienic scene: Pilgrims from a dozen countries converge on one small city. They stay in cramped hotels, using communal toilets and eating meals together. For their main ritual, they converge on the tomb of a woman, the sister of a holy man, and as they get closer, they feel with rising intensity grief over her death and the deaths of her kin. The grief is a commandment: Each tear, according to one tradition, will be transformed in the afterlife into a pearl, and an angel will compensate them for their tears with a bucket of pearls that will be signs of their devotion when they arrive at the gate of paradise. But for now the bodily fluids are flowing, wiped away occasionally by bare hands, and the crowd is getting denser. A metal cage surrounds the tomb itself, and when the weeping pilgrims reach it, they interlace their fingers with its bars, and many press their face against it, fogging up the shiny metal with their breath. Some linger for minutes, some for seconds. In a single day, many thousands pass through the same cramped space—breathing the same air, touching the same surfaces, trading new and exotic diseases.

[GulfMan]

Strange how Trump praise this XI character as if he’s a good friend and an ol’ Country Boy doing hard work over in China isn’t it?

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[tbw2]

Great reason to implement a new Middle East travel ban.

[teeman8r]

the mooslim out front should have told you that.

[Boogieman]

Well, how do you know a violet oil enema won’t prevent coronavirus? Have you tried it?

[buffyt]

Iran has a society??????????????????????

[Anti-Bubba182]

Just don’t bring it to the US.

[nuconvert]

She sits next to Rouhani (president) so he will have it next

[Michigander222]

And exporting it everywhere!

[calenel]

The flu is endemic.

Smart people are trying to keep the Wuhan virus from becoming so.

[fishtank]

Site sight cite

[calenel]

“The world’s Muslims visit only during the very short time of the Hajj.”

This is incorrect. There is a different term (Umrah) for visits to Mecca that are not during the Hajj, but they do occur in large numbers and Mecca is closed to that right now.

[calenel]

Can’t compare this to the flu until it becomes endemic like the flu.

[Dogbert41]

🙄

[calenel]

“Site sight cite”

Pick up your homophone and call someone that cares.

Just kidding. But if you criticize people’s grammar, spelling or punctuation around here you are likely to get abused by the can’t-be-wrongs. Just a heads-up.

[dirtymac]

This virus is just what socialist government’s have been looking for. An inexpensive and non chargeable to eliminate a large chunk of their population. Taking care of a lot on non productive people, which in socialist countries there are a lot of, is very expensive. Having a lot of people gone and not due to starvation is a win for China, North Korea, Iran,

[calenel]

Nah, the flu was good enough. I think the Chinese government, which is going to bear the brunt of the blame, would have preferred not to tank their own economy. And diseases are not really a precision instrument.

[dirtymac]

The Chinese would love to lose 100,000,000 people out of their own country.

[wtd]

Former Iranian ambassador to Vatican succumbs to coronavirus in first high-profile death of the epidemic

RT.com/news: Iranian Ambassador to Vatican dies of Coronavirus

One wonders when the Iranian ambassador to Vatican last had contact with the Pope given recent reports of Pope's illness:

AP tweet

[Almondjoy]

Are those confirmed cases or their best guess?