Posted on 03/15/2020 2:11:56 PM PDT by TheConservativeBanker
Whether we will collectively move away from fears that make us subservient ....
By Philip Alcabes | March 10, 2020 Flights are canceled, airports are closed, conferences and conventions postponed, churches and mosques shuttered, soccer games played in stadiums empty of spectators. My university has called home the study-abroad students from Italy, Japan, South Korea, and China. It would be easy to look at the world in the face of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, and believe it is theater, penned by a playwright filled with xenophobia and fears of promiscuous mixing with other humans.
Every epidemic is theater, a drama written by the powerful for the sake of the unsuspecting. AIDS became a morality tale of innocence and sin. Outbreaks of Ebola became stories of strange tribal customs and feckless governments. Measles outbreaks become the fault of a delusional but highly organized “anti-vaxxer” movement. What’s unusual about the outbreak of COVID-19 is that the story isn’t being told by the powerful. The powerful are just consumers here, responders, sometimes influencers, salespeople of a certain frightened view. But the story of COVID-19—a surrealist masterpiece—masked citizens, ubiquitous squeeze bottles of Purell, conspiracy theories, bravado, insouciance, boredom, and anxiety—is taking shape purely out of information.
A little epidemiology to start with. It’s becoming clearer by the day that COVID-19 is a conventional virus. By this I mean that many people who are infected (perhaps most) do not get sick at all or become only mildly ill. Most of those who do get sick are older (children under age 15 are almost never reported among the seriously ill). They may have a concerning but not serious illness, including fever and cough. A few suffer badly. Some must be hospitalized, and a fraction of those who are hospitalized have and will continue to die......
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanscholar.org ...
The chart is a misleading fraud because they changed their source info, which had number of ‘confirmed cases’ into ‘# of infections’. This leads people to grossly underestimate the infectiousness of the disease.
You asked what i disagreed with —
“You see that error constantly from people who are trying to minimize the potential severity of the threat. Do they really believe that everyone who would test positive for COVID-19 has already been tested? It is ridiculous.”
i don’t agree with this because this mistake has lead to misleading hype on both sides of the severity issue.
In this case, it presents a gross underestimation of how widespread the infection is.
But it has been misused widely in a second way.
This explains why i talked about death rate, even though this chart didn’t. You see, many people have been overhyping the WHO death estimate of 3%, without paying closer attention to the fact that it is 3% of “confirmed cases” not 3% of “all those infected”.
I have seen MANY write ups that make this mistake, and falsely scare people into thinking 3% of all people infected were dead. It has happened in vanities posted to this forum also. I don’t think this is a minor point at all...
But really, I’m not arguing that people in general are overestimating or underestimating this disease. I don’t know. I just know people are grossly misrepresenting statistics and writing misleading articles as a result of this issue of conflating “confirmed cases” with # of infections.
Which does not answer the question of what you disagreed with. You are saying that the artificially low "confirmed" number can be misused in more than one way. That's correct, but it's not a disagreement with what I said. It's another subject, one that I did not address.
I just know people are grossly misrepresenting statistics and writing misleading articles as a result of this issue of conflating “confirmed cases” with # of infections.
We'll have to settle for agreeing on that.
Goodnight.
“Which does not answer the question of what you disagreed with.”
Huh? The entirety of my last message consisted of posting the exact quote from you that I disagreed with, and explaining in detail why I disagreed
Kind of ironic - we know that the Deep State and others use fear as a way to steer and control the people - we had the commie/nuke war threat until the Berlin Wall came down then it wasn’t viable anymore and up pops Globull Warming, which has many in fear that we’re gonna destroy the Earth even as we do less harm than past generations and none of the data actually supports anything but the earth’s climate and Mother Nature do not now, and never did have a “balance” and even if they did, we have no idea of how to maintain one or ‘fix’ things...all our efforts end up causing more harm....the coronavirus scare is no different - the panic-induced knee-jerking will cause more harm than the virus.
Folks who would be up in arms if the government decided to tell them they could not move freely are now begging that same government to lock them, and everyone else, down....I’d wager if, after doing that, the story ‘evolved” they would also go meekly to barb-wire surrounded camps/tent cities because the “latest info” said that’s the only way to stop it.
Even though we know that they use fear to guide and control us, so many can’t see it through the red haze of insane panic....they not only welcome the government controls, they beg for them...
And the fear mongers will try to leverage it...
Reminds me of a saying, by Ben Franklin, that many FReepers, who are now acting insane, used to showcase:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Good read - I have a supplement:
Kind of ironic - we know that the Deep State and others use fear as a way to steer and control the people - we had the commie/nuke war threat until the Berlin Wall came down then it wasn’t viable anymore and up pops Globull Warming, which has many in fear that we’re gonna destroy the Earth even as we do less harm than past generations and none of the data actually supports anything but the earth’s climate and Mother Nature do not now, and never did have a “balance” and even if they did, we have no idea of how to maintain one or ‘fix’ things...all our efforts end up causing more harm....the coronavirus scare is no different - the panic-induced knee-jerking will cause more harm than the virus.
Folks who would be up in arms if the government decided to tell them they could not move freely are now begging that same government to lock them, and everyone else, down....I’d wager if, after doing that, the story ‘evolved” they would also go meekly to barb-wire surrounded camps/tent cities because the “latest info” said that’s the only way to stop it.
Even though we know that they use fear to guide and control us, so many can’t see it through the red haze of insane panic....they not only welcome the government controls, they beg for them...
And the fear mongers will try to leverage it...
Reminds me of a saying, by Ben Franklin, that many FReepers, who are now acting insane, used to showcase:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” ― William Pitt the Younger
Thanks for that quote - saved for future reference/use...
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