LeSving wrote:
I don’t see the purpose of being concerned of where something originates. Everything has to start somewhere.
Actually, I think its extremely telling…
LeSving wrote:
I don’t see the purpose of being concerned of where something originates.
I think I can see plenty.
A track record for poor food safety, a penchant for eating any animal, diseased or not, a lot of dangerous fake food products and medicines, the massive overuse and poor understanding of antibiotics, lab test animals being sold into the food chain.
The environment in which something originates I would think could give potential clues as to properties it may have.
Yes indeed. One can only hope that China will learn something from this, otherwise we will continue to see a steady stream of nasty diseases coming out of there.
Economically China will also be damaged because anybody in business who has more than half a brain will have realised that a supplier in China might as well be on Jupiter. The cheap stuff (most of Chinese output) will still come from there simply because at say 1/4 of the cost of 1st World production there is no option. There will be some diversification to e.g. Vietnam, etc.
But a lot of stuff which people made in China was pointless relative to making it back home. Middle of 2019 we terminated all Chinese “finished products” (the company out there did a runner yet again, disappearing with all our tooling and test equipment) and we are building them here in the UK. The extra cost is almost compensated for by the savings on shipping costs, and the regular “disappearance” of stock etc. We still buy cables from China, but they are cheap so we can buy 2 years’ stock in one go.
The big companies (Apple etc) will just carry on because they have their own people out there, inside Foxconn, watching everything.
It’s obvious that much of the “ex-Italy problem” is mostly due to ski holidays, especially in some countries. Even right now, today, the UK is sending hundreds of schoolchildren to Italy. Kids spread everything they can; they don’t have the concept of hygiene. One lot has just come straight back because they found the resort closed… Most skiing is done in groups, staying in small apartments to save money, there is a lot of “chalet” holidays (which are even more crowded), and because most people struggle to save up the money for the one trip in a year (especially family trips which are really expensive) they are obviously very reluctant to cancel. I think this will end soon because while the actual ski regions are not much affected, the airline airports which one has to fly to are going to get closed off. Further up the income scale, people who ski a lot have a lot of money (it’s an expensive hobby) and travel a lot so spread the stuff nicely…
Starting from tomorrow, Cervinia and all ski resorts in the Aosta Valley will close the lifts, until further notice.
… one for the “it’s only the elderly who die a bit earlier so why worry” brigade …
Yes, well. There seems to be a very skewed result depending on where people are when developing the disease. Germany has more than 1000 cases now, no deaths. Norway, Sweden, the same (not 1000, but much more widespread than Germany when counting cases per million). Touch wood of course. South Korea 7.3k cases, 50 deaths. Italy also has 7.3k cases, but 366 deaths. How come? UK, almost no cases at all when taking into account the population. The worst affected country in the world is in fact Iceland with 166 cases per million (China has only 50). No deaths in Iceland. Go figure. Are there different strands of the virus? Different health care systems? different procedures to stop the virus from spreading to those who really need to be protected from it? I don’t know, but time will eventually tell what has happened, I would think.
Anyway, that graph is severely misleading, and probably made to scare people.
Various theories have been put forward for varying mortality rates. One of them is a much higher % of smokers in certain countries. Another one is the age profile of the population. Another one is genetic.
One reason Germany may be doing well is that it has a very high number of ICU beds compared to other countries. I have to wonder what they do with them when there are no epidemics! (MedEwok?) In the UK, by contrast, we often cancel surgery because there are not enough.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-012-2627-8/figures/1
I suspect though that a lot of it is down to chance. Early on, just a few carriers will start off the spread of the disease. So if in early February country A has 2 cases and country B gets 0 and country C gets 4, mid March country C will have far more cases than country B, even though the initial difference might just have been down to luck.
Another difference will be how far the diseases have progressed. It takes time for the disease to kill, so a country that tests lots of people will initially find a higher proportion of early, mild cases than a country that hardly tests anyone. A week or two later the numbers of severe cases may start to look more comparable.
Countries like the USA who hardly test anyone, will have seemingly lower infection rates but higher mortality rates, as diagnosis is biased towards the dead and dying.
Greetings from Death Valley… in spite of the name nobody is dying and the outdoor pool is 84 Fahrenheit. My travels plans are so far intact other than not flying here as the runway condition is apparently suspect.
I had a cold earlier in the last week and was coughing a bit… potentially embarrassing when traveling this month but its something that’s been going around at work for several weeks. Gone now and my wife didn’t catch it, which (trust me) improves our trip immeasurably. 200 ft below sea level with dry air is also good.
