degringolade

Impressionism / Antoine Blanchard/ Porte St. Denis

Weaseled out of a social event last night. Still feel a little guilty, but Thursdays just ain't my day. Came home, read a little and went to bed early.

No guilt

Screed:

One of the reasons I got out of the business is the propensity of the denizens to cry wolf.

I tend to think that the folks who go into virology and infectious disease see themselves as knights errant, bravely battling the unseen death of disease. But truth be told, as a group, we were remarkably parochial in our outlook and appallingly mercenary in our responses. Seems to me that we were blinded by the less than complete truths revealed to us by the flawed statistics that we used to gauge things and the desire to prophetic in our proclamations.

Yep, new disease coming out of China. Wow, first time that has ever happened. Oh, some people are dying. Not good.

But what has it been, a week now? Maybe two weeks?

I find this article interesting

I can't say for a moment that I trust the r naught value that has been assigned. The death toll doesn't seem to be all that bad and the recovery rate....well lets just say it is a bit early to tell. I would guess that it is offing folks weakened by other diseases, poverty, and environmental degradation. Oh wait, this is China, and not the rich China of the coast.

I think that as long as there is a population problem in China and India, the problems will come out of there. China will be more prolific in the generation of new strains because of the cold and the close quarters shared by humans, animals, and vectors. But I think that new black plagues are not in the cards. Oh granted, there is a chance of something worthy of becoming an epidemic, but the chances are pretty small.

One of the things that I do know is that one day there will be a pandemic from a new disease. Said pandemic will probably kill quite a number of people. A new strain of XXXX is out. That will be coming every year for the rest of the days of homo sapiens. What is needed is a way to ignore the bleatings of the press and the cognoscenti and deal with what comes.

I think that folks get off on thinking about the apocalypse. Too many zombie movies, too many stories of the last man on earth battling nature to retrieve his passionately missed lifestyle.

Hell, none of that stuff is going to happen. Even if a new flavor of the bubonic plague comes tearing through, it would behoove everyone to remember that even with rats and lice being prevalent, the plague only took a third of the population. Like it or not, even if that went up to half, we would only be back to the population when I was a junior in high school. I think that the human race would manage.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not in any way rooting for the disease, all I am doing is pointing out that we had better get used to this kind of shit. It is going to get worse as it is part and parcel of a too-populated world.