Originally Posted by
Less Hair
Have to disagree. Didn't it start in China without free media western style, without public debate and still lockdowns and production stops?
Yes the virus started in China. As my post above says quite clearly, The Virus itself isn't the problem facing the world. This is now an economic problem. People are being laid off left right and centre not because they are sick (globally as a percentage the cases are actually very low), they are being laid off because the world and joe public is afraid of being sick. This has been caused purely by the media and peoples hysteria. To quote a wise man that I know. "They've kicked the snowball down the hill, and now have no way of stopping it". The media have given a germ a name, turned it into an entity and then released it. If no one had heard of corona, and there was just another type of 'flu' going around. Would we have known any different? Would the shelves be empty of toilet paper and other goods? The answer is no. It has become a self sustaining creature, that feeds on headlines... and I suspect the deaths globally caused by stress, depression and panic will eventually far outweigh those caused directly by the virus.
China is a different ball game. For the following reasons:
As I am sure you see aware it has a huge population, the normal rules of statistics lead to figures which sound big, but on a 'chinese' scale are not. I'll give you an easy example. If you have a skill or talent or condition that is 'one in a million'... in China there is, statistically, a thousand people exactly like you. So the 'outbreak' reported from china was hardly the catastrophe they were pushing.
Secondly China is a one off in the way it deals with things. The use of terms such as 'lockdown' as an effective means of dealing with the virus, might very well work in a society that is already oppressed and the individual only exists 'for the good of the state'... if we are going to copy china then let's get a few hospitals built in a week, I know I'm not doing anything else at the moment (I haven't got so much as a sniffle at the moment by the way, and I'm willing to make you a bet that neither have you). Did china face the problems of having a run (pun intended) on toilet paper and people decimating the shelves? Were people put out of work in china? Did their economy, whilst they were nailing shut their front door, say, 'oh by the way you still have to pay your landlord the rent'?
Thirdly, China's life blood is its manpower as a source of cheap labour. It is literally people powered. If there is even a small loss of production due to a mass cold, then the financial ramifications on economies of scale are colossal. They attempted to isolate it, not because of its fatality (which is actually very small). But because of its potential to spread in a
very dense and overpopulated region that deals with vast amounts of production. I'm not going to add statistics here, but what I will say is if a percentage of a small number cant work, it isnt a big deal. If a percentage of a large number cant work, in a country that's life blood is the people churning out goods, then it is. They would have had the same reaction and taken the same measures if it was a bad case of gastric flu.
The fact that it originated in China with its closed media bears little significance, I dont understand your point. Western nations still report on global events and present their own 'spin' on it. The media in the UK still reported it, and as early as January they have been slowly ramping up the hysteria. To give a real life example BBC radio 1 'newsbeat' had an attention grabbing headline that announced 'Corona virus cases in Britain increase by one third'... yet when you listen to the report, which came at a stage where I think around 12 people in the UK were confirmed cases, it basically stated that 3 or 4 Britain's had returned back to the uk, after being diagnosed and isolated with corona elsewhere... they were not newly infected, and whilst statistically the number of cases on British soil had increased, the headline didn't match the facts.
To give you another example, The media have bandied around terms like 'outbreak' with reckless abandon (it was written in solid red on the front page of our national rag)... and perhaps more disgustingly 'superspreader' to describe a man who 'infected' other people. This 'superspreader' was so very much on deaths door with this plague like, flesh eating, zombie making, virus... that he went skiing! And then he so cruelly managed to infect his friends. I am almost certain that none of them died, but they may have had quite a bad hangover from the
apres.
Anyway apologies for the long post. I'm off work at the moment you see, so need something to do. My new position won't take me in the current climate and my old position is also gone. As a now former captain, I'm about to apply for a job in a supermarket, as the economy still dictates that I must still pay my bills, and regardless of the 'dangers' of this virus, it seems that whilst we aren't allowed to go to the pub or fly in an aeroplane, it still is perfectly socially acceptable for the great unwashed to congregate
en masse, in order to pillage the shelves to ensure they are better off than their neighbour... plenty of demand there. This is the true cost, symptom and infection of the 'corona virus'... not the sickness.
Stay well all.