Coronavirus
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Is it the new plague? A return of the Black Death? Another Spanish Flu pandemic?
Or an over-reaction and an unfounded panic?
41 deaths is scarcely little more than a bus crash. 1,400 confirmed case – a blip compared with the increases measles cases. The rise and spread of Dengue fever is a genuine health emergency
http://news.trust.org/item/20200124114822-5b3e5/
WHO has not declared it as a global health emergency
But already the stock market has responded with a drop – and no wonder at the closures of businesses and restrictions on travel. Couldn’t have happened at a worse time – the Chinese New Year – the world’s biggest migration of people.
But what really struck me is that China is capable of building a new hospital, designed to have 1,300 beds, scheduled to be completed in two weeks.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-china-51245156
Yes, building that hospital will be a great feat and shows what can be done when there’s a will — and as soon as socialism is established there will be a will to eliminate world poverty and the diseases it leads to. We know too that the US Air Force can build an airfield in the same sort of time. So the technical means to eliminate world poverty and disease are already to hand.
All that is standing in the way is class ownership of the means of life and production for sale with a view to profit.
How quickly will the slums and shanty towns around the world can be demolished and re-built with decent housing and sanitation and infrastructures such as schools and clinics certainly won’t take as long as some presuppose. Similarly, the rural areas can be equipped with better connecting roads.
I always mention that when the military is demobilised many of its regiments will in fact remain. The Royal Engineers, The Corp of Signals and Transport, logistic brigades, Medical Corps, REME, etc. These will be diverted to civilian use in the undeveloped and developing world, making use of those skills for civilian use, as you say, building airfields and laying bridges.
If this becomes a world pandemic (hope not) maybe we would enter the scenario in Pieter Lawrence’s novel The Last Conflict where the world is threatened by an asteroid hurtling towards it and the authorities everywhere are forced to forget about monetary constraints and set about mobilising resources directly to deal with it (to built underground shelters, if I remember). Not the ideal way for world socialism to come about, but it was just a novel.
I think it isn’t the right analogy. One was an extra-terrestrial threat.
This simply could become very protectionist…as we see with the now closed city and province of Wuhan, whole countries might be placed in quarantine and of course civil liberties suspended and probably a rise of xenophobia soon as a stranger shows a temperature.
As mentioned there would be serious economic ramifications, another world recession. To adapt a saying, if China catches a cold, then the whole world will begin to sneeze.
I recall one flu epidemic several years ago brought trains and other parts of the economy to a temporary stand-still. With Brexit, could the UK endure an additional economic strain.
It would also result in the collapse of the NHS which health experts say is already tottering towards a collapse of services every Winter with normal seasonal flu. A pandemic would bring it crashing down.
So far it is only the old folk with pre-existing chest complaints that have died. The risk is as with flu, is it once again mutates into something more virulent and I believe this is the reason for the urgency to contain and remove it.
I recall the World was awaiting for bird flu to cross over the species line, which it did but only in a few isolated cases where there was much more human chicken contact.
Then there was SARS, again originating in China which they stopped from turning into a global pandemic.
This too I think will not develop into a Spanish Flu (note how we do blame foreigners) which killed millions upon millions.
No – on this topic I am an optimist, not gloom and doom.
…Atishooo… and we all fall down
Oh, I should add, that if this is indeed serious, I fully expect the pharmaceutical industries to try to hold the World to ransom, just as they did when the HIV/AIDS epidemic took place and the outrageous price demands they placed on antiviral medicines.
It took a lot of political lobbying from activists plus the competition threat from cheap Indian generics to make them reduce the costs of treatment.
This too I think will not develop into a Spanish Flu (note how we do blame foreigners) which killed millions upon millions.
Talking of which the first suspected case of coronavirus has just been identified here in Granada, Spain – a Chinese tourist
There is an epidemic of Tuberculosis around the world and they are not talking about that, it is considered one of the diseases of the poor peoples, it is a disease produced by poverty, lack of medical services, poor nutrition, and lack of proper sanitation. There are thousands of cases in the USA
In the USA there are millions of Peoples infected with Hepatitis and they are not ready to face the problem, and many homeless are also infected with hepatitis
There are thousands of peoples infected with Measles and chickenpox and there are more than 30 millions of peoples without medical coverage
I have already mentioned the rise in dengue fever cases due to the changing climate patterns and the subsequent spread of the species of mosquitoes which carry it.
But also related to climate change is the rise of Lyme Disease caused by widening spread of ticks.
Compared to Ebola, in the Congo, measles is far the greater killer.
Swine flu is also a potential disease doctors are waiting for to mutate
But already because of the swift reaction of the Chinese government, old-time Maoists are out hailing their response
Look on the bright side, at least David “National Treasure” Attenborough will be cheered up if half the world’s population die.
He talks about overpopulation, if he was sincere he could at least do the honourable thing and top himself. It might not solve the situation, bit at least it would give me a laugh.
The Coronoavirus phenomenon as seen through prism of capitalist geopolitics
There is an epidemic of Dengue in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and after the earthquake in Haiti, ( or Hayti ) the amount of peoples infected has increased, and now the scapegoat in the Dominican Republic are the Haitians, they must blame everything on poverty and misery produced by capitalism, and the US corporation who are destroying the rivers and the lack of potable clean water.
The Sorcerer with an academic diploma in Theology known as Pat Robertson said that the earthquake is in Haiti was produced by god because they practice Voodoo and Santeria, but the first question is what is the difference between Voodoo, Santeria, and Christianity ? and the second one is, what produced the earthquake in the Caribbean region?
Santeria is the Catholicism of the black slaves of the Caribbeans which were not permitted in the Protestants and Catholics church, and they created their religion, saints and rituals, similar to the Catholics saints and rituals, and earthquake in the Caribbean are produced by two tectonic plates, one coming from North America and another one from the Caribbeans region, and Milwaukee deep, and when both reached each together, one below the other one, they crack into pieces producing an earthquake.
We can see how religion is used to justify poverty and contradicts science, no wonder why a communist party in the Caribbean called pope Paul II the Great Sorcerer
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