sokolow

Ran across that because a friend sent me to this thread by @kakape about what expert observers thought were plausible and probable near term scenarios before the current outbreak https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1243507635145629699.html

Highlighted by @erictopol

Anyway came here to post this Click to embiggen

Absolutely not, we should absolutely refuse to accept an outlook where inhumanity starts and ends with the actions of our perceived enemies. If we’re going to count up the mountains of skulls, the armies of widows and orphans, the misery we make with political and economic actions or failures to act we need to put the USA, the British empire, and all the colonial powers in the same bin to be judged. We should not permit our own governments to get away with having “sinned quietly” by comparison, because for whatever reason it is convenient and comfortable to start history after 1857 or 1907 or 1957. I say “sinned quietly” because the person who wrote it made a deliberate choice to carry out policy he knew he should revile, when he damn well knew better We have to apply minimally *the same or higher* standards and hold our own “regimes” to higher levels of scrutiny and humanitarian standard whether historical or contemporary. btw as far as it goes for me this is not about like, equivocating or to excuse, to run an exercise in apologetics for a foreign government. its historical honesty we need to have about ourselves if we want a better future

@RCNYILWX I think it is important to recognize that China is not an evil and monolithic orwellian total state with iron control over an antlike brainwashed populace; geopolitically it’s a modern state-capitalist superpower with a strong centralized government that has foreign, domestic, and economic policy priorities different to those of the USA. Those priorities don’t rate some individual rights as highly, and do rate some collective rights more highly. Nonetheless the level of active surveillance power & coercive intrusion the central government can apply is probably less than the DDR had at its height and likely less than the USA can apply to you or me if it thinks we’re a national security threat If I wanted to round up a dozen candid accounts & frank opinions from Chinese nationals all I’d have to do is just ask a bunch of friends and I’d probably get answers within a day

Anyway I think if there’s one area PRC public health authorities might be keeping quiet that’d be real positive if there was glaring transparency, it’d be what they know or don’t know about asymptomatic carriers & transmission. AFAICT from what my spouse says, even her major research institution is grappling with the issue. Also if you can help now is a great time to call down your phone tree and make sure your family, friends, neighbors, church members, coworkers all are gonna be able to make rent & fill their pantries. Check with your local food bank

Even if we want to pretend China was 100% maliciously covering it up or first and foremost covering its own incompetence or whatever — if we are seriously indicting China my god the magnitude of blame the USA deserves for how we failed to use our seven weeks to prepare to save lives and the common wealth, if we for one minute are willing to apply the standard of scrutiny to ourselves as a nation that we think others deserve.

From an effective patient zero, lets say it took a month for the PRC public health system to identify clinically, trace and type, and begin assessing the outbreak of a novel — though not unfamiliar — zoonotic virus and another three weeks to recognize the gravity of the situation and implement measures which at the time! remember! parts of the anglosphere MSM insinuated were authoritarian and draconian — that brings us to the end of January. Seven weeks. My household including healthcare professionals heard about the potential for this to be serious on the 26th of January, and about then my spouse started getting workplace briefings. OK let’s say that China’s government or scientific establishment was negligent or irresponsible — and I don’t really think they were, but for the sake of argument lets just grant it. OK its about seven weeks from end of January when they were airlifting out UK nationals and the world was coming to grips with the idea this was serious I do not really see that we, in the United States, leveraged the benefit of their experience to prepare. The USA didn’t have to identify the novel pathogen, didn’t have to describe its behavior or learn how to screen for it. So if the NYT can scold China for failing to contain it what do we say about our own leadership used our own seven weeks if in that time we couldn’t even produce and deploy a rapid test that other people in other countries have since already invented and implemented on a mass scale

I got 15 cases of hard seltzer, my Doppler on Wheels dakimakura, and assorted handguns & mall bought samurai swords strewn within easy reach about my dimly-lit flag-draped living room. i’m ready for anything.

Also speaking of the This Week in Virology podcast http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-592/ Lots of great stuff there

I think critically aware skepticism is appropriate for dealing with what pretty much any government, corporation, or media outlet is claiming but given that, i don’t get the impression that the UN (say) or science communicators like the TWIV crew think Chinese offcial information or media is full of sh¡t.

At least being weather dorks has given us that spicy prepper edge & a fundamental fascination with staring at computer screens slamming f5 to see how well numerical models verify in simulating chaotic, emergent phenomena. How long until the subforum comes up with the sars-cov2 versions of DAB and “wagons ______”. Which public health & epidemiology figures will be the new skilling? which research institute will emerge as the euro of pandemic modeling? Work for me is going full speed and probably will keep on until the governor says shut it or marty ozinga stops making concrete.

“the first parakeet of spring” i mutter while a large teal psittacine craps on my truck

we also have a flourishing year round population of winter hearty feral parrots thats been here for 50 years and which is spreading towards elgin sometimes i feel like we’re abnormal, birdwise

But we can say with emphasis that confidence is quite low on any details with that period besides that northeast winds should become prevalent and combined with good ol` stratus clouds, that will push our high temperatures back down into the 30s.

actually we could have just merged with NE as the st pierre & miquelon sub-subforum but that’d be horrible and like, the southern cross flags are cooler than the tricolor anyway

i feel like its been cloudy, rainy, and 25-35F for three months. if we’re going to open the new “Australian and New Zealand subantarctic islands” subforum i at least want there to be god damn penguins

Ripping down near Sox/35th

I’ll def jebjaunt to see 20’ rollers

hanging out under the L tracks by the dumpsters, “checking the 700-420mb ΔTʜᴄ”

-SN since 0500 and sidewalk + lawn accumulation near Sox / 35th

IMG_REAL_SAD_EMOJI KLOT:

Tis the season (for garbage field conditions)

Also re: the practicalities and or ethics and or legality of SAR cost recovery as random example I would wager that “professional international extreme weather videographers” who have “extensive support and advisory teams” and “relationships with major media outlets” whose jobs take them primarily to places likely to become “rubble-strewn flooded disaster areas awash as much with human misery as the wrack of the cruel unforgiving sea” probably have platinum-plated extrication & medical evacuation policies from Global Rescue that make the coverage held by heliski outfits look like an expired HikeSafe card clutched in the clammy, sweaty palms of an overweight hiker experiencing chest pains.