Chance plays an underappreciated role in human affairs. Whether it is the weather or human error, unexpected events often change the course of history. The death of Ogedei Khan in 1242 halted the Mongol invasion of Europe. Constantine having a strange dream prior to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, advanced the cause of Christianity in Europe. The shifting winds at Salamis allowed the Greeks to defeat the superior Persian navy. Chance is often a player in human affairs.
A recent example is what happened in Iran. According to news reports, the experts gave Trump a list of options, with droning the general deliberately setup as the least pleasing option. For some reason, he picked that one. Maybe it is apocryphal or maybe they were just dumb about it, but the unexpected happened. Of course, the Iranian response was altered by the unexpected blunder of shooting down the passenger plane on the night of their response. No one imagined that happening.
We may be seeing a similar bit of chance in China, as she contends with what is becoming a very serious pandemic. Right now, the cause of this infection is being blamed on eating weird foods, but no one really knows. There are serious people wondering if this is not the result of some error in their bio-weapons program. The Chinese did steal coronavirus from Canada recently and we know they have a clandestine lab located in the area of the pandemic. It’s not an unreasonable suspicion.
A lot will depend on how things unfold over the next several weeks. If they are able to contain the spread and the death toll is limited, then the cause of this outbreak will not be important. The way the Chinese handled it will get the attention. On the other hand, if things get much worse, then people will want to know how this happened. Even in a big country like China, a million deaths will spawn a lot of speculation. No one is going to accept the bat stew argument or dumb luck as an excuse.
The thing is, chance often finds the raw nerve in society. For example, most Americans were always unsure about the competence of the Bush administration. The handling of the Katrina disaster confirmed in the minds of most Americans that the administration was not very competent. When Iraq started to go sideways, that lack of trust turned into a collapse in support. The public, especially conservative supporters, were unwilling to take the administration’s word for anything happening in Iraq.
Of course, the collapse of conservative support for Bush had consequences. Obama beat Clinton in large part on being an outsider. He also beat the fevered warmonger John McCain for similar reasons. It’s hard to know, but Katrina probably had more to do with putting Trump in the White House than anything else. His rise in the primary was due in large part to voters remembering the incompetence of the Bushies. An ill-timed storm did what the paleo-cons could not.
We may be about to see something similar in China. The last few decades have seen a great alteration of the country and the people. In one generation, families have gone from rural peasantry to urban middle class. The unprecedented economic boom in China has had unprecedented cultural changes. It’s also changed the nature of the ruling class as well. The combination of elements we see in modern China is not only totally new. It is untested. It has never been under pressure.
What China is today is an accidental compromise between the prosperous urban dwellers and the legacy ruling class. It just sort of happened. As long as the good times keep rolling, the new class of Chinese will tolerate the corruption and petty shenanigans of the ruling party. Dealing with crooked officials or petty tyrants harassing trouble makers is a tax people are willing to pay, when times are good. No one really knows what will happen if times stop being good.
This virus outbreak could be the big test. It really does not matter what actually caused it if the government is unable to contain it. People unhappy with the party will use the crisis as a chance to speak out against the party. That’s how rumors about the plague’s origin will emerge. Instead of blaming peasants eating bats, it will be bureaucrats experimenting with bio-weapons or perhaps experimenting on people. A crisis can easily become a vehicle for conspiracy theories about the state.
On the other hand, politics in China is fundamentally the same as politics everywhere else in the world. The people in charge of the party are at the top of a faction that is currently dominating the other factions. There is no question, for example, that there are factions unhappy with how Xi Jinping is handling trade issues with America. Some want a harder line, while others want a more conciliatory approach. A stumble in handling the pandemic could open up these riffs within the party.
Again, much will depend upon how events unfold in the coming weeks. As things stand, this virus has at least two characteristics experts predict will precede a disaster. One is the virus is contagious during the “incubation period.” This means people can spread the virus to others, weeks before they show signs of infection. This accelerates the spread, as authorities cannot react in time to quarantine the infected. Given modern travel, this is what makes this virus so concerning.
The other red flag is the mortality rate. The numbers coming out of China are mostly certainly wrong, but we have roughly 100 confirmed deaths and 3,000 cases. That’s a three percent mortality rate. The Spanish Flu was around ten percent, so this virus is not as deadly yet. That’s actually bad news, as it means the infected linger on and have a greater chance to infect new people. A quick death actually aids in quarantining a virus outbreak. More bad news for China here.
Again, nothing could come of it, but that’s how it works with chance. It is only after the fact that people see the long shadow of the unexpected event. The Persians did not grasp the significance of the skirmish at Thermopylae until they were being chased from the field at Platea. China could be on the verge of a great leap backwards, as her people turn up in hospitals with pneumonia. All the conditions are in place for chance to have a starring role in this story.
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56 million under quarantine is what makes serious people suspect that this is a leaked bioweapon. At this point, though, it is all wait and see unfortunately. If it really is as infectious as reports claim, then in a week or two we will know. I suspect that this will spread like wildfire in China itself, and not much outside. They are filthy and corrupt; if it becomes a problem in Japan, the cleanest (and most orderly) country in the world, then we have a problem. India is probably in the best position: swimming in rivers of shit gives their… Read more »
With India enduring an unusually cold winter and horribly unequipped for the complications that come with the cold, the virus could be like a tornado in a trailer park.
I don’t think I’d place a bet even given 10:1 odds.
Oh I agree it would spread like wildfire there, my point was that because their immune systems are conditioned from living in filth, the mortality rate there would be far lower.
I do hope you are correct…
It’s funny that it fell off the Drudge Report’s large font headline in favor of the death of some basketball player nobody cares about. What priorities we have.
It’s almost like you are unaware that drudge is a jignat. A member of a certain tribe that runs 95% of the media if you don’t know the term jignat.
It will be interesting to see what happens if the virus hits lets-all-shit-in-the-streets US cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. They already have a public health issues with the policies that lefties have enacted. Pandemics also tend to hit populations living in dense situations harder – so cities (leftist havens) which are “blue” – probably have much more to worry about than “red” areas.
Calsdad: don’t forget the rampant use of intravenous drugs and discarded needles everywhere, that spreads pathogens like no other. The various skid rows would become incubators of whatever fresh hell this is, and it would spread to the hipsters and yuppies pretty quickly.
Of all the West coast cities, San Diego would fare the best if only because of the sheer volume of military personnel there.
If you expect the truth from the Chinese government, then you are, respectfully, quite insane. And as for anyone seriously questioning the official pronouncements, a pipe dream at best. My wife is Chinese, naturalized many years ago. Her oldest sister, who was raised in Communist China looked right at me once and said: The Tiananmen Square massacre never happened; because, the government said it never happened. They would not lie. When I asked her about the press coverage, she calmly and clearly stated it was a fabrication of the western press meant only to embarrass the Chinese government. Really. Some… Read more »
Only 80 ppl have died of this thus far yet the media is acting like this is the Spanish Flu again. It is the same pattern: outbreak, some deaths, mass quarantines and stopping flights, containment, and things return to normalcy. I think this story brings to light the cultural differences between America and China and the latter’s propensity for eating live animals and disregard for sanitation and food preparation. It’s like they cook parasite-infested animals over used toilet water. It\s a miracle more people don’t get sick.
Cast-iron constitutions. The ones who lack one die.
The biggest takeaway from this whole to-do is that Chinese people eat bats. Otherwise it’s a big nothingburger.
“nothingburger”
Yep. If it spreads to the nodes of the globalist network of evil, New York City, Washington DC, and Hollywood, then I’ll pay the story the attention it deserves, and by attention I mean laughing.
Not sure why I’m supposed to care about this virus. If it really is that bad, it’s going to infect all the globalist centers who are obsessed with bringing these aliens over in the first place. And now they still refuse to close the borders.
I can bet that my “shithole” city is going to be one of the last ones infected.
“Nothingburger”? The special of the day is batburger. And would you like to make it a Meal? Add a nice side of fried crickets and a large Corona-cola for just $1.99 more!
“Care to supersize those fried crickets for a dollar?”
Once they give the crooks-in-residence the coast is clear that no embarrassing headlines stand to emerge from the defense in the shampeachment, I think the Kung Flu will undergo a remarkably swift containment. At least as far as news coverage goes.
It’s possible that the cause of death is being recorded as pneumonia. If the medical facilities are as stressed as they’re being portrayed I doubt that every sample is being sent off to the lab to confirm this virus.
Seems to me that one can label the cause of death as anything they want—it will do no good. A simple compiling of numbers of excess deaths, excess pneumonia’s, etc. over “normal” numbers and assuming this excess to be caused by the virus is a simple matter. Of course, this is communist China, they control the data, they control the narrative.
Stay tuned it’s just getting started.
It’s the Y2K phenomenon: people panic, everyone does a lot of “stuff”, most of which is placebo, but some of it actually helps, and then the panic situation is avoided. If they never panicked though, then the panic situation would come into being.
In case anyone is wondering Y2K was real. I had equipment crap out on me because of the rounding error.
The equipment was of no consequence to me (an old fax machine) but had the happened in scale on systems that mattered its possible the results would have been very bad.
I’m not however as sure about this flu so I am withholding judgment.
Katrina was not Bush’s fault. What really happened in New Orleans is that a major disaster hit an African city on the North American continent and Africa reasserted herself. Harvey was probably as bad if not worse than Katrina and on a larger scale. All of the chaos that happened to make Katrina so memorable happened in the African parts. Had the Superdome not been filled with Africans, the horror stories that came out of the Superdome would not have happened. There would not have been wide scale looting or shooting at rescue helicopters. The majority African police force run… Read more »
The fallacy of self-government in an African setting. The fault, if any, of the Bush Administration was playing it by the rules, and not directly federalizing the National Guard.
How did the federal government prepare for, and respond to, Katrina? FEMA and other administrative agencies, managed almost exclusively by whites, hindered relief efforts. To wit, (1) FEMA blocked the delivery of emergency supplies which had been ordered by the Methodist Church of New Orleans; (2) FEMA turned away doctors volunteering their services at emergency facilities. One of the reasons doctors were turned away was that the names of the doctors were not in the right federal databases; (3) FEMA refused Amtrack’s offer to evacuate victims; (4) Both the Motorcoach Association and the American Bus Association could not get their… Read more »
Back in 2005, a doctor at my church rented a huge motor coach and loaded it up with supplies and volunteers and headed for the Ninth Ward, from coastal California. I said to them, umm, are any of you licensed in Louisiana? They laughed at my naivety and went on their way, where all these doctors and nurses then spent their time filling sandbags and serving meals. As far as their names not being in a federal database, there wasn’t one. If you aren’t licensed in a state, you can’t practice there. There is such a database now, and provisions… Read more »
Even if I granted that all of these things happened, so what? Did this make Africans riot, loot, rape and shoot at rescue workers? What is the connection between “:The Red Cross was denied access to the Superdome – the access was blocked by white bureaucrats;” and gang rapes in the Superdome? Did whitey somehow cause Africans to behave in African ways? Why, when white areas are hit by massive natural disasters, does this kind of stuff not happen? Even if I grant that the feds didn’t do a good job, that doesn’t explain the murders, rapes, abandonment of the… Read more »
You essentially argued that all of the problems associated with Katrina were caused by negroes.
White people do themselves no favors by failing to admit that the federal government, controlled and managed by white cucks, performed horribly.
That blacks are inferior to whites is not debatable and there is nothing in my post which suggests otherwise.
So were whites supposed to go in to help people are attacking aid workers? Nobody is arguing that federal bureaucracies are the best possible way to deal with all problems. In your post, you blamed all of the failures on whites and said white men are a disaster while “Brownie did a helluva job” A helluva job at what? Of course, mixed in with that is typical libertarian nonsense. OK, socialism bad, now what? Shall we put the browns in charge? I have no love for Bush. He was a terrible president and a warmonger and him and his gang… Read more »
“Brownie” is a reference to Michael Brown, Bush’s FEMA chief. Specifically, several days after Katrina, GWB said “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” Did I blame ALL failures on whites? Of course not. My post was animated by the desire to check the proposition, asserted by you, that all of the problems associated with Katrina were caused by negroes. Is there anything in my post that could be construed as endorsing black rule? Putting Africans in charge? We agree that blacks do not create civilization and that they have typically destroyed what whites have built. However, wouldn’t we be remiss… Read more »
My favorite was the out-of-state licensed emergency responders- EMTs, nurses, firemen, police, etc.
Before being allowed on scene, they had to sit through an 8 hour “ethnic sensitivity” class.
Thanks to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, I was without power for 6 days. In 2011, there was a late October snowstorm that left me without power for 4 days. In both storms, people lacked power for upwards of 2 weeks. I didn’t hear about looting or violence in the suburban areas.
Newark or other heavily minority areas – I don’t know.
Twelve days here. Only saving grace was that the two nearby “vibrant”cities had underground ConEd supply cables so were able to keep power up in most of the big projects and buildings. But was still, very, very dicey. Was still with the FD then so sat in on the nightly County briefings. We were right on the edge. Sent my wife and kids to stay with friends that had power. Had to discourage a couple of guys cruising around stealing generators to move along at one point with my dog and an Africa slung 870. With no cell service cops… Read more »
After the 2011 earthquake/tidal wave in Japan, I happened to come across a random press photo: At first glance, it looked like a narrow street of small, clean terrace houses, until you noticed the entrance part was made of 2x4s and plastic sheeting – the kind you could cut open with a banana – and the walls were plywood. On closer inspection, I could not see a single piece of paper or an empty plastic bottle anywhere. The gravel path was raked, bikes and prams were orderly parked against the walls and there were pots of flowers in front of… Read more »
>The thing is, chance often finds the raw nerve in society. For example, most Americans were always unsure about the competence of the Bush administration. The handling of the Katrina disaster confirmed in the minds of most Americans that the administration was not very competent. When Iraq started to go sideways, that lack of trust turned into a collapse in support. The public, especially conservative supporters, were unwilling to take the administration’s word for anything happening in Iraq. ————————— yeah like Bush was supposed to prevent low-IQ ppl from looting or stop the water from rising. The media framed it… Read more »
interesting to observe the differences between Katrina (New Orleans) and Harvey (Houston).
Yep, difference is as apparent as white and black. 😉
That New Orleans hurricane and the buses in the flooded parking lot that were supposed to be used for evacuation – all confirmed to me that the local leaders were nothing but corrupt, race-baiting idiots.
A few months after the successful punitive campaign in Afghanistan, I saw heavy-lift transports landing in Afghanistan – not to bring home the Rangers and Airborne troops, but to deliver heavy occupation forces. That’s when I knew they were all idiots.
Blacks were well aware that a deadly hurricane was moving in their direction. They sat around waiting on whitey to do something. But whitey was busy getting his own ass out of the way of the storm, like any intelligent person would. That photograph of hundreds of school buses in New Orleans under water tells you everything you need to know about a black-run city.
I remember the mayor of New Orleans, a black fellow I’d never heard of before, giving a speech beseeching everyone to leave. He went over it nine ways to Sunday: I know you’ve heard it before, this one is different, services will be absent, everyone needs to leave, on and on. I thought: a realistic and logical black! This fellow has a future in politics! Of course, days later he was blaming whitey for blackie having disregarded blackie’s warning. This was my first exposure to Obama-type reasoning, Obama not being known for it yet. Here’s the difference between Nawlins and… Read more »
“People offered themselves into it as a substitute for starving to death, and once they were property someone actually had an interest in their survival if not exactly their well-being.”
True dat. The Irish day laborers were far more expendable than black slaves. The former were queuing up to work for next to nothing, the latter property that cost real money to replace.
Black slaves were the expensive professional athletes of their day. Picking cotton : sportsball :: coal : nuclear power
I’d love to see that question on the SAT. Do they still do analogies? Or were they ‘biased’…
The incompetentcies of Nagin and his “Chocolate City” screw-ups were not the fault of the Bush administration. Not foreseeing and getting in front of those screw-ups should have been obvious to anyone paying attention. This was why the Bush administration came off as incompetent. Giving Blacks responsibility is a kind of political theater; “Yes, the Emperor is finely dressed”. Expecting Blacks to handle a crisis? Come on! This was a great example of ZOG buying its own bullshit.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is. It only matters what people believe. The media framed Bush as incompetent, and he didn’t manage to counter it, so he was incompetent in the public eye. The media framed the Tet Offensive as a disaster for the US even though it was a US victory, so people withdrew support for US involvement in Vietnam
In a crisis, the leaders have to be on the ground appearing to do things, e.g. Rudy Giuliani during 9/11. Bush should have been in NOLA hugging black babies and handing out water. It would have been counterproductive in terms of real solutions, but would have been a better narrative.
Kanye: George Bush doesn’t care about black people
Tet was a disaster for the US.
It demonstrated beyond doubt that the bullshit being spewed by the government was just that, The morons in the US thought it was about body count. It wasn’t then and isn’t today.
They had no idea what victory was.
I just made a similar comment. Katrina was an African storm on the American continent.
Yes, Bush was completely incompetent about it, but what was he going to do, go down and start shooting looters?
Funny thing, there were people arrested for minor stuff before the storm. The jail and the courts flooded along with a lot of the paperwork. A lot of these guys had to sit in jail for months and months and months trying to figure out why they were there.
Bottom line is Africa asserted itself. It was a magic dirt fail.
Africa Wins Again.
One smart thing that the Bush Regime did do was forward stage all the emergency supplies needed immediately after the storm via Walmart who has the world’s widest knowledge base of what and how much people buy in the weeks after a big storm. Unfortunately Walmart couldn’t provide passable streets and law and order,
The federal government did a horrible job. See my detailed post below.
In his post below, Tars essentially argues that all of the problems associated with Katrina were caused by negroes.
Cucky whites and Neo-Cohen whites create havoc, mayhem, and destroy civilization.
After Katrina, Steve Sailer wrote what is probably his most widely condemned column.
‘What you won’t hear, except from me, is that “Let the good times roll” is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.’
He was excoriated. The conservatives passionately denounced him. I was race blind at the time and was mildly offended.
Jared Taylor wrote a classic about Katrina:
https://www.amren.com/news/2015/08/africa-in-our-midst/
Wow, I had never read that. In 2006 I was living in <3% (then) black Phoenix, far, far from race woke.
That is absolutely horrifying.
When I picture societal breakdown, I picture it bad but not that bad. And it probably wouldn’t be without you-know-who.
We have a media and a scientific community that thrive on apocalyptic narratives. China has a ruling class that can and will overreact in an effort to demonstrate it has not lost the mandate of heaven (the anti-Katrina). Add those two together and I’m not convinced that we’ve seen anything yet that should strike fear in the hearts of the truly observant. That said, listening to my wife talk to her Taiwanese sister yesterday, the two of them completely buy everything they hear and see on the news. These are intelligent people and yet they have no cynicism about the… Read more »
Exactly. You cannot trust epidemiologists. Panic is their life blood
Apparently the coronavirus was passed from animal to human via a Black swan.
I have to say I’m leaning in the direction of screw up in a bio-lab on this one. I’ve had some exposure (no pun intended), to how Asians handle sensitive material. The same short-cut mentality that plagues their bureaucracy shows up in these areas. I can easily imagine people in the lab getting infected with something and then passing it to their community by accident.
It will be interesting to see if there are any public reports about the nature of this virus once Western labs gets some samples from victims.
“Saving Face”. Remember Japan and Fukashima? One obfuscation after another. Up to and including lulling a US aircraft carrier close enough to have their planes irradiated, the ship contaminated, and numerous sailors injured. And they’re our allies! The Chinese are going to be much, much worse. I’ll sign onto the mismanaged bioweapon theory. The west has been giving China a pass for decades by allowing them to steal everything that isn’t nailed down. It’s like giving teenage boys keys to the liquor cabinet, dad’s Porsche, the gun safe, and mom’s Oxycontin prescription and telling them “go have fun, there will… Read more »
The other red flag is the mortality rate
Maybe even a 3% if it’s across all human cultures might do the trick. Reset the conscience of the world, collapse polity & institutions? Check. Check. Tripple check.
This might be a merciful act of the Inexpressible Mystery, saving us from ourselves.
The 3% may be a bit of an underestimate–since a relatively small number of people have been “cleared” and what looks like a large number are under intense medical intervention. Overwhelm the medical response capability and that number goes up–only so many ICU beds and qualified personnel. Spanish flu had no effective medical interventions. The other stat to watch is mortality by age cohort. Spanish Flu killed by cytokine storms and was deadly to the young with responsive immune systems. Early data suggests the elderly are more susceptible. Maybe it ends up solving China’s “inverted” aging triangle.
If the elderly are more susceptible, it could also doom the Rebublicans razor thin margins in several states this November.
I hope you are wrong on a million deaths. What tragedy if that comes to pass. If your supposition about a botched bio-program endeavor is correct then a silver lining may appear. There is serious movement on ending birth tourism from the orient. A link to stolen lab viruses may bring not only birth tourism to heel, but additionally move Chinese technology theft to the forefront of American minds. It would serve us well to begin disentangling Chinese “immigrants” from our tech/military/manufacturing industries.
That wou;d be a distant second for me to getting the dual-citizens out of the US telecom infrastucture.
And a quick one line executive order from Trump could stop this atrocity:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents
What sort of country shares all its raw intelligence data with a an enemy?
The US isn’t much better. Sci Am notes there were 400 reported accidents including containment breaches in the US over 7 years
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/nearly-400-accidents-with-dangerous-pathogens-and-bio-toxins-reported-in-u-s-labs-over-seven-years/
This really isn’t just a China thing but a no one should be doing this period thing.
Gotta kill those pesky swans!
Well its an interesting development coming on the heels of the African swine flu in China. China consumes the most pork. They have lost over 50% of their pork production to the disease. Some unknown (shocking) millions more pigs in preventative culling. The US exports the most pork. The US has had ham-sammich sniffing dogs at airports trying to keep Chinese pork out. And here we are with a human-borne version of some other Chiner disease that may be nothing or may take out a lot of pork eaters. The only truths I can rely upon are: (1) China is… Read more »
Why would we be surprised? We’ve been monitoring the Flu in Asia for years, which is how we come up with the best guess as to what cocktail of vaccines to product each season. Seems we’ve basically accepted the idea that Asia will produce new variants and they will travel seasonally to our shores sharing the joy. Now there’s a new kid on the block and we are all excited about travel restrictions and what not?
If you’re going to kill them, might as well eat them. How to roast a swan: Take three pounds of beef, beat fine in a mortar, Put it into the Swan – that is, when you’ve caught her. Some pepper, salt, mace, some nutmeg, an onion, Will heighten the flavour in gourmands’ opinion. Then tie it up tight with a small piece of tape, That the gravy, and other things may not escape. A meal paste (rather stiff) should be laid on the breast, And some whited brown paper should cover the rest. Fifteen minutes at least ere the swan… Read more »
Worked for a guy years ago that was from the Eastern Shore–his grandfather kept the family fed many times during the Depression with poached swans–lot of meat compared to a Canadian goose.
I’ve been cheering for an asteroid to end most of humanity for ages, actually two; one heading for the US Democratic convention and the other for Brussels. Hopefully this will have a better chance of success. Never underestimate the benefits of a good plague. We’re way over due anyway.
My prayers are for the EMPs. It just seems to me that humanity was a lot less…silly…without things like Twitter, Facebook, etc. I’d miss reading and hearing the Z-man, but maybe we could re-invent the printing press…
Well, there’s Betelgeuse. It’s been dimming lately which makes some speculate that it might be about to go supernova. At 600+ light years away though it won’t fry the atmosphere and the satellites the way a nearby star blowing up would. It would still make a nice show and probably be visible in daylight for weeks though.
I’ve been waiting all my life for Betelgeuse to blow. Hope I live long enough to see it.
And at night for what, like 2 or 3 years? Basically light from a second moon from what I’ve heard.
If the death and destruction caused by Katrina led to the the rejection of yet a third BUSH in office, I’d have to say it was worth it. The lord works in mysterious ways.
Here in CA there are lots of people wearing masks. I feel like we are totally behind the 8 ball on this and that it’s going to get much, much worse. On my flight here last Weds we had a Chinese family sneezing and snotting all over themselves as they are fond of doing. My wife was beside herself but if it’s meant to be, well, so mote it be. Protect yourself fam, eat lots of mineral rich foods, drink ginger tea (boil ginger root in water, add honey to taste), sleep as much as you can, get exercise. I… Read more »
FWIW, I’ve been told that in Asian cultures (Japan, esp), the people who wear masks HAVE the flu. It’s a courtesy to those around them to try not and spread the flu.
Get ready to see masks everywhere. Eyewear is at least as important for some pathogens. When we see masks + eye protection, look out.
Nah. The use of dust masks has become fairly ubiquitous in public, even during normal times. They’re worn to protect against dust, pollution, sun exposure, and of course communicable diseases. Perhaps the Japanese have that sort of concern for their fellow tribesmen, but in other countries, it’s strictly defensive.
“concern for their fellow tribesmen”
Indeed, FELLOW is the key word. The rest of us are, in Gunny Hartman’s immortal words, “not even human fucking beings”. But at least the Japanese are polite about it these days. And to be fair, the Japanese are not alone that way. Han Chinese consider all non-Han to be inferior. And while I’m sure I can’t think of any specific examples right now, I’ve been told some Tribes even claim that us subhumans exist only to serve them. Who could ever think such a thing?
As to Japan as a model ethnostate …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7hMOEyVSdY
I disagree about China, at least in sense that we really don’t know what the Chinese people are thinking. One thing is for sure, they don’t think like we do. They are not us and we are not them. We should not try to superimpose our ideas onto that of the Chinese. Almost all of our experience is with Europeans. We look to Europe and see the same stuff, but that’s because we are Europeans. The Chinese are not. People around the world do not want the same things. They probably all would like to be rich, but that doesn’t… Read more »
Big fallacy of liberals and normies: That people are alike all over, want the same things and are capable of the same things. One of the reasons we went to war in Iraq; they were dying for democracy.
People are the same everywhere, but they are also different everywhere. The argument is over what is ‘the same’ and what is ‘different’. Lefty and Normie think the genetics are the same, and that the differences in revealed preferences and behavior are purely environmental (aka ‘culture’). We know the genetics and environment are both different, with similarities in underlying biology only in a very general sense. You can, of course, find similar people in both groups, but you will find far different ratios of those revealed preferences/behaviors in the populations. It is the population level differences that normie cannot understand… Read more »
Absolutely. As Z stresses, biology -> culture -> institutions -> politics.
OK to all that but here’s one thing the Chinese do that is so far as I know unique–with no alternatives or means of change available they take a ton of shit until the paint factory, for example, blows and kills dozens of employees. Then they riot burn the entire place down. 600x a year, unreported of course. If in fact the Mandarins have let loose a big one we are underestimating what will happen there. Life and work is still very hard in China, Dickensonian hard.
You get a completely different basis in a culture that has never heard of “the Fall”, and it’s nobody’s fault – it simply is. Everything is impermanent, ever changing. Good and evil rise together; opposites have no meaning without each other. What is the meaning of up, without the coexistence of down? That makes their understanding of God more elemental like the forces of nature, storms & sunshine arise from the same Diety. Foreign feeling to the West, but is it really? The same God who created also burns the entire Creation and washes it away with water in the… Read more »
We don’t know the mortality rate, but it’s likely higher than 3%. Probably somewhere between 3 and 15%. 100 dead out of 3000 infected is misleading, because those 3000 infected will yield more deaths with time. It’s really 100 dead out of a lower number of infected at the time. When they looked at the people infected AND admitted to a hospital in December, the mortality rate was 15% (6 out of 41, mostly elderly; all the elderly patients in that group died). On the one hand, this was a subset of the infected, since not everyone infected was admitted… Read more »
The coronavirus I not new. As I remember from long ago at University it (the family) was associated with the common cold. One of its characteristics was that it was relatively benign—as in most healthy people catch colds and recover, and it was a virus that rapidly mutated such that vaccines could not be developed easily for any particular strain. I’d be interested in where this particular strain came from. It should be easy to analyze—as in RNA sequencing and therefore matching to any Western biolab’s samples. So if stolen from Canada, we’ll know it. Of course, since we are… Read more »
I think we learn a lot about this once western labs have had a chance to inspect some victims. There are enough cases in the west now for labs to begin looking at this thing. If we hear nothing about its nature, then we can suspect something hanky. If they say it is a variant of SAR’s or MER’s or some other known strain, then it is probably a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Timeline and Science of the Cornavirus-JF Gariepy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_lrza6BZqs
Think this is hurting the beer sales for Corona? I know my feminist professor, whose last name is Weinstein, wasn’t happy with the PR the Wild Boar of Hollywood did for her family name.
Here’s one on not WEINstein, but EPstein. Same idea though. “How does this affect the Jews?” Not ONE sentence, not even a single crocodile tear for the actual victims.
https://forward.com/opinion/427300/as-a-jew-i-cringed-over-jeffrey-epstein-i-played-into-the-anti-semites/
Yeah pretty much the only thing the victims get are callouts about someone who “behaves in such a horrifying manner”…
The Chinese are racing to build a 1,000 bed hospital in Wuhan in just 10 days. What does that say about the virulence of the disease?
Building a place with a bed to allow the sick a place to die seems somewhat unsatisfying to this Western mind.
Why do I picture this as GP tents with cots, not far from a convenient incinerator or mass-grave?
Why not use one of the ghost cities they’ve already built? saves the construction phase, at least.
The Chinese build “ghost cities” that no one lives in in order to keep people working and mollified.
More thought provoking analysis from the Zman once again. The question is if it becomes a new pandemic the cat is already out of the bag. This could have worldwide consequences many quite unexpected for good or bad.
Reminds me of this verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Over at The American Conservative (I know, “Normiecons! Boo! Hiss!”) Rod Dreher has been following the outbreak pretty closely. He posted a letter from a reader this morning who has a Chinese wife from out in the Chinese boondocks. The wife is a highly educated woman, but she still holds to the Chinese Zodiac. Evidently this year, the Year of the Rat, coincides with two other Chinese traditional calendars. Basically, when all three of them line up, it’s seen as super bad luck for that year. The last time it happened was in 2008 and we all remember how much… Read more »
Chinese people are really lunatics. I’m not really one to judge other people’s cultures and beliefs but they just seem moronic. I’ve never seen such a dull intellect and curiosity. The nice thing about mass immigration is that we get to see the average Chinaman – not just the super genius ones which used to cause us to hold all of China in high regard. I would completely cut off immigration from Asia. They are just too alien to us. Jews and Muslims, as well as Africans are far more understandable, to me at least. We don’t need any of… Read more »
Hey that Rhino has a Horn that looks like, well, you know. I bet it would make my, you know, get bigger…
WW3, the boogaloo AND pandemic. 2020 is really blueballing me.
Hey, it’s only January. Keep your seatbelt on.
Plus 50% wheat and hog loss, due to wet fields, market loss, and virus.
Plus, egg production is down 25%.
Add in a 30-year cold spell.
And the sheer competence of the Woke!
History’s rhyme might be four sets of hooves in syncopation.
What I noticed yesterday is that we’re still getting flights not only from China but Wuhan (as of Saturday at least). If the virus takes off here in any meaningful way, what are the chances that orange man would have election blowback for not stopping flights from central China? It seems like the same Katrina like dereliction of duty as he’s engrossed with impeachment. Also, from what I’m reading the Chinese are putting the causes of death as “viral pneumonia” not this particular virus, so they don’t have to count it in the statistics and can drastically low-ball the death… Read more »
The Left is incredibly skilled and focused at making “magic dirt fails” the fault of people they don’t like. Hind-brain propaganda works, and they know how to wield it.
Possible pandemic breaking out in communist country who’s government lies about everything, how could anyone worry?
How many of these alleged pandemics have the media tried to sell us? SARS, anyone? H1N1? Anyone remember how rat droppings in New Mexico were supposed to kill us all?
I’ll believe a pandemic when I see it.
Hantavirus has a mortality rate of ~30%. It’s hard to get if your not inhaling aerosolized rodent excreta.
Friend of mine had the bad luck to inhale the wrong barn dust, and spent several months in hospital from hantavirus; almost died and came out skeletal and aged ten years That was in central California, another area where it’s endemic.
You are missing the point here. It does not have to be the zombie apocalypse to have a big impact.
In the world of global supply chains, these things matter more than even 30-40 years ago. Stuff is not moving in parts of China. The containers don’t get to port. The container ships don’t get to Long Beach. Commerce begins to slow down or come to a complete halt. During the Icelandic volcano several years ago we had European clients in advanced manufacturing that were dependent on just-in-time supply chains from all over the world. When the planes stopped so did supplies of chips and high precision parts that were not held in inventory. Global supply chains are highly efficient,… Read more »
Maybe it’ll incentivize ’em to look for U.S. supply chains again.
For certain products that has been starting to happen for a while. Particularly if energy intensive. Cheap natural gas has been a boon.
Sam;
You have put your finger on one big reason why we in the US should be concerned. The ‘design margin’ has been eaten up in US medical resources as well as in supply chains. Constant pressure from HHS and private medical insurance firms to ‘reduce inefficiencies’, ‘streamline process’, etc. in health care in this case, have made all our systems fragile. This was fine so long as the unexpected random shocks are mild and of short duration. We are not ready in any way for a pandemic, particularly from a custom designed bioweapon.
Gotta keep it brief, Day Job is kicking my a** again today – events like this are why it pays to play the long game & stay alive for the future. The Empire is just as vulnerable to this kind of outbreak – look at the bullets we dodged during the last big Ebola flare-up. Black swans can work for us as well as against us in any future conflict with the Empire, hot or cold, if enough of us are still around to take advantage of them.
Our Overlords keep telling us that diversity is strength too. The reality of course is the opposite. The more vibrant the Empire gets the more fragile it becomes and the more likely entire factions and ethnic groups that were poorly integrated into it to begin with will either cut and run or mutiny.
Not mentioned are the protests in Hong Kong (still going on? I can’t tell, there is a press blackout there). They show that the Chinese government is not particularly good at responding to events; they simply thrash around for a solution. Now that HK has let that cat out of the box, the expectation should be a clumsy thrashing around to contain and explain this thing, which will either be yesterday’s news and gone in a week, or the start of something big and bad. Perhaps HK has weakened Xi’s government, and Coronavirus will sweep it away. The problem is… Read more »
If we didn’t have the 24-hour news cycle and cable news outlets fighting for ratings, would we have ever even heard about this? The flu kills far more people and we still argue about whether to get the flu shot.
I contend that this is all media hype, combined with vulnerable pols trying to look effective.
The influenza family of viruses and this corona virus are all respiratory viruses and can be deadly given the right circumstances. Even the annual flu shot only has about a 40-60% efficacy rate.
“Deadly given the right circumstances.” Yes, but that describes every single pathogenic and opportunistic virus, fungus and bacteria. As stated above, it’s a big nothingburger. Media hype.
What to think about this: the highest death toll seems to be among the 60+.
China’s biggest population segment is… the 60-65 bracket.
By design, Rho? Clearing off of the dead wood?
There is a concern about the one child policy leaving one child responsible for four grandparents. One way to solve the problem.
Chance. Black swans. Unlikely events happen almost 100% of the time. Earthquake, volcano, firestorms, floods, assassins, war, famine, plague…
In hindsight we look back in surprise at the chance, unlikely chain of causation that has resulted in a consequence that was there in waiting to happen all along, as the world is a very unstable place.
Some observations: cultural and current events, in that order. Unless something has changed in the last couple of years, it is common practice that hospital patients are not fed by the hospitals, but by the families. Realistically, that means that, for each patient, there is a person or two that is regularly visiting to feed their relatives or friends. Then they walk right out and mingle with the populace. At banquets, it is common practice for participants to reach into common dishes with their chop sticks in order to retrieve tasty morsels. So, everyone at the table is sharing saliva… Read more »
Welp, so much for that high Asian I.Q.
I agree that this looks more serious than SARS and bird flu, which initially had a ‘cry wolf’ effect on me. And while I’m not sure about percentages, it could be an escaped bio-weapon. About serendipity, if you don’t like Bush/the CCP or who else is out of luck, it is the uncontrolable element in the struggles of life. When it really ‘explodes’ tends to be when it meets talent and courage. The old saying ‘luck favors the bold’ does not mean that bold, or talented, people are more lucky but that they know how to make use of luck… Read more »
My most favorite aphorism is “Luck is where Opportunity meets Preparation.” In short, a response to folks shifting blame for personal failure to “bad luck”.
Coronavirus would be a dumb bioweapon, because today’s lethal variant could be tomorrow’s harmless mutation. You couldn’t count on it being effective beyond initial release. Further, because of the long contagious-incubation period, it’d be damn hard to quarantine. In short, it’d be suicidal. I’d add that only a complete moron considers a bioweapon against which it is not practical to immunize one’s own people (including one’s own self), and as noted there is, as yet, no practical human corona vaccine. There was a highly effective modified live vaccine against canine coronavirus (developed at Cornell), but the company that acquired the… Read more »
Look at all the panic it is causing. Imagine inducing that in a hostile country. Doesn’t seem idiotic to me, but perhaps reckless and unpredictable.
I think I’ve figured out Trump’s 4th dimensional chess game. He doesn’t have one, but this is what he does. He throws the board and all the pieces into the air and creates complete chaos and then looks for opportunities in the pieces when they fall to the ground. He is very good at recognizing opportunities, that is his strength.
The two least trustworthy sources in the world are the media and epidemiologists. There are wolves out that there and one day one of them’s going to come eat us but you cannot trust these people to tell you when they’re coming.
There are over a million chinese in Africa…
oksign, let’s hope the inexpressible Mystery extends His hand to the Chinese works in Pakistan, and thence to India and the Mideast Hajj as well. (3 cheers for Africa, by the way)
Will this mean borders at last, or will we get ‘refugees’ instead?
I thought that immediately. If the virus really takes off America will be thought of as the country so backwards-assed in its priorities that it took a modern Black Death, or at least the threat of it, to get it to actually control its own borders. I’ve also thought that if the country fucks around enough and say, 500,000 people eventually die from it that maybe, just maybe, the people will say to the ruling class – Ok, that’s enough, we’re done listening to you fuckers lecture us about ANYTHING. We’re not even going to keep pretending not to be… Read more »
Of course it’s going to be cries to admit refugees — IF this thing hits Africa in a large way. Chinese, not so victimy to the prog on the street, so there will not be any serious calls to “help the Chinese,” but black Africans, the second-greatest victims ever.
Hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe that was one of the reasons BLM fell out of funding, and out of the press, and fizzled. The second-greatest victimhood cannot be allowed to challenge the narrative supremacy of the Greatest Victimhood Ever.
Yes, the CCP could lose the mandate of Heaven over this.
Briggs has a refreshing take on this. He’s been battling the epidemiologists (and even Nassim Taleb in some cases) for years because of their terrible math and even terribler(?) conclusions.
“But Taleb went one step too far and began to believe in his own models. That is, he embraced the Deadly Sin of Reification. He began to talk and think as if events had probabilities, that his models (with their impeccable math) were realer than Reality.”
Briggs is well worth a read for any on the d-right.
https://wmbriggs.com/post/29071/
The incubation period is days, not weeks. It’s exactly like the common cold (AKA… coronavirus) or influenza. Not novel or unusual in the slightest.
I love that this essay is organized and written from the chaotic systems point of view, which is very important in human affairs yet so very often entirely overlooked. The same way that had some butterfly (merely a single butterfly) flapped its wings differently in 2005 then Katrina may not have even formed at all, the fact that it did (merely a single weather event) may possibly end up having an enormous impact on the course of history. I agree it’s exactly the same with the corona virus, although the immediate recentness here makes the uncertainty of long term impact… Read more »
As with most infectious disease, I think that the shape of your immune system and the sanitation of your situation is the most important considerations. Even at my advanced age I have not gotten a cold or flu in over 20 years. The last time was when I was forced to take a flu shot for work. (f’ing shot near killed me) Health reporter Bill Sardi has some interesting reporting: “… But coronavirus it is just a common cold virus. Yep, the coronavirus is just a common virus that infects your nose, sinuses and upper throat and produces the same… Read more »
China is the new American ideal. *According to plan*
Every couple of days I google corona virus and the number of infected and dead has doubled. Although they are corrupt a draconian police force and conformist population are relatively civilised compared to many places in the world. As soon as this gets a foothold in a 3rd world city it will spread like wildfire.
Score! My supplier has great prices on Coronavirus, and plenty on hand… https://www.atcc.org/products/all/VR-740.aspx But remember to be good stewards. It’s up to YOU to ensure your bio facility is up to standards. On a serious note, I agree that chance will continue to have the upper hand going forward ho. Although I think of it as Crashing By Design. You’ve given me an idea. Rather than blame the abysmal state of the news media on ignorance or moral decay, I’ll chalk it up to a failure to accurately factor in chance. Then I shouldn’t be quite so disgruntled when the… Read more »
Goes to show that for all of China’s bluster and economic and military might, one carefully laid biological weapon could cripple the place. Not that I’m suggesting such a thing should happen – I like my cheap t-shirts and plastic cutlery.
Regarding the killing of the Iranian General. I read recently that the coalition in Afghanistan has started losing Helicopters (four this month) and just recently one of four important aircraft used in relaying radio traffic in mountainous terrain. I’m no military guy but MANPADs have always been jealously guarded by advanced powers not wanting them to fall in the hands of lunatics. Maybe the rules are changing? When faced with being murdered by being sodomized with bayonets and having evil Hillary laughing about it the Mullahs said to hell with it?
What’s that old saying ? You can change your whole life by missing one bus ! Had no idea the Chinese stole the virus from the Canadiens. Crazy thing is we have government labs playing with all kinds of nasty stuff . Have two of them right here in the city. Supposedly the amounts are of no real consequence , but doesn’t stop them from having armed guards at the door. Be interesting to know what the chinese had in mind ? They have a keen interest in africa . Only problem it’s full of africans 🙂 Some plot to… Read more »
Not buying it. You’re just another reactionary talking head peddling the official narrative from the media.
No one should believe a single syllable that comes from the media. Corona is just another viral marketing campaign.