Support the Arctic Sea Ice Forum and Blog

Author Topic: Lessons from COVID-19  (Read 48463 times)

be cause

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2441
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1012
  • Likes Given: 1034
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #50 on: March 27, 2020, 10:59:28 PM »
Hi NeilT .. i hope you can advertise your jet to embassy and others so you could bring as many home as possible . S.America has many ex-pats desperate to return .. you can help a few other families .. b.c.
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

TerryM

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6002
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 893
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #51 on: March 27, 2020, 11:30:18 PM »
Neil


His papers have expired, he's broken quarantine or whatever safeguards that more than one country had put in place, and you're now responsible for transporting him halfway around the world.


If it should turn out that he's an asymptomatic carrier responsible for outbreaks in possibly 3 countries, what should his punishment be? What if there are multiple deaths following in his path?


Do you share criminal responsibility, and if not why not. Laws were evidently broken, some before he enlisted your aid and some under your direction.


Should he - and yourself be civilly responsible for any harm he may have caused? What's the life of a Jet Pilot worth - how about the life of an Argentinian Peon?


I understand your motivation and might have done the same, though I certainly wouldn't admit my culpability on the internet.
I hope of course that he's well and has never been responsible for anyone catching as much as a mild case of the sniffles. I also dare hope that before some other doting father contemplates "rescuing" a loved one, that he considers the damage that his compassionate act might cause.
Terry

NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #52 on: March 28, 2020, 03:14:09 AM »
Hi NeilT .. i hope you can advertise your jet to embassy and others so you could bring as many home as possible . S.America has many ex-pats desperate to return .. you can help a few other families .. b.c.

Not my jet.  I just chartered it through a charter company which has, so far, carried out 2 dozen rescue missions of this kind.

Anyone can find them if they want.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #53 on: March 28, 2020, 03:24:20 AM »
Terry,

My son was authorised by the police, the UK government and the Argentinian government to travel.

On his jet leg it took more than 12 hours to get the paperwork done and he was travelling under an existing "allowable" travel mechanism where Argentina allows citizens of another country to travel to an airport which can repatriate them and the person travelling has a booked repatriation flight.

No quarantine was broken, he travelled under the rules and restrictions of the quarantine in place.

The night before he was driven by an American citizen, to the city I flew him out of, through 9 police checkpoints and one Army checkpoint.  All checkpoints accepted the repatriation clause and the Embassy documentation.

I am ex military. That means I'm biological warfare trained. Unlike civilians who work outside the sphere of infectious diseases.

No laws, rules or quarantine was broken.  My son is not asymptomatic but living in a hostel with 6 other people, many of whom had washed up in a backwater in Argentina, was going to guarantee that he got it eventually.

He has a fair chance of picking it up on the flight back home but it is a risk we must take.

Don't try and scare me here, or paint me as a monster.  If I thought I was moving my son, infected, I would not have done it.  Whatever the cost to me.  But not moving him to a safe place, uninfected, was not an option.

I have no qualms whatsoever, in repeating any of that on the Internet.  If it saves someone's life, then fine.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #54 on: March 28, 2020, 03:26:16 AM »
But as NeilT says, this sign will be used as an argument to double down on the system. And given the many NeilTs in the world, it will probably receive wide support. I mean, just look at that insanely corrupt stimulus package that was pushed down everybody's throat in the world's largest banana republic. One could describe it as 'ironic', if it wasn't so criminally murderous.

Not really Neven.  I'm a realist.  I would hope that our governments would suddenly ignore the masses of voters and say "hey we're going to spend whatever it takes to fix the climate issue then we're going to MAKE you pay for it.  ALL of you".

But, as I say, I'm a realist.  I hope others are too.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

TerryM

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6002
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 893
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #55 on: March 28, 2020, 03:57:17 AM »

NeilSorry that I misinterpreted your earlier post.
The facts apparently are not as they seemed.


One of our Governmental missives said that wherever you slept the night before was where you were to remain until the crisis has passed.


Rough for some, but best for the majority.
Terry

Archimid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 3511
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 899
  • Likes Given: 206
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #56 on: March 28, 2020, 10:17:31 AM »
Posting this from the COVID 19 thread.

In Texas, a midnight run across the Mexican border gets masks for doctors

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-27/masks-from-mexico-doctors-protective-equipment-shortages


Quote
Banning’s friend, who had connections in the oil and gas business, had 350 cases of surgical masks from a factory in Mexico. He’d managed to get the shipment over the border, navigating drug cartels and border agents demanding payoffs. Did Banning know anyone who could use them?

Banning, who heads the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, didn’t have to think twice.

“We had physicians tying bandannas around their faces,” he said. “It was like they were fortifying the big urban hospitals and leaving the front-line soldiers to fight without defenses.”

I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Archimid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 3511
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 899
  • Likes Given: 206
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #57 on: March 28, 2020, 10:24:17 AM »
In reply to the incident above.

Pretty much, yes. If you don't have the money you don't get the medicine, you die. Same as justice in the US.

But right now, that hero is saving lives in a way that should teach us humility.

Ah, so Trump is doing it right reserving resources to the people he likes. There's no difference.

The President of the United States has a duty to all the people of the US of A. A doctor in a medical emergency has a duty to their patients and colleagues. That's a difference with functional implications.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

SteveMDFP

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2476
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 583
  • Likes Given: 42
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #58 on: March 28, 2020, 10:41:24 AM »
\
The die was cast ? So you are saying that they could not have managed it better better when there were only a few cases. But now there are 80 000 it's possible.
Public health measures slow the spread.  A virus this contagious, with spread by asymptomatic victims is essentially impossible to stop, unless whole populations can be tested and quarantines enforced.  Sufficient test kits could have been stockpiled, if wise leaders heeded the warnings that Wuhan was showing to the world.  There isn't time to catch up at this late date.  The die is cast.

Pmt111500

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #59 on: March 28, 2020, 11:16:47 AM »
In reply to the incident above.

Pretty much, yes. If you don't have the money you don't get the medicine, you die. Same as justice in the US.

But right now, that hero is saving lives in a way that should teach us humility.

Ah, so Trump is doing it right reserving resources to the people he likes. There's no difference.

The President of the United States has a duty to all the people of the US of A. A doctor in a medical emergency has a duty to their patients and colleagues. That's a difference with functional implications.

Thank you for the answer. Now we'd need to define 'duty' and see if it is mentioned in the law on electable persons to the office, do they need to understand it, but that might be a question for the law people and I'm not very versed even on Finnish law.

Archimid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 3511
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 899
  • Likes Given: 206
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #60 on: March 28, 2020, 11:50:38 AM »
Do you understand why it is wrong for a leader to hoard supplies during an emergency and release them only upon receiving pledges in exchange?
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 8234
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2041
  • Likes Given: 1986
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #61 on: March 28, 2020, 12:36:27 PM »
Clearly shows he is unfit for the job but that is not exactly a lesson from Covid.

The lack of international cooperation on this is going to hurt and make thinks worse like it hurts AGW.

The scary thing is that this is just a disease so it will fade.
With AGW that will not happen. Things will just get worse year over year.

There are lines we should not have crossed and we crossed a number before the 1.5 C point was reached and we still have 0 real commitments to actually hit that target.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Archimid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 3511
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 899
  • Likes Given: 206
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #62 on: March 28, 2020, 12:45:17 PM »
Quote
The lack of international cooperation on this is going to hurt and make thinks worse like it hurts AGW.

Ain't that some truth.

The C19 problem can't be solved without international cooperation and coordination. If there was a time to cooperate, it is now.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 8234
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2041
  • Likes Given: 1986
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #63 on: March 28, 2020, 01:02:08 PM »
Or ages ago.

When the soviet union collapsed the empire changed it´s targets.

We could possibly have reduced weapons by a lot in the world and invested in really making it a better place for all. Imagine where we could have been if battery and solar tech had gotten subsidies even if it was half of what big oil got every year from the late nineties on.

We could have conserved so much older forests which are a much better carbon sink then the palm oil plantation that is there now etc.

The reality should sink in that we are here together on one planet we cannot get of.

And we should get clear about the difference between the carbon budget where you cannot cheat because of physics and our usual urge to cheat which is easy in this economic system with well trained consumer sheeple. 
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

bluice

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #64 on: March 28, 2020, 04:05:04 PM »
For a time we did reduce weapons. Even nowadays armies in Europe are mere shadows of their Cold War counterparts. Readiness was lowered and nuclear arsenals were partly decommisioned. Though the US never really followed in order to retain hegemony.

9/11 and GWB changed the course with the mindless war on terror. American overseas adventures tempted competing powers, mainly Russia and China, to increase military spending. But even then world remained mostly peaceful. NATO didn’t have a defence plan for new Baltic members before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. That was the ultimate gamechanger and military spending has gone up ever since.

So there was a window of opportunity but it was completely and utterly wasted. Everybody was too busy trying to make money from the new tech or hoarding the cheap consumer junk the coal powered Chinese economic miracle pushed around the world.

Now we are living on a planet becoming less and less hospitable every year. Nationalist populist leaders around the world are playing zero sum games against each other while using diminishing resources at their disposal to cement their power and grow their armed forces.

It’s easy to be pessimist but it is what it is. What makes me sad is that we had the opportunity to build a different kind of world but we decided to trade it for sweatshop clothes and flatscreen televisions.

LRC1962

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 446
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 11
  • Likes Given: 3
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #65 on: March 28, 2020, 04:45:57 PM »
I think we have 2 different answers and Covid and AGW apply to both.
Lessons we should learn are that for profit fails miserably in a crisis. It is based on the premise you never have redundancy and you do everything as cheaply as possible. and result when a crisis hits you have no extra manoeuvring room in your system to mitigate the crisis and what you have in place is not good enough to handle the crisis.
What we are learning is that globalization is extremely fragile. Go into crisis mode what happens? Every  man for himself. Even in the boundaries of a county it is that way. Isolation is much needed, but what about much needed resources? There is very little cooperation in fact there is much more bickering about what  the other guy is or is not doing. End result. Everyone develops their own tests and own procedures and own medicines and own vaccines with very little sharing. There is some, but of the $Ts being spent very little. And as for the third world? Tough that's their problem.
IMO the same thing will happen with AGW solutions. Every man for himself and as long as I am taken care of, and I had better be, who cares about anyone else?
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
       - Arthur Schopenhauer

blumenkraft

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #66 on: March 28, 2020, 05:22:50 PM »

be cause

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2441
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1012
  • Likes Given: 1034
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #67 on: March 28, 2020, 05:25:58 PM »
ah .. a general strike by the unemployed ?
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

blumenkraft

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #68 on: March 28, 2020, 05:33:45 PM »
hmmm...

gerontocrat

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 20378
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 5289
  • Likes Given: 69
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #69 on: March 28, 2020, 07:48:39 PM »
The lesson is that those who presume to govern us, a.k.a. "The Masters of the Universe" are determined to get back to BAU at any cost by any means.

The evidence for this abounds... e.g. A post from Sigmetnow on the oil & gas issues thread
Quote
EPA suspends enforcement of environmental laws amid coronavirus
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak.

The temporary policy, for which the EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of industries to skirt environmental laws, with the agency saying it will not “seek penalties for noncompliance with routine monitoring and reporting obligations.”

Cynthia Giles, who headed the EPA’s Office of Enforcement during the Obama administration, called it a moratorium on enforcing the nation's environmental laws and an abdication of the agency's duty.

“This EPA statement is essentially a nationwide waiver of environmental rules for the indefinite future. It tells companies across the country that they will not face enforcement even if they emit unlawful air and water pollution in violation of environmental laws, so long as they claim that those failures are in some way 'caused' by the virus pandemic. And it allows them an out on monitoring too, so we may never know how bad the violating pollution was,” she wrote in a statement to The Hill.

...
In a 10-page letter to the EPA earlier this week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) asked for a suspension of rules that require repairing leaky equipment as well as monitoring to make sure pollution doesn’t seep into nearby water. ...
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-suspends-enforcement-of-environmental-laws-amid-coronavirus
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

Human Habitat Index

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 464
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 51
  • Likes Given: 368
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #70 on: March 29, 2020, 09:02:49 AM »
Looking at the statistics, the lesson is if you are healthy you are unlikely to be affected.

Lesson for governments is to focus on wellness and preventative medicine emphasizing nutrition.
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer

Neven

  • Administrator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 9470
    • View Profile
    • Arctic Sea Ice Blog
  • Liked: 1333
  • Likes Given: 617
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #71 on: March 29, 2020, 04:53:59 PM »
Looking at the statistics, the lesson is if you are healthy you are unlikely to be affected.

Lesson for governments is to focus on wellness and preventative medicine emphasizing nutrition.

Finally, an interesting comment.
The enemy is within
Don't confuse me with him

E. Smith

oren

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 9805
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 3584
  • Likes Given: 3922
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #72 on: March 29, 2020, 05:12:12 PM »
Looking at the statistics, the lesson is if you are healthy you are unlikely to be affected.

Lesson for governments is to focus on wellness and preventative medicine emphasizing nutrition.
What are those statistics? What are the hospitalization rate and death rate for age under 50? Under 70?
In Israel at the moment 5% of the critical patients are people under 50 (one is 22) who have no previous health conditions.
As there are more young healthy people than sick old people, the hospitalization rate alone could overwhelm local healthcare systems.

Sigmetnow

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 25761
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1153
  • Likes Given: 430
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #73 on: March 29, 2020, 05:20:23 PM »
From March 25.  Apologies if it has already been posted; my searches didn’t turn it up.

How the Pandemic Will End
The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.
Ed Yong is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers science.
Quote
Three months ago, no one knew that SARS-CoV-2 existed. Now the virus has spread to almost every country, infecting at least 446,000 people whom we know about, and many more whom we do not. It has crashed economies and broken health-care systems, filled hospitals and emptied public spaces. It has separated people from their workplaces and their friends. It has disrupted modern society on a scale that most living people have never witnessed. Soon, most everyone in the United States will know someone who has been infected. Like World War II or the 9/11 attacks, this pandemic has already imprinted itself upon the nation’s psyche.

A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. “What if?” became “Now what?”

So, now what? In the late hours of last Wednesday, which now feels like the distant past, I was talking about the pandemic with a pregnant friend who was days away from her due date. We realized that her child might be one of the first of a new cohort who are born into a society profoundly altered by COVID-19. We decided to call them Generation C.

As we’ll see, Gen C’s lives will be shaped by the choices made in the coming weeks, and by the losses we suffer as a result. ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Sigmetnow

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 25761
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1153
  • Likes Given: 430
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #74 on: March 29, 2020, 05:44:07 PM »
Lessons... in math?  ;)

a2+b2=c2
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Neven

  • Administrator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 9470
    • View Profile
    • Arctic Sea Ice Blog
  • Liked: 1333
  • Likes Given: 617
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #75 on: March 29, 2020, 06:09:53 PM »
What are those statistics?

As kassy said in the other thread, 80% of all COVID-19 patients in Dutch ICUs are overweight. That's just an example.

Isn't it clear to you that in a society where a) there is minimal air pollution, b) people aren't made chronically addicted to tobacco and sugar, and c) food is minimally processed and tampered with, there is no chance that COVID-19 could have the impact it has now?

If you agree with this on principle, ask yourself the question: Why do we have the opposite of a), b) and c) in most of the western world? Make that all of the world. Why is that?

And does this have to change if we want true resilience to pandemics and other global problems, like AGW? Or do we just treat the symptoms (in COVID-19's case, mass production of medication, vaccines, ventilators, PPE, etc) and change nothing?

What lessons do we learn from this?
The enemy is within
Don't confuse me with him

E. Smith

TerryM

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6002
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 893
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #76 on: March 29, 2020, 06:26:43 PM »
^^
Do we know what % of middle aged Dutch are overweight?


Terry

blumenkraft

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #77 on: March 29, 2020, 07:09:00 PM »
Lessons... in math?  ;)

This is hilarious, actually!

NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #78 on: March 29, 2020, 07:26:25 PM »
What lessons do we learn from this?

If you want a), b) and c), you need less people in the world.  Those less people will consume less energy, less food and produce less waste and less emissions.

At the same time, there needs to be a more proactive approach to energy use, waste and balance in the 1st world.

Especially if many of those people wish to advance to a state the 1st world is in.

It is a multi sided equation.  Because if you don't balance it all the way, then you will simply be crushed by the other side of the equation.

However I tend to see only one side ever being addressed by the AGW lobby.  The non AGW lobby is aware that only one side is being addressed and resist.

Killing the argument.  It only gets real traction when there are climate disasters.

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 8234
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2041
  • Likes Given: 1986
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #79 on: March 29, 2020, 07:33:59 PM »
You could build cities and society differently.
We did not get here because we chose the best options for all of us.

And it is not like we are doing a great job in the first world with unsustainable soil and water management and rampant pollution problems. Those would bite eventually even if there was no AGW. It is very much the same problem.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Tom_Mazanec

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #80 on: March 29, 2020, 08:57:23 PM »
Neven:
It would still be pretty bad. Spanish flu happened before those problems. But those things don’t help.
I used to be obese, maybe morbidly. Now I am overweight and trying to get down to normal.

Sigmetnow

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 25761
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1153
  • Likes Given: 430
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #81 on: March 30, 2020, 02:59:44 AM »
Lessons: 
1) Believe experts.
2) Don’t lie.

Quote
Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) 3/29/20, 5:37 PM
"...I've been talking to Fox insiders over the last few days, there's a real concern inside the network that their early downplaying of the coronavirus actually exposes Fox News to potential legal action by viewers who maybe were misled. " —@gabrielsherman
https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1244378107286519814
Article below.

Quote
Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich)3/29/20, 5:46 PM
Fox is right to be concerned. Very concerned. This could be a legal bloodbath. Discovery will undoubtedly show that its personnel were putting out falsely comforting information it knew to be false and misleading in order to sync up with WH messaging.
https://twitter.com/mrbromwich/status/1244380474690220034


Fox News is worried about legal action after misleading viewers about coronavirus
Quote
…Fox News tried to do their original playbook, which was dismiss it as a hoax, say that this is another partisan attempt by Democrats to hurt Donald Trump, and this was the case where they could not prevent reality. Fox News is a very powerful media organization, but it cannot stop people from dropping dead. And what happened is that people did start dying. We did see hot spots in New York, on the West Coast and now we're seeing one in the deep South, which is getting closer to Trump country, and Fox News has had to pivot to actually cover this as a real story. ...
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-worried-about-legal-action-after-misleading-viewers-about-coronavirus
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Sigmetnow

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 25761
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1153
  • Likes Given: 430
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #82 on: March 30, 2020, 04:07:31 AM »
Lesson: our cultural habits spread germs.  Germaphobes have it right.

Mythbusters Contamination


People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

The Walrus

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 2827
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 149
  • Likes Given: 484
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #83 on: March 30, 2020, 05:40:43 AM »
Other news outlets were not so clear either.  Politico was pushing the fake hoax scenario.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/28/trump-south-carolina-rally-coronavirus-118269

CBS posted a false story about Trump telling people with the virus to go to work.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-coronavirus-comments-suggesting-people-go-to-work/


NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #84 on: March 30, 2020, 11:40:09 AM »
I'm not saying we are doing a great job, for the liveable biosphere we are doing a crap job.  But constantly addressing only one part of it gives an out for those who want to do nothing.

The world, in general, learned virtually nothing from SARS and MERS. But some did, like China and South Korea.  Both addressed it in slightly different ways but the underlying tool was the same. They removed some freedoms in order to get the job done.

Now let's apply that to AGW.

Only when millions are at risk in the next few months is it acceptable to remove freedoms and take dramatic action.

In terms of AGW, that is 50 years too late.  Or even 100 years.  Years which can never be recovered in terms of human timescales.

Are we sure we want to apply Covid-19 disaster regime to AGW? Personally I would have thought we needed far more proactive measures.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

Neven

  • Administrator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 9470
    • View Profile
    • Arctic Sea Ice Blog
  • Liked: 1333
  • Likes Given: 617
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #85 on: March 30, 2020, 12:13:23 PM »
What lessons do we learn from this?

If you want a), b) and c), you need less people in the world.  Those less people will consume less energy, less food and produce less waste and less emissions.

The system requires, no, demands more consumers, and growing consumption rates. Why is that?
The enemy is within
Don't confuse me with him

E. Smith

Aporia_filia

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 172
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 109
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #86 on: March 30, 2020, 12:41:37 PM »
From the point of view of a non human member of the biosphere, these are the lessons of a David vs. Goliath story.
The biosphere is happy because its tricks to keep the wonderful homeostasis between the different members of its community are still working (apparently).
As any other plague, our huge and extremely successful population boom is the main reason for our demise.
If humans can not understand and learn and apply this knowledge there's no future for us.
My little thoughts.

nanning

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2487
  • 0Kg CO₂, 37 KWh/wk,125L H₂O/wk, No offspring
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 273
  • Likes Given: 23170
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #87 on: March 30, 2020, 03:09:10 PM »
^^
"The biosphere is happy"

Is that really what you think? I find it absurdly wrong.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

SimonF92

  • Grease ice
  • Posts: 592
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 210
  • Likes Given: 87
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #88 on: March 30, 2020, 03:16:34 PM »
This made me do a sad-smile when i saw it
Bunch of small python Arctic Apps:
https://github.com/SimonF92/Arctic

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 8234
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2041
  • Likes Given: 1986
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #89 on: March 30, 2020, 03:32:05 PM »
Very on point.

I don´t think anyone suggests a ´Covid-19 disaster regime´ for AGW.

It´s more like learning from the mistakes.

This is a relatively simple problem.

After it was clear the was a new SARS variant arguably we could all have gone for the best practices. This includes more testing then was done but also realizing that in the current set up this still was likely to fail.

Next step would be to educate the public. Possibly tell everyone to wear a mask (to lessen the spread of what you for whatever cough or sneeze up).

The countries that did rather well are those who knew the reality of SARS like outbreaks. Here in the west many just did not see it coming. Ideally governments have someone looking at the near and further future but the focus is very much on the economy and that not even in a good way like investing in science needed for renewables because that is knowledge we can use in the future but just looking at another corporate handouts and some social programs to gut.

One problem is that the fight for old basic rights has long been resolved so most people have never been on the barricades and they take everything for granted. By and large the public has been educated to be uncritical consumers.

Our elections boil down to simple choices and hardly any debate is technical because that is boring.

So we pick someone because we lake him more or he is alarmed by the same things or whatever.

Meanwhile big business has all these lobbyists directly working to change laws to their benefit and that is usually not the benefit of us all. And off course there are these revolving doors like Wall Street - Washington and back.

We should recognize that we have only one planet and thus we have to live within our means.

When we know that agriculture is not sustainable we have to make it sustainable.
When we know we are mismanaging water we have to fix that.
When we have rampant chemical and plastic pollution we have to fix that.

And with all the tipping points you really want to control the carbon problem before it gets out of hand.

In the Netherlands we had a lot of discussion and farmer protests related to the nitrogen problem. No one adresses the wider issue. They might not like the limits imposed by the nitrogen laws but if your soil runs out in 30 years then you don´t really have a farm to pass on.

We are ignoring so many problems and many will hit at once.

The main thing is to take down concentrated wealth not just for the money but also to break down monocultures which make us a lot more vulnerable. We need all the variety we can keep so changing the system to promote small scale sustainable farming.

But mostly just start doing something.
Going by the principle that you cannot cheat physics so no book keeping tricks.
Absolute budget absolute goals.

Also simple goals like what does it look like in 20 (or whatever) years and can you live in that?

We can learn that ignoring real problems leads to more really big real problems that we have trouble handling hence prevent what you know we must prevent but of course the people deciding on those things are in a totally different bubble.

Maybe the lesson is not to ask what the world can do for you but what you can do for the world.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Aporia_filia

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 172
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 109
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #90 on: March 30, 2020, 09:53:28 PM »
Nanning, plants and animals know nothing about covid, although they notice less noise, pollution and human pressure. I guess they like this, don't you think? Saying the biosphere is happy is a way of pointing this.

Archimid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 3511
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 899
  • Likes Given: 206
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #91 on: March 30, 2020, 10:21:23 PM »
This made me do a sad-smile when i saw it

That image is worth a thousand words.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

bluice

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #92 on: March 31, 2020, 10:17:26 AM »
We can learn that ignoring real problems leads to more really big real problems that we have trouble handling
That is the most important point regarding AGW. We can twist and turn and negotiate and politicize all we like but unless emissions go down the climate will hit us in the face with an iron fist. You cannot make compromises with climate just as you cannot make compromises with a virus. Ignoring reality is not a strategy.

Now we have also seen how fast things can change. What was inconceivable a month ago is now everyday life in large parts of the world.

NeilT

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6275
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 386
  • Likes Given: 22
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #93 on: March 31, 2020, 05:34:01 PM »

The system requires, no, demands more consumers, and growing consumption rates. Why is that?

Because it was put in place after WW2 to give US industries, which had boomed during the war, somewhere to push their goods to.  To ensure that the end of the war did not wind up with an inevitable depression.

It was sound at the time but nobody expected that the whole wold would become invested in a short term "fix" solution.

It continues to exist today and shouting "the king has no clothes", whilst ignoring why it has continued in the way it has and also all angles of the situation, is more likely to get the little boy stoned than for the people to suddenly wake up and realise the situation is unsustainable.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

Robert A. Heinlein

LRC1962

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 446
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 11
  • Likes Given: 3
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #94 on: March 31, 2020, 07:53:09 PM »
IPCC 5 and Paris can be placed in the trash bin. At least in the short term most environmental concerns worldwide are going to be ignored all in the interest of generating maximum number of jobs and profits at all costs.
Looking at https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/13/a-closer-look-at-scenario-rcp8-5/ I do not think we will see 8.5, but 2.6 was hopeless before Covid now there is no chance and you will see a very fast upturn in CO2 once Covid is stabilized. Where we are heading. I do not know, but based on what is occurring with governments reaction to Covid? It will only be until after extreme crisis is already on us that any action will be taken and we all know that will be far to late to just mitigate the disaster we will be facing.
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
       - Arthur Schopenhauer

Tom_Mazanec

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #95 on: March 31, 2020, 11:12:23 PM »
I am just sad I will not live to see that crisis change things, LRC1962. At least I would have the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.”.

blumenkraft

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #96 on: April 01, 2020, 12:00:49 PM »
Don't let a good crisis go to waste.


TerryM

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6002
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 893
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #97 on: April 01, 2020, 08:40:52 PM »
Everything became chaotic due to CV19.
Those with the best paid lobbyists will make the rules and decide who receives bailouts paid for primarily with dollars backed by the myth that the US will somehow at sometime repay its debt.


I don't imagine that those that have invested so heavily in politicians have our interests in mind. I fear that the Pre-Pandemic Era will be remembered as "The Good Old Days". An era when we somehow believed that those in power cared about our needs, our demands.


Best of luck to all, but I can't imagine this working out well for anyone not presently near the very apex of the elite.
Terry

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 8234
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2041
  • Likes Given: 1986
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #98 on: April 01, 2020, 10:39:04 PM »
I fear that the Pre-Pandemic Era will be remembered as "The Good Old Days". An era when we somehow believed that those in power cared about our needs, our demands.

If you still believed that in 2020 or even the last decade you were not paying attention. See all anti-science anti-people pro-business decisions by the current government or TARP etc before. Or the whole general set up on health care and wellfare. See Inequality thread for some nice examples.

In general lets be critical of what our governments do now as we need to anyway but of course there is quite a difference between lets say Europe and the USA. Basically the US population should be unhappy with all kind of measures but we either hear nothing about it (well some minor articles about organisations fighting things in court) but for some reason nothing much gets the public moving. All to busy surviving i guess.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

Pmt111500

  • Guest
Re: Lessons from COVID-19
« Reply #99 on: April 02, 2020, 05:19:11 AM »
"If you still believed that in 2020 or even the last decade you were not paying attention. See all anti-science anti-people pro-business decisions by the current government or TARP etc before. Or the whole general set up on health care and wellfare. See Inequality thread for some nice examples."

Agree wholeheartedly here, the last "Good Old Day" was December 11th in 2000. (Yes, had to check the date of suspension of Florida recount). After that the US has not based it's policies in reality. No doubt their odd election system has skewed results even before that.  (Now they have a reverse compass needle as El Prez, while Obama said :we cannot know which end of the compass needle is the right one.' sorry frustration speaking.)
« Last Edit: April 02, 2020, 05:39:22 AM by Pmt111500 »