Coronavirus - International stories and thoughts

Obviously it's asinine to think the "sustainable" population could only be 10% of the current population.

I'm sure it would be higher than today, and most likely by quite a bit *if* we manage the greenhouse gas problem (big if though). Otherwise the market force of "mother nature" will probably dictate other outcomes for humanity eventually. I doubt this coronavirus has anything to do with that, sounds like this may be more of a fluke development due to some curious tastes/excesses of exotic game in these Chinese markets. But then again, a "fluke" (man-made or otherwise) is likely the biggest threat to survival (along with the obvious other doomsday scenarios, like nuclear war or an asteroid). If not a disease, I'm thinking at some point a scientist will accidentally create a black hole which simply consumes all types of matter on earth.

 

it goes well beyond greenhouse gases or markets, we are using 30 percent more natural resources than the earth can regenerate each year. We are essentially stripping the earth bare already.

The Earth is exhausted - we're using up its resources faster than it can provide | DW | 01.08.2017

the extinction rate is 1000 times higher than ore human days, and headed towards 10,000.

Current Extinction Rate 10 Times Worse Than Previously Thought

There are too many of us, but no plausible way to reverse the trend other than to hope that long term demographics change, man becomes even more evil and fixes it through war, or nature takes care of it, and we spend generations and generations fixing the mess we made.

 

given the sparseness in the stands at Miami and FSU, their football games are in no danger of being cancelled

 

Mother Nature will balance out the population. You can be sure of that.

 

There are already rumblings of this virus being some sort of bio weapon.


Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag

 

Does that stuff take hold in far east Asians more easily than other races? Some people are claiming that but I don't know if it's true or not.

 

It just wouldn’t be a major world event without a silly conspiracy theory. It’s almost like that’s how you know it’s something big.

 

I have to agree with oragator1. Give it another couple of months before freaking out folks. That's when you either have 1 out of 12 sick globally with a 25 to 30% mortality rate or it burned itself out.

You really want to get freaked out, watch Contagion. It came out in 2011 and has 5 or 6 big actors in it but this virus is following the script almost exactly. In the movie, the wife of Damon goes to China on a business trip and she is Patient Zero. You have to wait to the end of the movie before they show a clip of how she got sick. She flies back to Chicago and has a quickie with another guy before returning home. By then, many have died. I think Day 26 was when the end of the movie occurred with the virus infecting 1 out of every 12 people globally and 25 to 30% of them dying. Do the math and worst case, 180,000,000 dead world-wide or 2.5% of the population. By comparison, the Spanish Flu killed roughly 3% of the global population.

 

Well, it's China, a super-repressive regime with a population problem. It's not like they haven't instituted population control measures in the past that we actually already know about. I agree though, still seems far-fetched.

 

I am fortunate to have visited the monument myself.
Personally speaking I find the message inspiring and reasonable.
Of course the 500 million number is representative of a post apocalyptic number.

Not surprised by the defacement, especially in the deep south of Georgia.
Performed, no doubt, by that very virulent and "disgusting" sect of Christians that represents intolerance - runs all the way back to the Roman Empire and still exists today. We know the type, destroyers of the Alexandrian Library, Crusaders, participants of "Pogroms" that continue to this day, murders of Dr's practicing reproductive rights and of course one of my favorites, Westboro Baptist, lets not forget the legion of pedophile Catholic Priests, raping children in the name of Jesus.

Fanatics and a stain not only on our country but the human race itself.

 

I don't think it would have been intentionally released as a population control measure. If it was man-made, it would be more likely that it was made as a biological weapon and accidentally released due to sloppiness on the part of researchers or technicians. There was a rumor that Wuhan had a biological research lab of some sort.

China does not want to reduce its population, especially not its youngest citizens. China reversed its one-child policy recently so that it could have enough new factory workers to maintain its growing economy. Why would they do that if they wanted to reduce population?

 

to further your last sentence and to quote war games, “but does it make any sense?”

first a virus by its nature can’t be controlled, so there is a chance it mutates and the numbers skyrocket.
And it kills the sick and old, who aren’t the population problem anyway, to slow population growth you need to eliminate people in breeding age.
But the most important and obvious fact is that it is being typed by every agency on the planet, if it were man made we would hear it being screamed from the rooftops by someone credible already. It would represent an existential threat to the status quo of the entire planet.

 

Well China is about to have a huge older population issue. I guess this stuff would be more likely to kill elderly people.

 

Numbers still rising.
Coronavirus: China reports 45 more deaths, 2,590 new cases in outbreak

 

Why would China have an "older population issue"? The Chinese government has made no commitment to financially help their elder citizens, and their citizens do not expect this help as they age. Older Chinese become very thrifty, and many rely on their child and extended family for financial support. Some keep working into their 70's and 80's, if their health allows it. There is no assumption of a soft, cushy retirement for 99% of the population.

On the other hand, if it got out that the Chinese government was killing off grandparents in massive numbers for any reason, the government would lose what little legitimacy it has and the rebellion would begin. No dictatorship-style government wants a rebellion. That is why China takes protests so seriously, and that is why China has 2 million people monitoring what Chinese people say on the internet.

 

So China weaponized a biological pathogen and unleashed it on its own population? Uhhuh ...... SMH

 

Yahoo article just came out indicating some epidemiologists believe 75,800
infected in China

 

Chinese elderly are respected and cared for by their children and grandchildren. The one child policy that was rescinded a few years ago had unforeseen effects that resulted in more boys being born than girls. Chinese parents tended to abort their female children, preferring to raise boys. They believed sons would provide them better care in their old age than would a daughter. This was due to daughters marrying and joining the household of their husbands, resulting in the neglect or short changing of the parents of married daughters.

How the elderly are treated around the world
A new "Elderly Rights Law" passed in China wags a finger at adult children, warning them to "never neglect or snub elderly people" and mandating that they visit their elderly parents often, regardless of how far away they live. The law includes enforcement mechanisms, too: Offspring who fail to make such trips to mom and dad face potential punishment ranging from fines to jail time.

If the Elderly Rights Law is any indication, Chinese parent-child relationships have become a bit complicated lately. Eastern cultures like China's adhere to the Confucian tradition of "filial piety," which prioritizes the family unit and values elders with the utmost respect. But China's rapid industrialization has forced people to flock to urban areas for work, causing many adult children to move farther away from their parents, who often remain in rural areas and are unfit to pick up and move.

How cultures view and treat their elderly is closely linked to their most prized values and traits. Here, a sampling of the experience of aging in different cultures around the world:
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Another unintended consequence was the glaring shortage of marriageable young women when this wave of young Chinese men was ready to settle down.

China's Growing Problem Of Too Many Single Men

China's Growing Problem Of Too Many Single Men

Yet, for all these colossal national challenges, Eberstadt’s essay adds one more demographic trend unique to China that will have significant social and cultural implications:

“…China will face a growing number of young men who will never marry due to the country’s one-child policy, which has resulted in a reported birth ratio of almost 120 boys for every 100 girls…By 2030, projections suggest that more than 25% of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married. The coming marriage squeeze will likely be even more acute in the Chinese countryside, since the poor, uneducated and rural population will be more likely to lose out in the competition for brides.”

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The imbalance has created monumental demographic complications. Here's one:

Anger and Frustration

The prospect of never finding a life partner can be one of the greatest fears in a person’s life. In a culture like China’s, where the mainstream societal expectation continues to put heavy emphasis on progeny, family network strength and family unit establishment as a benefit to status-building, for these one in four adult Chinese males, being single adds extra dimensions of undesirability. Deep personal anger and frustrations must inevitably be a byproduct of these societal pressures.

If these single men will be found predominantly in a single demographic–namely rural, poor and uneducated men–what we might see is the emergence of a distinct subgroup of people, or a new class segregation. An entire class of potentially angry, frustrated, relatively poor and uneducated single men can mean serious threats to societal stability, if this group builds a class identity that feels antagonized by society as a whole. China’s history is full of examples when a group lashes out in defiance and/or violence. This potential new class of single, frustrated men will number in the tens of millions in 2030.

 

Video from inside a Wuhan hospital. Nine dead in just the one video.

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