
The most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria - lcaff
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-most-dangerous-thing-about-coronavirus-is-the-hysteria/
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lolc
This article makes me angry because it doesn't consider the effects of Cov2
going pandemic. It could become another seasonal flu and kill people like the
current flu kills people. It would add to the deaths.

Having just suffered through a flu infection, I absolutely don't want another
strain in the wild.

Granted, that is assuming that Cov2 proves as resilient as Influenza. Maybe it
will just flounder coming summer and be extinct by next winter. But it's not
something we want to find out the hard way. We fight it now and if it turns
out weaker than expected that's good!

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stevens32
> It could become another seasonal flu and kill people like the current flu
> kills people. It would add to the deaths.

This is bad, but 'another seasonal flu' is not dominating the news day and
night. Governments aren't preventing people from doing business with, and
traveling to countries due to the seasonal flu. Seasonal flu isn't giving
closet racists license to come out of the closet. Maybe you're lucky and have
missed all the "they deserve it" comments, but the truth is if this originated
in any other country this wouldn't be getting the coverage it's been getting.

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SpicyLemonZest
I simply don't believe that closet racists are coming out of the closet. It
seems to me that open racists are just saying "haha coronavirus" instead of
whatever they were saying before.

Governments don't block travel due to the seasonal flu only because they know
the seasonal flu is unstoppable. If the seasonal flu could be kept out of your
country by closing borders for a month or two, I think a lot of governments
would do it.

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stevens32
I debated bursting your bubble on this, because I would like to get back into
the bubble - but in case others find this and aren't aware:
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/JeNeSuisPasUnVirus](https://twitter.com/hashtag/JeNeSuisPasUnVirus)

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SpicyLemonZest
I don't really know how to interpret this. The first example I saw in English
(I had to skip past some because I can't read French) was some guy beating up
an Asian woman. I find it pretty implausible that guy's racism was closeted
beforehand.

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JoeAltmaier
No, its probably the 14% death rate among the elderly and lung-compromised.

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jmnicolas
If the virus was so benign then why the Chinese authorities put half the
country in quarantine ?

There are about 80k confirmed cases around the world, but since this thing can
be asymptomatic for weeks and hospitals don't have the resources to test
everybody there are probably many many more unknown cases.

And let's not speak about the trustworthiness of Chinese gov stats.

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SpicyLemonZest
I can’t defend the article. But it seems hard to maintain a perspective where
we distrust China’s case statistics but trust that they reacted correctly and
proportionately to the real scenario.

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nexuist
How so? "Watch what they do; not what they say." If your boss says the project
is on track but refuses to let anyone take a sick day, you would think there's
more to the story too.

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roflchoppa2
look dude i just wanna work from home, traffic in the bay area sucks, if i
have to pretend I'm scared of some Wuhan Coronavirus ill do it.

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brnt
What hysteria is that exactly? Arent easy to implement countermeasures such as
avoiding crowds if you can and coughing in your arm and washing your hands
more regularly good things without any downsides?

Calling everyone thinking of how to keep virus-free hysteric is hysteric.

