The next outbreak? We're not ready. Ted talk by Bill Gates (2015)
ted.com
ted.com
By marking it as a duplicate, you just killed this new thread.
When a discussion is particularly good, we sometimes override that. This one seems pretty generic to me, though, especially in light of how many coronavirus threads HN has been seeing. I'm not sure there's even a single comment below that is reacting to more than what's in the title: "outbreak", "not ready", and "Bill Gates".
10 days ago, the number of cases were small and there was no lock down. Many people did not consider Corvid-19's real impact. Now that most of the country is taking it seriously, it is more top of mind.
10 days ago, Corvid-19 posts were barely considered here on HN. Now many are generating serious discussions.
Please reconsider marking this as a dupe.
We aren't even learning now, even after it was obvious Italy needed to lock down more, the US still wasn't taking it seriously. I listened last night to my city council argue that it was still no big deal. Two members, a doctor and scientist said we needed to shut down the city, and everyone else arguing it would destroy small businesses and it wasn't that big a deal to anyone but the elderly.
We just don't learn.
I watched the news this morning and the broadcasters were panicked at a level I haven’t seen since 3/11. No meaningful measure have been put in place to curb the spread of the disease or strengthen healthcare infrastructure in Japan.
But Aso Taro, a leading politician of the ruling LDP, did announce his major response initiative: giving out certificates for Wagyu beef.
Also, the whole "young people and what not are at low risk" is anecdotal. We have no clue what the longterm, and passive ramifications of this virus are.
So yes, they are low risk because they get priority in the hospitals. But when the hospital is full, what will happen to them?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-young-...
For more accurate data, 0 deaths have occurred in Italy for those under 30. Under 40, the few (9) are due to severe pre-existing conditions. Median age for fatality is 80 years old.
The exponential curve not only applies for rate of infection but seems to be holding true for age as well.
Edit: Source for Italy data here - https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Infograf...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/3...
Here is part of the problem: hospitalization and ICU don't necessarily mean the patient will die as long as we have the resources to hospitalize, intubate and medicate the patient.
Once we are out of respirators and the like, then the death rate with these patients will spike.
In Italy, we are seeing younger patients face graver conditions over time as the medical system gets overrun. [citation needed if someone help me dig one up? I can't remember where I read this]
this could be for a number of reasons though:
1. younger people feel invulnerable and go out more
2. underlying conditions in these people x a large population
3. overwhelmed hospitals
Likely, some combination of the above.
1. "Seeing younger patients facing graver conditions" - are we seeing excess mortality rates amongst the younger population in Italy as we speak (compared to say this time last year)?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/not-just-older-pe...
The virus grows fast so the question is what % of people of a particular category who have it will need an ICU/hospital to prevent their death.
The actual report says that people under 19 comprise 2% of hospitalizations -- I doubt it suddenly jumps to 38% for the next 5 years. It also says there are no known fatalities of people under 19.
For example, all businesses with more than one person or with customer contact (including not-quite-employment situations like UPS or ride sharing) should take everyone’s temperature every day. Feverish or otherwise sick employees should be sent some, with pay, and there should be very strong disincentives for managers to encourage their employees to pretend to be healthy.
For another example, everyone on public transit or otherwise in a crowded place should wear a mask. If a real surgical mask is not available, a couple of layers of fabric should still help.
(Also, there wasn’t really any research needed to vaccinate against H1N1. It was just a matter of production. On the flip side, the flu mutates very quickly to evade immunity, whereas coronaviruses seem to mutate very very slowly. A COVID-19 vaccine that works* seems likely to provide protection essentially forever.)
* Early indications were that the obvious vaccine design for SARS made the disease worse, not better. That’s why we haven’t seen much excitement about inactivated COVID-19 vaccines.
- Canada: 250
- US: 27
- Germany: 9
Areas affected by SARS instituted targeted quarantines after detection and were able to contain the virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea...
H1N1 was much less deadly than Covid-19 and spread less quickly. There were only ~18K confirmed deaths worldwide. (The estimated number of deaths was much higher at 150-600K. Basically, we confirmed it was less deadly than the seasonal flu so we didn't test everyone for it.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic
People are freaking out about Covid-19 because it spreads faster and is already stressing hospitals. Deaths and cases double every 2-3 days absent control measures. It can take 2 weeks to cause symptoms, so even if everything gets shut down now, we could have 25x as many hospitalizations/deaths than today. If smaller control measures aren't as effective, it'd take time to confirm and the peak would be multiples higher. H1N1 spread much slower so we could have responded much more leisurely if things started to go out of control.
Economies and markets are a tool used by human's to achieve goals(ideally better quality of life), they are not the goal itself.
If an economy's purpose is to sustain humans, then letting it crash and burn puts those humans at risk.
It's a balancing act. We just can't forget that too much economic destruction will cost lives as well.
How much actual value(quality of life) is really being generated here? How much of it is hype, bandwagons, and charades? How sustainable is it and what safety nets are available when the bottom falls out? During this time you also think about how many people are telecommuting effectively right now, and how much downtown economies and real estate relies on everyone getting in their car, or on a bus/train going downtown each morning, and then the knock on effects this has on the environment.
A lot of people don't want to hear pessimism or realism, they want to see growth, growth and growth. Growth at all other costs can still result in the side effect of quality of life improvements, but unlimited economic growth has not been sustainable, and we've had quite a few boom and bust cycles the last 2 decades now. If you're designing the economy to continually boom & bust, it's hard not to expect eventual economic destruction. It's not a matter of "not letting it happen", it's a matter of that's how it's been designed. It's what it does.
It's almost as if people don't realise economies are reliant on people to contribute to them. You infect half the population you're going to have the same effect regardless. Only this way, we might not end up killing millions unnecessarily.
If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say.
EDIT: All complex decisions involve trade-offs. Right now, there's at least a few dozen more likely ways that people will die other than COVID-19. Heart disease, cancer, car accidents, even seasonal flu currently has a higher death count. You cannot lock down the economy for months on end, ratchet up unemployment to 30%+, and continue to feed people and keep their housing and shelter paid for. People's lives and livelihoods depend on the economy staying functional and healthy. It's not trivial. You have to find some way of moving forward without locking down all 320 million people. Maybe you look at areas of outbreak and you quarantine those areas on a piecewise basis. You ramp up testing, you use masks in public, you do something pro-active to keep the economy going. You provide assistance to those that are at high risk, but you let low risk individuals get back to work and keep the economy moving. The food you eat. The healthcare services you depend on. The military. The semi-truck drivers delivering products and services. The aircraft to transport products and people. All of that depends on the economy working.
Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
If you really think that the economic effects outweigh the loss of life this virus can and will cause, all I can do is be glad that all you have is your ability to express your opinion, not the ability to do anything about it. Thank god for that.
Finally, and yes I'm quoting myself here "If you do not have another solution that keeps people alive, kindly be quiet; you have nothing important to say."
> Kindly keep the nasty comments about trying to dissuade me from discussing these important topics to yourself.
This is absurd; you're responding to me. And this isn't a discussion, these are opinions, with no facts to back them up. I simply find these opinions disgusting, as they do not prioritize keeping people healthy and alive.
1. There are 20-50 year olds with pre-existing conditions such as asthma who are at higher risk. For example, a colleague on my team has asthma. Another colleague on my team has a husband who has asthma. As a Manager, I can't ask either of them to come into work.
2. What about 20-50 year olds who come in contact with 50+ year old or live together with them? They may be at low risk, but they will definitely spread the virus around more
It becomes quite complicated dealing with these things on a case by case basis.
Not low risk of getting hospitalized and having permanent or long-lasting lung damaged. Do you want compromised breathing for the next 5 years?
The problem is that they are right with this. Shutting down the city will probably destroy small businesses. Those same people also can't do much to help small businesses. It is understandable that they don't want to sentence these businesses to death when they are powerless to save them. This is why the relative inaction by the federal government is such a problem here. They are the only entity that has the power to stop the wide spread of the virus and absorb the economic repercussions of the shutdown.
EDIT: This is being downvoted, so let me make a clarification that I am explaining the government's potential reasoning but I am not excusing or agreeing with it.
Spain's hospitals are collapsing, sick people are now laid on the ground, they are improvising by making new beds in expo halls, etc. It's not just Italy now, we're seeing how bad it gets and it only takes another week or two for the rest of the world.
In this case, I propose that a better definition of the problem is: people disagree on which variable to optimize.
But neurotypicals don't think in terms of "optimizing a variable" (precise, logical thinking), for a given set of variables. Rather, they think in terms of what is "the right thing to do" (fuzzy, heuristic-based thinking), in a given situation.
System 1 vs System 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...
Everyone "thinks" (see: recursion) they think in System 2 (conscious, logical), because this is what we perceive, in infinitely high resolution - it seems like what we think and believe is purely the result of disciplined, rational thought, but it is not. Not even close. And it's not just those who are less intellectually capable than us....it's all of us.
Now, it is obvious of course that the degree to which each individual person suffers from this will vary significantly. If we had a means of measuring this, this would give us a metric of the variance of this phenomenon between people at the personal population level. I would call this the relative variance of X.
But there's another metric that is far less obvious: the ~absolute variance - this metric compares variance not between the peoples of Earth, but between them and a purely rational, emotion-free actor.
It seems to me that the second metric would be an extremely interesting thing to know, and perhaps extremely useful. But alas, we have no data source. I wonder though: might there be a way to come up with an estimate that is plausibly accurate?
I guess it's been a while since we've eaten the rich. It was a long time coming.
The United States is run by a landlord and all his power comes from workers servicing his debts.
Still, a stronger argument is that a bank is a business overall. They live out of debt. That kind of hit could also kill the bank I believe.
David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years details the cyclic history of such things.
Some of the more savvy Haves, like Mitt Romney, recognize the current threat to the status quo and have made their opening bids on negotiating an armistice with the Have-Nots.
Others, on both sides, are less willing to haggle.
It's not a naive question. Unfortunately I don't think the answer is going to be palatable.
I don't see why we couldn't do a mandatory social distancing & mask law (even an improvised one) and let people otherwise go about their business. It would help lessen the impact to businesses, and arguably could result in significant reduction in the transmission rate.
First off, social distancing is a risk mitigation strategy for droplet transmission. The idea is to provide sufficient distance between people and a cough or sneeze that a large fraction of the droplets settle before they could end up in someone's eyes/mouth/nose/next inhaled breath. Briefly invading someone's 2-3m bubble while accidentally bumping into them or walking past them really carries very little risk of exposure. It's more relevant to having a conversation with someone, particularly when indoors.
Whether or not aerosols play a major role in transmission remains to be seen, but we know that the virus can survive in aerosols for hours, and aerosols can remain suspended in the air for a very long time. (That's where N95's may become more relevant, but pathogens that have a dominant aerosol transmission are rare. Things like TB and measles behave that way. SARS-CoV-2 would probably have a high R0 if it were dominantly transmitted this way.)
Now, the statement "only N95 masks are effective to prevent transmission" is just false in several different ways:
First, when worn by healthcare workers, there is no significant difference between surgical masks and N95 respirators in preventing respiratory infections.[1][2] To quote the meta-analysis study[1]:
>"We identified 6 clinical studies (3 RCTs, 1 cohort study and 2 case–control studies) and 23 surrogate exposure studies. In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection (RCTs: odds ratio [OR] 0.89, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.64–1.24; cohort study: OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.03–6.41; case–control studies: OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.25–3.36); (b) influenza-like illness (RCTs: OR 0.51, 95% CI 0.19–1.41); or (c) reported workplace absenteeism (RCT: OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.57–1.50). In the surrogate exposure studies, N95 respirators were associated with less filter penetration, less face-seal leakage and less total inward leakage under laboratory experimental conditions, compared with surgical masks."
Next, let's look specifically at surgical masks when worn by the public in the case of SARS-CoV-1 in the following study[3]:
>We also used this investigation to quantify the impact of behaviors (i.e., mask wearing, handwashing) that were promoted to reduce the risk for SARS. Wearing masks outside the home in a reference period corresponding to the 2 weeks before symptom onset for cases was significantly protective against clinical SARS. Supporting the validity of this finding, there was a dose-response effect: by multivariable analysis, persons who always wore masks had a 70% lower risk of being diagnosed with clinical SARS compared with those who never wore masks, and persons with intermittent mask use had a 60% lower risk. Many persons who wore masks in the community did not use N-95 or similar highly efficient filtration devices, which have been recommended for use in the hospital setting.
And finally, the above doesn't even address the fact that mask protections work BOTH WAYS. It has also been shown[4] that masks when worn by infected individuals help prevent the dissemination of infectious droplets and aerosols, and reduces the rate of viral shedding. To quote that study, specifically on placing surgical masks on the infected: >"Overall, masks produced a 3.4 fold (95% CI 1.8 to 6.3) reduction in viral aerosol shedding."
Finally, there's evidence that even homemade improvised masks work surprisingly well! They perform only marginally worse than surgical masks in particle filtration tests.[5][6] (Remember how surgical masks, which perform worse than N95's in those same type of tests, showed no significant difference in their ability to prevent illness?) To quote the conclusion of study[6]:
>"Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission."
TL;DR In short, if everyone in public wore masks, it would not only be definitively protective for the wearer, but for those around them as well.
[1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868605/)
[2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779801/)
[3](https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/2/03-0730_article)
[4](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3591312/)
[5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258525804_Testing_t...)
Reopening quickly NOW would mean: - The collapse of the hospital systems of ANY country currently on earth (save a few that are actually working for the people, not to make profit) - The endangering of many, if not all medical professionals - A huge reduction of workforce realistically, because there will be many people sick for multiple weaks, prepare to lose 5-10 percent of your FULL workforce if the hospitals are overloaded.
So if the shutdown is not implemented, and not followed through, the economy will STILL collapse, and the consequences will be 3-4 times more deadly to the whole population.
The only upside to the global epidemic is that finally the neoliberal haegemony is ending, and libertarian dreamers who were not facing tough situations before can actually see where their favorite policies lead in the actual real world.
And we all will see it, because the inertia in the system will keep forcing politicians all over the world to ignore basic rules of society in favor of chasing a dream (some GDP growth preservation).
We can all see it clearly if we take the time to think it through. You have a bellyache. You want to eat cake. You can either not eat it, or you can eat it, vomit it out, go to the hospital, and still not feel well. Oh, and the hospitals are overloaded with COVID-patients.
I'm working on a joke and only have the punchline: "Western Democracy with Chinese Communist Party Characteristics".
You can lock down, you can isolate... destiny still arrives.
Competitive Schadenfreude.
The Panicked Middle leans heavily towards the Apocalyptic Left.
Stay off the political drugs. They're not good for you.
I sincerely hope that one of the side effects of this crisis would be more acceptance towards science.
It's literally all they do anymore and I just can't imagine living my life so negatively.
We'll get through this, regardless. Plenty of brilliant minds coming to the fore right now.
When the going gets though, the tough get going. This is really what you will see in the near future.
Unfortunately _that_ seems to be off the table. So what if the counterparty wants to taunt them a little? Maybe it's rude but at least they're not killing people.
I don't think any group in this country is mature enough not to operate with pride at all, but it's amazing how far some people will go to avoid admitting fault.
I am sympathetic to why nothing changed and no one listened. good risk management shows up as nothing bad happening. Heroes who avert disaster don’t get statues.
Want strong civil defense? Look at Switzerland.
Most people do not include counter-factuals in their thought process. I would go further and propose that not only do most people not even know what counter-factuals are, but many of them would be extremely psychologically resistant to the very idea.
A similar example of this is: go into a forum, find someone who is predicting the future, point out to them that they are predicting the future, and observe the result. Now do this 100 or 1000 times and keep track of your results.
"But this is just people being stupid!"
I disagree. Yes, it is indeed people being stupid....but is it "just" that?
Plus, the idea that our elected officials let people die in some sort of racket to prove their use is more reason to boot them out of office than a peaceful term.
There's just no "right diet" if you want to avoid disease mutation. Mad Cow Disease, Salmonella, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, all of those and more have (and continue to) cross-infect our species from standard western diets. Several major western religions ban pork for "uncleanliness"/prone-to-disease, for what were once very good historical reasons.
Even if this virus did have something to do with diet, the only rational response is to cut way back on all meat, not just "weird" meat to a Western view, because it isn't just "rodents" or "ugly animals" that mutate these sorts of virus, because we've seen it with pigs, chickens, cows, etc. Probably no one wants mandatory veganism, but that's nearly the only "safe" option if you want to demand we track regional diets. (Even then you get things like salmonella cross-infections from fertilizers used in vegetable farming. There's no 100% safe diet. Life, uh, finds a way.)
I have a hard time seeing a different outcome if a virus of similar potency came out of Africa or somewhere else, based solely on how poorly leaders from around the world have responded to it.
Authoritarian structures generally excel when you need a lot of people to do a lot of the same thing: responding to disasters in simple but effective ways, high volume manufacturing, grunt and infantry level military operations, and large infrastructure projects.
These are the areas where China leads the world. With the possible exception of the military, America and other Western democracies are downright horrible at these things. We can't build infrastructure, have lost much of our high volume manufacturing, and react to disasters with delay and bickering and population non-compliance.
Where they don't excel is creativity, invention, innovation, culture creation, and maximizing individual well being in peacetime. They're also more politically brittle because there is no graceful mechanism for non-violent political change.
For a while they suppressed information about what was going on in the region, suppressed information to the outside world about the virus, and generally said "Everything is fine" delaying their response.
Now, to their credit, once they committed they did an excellent job. And the population has complied in amazing fashion. But the slow-moving party has a weakness that it won't broadcast when things are starting to go wrong until they can't ignore it any longer.
You can also imagine what would have happened if they continued to lock up critics for even longer.
Enlightened authoritarians only work if they are, well, enlightened. Once corruption seeps in those same levers of power can be exploited for personal and Party gain.
In the same vein that there are democratic countries who are handling COVID 19 much, much, better than the West. Not to mention those same countries give us great "innovation (e.g. technology), culture creation (e.g. Parasite), etc.". The Western democracies should not escape blame because they are "democracies".
Also on high volume manufacturing, China's success at this has nothing whatever to do with authoritarianism. None of the big manufacturing concerns in China are state run, they're all private companies build using private capital. Their success is a result of the government getting out of their way.
The CCP’s culture of fear and retribution pushed municipal officials to suppress reports of a novel outbreak, and pushed authorities to retaliate against medical professionals sounding the alarm.
A culture of transparency and non-retribution may have enabled China to contain this, and could have provided earlier warnings to the world to prepare for an epidemic or pandemic that might not have even happened.
I think China has shown a lot of transparency and has put a ton of resources towards containment.
> and could have provided earlier warnings to the world to prepare for an epidemic or pandemic that might not have even happened.
Not in a thousand years. The west was sitting on their hands for almost two months, busy armchair-commenting on the CCP's failings, preparing half-heartedly at best, taking no proactive measures whatsoever. I'm utterly disappointed with my government and don't see how this would have turned out any different for us had we had twice as much time to prepare, or had this originated in a western country.
China gave a perfectly fine head start as evidenced by countries that were able to contain it. Everyone else just wasted the head start, and I see no evidence that they wouldn't have wasted it even if China gave them a longer one.
What % of people in a given region in a given month travel outside:
a) Their city
b) Their state/providence
c) Their country?
and then compare it to other countries. I suspect there are many places it could have started with way more international travel.. which would have made the first wave hit more places at once.
From the Moral Mazes blog series featured on HN a couple months ago https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha... ; the first segment is https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/28/moloch-hasnt-won/
I want criminal charges pressed against bureaucrats and politicians tarred and feathered not so much because I'm pissed that their negligence has killed / will kill thousands but so that future politicians and agency heads will take this shit seriously in the future. If there aren't sufficient legal avenues for holding politicians and bureaucrats accountable, then we need to create some.
0 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/24/trump-cuts-u...
I don't see how blaming x and y will fix anything but boot out the current bureaucrats. The next time a pandemic happens, the guys who remembered anything in living memory are already dead or retired.
Worse, punishing people when they don't understand or making honest mistakes are going to lead to hiding of their mistakes or incentive not to understand anything.
but I thought the CDC was one of the few government agencies that had its shit together. Apparently they couldn't even be bothered to keep a reasonably stocked reserve of masks and ventilators
It's hard to keep a reserve of masks and ventilators when the higher ups don't think your mission is particularly important and you don't have a budget. Ventilators and masks costs money to store, maintain, and test.
The better solution is to prioritize pandemic preparation and war game pandemic scenario, and conduct an honest investigation to prepare for the future, rather than punish people.
Maybe to your point the CDC or Congress really is just one guy working out of his Atlanta garage and it is too much to ask of him to maintain a stockpile of basic supplies for the most likely disaster scenario (you know, those respiratory disease outbreaks that we've seen 3 of in the last 2 decades). If this is what the investigation finds and this guy really did everything he could with the budget he had, then let's name and shame the politicians who gave him that budget.
Like I previously mentioned, I don't doubt that congress didn't give the CDC a stellar budget, but I have a hard time believing that they spent their resources on better things than masks and ventilators (no, not based on hindsight, but based on the pattern of respiratory disease outbreaks) and that they couldn't even afford to plan to secure supply chains. That's like one analyst's job for several months.
But again, maybe I'm wrong and the fault lies squarely with Congress or one or several administrations--those politicians still deserve to be tarred and feathered (again, accountability is a real thing). In any case, we won't know without an investigation.
> conduct an honest investigation to prepare for the future, rather than punish people.
Nope. "Accountability" is preparing for the future. Without it those in charge will just ignore those best laid plans because they're too expensive and there's no cost to ignoring them. If you drive drunk and kill someone, you go to jail. If you are in charge of a federal agency and you don't do your basic due diligence and your glaring fuck-up kills thousands of people, we shouldn't laugh it off.
There’s an epidemic in the China with a population of 1.3 billion, the second largest economy. They lock down Wuhan on Jan 23rd to try and contain it from spreading to the rest of China.
On Jan 30th with 7818 infected, the WHO declares Global Health Emergency. It’s a now threat beyond China.
What do you do?
Things to consider:
- There are 100,000 global flights a day.
- China is rushing to build 2 hospitals in 10 days
- It appears to be highly contagious
Either all countries must react properly, or a single country's actions won't do anything. Good luck with that.
China had already locked the doors within their country to try and contain it. Anyone who isn’t a Chinese National can fly in and out of China for the United States.
We didn’t ban flights, we banned Chinese citizens.
Are you sure, you aren’t lulling yourself into a false sense of security?
But stocking up the mask and respirator and PPE reserve immediately would not have gone amiss, nor would fever checks at airports, public buildings etc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-09/how-coron...
US/West has been taken over by paperclip maximizers, thats all. The landlords want to maximize paperclips, so no rent relief for small businesses. The politicians see this and decide shutting down would be catastrophic, instead of questioning the premise.
Like it is literally inconceivable to me how retarded modern capitalism is. You need a 5-6 week shutdown on businesses, so force rent to be waived for that period. Thats most of the fixed cost, and the employees being on leavetakes care of the variable cost. The businesses don't go bankrupt, everyone just takes a 6 week vacation and comes back like nothing happened. You need ICUs/equipment - take over hotels and make it happen. Instead, they are worried about getting congress approval to pass a bill to pay the hotel owners leasing costs during a global emergency. In the face of a million deaths, the paperclip maximizers can only see all the lost paperclips.
This guy may be talking to health experts, but he's not someone we should be taking advice from. He represents the right wing of international development aid.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/whos-racists-bill-gates-spend...
3 new people per second.
Out of curiosity, which developing nation problems get easier with more people?
Mankind's time of easy answers is behind us.
Where is the technology? Where is the solution? Where is the execution on the warning?
I wish my government was as effective and functional as Taiwan or South Korea.
Experts knew it was "all but airborne if not airborne" and that masks were the best way to stop it from day one, but discouraged Americans from buying them as the hospitals would desperately need them far more. So many more people will be infected and die because they didn't have a $.50 mask. And this is all because we didn't spend a tiny pittance getting ready.