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Started by bacardiandlime, January 30, 2020, 03:20:28 PM

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Stockmann

Quote from: spork on February 03, 2020, 02:28:21 PM
My wife and I discuss bat soup periodically. Ebola outbreak in 2014, for example.

While there are a a few dishes, including European ones, more disgusting than raw bat soup, such as casu marzu (illegal in the only place where anyone wants to eat it) or surströmming (eating it can get you legally evicted in Germany), raw bat soup is hard to beat in terms of how dangerous it is. The worst case scenario isn't catching Wuhan coronavirus, the worst case scenario is catching rabies.

Of course China is underreporting, but what about other countries? China jailed doctors who tried to sound off the alarm, but North Korea would've executed them. If it's become an epidemic in North Korea, we wouldn't know about it. What about cover-ups and/or failures to detect it in the Russian Far East? The danger of it speading to Africa, where China has a substantial presence, has been mentioned, but what about Latin America? The region may be overall more prosperous, but Venezuela doesn't have a functioning healthcare system and China has a presence there. Venezuela is somewhat protected by summer, but Central America has several failed states/provinces and it's winter, sort of. Overall things may not be as dire in Mexico but the healthcare system has severe challenges and there are places where the State has failed. Also, a number of countries like Peru, Mexico and Bolivia have cool highlands where the weather really wouldn't help.

Caracal

Quote from: spork on February 03, 2020, 02:28:21 PM
My wife and I discuss bat soup periodically. Ebola outbreak in 2014, for example.

That wasn't how the outbreak started. Probably it was a bat bite.

Caracal

Quote from: Stockmann on February 05, 2020, 10:35:53 PM
Quote from: spork on February 03, 2020, 02:28:21 PM
My wife and I discuss bat soup periodically. Ebola outbreak in 2014, for example.

While there are a a few dishes, including European ones, more disgusting than raw bat soup, such as casu marzu (illegal in the only place where anyone wants to eat it) or surströmming (eating it can get you legally evicted in Germany), raw bat soup is hard to beat in terms of how dangerous it is. The worst case scenario isn't catching Wuhan coronavirus, the worst case scenario is catching rabies.



Great, but as it turns out

https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus-bat-soup

bat soup is not really a thing in China, eating bats is not a likely cause of the disease, and the whole thing is based on racist ideas. So, how about we not spread around baseless radicalized rumors?

polly_mer

Quote from: Caracal on February 06, 2020, 04:38:39 AM
So, how about we not spread around baseless radicalized rumors?

Great idea! 

Are you ready to lead the way on discussing the real problems in US academia and the realistic solutions or are we still going to go with foolishness by people employed in academia who refuse to read research and policy statements?

I know where my bet lies since I still regularly encounter foolishness on the level of bat soup accusations.

In other events, no one is getting any of my stuff this week and I'm so tired of orange juice that I could scream.
Quote from: hmaria1609 on June 27, 2019, 07:07:43 PM
Do whatever you want--I'm just the background dancer in your show!

Wahoo Redux

Quote from: polly_mer on February 06, 2020, 05:20:06 AM
Quote from: Caracal on February 06, 2020, 04:38:39 AM
So, how about we not spread around baseless radicalized rumors?

Great idea! 

Are you ready to lead the way on discussing the real problems in US academia and the realistic solutions or are we still going to go with foolishness by people employed in academia who refuse to read research and policy statements?

I know where my bet lies since I still regularly encounter foolishness on the level of bat soup accusations.

Seems to me that rational discussion leads to rational discussion, or so I've heard.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

mythbuster

No one has said, officially or otherwise, that eating bats was how this was contracted. Bats may have been roosting in the area of the market and contaminated local foodstuffs, or a farmer may have bats on his farm and then come to the market already infected. Or a number of other permutations. We likely will never have a true case zero for this.

spork

The Wuhan municipal government has been ordered by central authorities to put infected residents in mass concentration camps for quarantine (in other words, in the minds of many in the city, death).
It's terrible writing, used to obfuscate the fact that the authors actually have nothing to say.

bopper

If you want to read fiction about an epidemic that started from bats... "Wanderers" by Chuck Wendig
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555273/wanderers-by-chuck-wendig/

clean

I had planned an Alaska trip with my fiance and my best friend for the end of May.  With the news out of China, my trip mates want out.  The final payment is due this weekend.  We would have an additional 2 weeks for a full refund (until 90 days before the trip date).

However, my friend does not trust the Chinese government news on the number infected or the mortality rate.  I dont blame him for not trusting them!

I think that for my girlfriend/fiance, the dealbreaker was the news about the Diamond Princess off Japan.  They are quarantined for 14 days, and her first thought was that being on a ship for 14 days would not be bad, but then she saw that they were being held in their cabins and food brought to them and no laundry.  I guess that IF she can not eat all the goodies that come with the ship and being stuck in the room only, that it lost its luster!  Of course being stuck in a ship size cabin with others and not necessarily even having clean clothes was just too much to risk!

Any thoughts?
"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"  Darth Vader

spork

Don't pay for the trip. Your friends are already flaking out. Reimbursement is a hassle.

Think about a possible future cruise along the coast of West Africa. The bat soup in Conakry was supposedly delicious before the government banned it. It's probably still available in out-of-the-way street markets.
It's terrible writing, used to obfuscate the fact that the authors actually have nothing to say.

ex_mo


Caracal

Quote from: clean on February 06, 2020, 09:19:35 PM
I had planned an Alaska trip with my fiance and my best friend for the end of May.  With the news out of China, my trip mates want out.  The final payment is due this weekend.  We would have an additional 2 weeks for a full refund (until 90 days before the trip date).

However, my friend does not trust the Chinese government news on the number infected or the mortality rate.  I dont blame him for not trusting them!

I think that for my girlfriend/fiance, the dealbreaker was the news about the Diamond Princess off Japan.  They are quarantined for 14 days, and her first thought was that being on a ship for 14 days would not be bad, but then she saw that they were being held in their cabins and food brought to them and no laundry.  I guess that IF she can not eat all the goodies that come with the ship and being stuck in the room only, that it lost its luster!  Of course being stuck in a ship size cabin with others and not necessarily even having clean clothes was just too much to risk!

Any thoughts?

This is all pretty irrational. I've had some pretty intense periods of anxiety centering around my health. The one positive of that is that I've had to accept that I actually can't trust my emotional responses, or more importantly, the intellectual scaffolding I tend to build around those emotional responses. At various times I have thought that it was quite likely that I had all kinds of dangerous diseases that were going to kill me and I believed that it was rational for me to think this. In fact, I had none of these things. What I have is anxiety. When I see the ways people react to these highly publicized health scares it is really obvious to me that lots of people also have anxiety that latches on to these things, but they really believe they are just responding appropriately to the situation, instead of letting their anxiety run their lives.

1. I don't really understand why your friends would think a trip to Alaska is dangerous. It might be closer to China geographically, but in terms of global travel, it is more remote, not less.
2. If they're worried about air travel, I don't see how that makes any more sense. Coronavirus isn't spreading in the US at this point, it doesn't actually appear to be being widely transmitted anywhere but China at this point. There's no reason to upend your life to avoid it in an airplane because until that changes it is incredibly unlikely anybody in the airplane is going to have it.
3. Ditto on the cruise ship. People convince themselves they are just being cautious, but caution only makes sense when you are responding to actual dangers, not just ones you can imagine. If there's a severe thunderstorm and I avoid tall trees that might be a perfectly rational response to the situation. If the weather is perfectly pleasant outside and I won't walk under a tree because I'm afraid a gust of wind could come up and the tree might fall on me, that is pretty clearly disordered.

What is happening is that your friends are trying to tell themselves stories that make themselves feel better about their ability to control the world and avoid pain, suffering and death. Saying that you won't go to Alaska because you don't believe the Chinese government is about trying to assert control. If you can properly assess risk and then take some concrete step to avoid, like pointlessly cancelling your vacation, then you can feel like you can mange these things. Of course he can't. It is theoretically possible, you could all get coronavirus in Alaska. It is also possible that you'll die in a car wreck on the way home today, or that a tree will fall on you while you walk across the quad, or that you'll have a heart attack tomorrow. Based on what we know now all of those things are far more likely than you getting coronavirus in Alaska in May.

mamselle

Somewhat like this logic (n=1), I nearly cancelled my wonderful, productive, satisfying trip to Europe last month.

There was the treat of a "Named storm" hitting England the week Iwas due to land at Hea5hrow.

The French train strikes were starting, and I worried other countries might go out in sympathy.

I found out one of the libraries I had to visit was going to be unusually closed on the week I'd planned to visit.

Etc.

I went anyway.

I'm glad I did.

I found a workaround for one set of cancelled trains, and discoved thenight-before schedule that made planning possible otherwise.

I flipped two nearby library visits and made it to the one I really had to see the next-to-last day (and got everything there done.)

Etc.

Not on the same level of worry, exactly, but a parallel combination of potential for anxiety and offsetting reasons not to let it be the voice that calls the game...

M.
Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

Reprove not a scorner, lest they hate thee: rebuke the wise, and they will love thee.

Give instruction to the wise, and they will be yet wiser: teach the just, and they will increase in learning.

bacardiandlime

I'm wondering if this thing is more contagious than they're telling us. One person who had travelled to Singapore spread it to the other people in their ski lodge in France. The numbers on that cruise ship in Japan keep rising.

Caracal

Quote from: mamselle on February 07, 2020, 09:54:02 AM
Somewhat like this logic (n=1), I nearly cancelled my wonderful, productive, satisfying trip to Europe last month.

There was the treat of a "Named storm" hitting England the week Iwas due to land at Hea5hrow.

The French train strikes were starting, and I worried other countries might go out in sympathy.

I found out one of the libraries I had to visit was going to be unusually closed on the week I'd planned to visit.

Etc.

I went anyway.

I'm glad I did.

I found a workaround for one set of cancelled trains, and discoved thenight-before schedule that made planning possible otherwise.

I flipped two nearby library visits and made it to the one I really had to see the next-to-last day (and got everything there done.)

Etc.

Not on the same level of worry, exactly, but a parallel combination of potential for anxiety and offsetting reasons not to let it be the voice that calls the game...

M.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The problem with anxiety is that it is totally rational to be concerned about all kinds of things. Of course you want to be keeping an eye on the weather when you travel, and you don't want to be trying to travel around a foreign country during some massive transit strike.
If I was scheduled to take a trip to Indonesia or something right now, I might rethink it. The actual risk of getting this might be pretty low, but this is all pretty disruptive to travel and I wouldn't want to put myself in a position to get stuck. But there's a thin line between totally reasonable caution and excessive anxiety that gets in the way of your life.