zimtim wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 10:49 am
Whilst this virus is spreading it is doing so at rather sedate pace.
However once it starts working its way through The Third world and the undeveloped countries then it will really spread and spread fast.so for now I am not to bothered about the 19 odd cases.reported in the UK.
19 cases in an African Country like Zimbabwe and the virus will spread like wildfire through out the continent.
Apparently also the Chinese have a.glut of.shipping containers that they cannot pack with goods and distribute worldwide which is one of the reasons for shortages and thus the knock of effect it is having with the markets.
This has a long way to run yet.
Interesting. You could argue that there is an irony, in that we rightly criticise the Chinese government for being an anti-democratic authoritarian, top-down dictatorship - but it is exactly that ability to quickly exercise draconian lockdown measures that has largely contained the chinese end of this virus. They were able to pin down whole cities, including the probable source in the huge city of Wuhan, by forcing residents into isolation etc. The very lack of freedom in chinese society has actually proved useful in the case of a crisis like this. It wasn't perfect, obviously, because the virus has escaped china, but it would be far more widespread by now if Xi had not used his dicatorial powers to contain it.
Translate that to western democracies and we face a real issue, where the draconian measures that might prove necessary conflict with our rights and freedoms - to gather freely in groups, to move about, to express ourselves etc... What will be required to replace authoritarian policing is
voluntary self-policing, and that will need a level of altruism and selflessness that we don't see much any more in our greedy capitalist culture. Those suffering from symptoms will have to put wider society first and lock themselves away for the greater good. But when their zero-hours contract refuses to pay them for sick leave and their money and food runs out, and when the shattered welfare state fails them, they will say 'sod this, I'm going out to eat something and I don't care who I infect'.
