PsySci&Futurism

26/03/2020

We observe as many authors try to comprehend the unfolding Covid-19 epidemic. Someone is sincerely trying to understand what is happening, someone is fulfilling the order, and someone is simply retransmitting what they are fed.

Essentially, 2 positions are fighting: alarmists promote a sense of danger in the audience and urge everyone to pupate in hard quarantine, the opposites sedately deny the danger of the virus to humans and urge us to relax and stop the panic.

Moreover, these 2 positions are points on the continuum, where extreme opinions from panic, to total denial, are generally placed at the poles.

Various political systems are experimenting with these positions. Somewhere, in response to anxiety, a total quarantine is introduced in the society with maximum restrictions on physical contacts, and somewhere the emphasis is on preventing a recession in the economy and therefore denial has been chosen, saying “it’s just the flu”.

What position to choose? This task, as it seems so far, does not have an objective solution. It requires an ethical position. If we allow a statistical approach, then we talk about the permissible percentage of the dead, compare it with other diseases, and care about the economy.

But if we take a humanistic approach, then we are thinking about our parents and grandparents, the people we love. In this case, we demand quarantine and masks. Nowadays for the minds of an ordinary person, the statistical approach is simply not ethical and, therefore, is not acceptable.

27/01/2020

What to expect from the 2019-nCoV virus outbreak in China. We are in a northern moderate climate accustomed to seasonal epidemics. We know that our common flu leads to complications and even death in, especially advanced cases. Corporations buy vaccines for their staff. Someone is vaccinated, someone is not. We know that the best and only cure is rest in bed, heavy drinking of warm liquids and that antibiotics do not kill viruses.

What started recently in China is something very different from what we got used to. The dozens of cities lockdown, sand barricades on the roads, the urgent construction of a hospital specifically for keeping infected patients - all this is too serious.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates in 2018 spoke of an epidemic that would begin very likely in China and take over the whole world. Is this forecast really being realized? The Institute for Disease Modeling calculation, which Bill Gates quoted back in 2018, shows that almost 33 million people will die in the 6 months of the flu epidemic. In our case, it will be in June 2020.
https://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-warns-30-million-people-could-die-from-flu-p-1825615528
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9afTl9z5JHQ
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2018/05/01/bill-gates-calls-for-and-funds-steps-to-prevent-a-global-pandemic

It is noteworthy that the virus "chose" the most effective time for its appearance. The most massive annual migration of people in the world begins right now in China. Last year, 415 million, or 30% of the Chinese population, left their places of permanent residence to travel during the Lunar New Year and Spring Festival.
https://www.statista.com/chart/12916/the-worlds-largest-migration-is-about-to-begin/

As for the long-suffering Wuhan, the New Year’s trip there has already begun for 5 million people who left the city before its lockdown. This is 35% of the city population.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047720/chinese-premier-li-keqiang-head-coronavirus-crisis-team-outbreak.

Several hundred million people a year can get the common seasonal flu virus, but the mortality rate is relatively low, it is 0.003%. The 2019-nCoV virus has already gained 2–3% mortality. And this is according to data available to media. These numbers are correct if we have complete statistics on sick and dead. Perhaps no one has complete statistics in the current situation.

For comparison, the mortality rate of Spanish influenza (influenza pandemic), which killed in 1918-1919 up to 3% of the world's population, was, according to various estimates, 10-20%.

The main danger of the 2019-nCoV virus is it's long, up to two weeks, incubation period. There are no vivid symptoms at this time. It seems like a cold but the disease develops and, most importantly, in these two weeks the carrier of the virus walks the streets, works, communicates and infects others.

Only one thing suggests a sort of relief, according to Kabbalah, we have 240 years remain until the end of the world.

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