COVID-19 pandemic
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Many dystopias already imagine a similar future: we stay at home, work on our computers, communicate through videoconferences, exercise on a machine in the corner of our home office, occasionally masturbate in front of a screen displaying hardcore sex, and get food by delivery, never seeing other human beings in person." --Pandemic! (2020) is a book by Slavoj Žižek "Nous ne nous réveillerons pas, après le confinement, dans un nouveau monde ; ce sera le même, en un peu pire."--Michel Houellebecq English translation: "We will not wake up after the lockdown in a new world. It will be the same, just a bit worse." "The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb." --researchers of the University of Hong Kong, 2007 “Obesity-related conditions seem to worsen the effect of COVID-19; indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that people with heart disease and diabetes are at higher risk of COVID-19 complications.”--World Obesity Federation "Now, the push-pull of when to re-open the economy during the coronavirus crisis centers on a similarly bleak question: What’s an economically acceptable death toll? Putting dollar figures on the value of life and health is inherently uncomfortable, one expert said."[1] Madhani, The Associated Press March 26, 2020 "(ROME) — It was the biggest soccer game in Atalanta’s history and a third of Bergamo’s population made the short trip to Milan’s famed San Siro Stadium. Nearly 2,500 fans of visiting Spanish club Valencia also traveled to that Champions League match. More than a month later, experts are pointing to the February 19 game as one of the biggest reasons why Bergamo has become one of the epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic — a “biological bomb” was the way one respiratory specialist put it — and why 35% of Valencia’s team became infected. The match, which local media have dubbed “Game Zero,” was held two days before the first case of locally transmitted COVID-19 was confirmed in Italy." [2] "Older people would rather die than let Covid-19 harm US economy" – Texas official Lieutenant governor Dan Patrick 24/3/20[3] "But maybe another – and much more beneficial – ideological virus will spread and hopefully infect us: the virus of thinking about an alternate society, a society beyond nation-state, a society that actualizes itself in the forms of global solidarity and cooperation."--Slavoj Žižek[4] who would later write Pandemic! (2020) "Chances are that when we look back at this period within 50 years, we don't think so much about the coronavirus, as about the moment when we started being massively controlled by our governments."--Yuval Noah Harari, El País, October 24, 2020 |
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A new coronavirus, designated 2019-nCoV, was identified in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, after people developed pneumonia without a clear cause and for which existing vaccines or treatments were not effective.
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Just-in-time manufacturing
With borders closed, many countries ran out of medical supplies and question the usefulness of just-in-time manufacturing.
Basic income
- "To get through coronavirus lockdown, we need basic income" --by Neil Howard & Sarath Davala
Meat industry
The meat industry stays optimistic: "Global meat industry reacts to coronavirus pandemic ... Association national livestock chairman Brendan Golden said there was a “major onus ..."--16-Mar-2020 at 17:43
PETA is more pessimistic:
- "Public health experts believe COVID-19 originated at a “wet market” in China, where vendors sell both live and dead animals for human consumption. COVID-19 is similar to the outbreaks of SARS and MERS: All three spread from animals to humans.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- “Approximately 75 percent of recently emerging infectious diseases affecting people began as diseases in animals.”
PETA adds:
- "In addition to serving as breeding grounds for viruses, the crowded, filthy conditions on farms allow bacteria to spread quickly. Farmers feed animals on today’s farms a regimen of antibiotics to try to minimize sickness or to promote unnatural growth. Did you know that animals on farms consume more antibiotics every year than humans do?"
Winners and losers in the coronavirus pandemic
- Economic winners: Tinder, digital learning, food delivery, takeaway, e-commerce, digital world
- Economic losers: brick and mortar
Ideologically, communism wins, capitalism loses.
Most deadly pandemics
- 300,000,000+ - Smallpox (20th Century alone)
- 300,000,000+ - Bubonic Plague: Black Death - 1300's-1720's; Plague of Justinian - 540-590; Third Pandemic - 1850's-1950's (same disease)
- 20,000,000 - 100,000,000 - Spanish Flu (worldwide, 1918 - 1919)
- 10,000,000 - 100,000,000 - deaths from diseases in Europe (millions) and the Americas (tens of millions) from diseases exchanged between continents after 1492
- 25,000,000 - AIDS (deaths worldwide, 1981 - present)
- 10,000,000 - Bubonic Plague (China, 1892 - 1896)
- 5,000,000 - Antonine Plague (Roman Empire 165 - 180)
- 4,000,000 - Asian Flu pandemic (worldwide, 1957)
- 1,000,000 - Hong Kong Flu pandemic (worldwide, 1968)
- 130,000 - North American smallpox epidemic (1775 - 1782)
- 60,000 - Great Plague of London (1665)
- 775 - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) (Mostly East Asia, few cases in Europe, Canada and United States, 2002-2003)
- 677 - West Nile Virus outbreak (North America, 1999 - 2004)
- 86 - H5N1 strain of bird flu (started in Asia) (late 2003-present)
See also
- Corona mixtape
- Coronavirus disease 2019
- Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
- Cross-species transmission
- Herd immunity
- Super-spreader
- List of epidemics
- Pandemics
- Virgin soil epidemic
- Wildlife trafficking and emerging zoonotic diseases
- Wuhan Institute of Virology
- Superbugs
- Wet market
- Car-Free Days
- Ski resort Ischgl in Austria was a hotspot
- Socio-economic impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak
- Impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic on sports
- Impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic on education
- Financial impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic
- Hot zone (environment)
- DP3T
- State of exception
- “Power, Profits and the Pandemic” (2020) by Oxfam
- Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic