About time the West pooled together en masse… we’ve given, probably, trillions in aid to other countries over the last few decades, so time to give aid to ourselves… we’ve worked for it and earned it, and now we need it, as too many of our businesses have folded and gone into receivership and families reduced to poverty… because our governments were mainly supporting foreign affairs at the expense of Home business.
Is this the start of a new beginning/a new (business) affair/a beautiful tryst?
Here we go again…
So far, the federal government has done little to help working people. On Friday, President Trump made a show of waiving the interest on federal student loans, but failed to note that monthly payments won’t be reduced. On Saturday, the House of Representatives passed a coronavirus bill that expands paid sick leave but exempts so many large corporations and small businesses that only 20 percent of the American work force will be covered. There is as yet no compensation for wage earners remotely analogous to the $1.5 trillion in short-term loans promised by the Federal Reserve, despite the fact that three million people are expected to lose their jobs before June. Ordinary Americans foresee a cruel repetition of the financial crisis, when banks and automakers became the beneficiaries of “corporate socialism.” NYT
They didn’t call it a political economy for nothing.
On the other hand…
Contrast these moves with those in France, where the president vowed to suspend all rents, electricity, gas and heating bills throughout the coronavirus crisis. The Irish government has promised to commit most of its stimulus package of 3.1 billion euros (around $3.4 billion) to benefit sick and unemployed workers, not corporations, and Danish lawmakers will pay up to 75 percent of some private-sector employees’ salaries to prevent layoffs. South Korea is providing largely free coronavirus testing, regardless of immigration status.
Or, you can just ask yourself, “What would Ayn Rand do?” 
Wait a minute…
Just out of curiosity, what would any Libertarians and Objectivists here recommend as the most rational policies?
I’m not selfish or greedy, I’ll just be grabbing one single woman by the pussy and afterwards her pussy will belong to me.
Coronavirus Edition:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBfoMgllphs[/youtube]
I’m ready for fun…
Of course he’s just paraphrasing Mr. Reasonable paraphrasing Satyr paraphrasing Donald Trump.
Well, at least until they infected.
There will be at least one woman out there who isn’t infected for the repopulation efforts, well hopefully there will be anyways. 
I have decided to contract the virus so that I’ll develop antibodies to protect me from future infection… so long as the covid 19 doesn’t mutate… in which case I’ll have to contract it again, etc.
In the next several days I’ll be going to places where I can be in the closest possible proximity to as many people as possible. The disco club, a hockey game, the mall, a premier movie, and downtown where I’ll ride in elevators for hours. I will also enter the bathrooms of these facilities and rub my face on the sinks. Immediately after opening doors I will pick my nose. I will use big bills so that I get many small bills in change. Money is an excellent medium through which to contract the virus. Finally, when I shower I’ll wear gloves so my hands don’t get washed.
Wish me luck.
Be careful that you don’t end up like this guy…
cnn.com/2020/03/17/us/kentu … index.html
Godspeed man.
We’ve had relative stability in the west for 75 years.
There have been challenges to that stability, like 9/11, the so called great recession, and now this.
Challenges come in many forms, they’re not just political and economic, they’re medical too.
I think a lot of the hope and idealism we had during the mid-late 20th century is gradually giving way to doubt and pessimism.
History didn’t end in 91 with the collapse of the USSR and the ascendency of so called liberal democracy like some optimists thought it might, it goes on.
Periods of instability always followed periods of stability, and they probably always will.
Civilization is unsustainable.
While some civilizations may be more sustainable than others, nothing is forever sustainable.
There will always be need for minor, moderate, and major reforms.
To not just evolve, but to evolve in an entirely different direction.
Sometimes change means progress, sometimes it means a last-ditch-effort to prevent things from regressing further.
If history, and prehistory have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t bank on progress, it’s not an inevitability.
Eventually some of these challenges will force us to make drastic changes.
Only time will tell if this crisis is one of them.
We have a medical paradigm.
That paradigm could be called allopathy, mainstream or scientific medicine.
This medical paradigm is the only valid paradigm to those who wholeheartedly believe in it, much like the works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Hippocrates and Galen stood largely unchallenged in the west for over a millennium.
We primarily treat colds and flues with antibiotics, high-tech drugs, social distancing, vaccines and washing because we think germs are the primary culprit, but others, like Bechamp, Louis Pasteur’s rival, thought the terrain was the primary culprit, and it may be that humanity still has a great deal to learn about the very fundamentals of health, even the methodology for how we learn, but sometimes it can be difficult to expand our knowledge into one domain of learning, without neglecting other domains.
We have a way of life.
That way of life has by-products, like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and pollution.
Interestingly both China, and northern Italy, the Po valley, where this germ seems to be most prevalent, are very polluted places, and this seems to be a raspatory illness.
So far our life expectancy seems to have been rising in most of the developed and developing world.
Is that something we can count on into the distant future?
Time will tell.
If this all isn’t just hype, if the threat is very real, will we continue to turn to vaccines and the like to save us?
Will they save us?
Or will they fail?
And if they fail, will it compel people to look into alternatives, or will most stay the course, even doubling or tripling down on mainstream medicine and medical martial law?
Do we just need a hell of a lot more of the status quo, or something else entirely?
Of course the last place we can look to for real change is the political, economic and intellectual establishment, and those who’ve most benefitted from it.
They will only offer more of the same.
Good luck Prom, if I’d been younger I would probably do the same. We’re all going to get it anyway tbh. so taking the bull by the horns is not a bad thing.
As anomaleigh says, if there is anything good to come from this the virus it is that it is a leveller, a clear signal that people are people of whatever race, creed or colour, and if the powers that be don’t take real care in preserving a modicum of wealth-blindness in the treatment of their populations and the maintainance of the economy at all levels… a clear red flag to everyone.
Who knows, when the dust clears, maybe the world will be a fairer place. Yeah yeah I know, stupid optimism. But hey, I’m stupid. 
Well, every year, I think something like 1% of the population dies anyway, and 1% are born, so in the US, about 3 million people die a year, most of them old and chronically ill.
If the worst estimates of corona are true, then it’ll be something like an additional 1%, an extra 3 million, most of them old and chronically ill, they’ll get corona and die a little earlier than they would have.
But are they just shooting in the dark?
It’s very possible this virus has been around for thousands of years, that this is just the first time it’s been successfully identified.
How do they know how many people have been infected?
Have they thoroughly screened everyone?
No, they’ve only screened thousands of people, out of 8 billion.
It’s very possible this virus has already infected hundreds of millions or even billions of people, that the vast majority of people experience no symptoms, even the vast majority of old and chronically ill people, that we’ve already seen the worst this virus can do.
So why isn’t the media and the WHO exploring these very real possibilities.
Is there a sinister agenda at play?
A plan for an authoritarian take over and population reduction?
Or is it more simply paranoia coupled with opportunities for government, media and pharma and inside traders to make billions?
Only time will tell for sure.
This may all very well be hype, like Y2K in 99.
In a Milestone, China Reports Zero New Local Infections NYT headline
How important is this?
For one thing, if China can sustain this to the point that their economy is up and running again, it will almost certainly trigger the same sort of “draconian” reactions to the virus in other nations around the globe. Impose strict punishments on those who do not stay in their homes until the curve is flattened and new cases are at a minimal.
Then [seemingly] it comes down to two things:
1] after the Chinese go about the business of “returning to normal” will that cause the virus to reemerge?
2] will the virus come in “waves” — ballooning once again in the Fall for example.
More than likely. The 'Spanish flue went down exactly the same way, it originated in Kansas, it was transported by WW1 soldiers heading to the European theatre, then mutated, and then it was spread again, and so on.
The casualties were upwards of 50 million worldwide.
Now the question that comes to my mind, is, could the horrible ‘super bug’ having ‘learned’ from the past, is using immuno-suppressive evolution, to over come the acquisition of newer adaptable antiviral agents, as did the HIV. Virus was able to do?
Even now there is no vaccine, after 40 years of mutation, and that did not go airborne !
{The HIV connection did not leave out notice by the Chinese }:
China Names HIV Drugs in Treatment Plan for New Virus
China Racing to Find Cure for Coronavirus
China is using AbbVie Inc’s HIV drugs as an ad-hoc treatment for pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus while the global search for a cure continues.
The Beijing branch of China’s National Health Commission said that a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, sold under the brand name Kaletra by AbbVie, is part of its latest treatment plan for patients infected by the virus, which has killed at least 56 people in China and sickened more than 2,000 worldwide.
The NHC said that while there is not yet any effective anti-viral drug, it recommends patients are given two lopinavir and ritonavir tablets twice a day and a dose of alpha-interpheron through nebulization twice daily.
Medical journal Lancet said on Friday that a clinical trial is under way using ritonavir and lopinavir to treat cases of the new coronavirus. Meanwhile, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention will start developing a vaccine, according to the Global Times.
Wang Guangfa, a respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing who was infected by the virus after visiting Wuhan to inspect to coronavirus patients, told China News Week earlier this week that his doctor recommended he take the HIV drugs to fight the new virus and they worked on him.
No. Corona viruses and retroviruses like aids are different beasties.
Different species of disease don’t actively learn from each other any more than we would learn to digest our food better by watching cows. Bacteria pass plasmids to each other, conferring advantages, but viruses, much smaller and simpler, don’t have the means to do so, they rely on mutation and selection alone.
But then , is not the way learning is processed, differ in kind, yet how could viruses ‘learn’ definitively, as the current focus on determenitive, non transcendent modes exclude their negation? After all, negation are the primal facial qualifiers of any standard study.
Such exclusions regress studies to primary modalities .
Supposing viruses have no primordial modalities consistent with interactive suppressive agents, may be a rather strong statement , reinforcing such a biased supposition? What the Chinese are implying, that HIV suppression by current drugs , may at least be worth a try, as Trump is seeking the same with malaria viral vaccine?
Meaning: it still may be a bio-weapon, yet if sustained, the Chinese may still save face by implying that it really was non intentional, and accidental. No World Court dare hold them to the opposite, and the worst case that could be held to, that it is not really beneficial to try the Chinese to the verity of which scenario befits their counter claim.
learning microscopically, differs from evolutionary adapted learning, by a measure that is well described by those acquainted in it in the philosophy of mind. It has always been a behavior/an intrinsic modality; and it is fairly recent that Ayer/ e.g. al has shifted focus to behavioral jumps, via procedural schematics .
Which leads me to my pet insistence on a partially differentiated functional approach: to what makes it a primordial excercise to assume a genus related excercise on any level of learning?
Not sure that viruses read philosophy tbh.
‘Learning’ is an inappropriate word really. Imagine a virus is like a car engine in a junkyard. Every day random car engine parts rain down from the sky. Once in a bazillion collisions the right part falls in just the right place with just the right alignment with just the right force to click in, and zoooom, engine upgrade achieved.
Is that ‘learning’…?
