Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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gad-fly
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Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by gad-fly »

“Distancing”, a key word in tackling the present pandemic, is a common requirement by Mother Nature in both the Animal and the Plant Kingdom. Territorial Distancing would define the zone to flourish and survive. Social Distancing, usually taken to define the comfort zone, has now been extended by this pandemic to cover security, occasionally all the way up to survival. If you look closely at Nature, this should not be a surprise. Members of a predatory herd can be seen to exhibit similar concern.

When the area of the Earth is divided by the present world population, clearly humans have never been more densely packed. Some would yell: Too close for comfort, but it is more complicated than that. Being close to your loved ones must be different from being close to strangers, even though in principle there should be equality. This raises the question: Should the globe be a village, or should it be composed organically of multiple villages, with each being a coherent and voluntarily-associated community, mimicking galaxies in the universe? Arguments for and against each abound. Economically, the Global Village responds to the need for international division of labor. Each does what he is best at, individually and regionally, and let efficiency be greased by trade. Why would this ant-hill not be happy? Perhaps there are too many ants around, and they want to establish separate ant-hills, both for optimum efficiency and comfort. In time, each would develop its own culture, language, tradition, and so on, or to recapture what they have left behind before they join this singular giant ant-hill. Note that ant-hill here has no implication.

It stands to reason that Social Distancing, in conjunction with Territorial Distancing, should apply to communities as well as to individuals. If this pandemic has brought about what has been overdue, its social redeeming value should not be lightly dismissed. It is ironic that this deadly disease can bring us together in our fight against it albeit in the short run, at the same time it will distance us into distinct communities in the long run. It is a moot point whether such distancing would be beneficial or deterrent to our civilization.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by h_k_s »

gad-fly wrote: March 30th, 2020, 7:13 pm “Distancing”, a key word in tackling the present pandemic, is a common requirement by Mother Nature in both the Animal and the Plant Kingdom. Territorial Distancing would define the zone to flourish and survive. Social Distancing, usually taken to define the comfort zone, has now been extended by this pandemic to cover security, occasionally all the way up to survival. If you look closely at Nature, this should not be a surprise. Members of a predatory herd can be seen to exhibit similar concern.

When the area of the Earth is divided by the present world population, clearly humans have never been more densely packed. Some would yell: Too close for comfort, but it is more complicated than that. Being close to your loved ones must be different from being close to strangers, even though in principle there should be equality. This raises the question: Should the globe be a village, or should it be composed organically of multiple villages, with each being a coherent and voluntarily-associated community, mimicking galaxies in the universe? Arguments for and against each abound. Economically, the Global Village responds to the need for international division of labor. Each does what he is best at, individually and regionally, and let efficiency be greased by trade. Why would this ant-hill not be happy? Perhaps there are too many ants around, and they want to establish separate ant-hills, both for optimum efficiency and comfort. In time, each would develop its own culture, language, tradition, and so on, or to recapture what they have left behind before they join this singular giant ant-hill. Note that ant-hill here has no implication.

It stands to reason that Social Distancing, in conjunction with Territorial Distancing, should apply to communities as well as to individuals. If this pandemic has brought about what has been overdue, its social redeeming value should not be lightly dismissed. It is ironic that this deadly disease can bring us together in our fight against it albeit in the short run, at the same time it will distance us into distinct communities in the long run. It is a moot point whether such distancing would be beneficial or deterrent to our civilization.
"Social distancing" is a term that arose out of the 1918 flu pandemic. Nothing new.

China has been infecting the world with viruses for decades, ever since it industrialized and began facilitating international travel to and from China. This was true in 1918 as well.

Air travel is the most responsible for the transmission of modern Chinese viruses including COVID-2019. Nothing new either.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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I hear that the wet markets are returning to China already. The fact that China is not taking the issue seriously, blatantly lying about its transmission and fatalities, tells me that the wise monkeys at the top of the Communist Party figure that the US has more to lose from a pandemic than they do.

As a retiree with a simple lifestyle, not much has changed for me with the lockdown, aside from the manic response of others, both online in the real world. The media has whipped up a lot of hysteria.

Globalisation and nationalism alternate as if performing a dance. It's like the public service, where conservatives will split up the departments and reduce accountability. This improves autonomy of departments and reduces red tape. When Labor is elected, they amalgamate the various departments and introduce more accountability measures, which reduces duplication and better utilises economies of scale.

That's what's happening now. The latest "dance step" will be to take a couple of steps back into our countries' borders. But soon, scientists and other knowledge experts, will find the need to exchange notes with their peers to make progress, and everyone takes a couple of steps back into the world.

There are advantages to globalisation and advantages to nationalism. However, seeing the dishonest toxicity on display by the US, China and Russia, separation and greater independence might be safer for smaller nations than accepting their poisoned offers to "help".
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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h_k_s wrote: March 30th, 2020, 10:58 pm China has been infecting the world with viruses for decades...
Your words seem to indicate that the people or the state of China do this deliberately. I think diseases like CoViD-19 are created independently of humanity and human activities. They mutate. I don't think it helps to cast blame, and I don't think it's any more accurate than claims in the Middle Ages of witches infecting local cattle with disease.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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h_k_s wrote:China has been infecting the world with viruses for decades, ever since it industrialized and began facilitating international travel to and from China. This was true in 1918 as well.
There is some evidence that the 1918 flu originated in the US, possibly Kansas. But it is by no means certain.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340389/

It was sometimes called "Spanish Flu" simply because of the restrictions on reporting in the rest of WWI Europe, but not Spain, and the fact that, having infected Spanish royalty, it gained wide publicity there.

Does it matter? Should it have been called "American flu"? Should the world have accused the US of spreading disease back then? Or maybe accused Spain? No.

An international blame game, such as those that Trump is most comfortable indulging in, as are you apparently, is a lose-lose game. It is at times like this, more than at any other time, that we learn the meaning and power of the concepts of society and cooperation, both intra and internationally.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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Pattern-chaser wrote:I don't think it helps to cast blame, and I don't think it's any more accurate than claims in the Middle Ages of witches infecting local cattle with disease.
When people start to get down to those kinds of blame games, and when things get seriously bad, any notions of objective truth go out of the window. I think there is a deep, primeval human instinct which says that disease is caused by evil and that somebody must be sacrificed or punished to make it go away. That instinct is always there. We haven't changed. But it won't be any use telling Trump (for example) that it's not helpful to anyone to keep calling it "Chinese flu", any more than it would have been helpful to call the 1918 outbreak "Kansas flu". The rule is: if people tell you not to say something, say it again and again and again, louder and louder. Never, ever, ever climb down.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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Steve3007 wrote: March 31st, 2020, 9:19 am The rule is: if people tell you not to say something, say it again and again and again, louder and louder. Never, ever, ever climb down.
In today's world, you just posted a definition of "truth". There was a time when truth had some basis in facts. Today, truth is created[/u] by repetition, regardless of opposition (or facts). Just repeat until your opinions are established as truth. 💩
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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Greta wrote: March 31st, 2020, 2:32 am The fact that China is not taking the issue seriously...
My friend, who lives in ShenZhen, China, says otherwise. She is not stupid, nor an unthinking slave of her government, any more than I am of mine. Sometimes I'm surprised how outspoken she is prepared to be (given my own preconceptions of the authoritarian nature of Chinese government). She was quarantined for weeks, not leaving her apartment except to buy food. Now, she says this:
We back to work on 2nd March, but still take very intense precautions. Now in Shenzhen city we only have import case from abroad, the borders are still under very high level control. Our life is slowly back to normal.
She says a lot more than that, but I'm not quoting any more from our private correspondence. Her report is that CoViD-19 was (and is) taken very seriously in China. She could be mistaken, as we all can, but I know her, and I know that she is reporting what she believes to be true (again, as we all are).
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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There is a puzzling rumour, mainly confined to the USA, that seems to say that China intentionally created and spread CoViD-19 to the rest of the world. If you Google it, the vast majority of the links originate from right-wing American media outlets like CBS Fox news. Only the other day, the G7 (I think) failed to agree a joint statement because the US representative insisted on calling CoViD-19 the "Chinese" or "Wuhan" "virus", as though it was their fault. I don't think this is truthful or helpful. Is there any actual evidence for these suspicions? I can't find any....
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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Pattern-chaser wrote:There is a puzzling rumour, mainly confined to the USA, that seems to say that China intentionally created and spread CoViD-19 to the rest of the world...
The BBC correspondent in Moscow (Steve Rosenberg) reported yesterday that there are all sorts of rumours as to the origins of the virus going around there too - most that it was created by the US, naturally enough.

I'm sure there will be numerous rumours and theories by various sides as to the origins of this virus, and the more people die the more rumours there will be. When things get bad people need to be able to blame other people for it.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

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Perhaps cognisant of having stumbled in his attempts to control the narrative, Trump has since decided to rally his supporters in what they do best: blame China.
Here's a link to the full article.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by gad-fly »

Steve3007 wrote: March 31st, 2020, 9:19 am
Pattern-chaser wrote:I don't think it helps to cast blame, and I don't think it's any more accurate than claims in the Middle Ages of witches infecting local cattle with disease.
When people start to get down to those kinds of blame games, and when things get seriously bad, any notions of objective truth go out of the window. I think there is a deep, primeval human instinct which says that disease is caused by evil and that somebody must be sacrificed or punished to make it go away. That instinct is always there. We haven't changed. But it won't be any use telling Trump (for example) that it's not helpful to anyone to keep calling it "Chinese flu", any more than it would have been helpful to call the 1918 outbreak "Kansas flu". The rule is: if people tell you not to say something, say it again and again and again, louder and louder. Never, ever, ever climb down.
What is in a name? Call it Chinese flu, Wuhan flu, thorny ball flu, or even US flu. As long as there is no stigmatization, what does it matter? Not that I am defending Trump, but it appears he was reacting to the conspiracy theory that the flu originates from American military in Wuhan.

To me, all this shouting match across the ocean is but a waste of time. Childish, or worse. It would be entertaining if not in such a sad time, when the demand for our attention cannot be stronger.

My suggestion: Call it any name you like or find comfortable with. I don't care, as long as there is no stigmatization with the alleged origin. Better still, once you have finished naming, get on with what is essential in the next instance.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by Sy Borg »

Pattern-chaser wrote: March 31st, 2020, 9:35 am
Greta wrote: March 31st, 2020, 2:32 am The fact that China is not taking the issue seriously...
My friend, who lives in ShenZhen, China, says otherwise.
While wet markets are still allowed to operate (and they are), China can fairly be said to not be taking the threat seriously. They are recklessly endangering the world as surely as the US recklessly endangered the world by invading Iraq.

The governments of US, China and Russia are each thoroughly cynical and wilfully destructive in their own way. Each will lever this global problem to their advantage without even the slightest ethical twinge. People can complain about conspiracy theories, but there is no level of skulduggery too obscene for these administrations, if it brings a competitive advantage.

Ethics and truth are also casualties of the current social and economic breakdown.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by Terrapin Station »

Are you essentially asking if we should have a one-world government? I'd be in favor of that as long as I'm in favor of the government in question.
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Re: Distancing in the Pandemic on the Global Village

Post by gad-fly »

Greta wrote: March 31st, 2020, 2:32 am
However, seeing the dishonest toxicity on display by the US, China and Russia, separation and greater independence might be safer for smaller nations than accepting their poisoned offers to "help".
I take you to recommend distancing on the Global Village between developed and developing countries. This political distancing may be said to copy social distancing between individuals as advocated in the present pandemic. It cannot be denied that some international aids programs, like the Marshall Plan, are genuine self-depleting offers to help other countries in distress. It may be said that the US also receive benefit from the Marshall Plan by helping Europe and hence the world economy recover.

Nevertheless, most of the offers to help other countries develop and recover stem from self interest. The Silk Road iss no exception. These offers, whether dressed as charity or not, would benefit more who has more bargaining power, like in a buyers or sellers market. Yes, it can even be sweeten poison.

I believe distancing on the Global Village will be the trend and, to some reasonable degree, the right course to follow. Produce more locally, travel more locally, rely more on yourself, accept and welcome diversity. Different living standard between countries is fine, as long as each is satisfied. Let hundreds of flowers bloom.
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