SALUTE Cuba, they have allowed an infected ship to visit their island and keep their economy going. This nonsense about a pandemic is a conspiracy from the insurance companies to avoid claims, and capitalist profit making organisation that rely on ignorance of most normal citizens. The stats of Cuba infection rates will be critical in limiting more messing up by panicking politicians, who are protecting themselves by saying their health systems don't have enough ventilators to meet the crisis.
I must admit that when this all started I made the mistake of confusing this with, say, flu, and couldn't see what the panic was about. The problem at the moment is that the death rate is much higher than flu, and that there isn't a vaccine. So for the moment it's a case of trying not to overwhelm the medical facilities until a vaccine can be made available.
Data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ which comes from WHO data gives the probability of dying from an infection for those aged 80+ as 15-20%. Since I have close relatives who are that age (and who are not fit for other reasons) those aren't odds I particularly like.
Or to take another angle - Western governments do not trash their economies without incredibly good reason. In the UK the people who are going to be worse hit are largely the core target voters for the current government: the self employed, the entrepreneurs, and the retired. When a government puts its main supporters out of work, or suggests locking them in their houses for three months, it's probably time to accept that something serious is going on.
The big challenge is to get the majority of the population to accept that this is serious, we might be in this for the long haul, and that it might need some changes to how we work as a society.
I must admit that when this all started I made the mistake of confusing this with, say, flu, and couldn't see what the panic was about. The problem at the moment is that the death rate is much higher than flu, and that there isn't a vaccine. So for the moment it's a case of trying not to overwhelm the medical facilities until a vaccine can be made available.
Data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ which comes from WHO data gives the probability of dying from an infection for those aged 80+ as 15-20%. Since I have close relatives who are that age (and who are not fit for other reasons) those aren't odds I particularly like.
Or to take another angle - Western governments do not trash their economies without incredibly good reason. In the UK the people who are going to be worse hit are largely the core target voters for the current government: the self employed, the entrepreneurs, and the retired. When a government puts its main supporters out of work, or suggests locking them in their houses for three months, it's probably time to accept that something serious is going on.
The big challenge is to get the majority of the population to accept that this is serious, we might be in this for the long haul, and that it might need some changes to how we work as a society.
