It wasn't created in a lab. ALL conspiracy theories stem from the human need to feel like humans are in control. In this case, humans were not in control, nature was. And then you have the greed and opportunism and malevolence of several world governments, which is what makes people doubt the origins of this virus.
This virus originated, most likely, in bats. There is a famous virologist in China who has been studying bat viruses for years (sorry I can't recall her name). She has repeatedly shown that human encroachment leads to spread of bat viruses into the surrounding environment, whether through their guano, through being butchered, etc. It's conceivable that other wildlife, e.g., pangolins, could have contracted this coronavirus through environmental contact.
Then there is the whole issue of humans in certain cultures, e.g. China, valuing exotic animal meat as possessing "magical" healing properties, combined with a cultural emphasis on fresh-butchering animals in front of or near their consumers. While on the one hand, this may seem better than the factory-slaughterhouse model, it depends entirely on how the animals are killed and butchered. Certainly animal blood can create an opportunity for viruses to cross over into humans. All it takes is a virus molecule on clothes, shoes, the knife, the counter, the butcher's hand, to spread it.
A similar mindset can be traced to how doctors were viewed here in the West a couple of centuries ago. Doctors were not considered "professional" if they showed up with a clean apron and hands. They were viewed as inexperienced, so doctors with dirty hands and blood stained aprons were preferred. Up until the 20th century, this accounted for a lot of patient deaths, especially for women in childbirth. The doctors were spreading more germs as opposed to really being healers. It took a long time for western culture to pivot on that.
So what we see in non-Western cultures, particularly in China and South Asia, is a lag on change of mindset in certain facets of daily life. Doctors are appreciated for sanitary protocols, but butchers and food vendors are not. 90% of all influenza viruses began in China, because outside the big cities, they live very closely with livestock and because this mindset of eating living things that are killed in front of you persists. Yes, 1918 Swine Flu began here in the US. With pig farmers in Kansas. Again, proving my point that if we get away from eating meat, we can prevent these kinds of diseases from proliferating and we can also stave off climate change to some extent.
Add to these issues that there is a lot of greed, malevolence and opportunism on the part of large country governments, ours included, and you can see why many turn to conspiracy theories to try to make sense of our world. While everyone is focused on the pandemic, China is making in-roads into many developing countries that will leave them forever indebted to China. As a matter of fact, Ecuador had decided to sell off 1/3 of its rainforest to China for oil drilling (I'll put a link below), destroying the environment and destroying indigenous peoples. China is also strangling the Mekong River, which is a lifeline river for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Ignore the conspiracy theories. If the Chinese or anyone else wanted to conquer the world with a virus, this isn't the virus to do that with. And the Chinese lied to the rest of the world about how/when/where this got started, and that's why their info is viewed with suspicion. Just because they lied doesn't make other lies true.
I hope that answers your question. Links:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/0NyKizih/how-china-is-choking-the-mekong
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We are not all co-conspirators. If somebody wants to discuss the philosophical foundations of interconnectivity of all beings and goodness and kindness to the earth, or whether the disease started in a Wuhan lab or a wild animal market, I totally agree those are important discussions.
As far as the enormous loss of life and suffering that has happened in the U.S. and will continue, the White House is to blame for failing to act earlier when they had the intel and the time to do something, to start testing and getting people to hunker down.
No. We are not all co-conspirators.Â
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Dr. Birx told the world that testing was not profitable so that is why there is such a problem with testing. Trump ended his BS rally right after she said it .
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Trump Quickly Ended Presser Right After Dr. Birx Said the Quiet Part Out Loud: 'Profitability of Tests'
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    It's a sad thing to say but it's 100% true: Donald Trump is actively obstructing efforts to deal effectively with the pandemic. He continues to peddle the outright lie that COVID-19 testing and supplies are quite adequate. The official numbers greatly understate the true numbers of infected people. For the most part we are only testing people who went to a hospital or a medical clinic with potentially life-threatening symptoms. We clearly need to test much larger numbers of people before we can really have an accurate picture of how many people are infected.
    The desire of most governors to not reopen most businesses without extensive COVID-19 testing is quite reasonable. With a death rate over 5% we can ill-afford to cut corners on testing to find out who all is infected and get them quarantined so they won't infect others. Donald Trump is actively encouraging protests in states and cities around the country to force governors and mayors to reopen businesses without extensive testing to find out who all is infected.
     Donald Trump is completely indifferent to the suffering of those who have been infected. He does not want the American people to learn the truth regarding how many people are actually infected or how many people have perished because of the pandemic.
This article in Science magazine is one of the most informative I've come across in terms of how COVID might be working once it infects a person:
The virus doesn't focus solely on the respiratory system but seems to use cells that are rich in the enzyme ACE2 (found throughout the body) to get a foothold and begin to replicate.
In my visualizations going forward, I will focus on all the organs and systems working in concert, in the right measure, to heal the body.
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I think this article by CNN's Brooke Baldwin is a nice followup to my previous post:
How fighting coronavirus taught me about the gift of connection
Someone's fear of losing their livelihood and not being able to feed their family is just as real as any fear of catching the virus. The problem is not the person or their political viewpoint. The problem is the fear. When we make decisions driven by fear, they are almost never for the Greatest and Highest Good. One way of avoiding this pitfall is to find compassion for your fellow human being, who may not realize that there is no need to succumb to this fear. Instead of succumbing to your own fear of what another person's actions might engender, send those persons love and light and say a prayer that they may find a way out of the fear, as well.
Dying from covid is a real threat - and there is no coming back from it. There are safety nets built into society that stop people from starving- most European countries have much better ones than ours and have shown more willingness to support people during this time regarding shelter and job loss but they do exist. This is an opportunity if we are all willing to see what this virus exposes- both in terms or offering compassion, but also in terms of not watering the seed of fear, this crisis offers the opportunity for The creative re-imagining Of a society that until now seemed fringe but this has exposed the weakness of capitalism and the reality that capitalism makes us miserable and is unsustainable anyway in a world that has finite resources. I know what it’s like to wake up from victim hood and to shift into a different energy- we are the authors of this story and we are not impotent- it’s not happening to us- we are participating in some way everyday. We are all called to act and one way of doing that is offering another lens through which to see our current circumstances- we do not have to succumb to our worst fears or buy into the hype that we face death if our economy doesn’t restart. I am not suggesting that economic loss is not a real concern or that it isn’t scary or difficult- but this is our opportunity to expose the system’s faults and work towards something better.Â
I might have come across as taking an unfair shot at social safety nets in my previous comment. Yes, many countries do a better job than the US when it comes to providing for the less fortunate. But, as @jaidy pointed out, this is an opportunity to expose the system's faults, and all national institutions as we know them are girded to some extent by the extractive logic of wetiko. So let's identify and remedy international cracks before carbon copying this or that country's welfare infrastructure.Â
Separately, if you don't think you're at a point where you can send love and light to someone whose behavior repulses you, as @frank suggested, you can at least follow the lead offered by @pikake and focus on loving and working on yourself, which will bring about its own transformations. We can't heal others without first healing ourself.
People keep asking when will it be safe to go out in public again? Â My gut is that it's going to be at least 1.5 years, and probably 2 years, before I will feel safe going out to public places. And that will depend on whether there is a reliable vaccine at that point. Â But it is more complex than that because while I can work at home, many cannot. Â Also I'm high risk, so I am not going to take any chances.
In this ProPublica advice to Governors on what needs to be done before economies should be re-opened, they spoke to experts and frontline officials from Italy, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.Â
An Excerpt: Â They advise:
- Massive, ongoing testing to detect where the disease is spreading,
- a real-time ability to trace contacts of those infected and isolate them, [Jeanne's note: this is quite invasive of people's privacy and I don't think we should do it here.]
- a willingness of people to wear masks in crowded public spaces,
- reserves of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other equipment for hospital workers to handle any surge in cases,
- and reliable, easily administered blood tests to find out the number of people who have been infected. If they work well, such tests could eventually be used to identify people with immunity who could work at higher-risk jobs.
We also asked American experts whether states can meet all or most of these benchmarks. Their answers coalesced around a single point: None of you are close to being ready....
One theme emerged again and again. Experts from across the world said it’s crucial to correctly interpret the recent drop in the rate of hospitalizations and deaths reported by New York City, ground zero for the epidemic. This result was achieved only by a month of slamming the brakes on the economy and banning the most basic interactions (and pleasures) of human society.
The bad news, they said, is that everything we’ve been through so far has merely allowed us to reset the clock to mid-January, when the virus was already seeded in many parts of America and we were on the cusp of the biggest public health crisis in a century. Allow people to return to offices, streets, malls and mass transit without a well-thought-out plan, and you stand a substantial chance of triggering a second wave of infections.
Reopening is essential to save the economy, they said, but don’t kid yourself: The new normal will look nothing like the old normal. Until there’s a vaccine or a reliable treatment, you and your states will be living and working very differently, constantly at risk from a wave of disease that could overwhelm your hospitals."  Here's the whole article https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-advice-from-abroad-7-lessons-americas-governors-should-not-ignore-as-they-reopen-their-economies
ProPublica is worth subscribing to; they have top reporters, and they are free, donations only.
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Some states have no real plan and just opening again. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday he was reopening many non-essential businesses effective immediately and beaches on Tuesday.Â
The governor announced his decision after other state leaders spoke of tentative plans to reopen the economy in the coming weeks. McMaster's plan included the immediate reopening of retail locations such as department stores, clothing shops and book sellers.Â
Beaches will be open beginning at noon on Tuesday.
"I've restored public beach access, allowing locals to use their discretion. I've also allowed some retailers that were previously closed to open, but they must follow strict social distancing measures," McMaster said Monday.
Georgia is also opening non essential businesses.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced on Monday that the first phase of reopening Georgia businesses will begin this Friday, April 24.
Gyms, fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studio, barbers, cosmetologists, hair designer, nail care artists and massage therapists will be allowed to resume business on Friday. Kemp said basic health and sanitation standards must be met before any business can reopen, such as screening employees for fever and wearing masks.
Theaters, private clubs and restaurants' dine-in services will be allowed to reopen Monday, April 27, Kemp said. Bars, nightclubs, amusement parks and live performance venues will remain closed for the time being.
This is a disaster in the making.Â
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Yes, a little 5-year old girl died in Detroit over the weekend. She didn't have any of the typical symptoms - just a mild fever and a really bad headache that got worse and worse. After her parents bought her to the hospital, she was tested and sure enough, she had Covid-19 and she deteriorated after that. She was declared brain dead over the weekend after being on a ventilator for two weeks. It's just heartbreaking.
Here is a link to her story - what a cutie pie she was. Her poor parents.
This should ease some of the fears about covid lethality. I'm not downplaying its danger at all, but the numbers arent as bad as they seem, and they seem scary as hell right now.Â
An antibody study in Los Angeles was done. Roughly 850 people were tested(small but large enough to give a basic idea) for covid antibodies. The study showed that somewhere between 28-55 times the number of people who tested positive for covid infections had antibodies. It's far from enough to gather herd immunity, but it does show one distinct fact-the number of asymptomatic cases and very mild cases is much higher than previously expected. If you translate the ratio over the entire country you get somewhere between 22-44 million cases of people that have been infected and recovered. Even taking the low end and multiplying the death numbers by 1.5x to adjust for covid deaths that were not recorded as such, you get a 0.27% mortality rate. That means less than 3 out of every 1000 people who contract covid are dying. Those numbers are very close to the seasonal flu(one type is what became of the Spanish flu).Â
I am not trying to compare it to the flu in danger because there will be rising death numbers and with no immunity at all, it's an entirely different animal. Covid kills indiscriminately versus the seasonal flu killing almost solely those weakened by other issues. What I am saying is that for those of us, myself included, that freak out over every cough, sneeze, and throat tickle we get, the true danger is not to the level we are making it out to be. Please dont let what I say cause you to relax your precautions, because we definitely should not. Just let it serve as a reminder that within the 22 million Americans already affected, many had underlying issues and did not succumb to the disease. I also am fairly confident that many with serious underlying issues are included in the asymptomatic group as well. Covid attacks some gravely and others not at all for a reason and whatever the reason is, it goes much deeper than preexisting conditions. It is something in the cellular makeup, or biochemistry, of everyone that decides who gets affected how. I am sure scientists are actively trying to detect that reason and will use it to fight the disease.Â
What a heartbreaking story. Â
i have a gut feeling for that also about going out safe until next year i still feel this virus will be around us but it will be more tamed there won't be many cases in the next coming months. my state is already planning their reopening may 8th as i thought it would we are going to reopen county by county that has the lowest cases i don't see a lot of people going out still because many of them are still scared about getting sick and will be like that for a while i do feel we will have a vaccine soon for this virus possibly by the end of the summer mid fall. i also keep seeing april 25 still for some odd reason i don't know why that date keeps coming to my mind so keep a look out guys i have a feeling the president is going to say something big it could be about testing or a vaccine again.Â
My ex does Vedic Astrology. I do not. We just spoke and I did remember an important change in later April. Rahu is changing it's decan (aspect) tomorrow.
This is important. The decan it's in now his very bad. Looking historically backwards, it's when the 1918 Spanish Flu, WW2 and 911 all happened.Â
The new decan is one of healing and optimism.Â
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