Tags
Coronavirus, Covid, COVID-19, Ebola, Smallpox, The survival kit, The survival kit # 2, Variola, Variolation
There are many recommendations on how to cope with COVID-19 – Covid – Coronavirus and many, perhaps most of the novel ideas will give some benefit. The most important is to physically be as far away from infected people as possible. Most people don’t have the option of living on a remote island or a wilderness area or even someplace within their area where they can totally avoid people, and therefore they must do the other recommended self-preservation techniques until an effective vaccine is developed.
Developing a vaccine may happen in a few months, or it might take a couple of years, but the coronavirus can be expected to go worldwide in a few months. That is probably too short a time to create a vaccine, test it for safety, and manufacture it in huge quantities need to vaccinate enough people to eliminate the virus entirely. The virus may spread so widely that it will find permanent refuges in unknown places and then become part of the background diseases that humanity has to cope with periodically.
One method for coping with smallpox was used before vaccinations were invented. Two hundred years ago a method called variolation was used for coping with Variola. It was discovered that the pus could be taken out of a surviving smallpox victim’s pustules during the late scabby stages of that deadly disease, and scratched into the skin of a healthy person. Those “patients” did get sick and a few percentages of them died, but most lived and didn’t go blind, and had fewer pox marks. Modern techniques might refine that primitive procedure in a few weeks to be effective against Coronavirus.
There has been enough spread of Coronavirus that some differences in the virus will have developed, and some of these will be less sickening and less deadly. These weaker diseases could be given to a population of people at risk in only a few days rather than a year or two. It is risky to proceed with this solution, but to do nothing and let this disease run its natural course appears to be a far worse solution.
From the people who undergo this two-hundred-year-old procedure, there will be some who will not get so sick as most of the others, and from these less sickened people a milder infection could be refined and given to yet another group. This would be a form of directed evolution and it could be helped along by using the modern CRISPR techniques.
Desperate problems call forth desperate solutions.
Adopting self administered home remedies or following any procedures from an ancient past are both foolish and unwise. Ignore information from CNN and instead go to the CDC website for useful information that is informative instead of being crafted for ratings of gullible consumers who eagerly swallow mindless hype and nonsense. Leave medicine and medical decision making to the professionals and get it first hand – not through some idiotic script reader on CNN who cannot even pronounce the words correctly.
There is no need to panic. The statistics indicate that this virus is nowhere as deadly as Ebola, SARS or MERS unless it mutates or panic driven behavior helps spreads the disease faster than we can react. Fortunately we have more than enough time to prepare and 99% of us will survive in spite of all our stupid overreactions.
A year from now it will all be forgotten just as soon as the media stops breathlessly screaming like Little Miss Muffet. Unfortunately this is an election year and as Saul Alensky’s student, named Obama, was fond of saying; “Never let any natural disaster go to waste – always blame and vilify your political opponents for everything regardless of the truth.” Mindless hysteria from all NEWS sources will likely last through the election in November. Listening to silly nonsense will not help in prudent or wise decision making.
The first thing I would do is turn off my TV. The second thing would be to ignore all information that did not originate from a medical source like the CDC or the research hospitals – at least until sanity returns. Go online and start here for reliable information:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html
However, if you really like to be scared and frightened, like little girls with spiders, go to this site to watch the horror unfold in real time (updated every five minutes):
http://outbreaks.globalincidentmap.com/home.php#
Dengue Fever and countless other diseases coming soon to a mindless hysteria near you. I have watched this site for years as cheap entertainment and if it tracked other coronavirus and similar outbreaks the same way it is tracking the Covid-19 virus, there would be no room left anywhere on the map. Note: you may have to wait for five minutes before the map loads but you can watch the breaking incidents of all deadly diseases all over the world far better than on the CNN (which is thought to be an abbreviation for Communist Network News – & propaganda).
A year from now everyone will forget and move on to the next hysteria. Remember when global warming hysteria was the biggest threat to the planet? Remember how they wanted to squander 30 Trillion dollars on globaloney warming? How funny in hindsight. Imagine how much they can squander when people are really going to die? Let the bidding begin! At least this virus threat is more credible and not quite so obviously silly – although seeing healthy people wearing face masks in public hoping to ward off viruses does make me smile a little. Ignorant stupidity and humor always go together as cheap entertainment. Just, don’t sneeze or cough on me because I doubt that Obamacare will actually provide any medical remedy other than death counseling and burial assistance.
;D
Suggest you turn off Fox News as well. I bet you think Trump is God as well. We don’t need soothsayers and smug survivalists now preaching.
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This might be a place a working group could discuss the risks/potential of this and realted proposals, perhaps combined with anti-virals?
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/04/01/taking-initial-viral-load-seriously/#comment-6191
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I’d like to send you a private invitation, but can’t find your email address. Please email me at rhanson@gmu.edu