RFalvo69
Posts: 1380
Joined: 7/11/2013
From: Lamezia Terme (Italy)
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Back when I enlisted in the Navy (1988) one of the mandatory courses was "Earth Sciences". I still have the 400 pages manual we had to study. One day our instructor said: "Climate Change is going to be bad. Pity that it will be politicised."
And we looked at each other. "Politicized?" How can you "politicise" a scientific problem? I guess that there will be dissent inside the scientific community, but increased fires or heavy weather phenomena are not tied to political thinking!
That grew old fast.
Around 2017 I happened to read "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry, about the Spanish Flu of 1918-19. While, once that pandemic started, there was nothing to do to stop it, I was amazed by how much it was helped by public ignorance and political interference. Almost no one listened to science. Masks, surprise!, were "against freedom". Doctors pleaded the various political organs to stop "War Parades" amid a pandemic. They were labeled as "against the morale" (the then sobriquet for "unpatriotic").
The result were events like the unfamous "Liberty Loan Parade" that was held in Philadelphia on Sept, 28th 1918 - when the pandemic was already so raging that the Army had cancelled the next draft call. Medical authorities of any kind implored for the parade to be cancelled. "No, because it was politically 'against the morale'". Some implored the newspaper editors to publish warnings or, at least, basic suggestions about how to protect yourself if you attended the parade. No one published anything.
Two days after the parade people literally started falling ill in the street. The result was one of the biggest superspreader events in history. Hospitals in the city were so crowded that they began refusing new patients. Sick people queued anyway outside the doors.
Colonel Charles Hagadorn, commander of Camp Grant, had ignored the medical guidelines for the Army and packed his barracks with young men. On Oct, 8th he read the latest casualty bulletin and committed suicide.
"Soon the daily death toll from influenza alone would exceed the city’s average weekly death toll from all causes—all illnesses, all accidents, all criminal acts combined." (from my Kindle edition of the book).
The Director of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Charities, Dr. Wilmer Krusen, a political appointee who hadn't acted against the parade ("There is no danger" were his exact words), assured that "There is no need to get frightened or panic stricken over exaggerated reports." (Sounds familiar?)
And this was happening while all the aforementioned normal illnesses, accidents and people injured in criminal acts still happened. Doctors and nurses were ran to the ground.
And then doctors and nurses started to become ill too. And to die. At the Philadelphia General Hospital, eight doctors and fifty-four nurses became sick. Ten nurses died. Fear and panic started to pervade the health-workers too.
Did all the above stopped other "Liberty Loan Parades"? Or, when the (infected) Army returned home, "Victory Parades"?
No, of course not.
So, I was reading all of this, in the sunny days of 2017, and thinking: "I'm not saying that our ancestors were stupid. No. They never are. However, the level of education was lower, the way pathogens acted was still not completely understood. An enemy with a rifle is a clear and present danger... a virus... who knows? Luckily, today we can readily inform ourselves should something like this happen! Medical science made many strides in a Century! After all, we dodged the SARS and MERS bullets, didn't we?"
And that became old very fast.
Masks are "political"???
Asking for proof of vaccination before allowing some specific activity during a pandemic is political???
In March 2020, while this pandemic raging out of control, The Governor of Florida, DeSantis, lifted all the medical mandates in his state during Spring Break, causing a superspreader event and the appearance of some variants. But if I say "And he still has his job?" I risk to get this thread locked because, for some reason... uh... "Debating this it's political".
The USA, most infamously, in 2020 had 25% of the COVID deaths in the whole World with only 4% of the population. But any serious analysis of why this happened becomes political.
I can see Sicily burning from here. The fires near Catania cause a black cloud visible during the day. During the night the horizon is faintly glowing. Another cloud, this one greyish, is faintly visible. That's Palermo.
Sardinia is burning. Marche and Abruzzo are burning.
Siberia is burning. Canada burned. Australia burned. Cyprus and Greece burned. Turkey, Spain, Oregon and California are burning.
But if I try to start a discourse about Climate Change [screech]"that's political!!"[/screech] My old teacher nailed it.
One day a cockroach will teach to little cockroaches: "First there were the dinosaurs, but an asteroid too care of them. Then human beings, but, sadly, their brain wattage was not enough to really endure. Now it's our turn!"
And good luck to them.
_____________________________
"Yes darling, I served in the Navy for eight years. I was a cook..."
"Oh dad... so you were a God-damned cook?"
(My 10 years old daughter after watching "The Hunt for Red October")
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RE: Delta Variant - please no politics - 
So, hurry and play those wargames while you still can.
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