A Discussion on Pandemics

by Gregory Buchmann

A Discussion of Bias

First of all, we cannot have a discussion without first a discussion of bias.   Bias is the personal experiences and point of view of the parties engaged in the discussion.   My personal bias is that I am a registered Republican.   However, I can further indicate that I did not vote for President Trump, and you can place me in the group called "Never Trumper!"   Perhaps this is because, above bias is ethics.   I believe that it is easily seen that Donald Trump has no ethics that I would agree with.   I did vote in the Michigan Primary this most recent Tuesday.   I did vote on the Michigan Republican Primary Ballot.   And again, I proud to indicate that I did not vote for President Trump in the Tuesday Michigan primary ballot. Read into this paragraph what your own personal bias indicates, but I think I fairly well describe my opinion.

Other terms for Bias

• Inclination
• Leaning
• Mind-set
• Preference
• Tendency

A Discussion of Yellow Journalism, perhaps more recently described as Fake Fake News

Next, we cannot have any discussion also without discussing Yellow Journalism.   Perhaps the most violent case of which is the Spanish-American War.   James Bond even made a bond villain out of Yellow Journalism with the movie "Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)"   So how much of the recent news concerning Pandemics is Yellow Journalism?   Time will tell, but the best information I have on pandemics is the following podcast Making Sense with Sam Harris - #191 - Early Thoughts on a Pandemic   I personally would not consider the information in this podcast as Yellow Journalism. But again, read into this paragraph what you will concerning this topic.

Other terms for Yellow Journalism

• Fake News
• Clickbait
• Tabloid Headline
• Melodrama
• Sensationalism

A Brief History of Global Pandemics in Modern Medicine

One might consider that the beginning of modern medicine was World War I.   The end of World War I brought the worst pandemic in human history and perhaps also modern medicine.   It is thought that the Spanish Flu may have killed 100 million people world wide, but those figures are strongly debated.   But again, with it brought modern medicine, so in a way it was a good thing.   1957 brought the Asian Flu and 1968 brought the Hong Kong Flu.   Again, modern medicine increased by leaps and bounds with technology and care.   2009 brought the Swine Flu taking somewhere between 150,000 and 550,000 lives worldwide and again modern medicine with now the tools of DNA testing advanced.   The question is, what will the COVID-19 Flu turn into?   Will it be as bad as the 2009 Swine Flu, or something more, or something less?   The interviewee in the above podcast tries to answer some of those questions as best he knows.

One might also consider that with all the recent news on COVID-19, that the one item of early discussion that has disappeared from the recent news is the R0 ( R Naught ) of the disease.   It would appear from the news that the R0 is higher than what it was thought to be early on with the outbreak.   However, no updated information on the R0 figure appears to be available on the internet recently.

The above table was lifted and edited from   Wikipedia Basic Reproductive Number

Finally, my personal conclusion of COVID-19

How bad is this going to get?   Obviously, this is going to be quite bad for the elderly and those who are already ill from some other life situation.   But, I think there will be waves of this illness, similiar to the 1918 Spanish Flu.   The 1918 Spanish Flu went on and on for 2 to 3 years, and in waves of illness and times of less illness.   Time will tell if these predictions are true or not.   People will get sick like they have the common cold, get better, and then a mutated version of the virus will strike again later and the same person may be sick again.   Time will tell.

2020 Greg Buchmann.

For educational purposes only.