the Covid hysteria is overblown (it is a bad disease, worse than influenza but not as bad as the Spanish flu, and not nearly as bad as other epidemics that spread in the past and could spread and kill again).
But modern westerners who think they control all aspects of their lives are aghast: it's almost like people are saying: How dare a disease hurt/kill me. It must be someone's fault. Let's blame Trumpieboy/Fauci/BillGates/the WHO/China/etc. (although that last one, China, is indeed partly to blame).
Which is alas why we are now seeing people developing paranoia against things that actually are saving lives: isolation, masks, and even rejecting without a logical reason a possible vaccine. (Kamela Harris insists she won't take the vaccine, implying it is being released early before all the tests are done, implying that Trump will release the vaccine early to get votes).
silly me. A quick google (or a phone call to the CDC) would have let her know that the phase three testing for the Pfizer vaccine will be over by mid October, meaning it can then be released by the end of October or early November...not because of the election but because that's how things are done.
Indeed, the results are so good that the vaccine is being manufactured already and the CDC and local health departments are already doing the logistics of giving the vaccine to millions of Americans, and only await the phase three study being finished.
But for us here in the Philippines, waiting for perfection in the phase three trials means we won't get the well tested vaccine from US companies for awhile, so we will be more likely to buy the Russian or Chinese vaccines, that haven't even started phase three testing:
why risk a partially tested vaccine? Because the Covid epidemic has shut down our economy and overwhelmed our hospitals, and hey, if a few people die of the vaccine, it's better than thousands dying of Covid, or shutdown related malnutrition because people are out of work and can't afford good food. And don't forget all the diseases that are not treated because no one will go to the hospital, either because they are afraid of catching covid, or they lack money to go to the doctor.
The use of the Russian or Chinese vaccines have geopolitical implications which are obvious but outside my area of expertise.
In the meanwhile, it is not good news when Harris hints about vaccine problems at a time the anti vax hysteria has spread from the liberal greenies to the Qanon crazies and the back-to-nature Christian right.
as Lolo would say: Crazy.
Sigh.
But this is not the first epidemic that America faced, nor the first time that NYCity tried in vain to stop an epidemic.
Major NYC Epidemics:
Yellow Fever (1785-1804)
Cholera Outbreak (1832)
Cholera Outbreak (1849)
Cholera Outbreak (1854)
Cholera Outbreak (1866)
Cholera? think severe diarrhea, so severe that you could die in 24 hours of dehydration.
what brought this to mind is a post on AtlasObscura about the woman who, a century before Rosa Parks, desegregated the NYCity transit system.
The article brings up the reason that Elizabeth Jennings didn't want to walk to church: The manure, the garbage, the mud, the dead animals, the flies etc. that confronted people in the streets.
True, there were "colored" trolleys, but it was full, and she was late for church, and the ordinary trolley was only half full...
Read the whole thing.
But the backstory is the lack of sanitation of NYCity, and the deaths in the city, from heatstroke but mostly from cholera:
By midyear, the first Cholera Hospital opened at 105 Franklin Street, followed by another on Mott Street, only to have the commissioners of health accused of suppressing data about cholera deaths as fear of an epidemic gripped Manhattan...
cholera.
Spread via contaminated water, where fecal material enters into the water system, into local wells, or when people are forced to use river water.
Yup. we had an epidemic when I was in Africa, but luckily it missed our area. the docs in that area converted schoolrooms so they could isolate patients away from regular hospital patients (schools had running water and toilet facilities).
this describes an epidemic in a village but nowadays, we see epidemics in third world cities whose water supply is deteriorating from lack of funds or from disasters.
but in the past, cholera was a world wide problem:
Cholera hit Ireland in 1849 and killed many of the Irish Famine survivors, already weakened by starvation and fever.[10] In 1849, cholera claimed 5,308 lives in the major port city of Liverpool, England, an embarkation point for immigrants to North America, and 1,834 in Hull, England.[11] ... Cholera, believed spread from Irish immigrant ship(s) from England to the United States, spread throughout the Mississippi river system, killing over 4,500 in St. Louis[11] and over 3,000 in New Orleans.[11] Thousands died in New York, a major destination for Irish immigrants.
Because back then, the people in the slums were the Irish: many illiterate and sick, who fled the potato famine and probably brought cholera with them on the "coffin ships"...
and yes, the association of disease with the Irish, along with the fear of losing "American culture" by outsiders with a different value system , religious bigotry (fueled by traditional British anti Catholic bigotry, and also by Catholic opposition to protestant Bible reading in schools), crime and gangs, and the worry about illegal voting. All of these issues fueled the nativist movement of those days, which led to the "anti Irish Riots" in several cities, link2 albeit not in NYCity.
Hmmm...
all of this sounds familiar doesn't it?
Cities with deteriorating sanitation, gangs roaming the streets, distrust of "dirty" immigrants: The same issues are being discussed exaggerated by politicians in this year's US elections.
Sigh.
But there is another side to the story that few notice:
the real heroes: Medical personnel, truckers, grocery store workers, the police, the farmers, and the lowly folk who keep the streets clean.
Have you hugged a sanitation worker lately?
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