Is this THE pandemic?

[vixb1]

Towards the beginning of the pandemic, I remember reading something about us being "due" a pandemic, but this wasn't it - ie this was all a bit tame.

I keep thinking about it. Now that it's got way more serious - is this now it?!

I think I'm just having a day where I'm struggling to come to terms with the direction this is all going in and the thought of having to face something worse in the future is just unthinkable :-(

I'm sure it'll be a deeply unhelpful post for some people. But for me, I think I need it laying out for me!

What do we think?

@Fieldofyellowflowers

I mean, the last bad pandemic was spanish flu which was just over one hundred years ago. The one before that was probably the great plague, which last affected the whole world in the 1600s. So three hundred years prior to spanish flu. Based on that, there is no 'set' pattern.

Part of the reason spanish flu was so bad was because it was ignored and concerns dismissed due to the war demands. It likely develped or very least spread via the american troop camps and it's global distrubtion can be mapped along train lines and returning troops at the end of the great war. It also affected health adults rather than children and older people which flu normally kills. It caused approximate 50 million deaths world wide.

Other recognised global flu pandemics are 1957 Asian flu pandmic, estimated 1-2 million fatalities world wide and 9 million people in UK, Hong Kong flu in 1968 I million deaths world wide.

There was also Russian flu in 1977 which was spanish flu resurfacing though affected those under 23 years of age but doesn't always seem to be counted in 20th century flu pandemics.

They think covid world wide so far is 2 million with 86,015 in UK.

There have been many articles on how we were overdue a flu pandemic but they were all independent events.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2007/02/severe-pandemic-not-overdue-its-not-when-if

Medical historians tell us there have been nine influenza pandemics in the past 300 years. So one every 30 to 35 years or so, or roughly three per century, is everybody's best guess about the future frequency of influenza pandemics.

But extrapolating from nine cases is far from a sure thing. Scientists wouldn't be all that shocked if pandemics started coming more frequently or less frequently. And even if the average remains three per century, it's only an average. The 21st century could still give us just one pandemic—or five.

And obviously covid is not a flu virus but coronavirus virus family and there are a whole range of nasty viruses out there.

What the last thing that goes through a fly's mind when it hits a windscreen? It's arse.

May we all be so lucky. If the end is out there, may it be quick and unforeseen. And may it happen suddenly whilst I am looking at the dog and thinking we might go out for a walk in a minute...

I think you’re right OP.

I also think, this will continue to worsen with more pandemics, more frequently the more us humans continue to eat animals.

I think we have our warning shots on animal consumption and global warming - ( partly due to animal farming), and we need to heed that and live simpler lives with less travel, less mass global farming, less animal consumption.

This is just the beginning of the end of humans!

“Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

"But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!"

"Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.”

― Alan Moore, Watchmen

Our world is full of everyday miracles. We can choose to see them, and make the most of them, or we can choose to focus on possible futures over which we have not one whit of control.

And obviously covid is not a flu virus but coronavirus virus family and there are a whole range of nasty viruses out there

I’m rather partial to theories about what kinds of bacteria and viruses could be released from the polar ice caps and other frozen regions as they melt.

I'm sure another one will be along soon. This is the first of it's kind in my lifetime so I hope the next one is on the SARS MERS level but careful what you wish for as some are less transmisable but more deadly.

Variants of bird flu would scare me the most right now. That is always on Gov radar in the UK

@Cornettoninja

And obviously covid is not a flu virus but coronavirus virus family and there are a whole range of nasty viruses out there

I’m rather partial to theories about what kinds of bacteria and viruses could be released from the polar ice caps and other frozen regions as they melt.

Christ! I’ve not even thought of things like this. 😱

@leopardspotsdotdotdot, sorry I’ve added another layer - I consume way too much science fiction.

I don’t know how credible it is but I know there are theories about how meteorites could carry completely new kinds of viruses and bacteria to earth. There’s plenty of theories that’s how life itself started on earth.

I think the poster who pointed out we’re on a rock spinning through space tethered to a burning ball of gases by an unseen force has the right idea about perspective though. We’re doing alright really.

I think the idea of humans dying out is really sad from a biological point of view. As it stands we don’t have any evidence that there’s any other intelligent life form able to observe the universe in the way we do. I think that it would be very sad to think that nothing would be witnessing existence in quite the same way.

Well, I've cheered myself right up with this post?!?!

Although I've kind of enjoyed it in a weird way. My take away is, we're fucked in general. Just get on and enjoy it regardless!

@LadyOfTheImprovisedBath

Fembot123 the poles swap places every 200,000 to 300,000 years it's recorded in some rocks - certain minerals align with the magntic field as they form forming a permant record of where the poles were.

As they change over it's likely magnetic field, that offers some protection from radiation coming form outter space, will weaken.

www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html

Apparently there's been some recent doom mongering on internet about how catastrophic it would actually be.

That’s really interesting 😊 thank you

I'm all out of shits really. Can't control any of it. Hopefully there'll still be Bailey's

Gosh...Think I will leave this thread...if I wasn't feeling depressed before, I am now

Back in March this thread would have sent me in to back to back panic attacks but I just feel numb now.

@tatutata

I'm all out of shits really. Can't control any of it. Hopefully there'll still be Bailey's

Did you try the orange truffle one over Christmas? It was amazing! Small little pieces of joy left in the world / Tesco!

Gotta love a man thread when op says I'm really struggling with the idea that worse will happen and everyone piles on to tell her how absolutely everything will get worse from here and this is positively Rosey compared to the rest of her life.

I very much expect there will be much worse pandemics in future, yes.

While this one is quite infectious the death rate per person infected is very low compared to some other diseases. It’s likely one day we’ll get one that is both highly infectious but with a much higher death rate. This one also almost exclusively kills the very elderly. And I think it’s very likely there will be one that kills the young and children as well, which would be much worse in my opinion. But no one can say if that will be in five years or fifty or a hundred. I imagine when I am nervous something like Ebola but with the infection rate of Covid and with a longer dormant period - Ebola only doesn’t spread in developed countries because you realise you have it so quickly and die before you can spread it much. Something with no symptoms for a week or so would be a killer.

I think this is a horrible thread. The last thing we need right now is people surmising about a worse threat coming that will kill our children.This catastrophising is so bad: we all feel so low, I think it's irresponsible to forecast terrors based on no facts whatsoever at a time when people are struggling. People are drawn to titles like this, no doubt hoping for reassurance!

At the moment, on the active board, there is a thread about a serial killer, one about mother on trial, and a se x robot thread.
No one makes us read them.

Er, yeah but those don't relate to the context of the pandemic and the unsubstantiated likelihood of facing much worse in our children's lifetimes. You know, that thing that everybody is dealing with at the moment and that is making many feel fearful, insecure and hopeless about the future. And when people are anxious about something they look for information so it makes sense that this thread would be one to read. My issue is with the unsubstantiated catastrophising that is presented as inevitability.

@user2021

This is definitely not THE pandemic. I think there'll be some sort of virus, natural disaster, or bio warfare in the near future (50-100yrs) that wipes out 80%+ of the global population.

You have no basis to say this, no evidence, nothing. I know that not everything is scaremongering but THIS is for sure

@Marvelina

Er, yeah but those don't relate to the context of the pandemic and the unsubstantiated likelihood of facing much worse in our children's lifetimes. You know, that thing that everybody is dealing with at the moment and that is making many feel fearful, insecure and hopeless about the future. And when people are anxious about something they look for information so it makes sense that this thread would be one to read. My issue is with the unsubstantiated catastrophising that is presented as inevitability.

Not to mention op has said she's worried and people are clearly taking delight in who can make it the most worst.

It's like a ftm saying she's worried about birth and everyone rushing to tell how they were sliced from front to back with no pain relief before an emcs and the sound went bad and their nipples bled for months and the baby never stopped screaming and that was when they were young and fit, not like the op.

It's competitive misery loading

Exactly! @SleepingStandingUp

[quote Cornettoninja]@leopardspotsdotdotdot, sorry I’ve added another layer - I consume way too much science fiction.

I don’t know how credible it is but I know there are theories about how meteorites could carry completely new kinds of viruses and bacteria to earth. There’s plenty of theories that’s how life itself started on earth.

I think the poster who pointed out we’re on a rock spinning through space tethered to a burning ball of gases by an unseen force has the right idea about perspective though. We’re doing alright really.

I think the idea of humans dying out is really sad from a biological point of view. As it stands we don’t have any evidence that there’s any other intelligent life form able to observe the universe in the way we do. I think that it would be very sad to think that nothing would be witnessing existence in quite the same way.[/quote]
While that is true, the probability of us being the only intelligent life in the universe is so vanishingly small that it's almost statistically impossible. The question is really why we haven't come across any others, rather than whether they are there: the Fermi paradox.

Here is an amusing and accessible explanation:

waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

@Marvelina

I think this is a horrible thread. The last thing we need right now is people surmising about a worse threat coming that will kill our children.This catastrophising is so bad: we all feel so low, I think it's irresponsible to forecast terrors based on no facts whatsoever at a time when people are struggling. People are drawn to titles like this, no doubt hoping for reassurance!

This thread is full of facts and links to scientific analysis and global studies by brilliant scientists. If you have an inability to consider things within the context of statstical probabilities then maybe you should become an ostrich and bury your head. If everyone took that kind of view society would be even more ill prepared for facing the challenges ahead of us. That would be far frightening.