Woodstock = Middle of Pandemic

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Masato
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Woodstock = Middle of Pandemic

Postby Masato » Wed May 06, 2020 1:16 pm

Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic

https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock- ... E0G6q5Izfw

In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.

Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see.

“In 1968,” says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, “the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.”

And this happened in the lifetimes of every American over 52 years of age.

I was 5 years old and have no memory of this at all. My mother vaguely remembers being careful and washing surfaces, and encouraging her mom and dad to be careful. Otherwise, it’s mostly forgotten today. Why is that?

Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.

Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.

Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue.


As Bojan Pancevski in the Wall Street Journal points out, “In 1968-70, news outlets devoted cursory attention to the virus while training their lenses on other events such as the moon landing and the Vietnam War, and the cultural upheaval of the civil-rights movements, student protests and the sexual revolution.”

The only actions governments took was to collect data, watch and wait, encourage testing and vaccines, and so on. The medical community took the primary responsibility for disease mitigation, as one might expect. It was widely assumed that diseases require medical not political responses.

It’s not as if we had governments unwilling to intervene in other matters. We had the Vietnam War, social welfare, public housing, urban renewal, and the rise of Medicare and Medicaid. We had a president swearing to cure all poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Government was as intrusive as it had ever been in history. But for some reason, there was no thought given to shutdowns.

Which raises the question: why was this different? We will be trying to figure this one out for decades.

Was the difference that we have mass media invading our lives with endless notifications blowing up in our pockets? Was there some change in philosophy such that we now think politics is responsible for all existing aspects of life? Was there a political element here in that the media blew this wildly out of proportion as revenge against Trump and his deplorables? Or did our excessive adoration of predictive modelling get out of control to the point that we let a physicist with ridiculous models frighten the world’s governments into violating the human rights of billions of people?

Maybe all of these were factors. Or maybe there is something darker and nefarious at work, as the conspiracy theorists would have it.

Regardless, they all have some explaining to do.

By way of personal recollection, my own mother and father were part of a generation that believed they had developed sophisticated views of viruses. They understood that less vulnerable people getting them not only strengthened immune systems but contributed to disease mitigation by reaching “herd immunity.” They had a whole protocol to make a child feel better about being sick. I got a “sick toy,” unlimited ice cream, Vicks rub on my chest, a humidifier in my room, and so on.

They would constantly congratulate me on building immunity. They did their very best to be happy about my viruses, while doing their best to get me through them.

If we used government lockdowns then like we use them now, Woodstock (which changed music forever and still resonates today) would never have occurred. How much prosperity, culture, tech, etc. are losing in this calamity?

What happened between then and now? Was there some kind of lost knowledge, as happened with scurvy, when we once had sophistication and then the knowledge was lost and had to be re-found? For COVID-19, we reverted to medieval-style understandings and policies, even in the 21st century. It’s all very strange.

The contrast between 1968 and 2020 couldn’t be more striking. They were smart. We are idiots. Or at least our governments are.

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Masato
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Postby Masato » Wed May 06, 2020 1:17 pm

Image

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Megaterio Llamas
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Postby Megaterio Llamas » Sun May 10, 2020 12:06 pm

Hah. I don't remember a virus going around in 1968 at all. I for sure went to some pro hockey games as well as CFL and triple AAA baseball games and would have played hockey and baseball myself, gone to movies, the PNE etc. Don't recall a thing about a deadly flu bug going around.
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Postby Song2 » Wed May 13, 2020 3:46 am

This was back when Hong Kong was part of England. A much more gentlemanly approach.

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Diet Butcher
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Postby Diet Butcher » Wed May 13, 2020 6:31 am

That was during the cultural revolution right? Swarms of mainlanders were fleeing to Hong Kong during those years. Like SARS, started somewhere in China, but not reported until it reached HK.

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Postby Benwahwah » Wed May 13, 2020 6:50 am

You could maybe say that instead of 'losing' knowledge, we have actually gained knowledge. Hopefully it means we are more compassionate as well.

Your current view (and the UK and US governments) seems to mirror this guy.

Image

Most people don't want their loved ones to die. We now understand that if we go in to lockdown we can save thousands of lives.

What we saw in the US was Trump trying to go with the old school view. Then he started getting rekt in the polls, because who wants to be the country with the worst fatality rate? So

The fact that China, Italy, and South Korea went into lockdown and seemingly nipped it in the bud (although with the easing South Korea is having a resurgence) is also having an impact on the perception of what we should do.

The biggest problem the US has at the minute is how thin skinned Trump is. It means that he constantly wants to please, and wants to try and cover both sides of everything. Look at how he is handling the easing of the lockdown. He is putting the responsibility on the governors of the states. That way, if they ease the lockdown and people die "Not my fault I didn't ease the lockdown" or if people are protesting being locked down "It isn't my fault it is your governor".

Anyone who can't see what a complete shitshow Donald Trump has been as a leader doesn't deserve to vote. It has disgusted me what people will accept just to keep 'their side' in power.

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Postby Masato » Thu May 14, 2020 5:47 pm

Benwahwah wrote:You could maybe say that instead of 'losing' knowledge, we have actually gained knowledge. Hopefully it means we are more compassionate as well.

Your current view (and the UK and US governments) seems to mirror this guy.

Image

Most people don't want their loved ones to die. We now understand that if we go in to lockdown we can save thousands of lives.

What we saw in the US was Trump trying to go with the old school view. Then he started getting rekt in the polls, because who wants to be the country with the worst fatality rate? So

The fact that China, Italy, and South Korea went into lockdown and seemingly nipped it in the bud (although with the easing South Korea is having a resurgence) is also having an impact on the perception of what we should do.

The biggest problem the US has at the minute is how thin skinned Trump is. It means that he constantly wants to please, and wants to try and cover both sides of everything. Look at how he is handling the easing of the lockdown. He is putting the responsibility on the governors of the states. That way, if they ease the lockdown and people die "Not my fault I didn't ease the lockdown" or if people are protesting being locked down "It isn't my fault it is your governor".

Anyone who can't see what a complete shitshow Donald Trump has been as a leader doesn't deserve to vote. It has disgusted me what people will accept just to keep 'their side' in power.


Hey Ben! Good to hear from you

What's the situation like in Thailand? Can you still teach? Are stores closed?

Just for clarification that first post is copy/pasted, it's not my writing though I think it offers some good points and questions.

This whole issue can be skewed from (at least) two very different perspectives, there will be casualties and suffering as a result of either direction, its the perfect recipe for polarizing views and conflicting debate. Very sad, it would be nice if the ways of looking at this could come together and have a discussion not a debate but I am seeing very little of it, especially on mainstream they just seem to be instigating a 'take sides/throw mud at the other' mentality. This is sad because it turns to red vs blue pro life vs pro-choice and all those other morally dualistic issues that divide us up so fast.

I saw a vid yesterday I'm guessing was very recent, Rand Paul was grilling Fauci on reasons Paul was advocating for re-opening. Fauci never got to answer Paul's questions about Sweden, though they were good.

I hope we are learning but the cost of this new reaction that we've never done before I fear it turning out to be devastating in so many ways. Can't really guilt someone for realizing that and wondering about it imo



No comment on Trump, lol

I will say deferring the choice to the individual states is very American, and in the USA probably the correct choice, even if it does take a bunch of the blame off his shoulders lol


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