{"id":8549,"date":"2020-03-23T23:58:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T06:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/?p=8549"},"modified":"2020-04-06T13:23:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T20:23:01","slug":"howto-catch-up-coronavirus-fast-underrock-enslaved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/23\/howto-catch-up-coronavirus-fast-underrock-enslaved\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullet points: HOWTO catch up on coronavirus fast if you’ve been living under a rock (or enslaved)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note: In 2020, I\u2019m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released Mondays or so\u2026LIKE TODAY’s! This is Week 12<\/em>‘s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us” \u2014 intensive care physician Dr. Daniele Macchini, in translation<\/a> from Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, Italy, Friday 6th of March 2020. (Additional attribution information<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artwork via<\/a> Colombian Juli\u00e1n Valencia, but original artist unknown<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Let’s say you’ve been living under a rock \u2014 or enslaved by time-consuming wage-work or an abusive chattel owner or months\/years of lock up or an unhappy, exploitative marriage or other \u2014 and you exit that problem (at least partially) to simply arrive at another: everything’s suddenly different and everyone else has been talking, and continues to talk, about some sort of coronavirus deal. If you think that’s a joke, consider the number of people exiting various forms of confinement daily, not to mention the other scenarios in this paragraph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, you’re literate and you have about three hours on your hands, so what quality information should you read to catch yourself up on the scary COVID-19 disease caused by late 2019’s new version of coronavirus (a family of related viruses)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below are ten bullet points, plus a bonus eleventh, listing links to study up on, primarily \u2014 but not only \u2014 regarding the medical and practical sides of things, to help you catch up quickly on the pandemic.<\/strong> I’ve been reading about novel coronavirus (just a fancy way to say new coronavirus), since late February; that’s how I’m distilling down your reading to essential material. Required texts would differ regionally, of course, yet as a Seattleite previously from North Texas, I’m gearing the present post toward the United States. Seattle is also where the index case (aka patient zero) happened in this country, so compared with the rest of the US, Seattleites have had a head start on this new world. Without further ado:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.<\/strong> On Friday 6 March 2020, Dr. Daniele Macchini, an intensive care unit physician at the Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, Italy, wrote a Facebook post in Italian<\/a> that the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera<\/em> (Bergamo edition) republished the next day<\/a>, probably contributing to an English translation appearing on reddit Sunday 8 March 2020<\/a>. To perceive clearly and quickly how serious all this is, read Dr. Daniele Macchini’s March 6, 2020 message in Italian<\/a> or English<\/a>.<\/strong> Epidemiologist Silvia Stringhini might have been the Italian-to-English translator (see this twitter thread of hers<\/a>), but I’m not sure. I’ll try to update the translator info. Here’s a Wednesday 11 March 2020 Snopes piece<\/a> providing attribution information for Dr. Macchini’s post. Here’s Dr. Macchini’s staffperson page<\/a> at the Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. On Wednesday 11 March 2020, Dr. Tedros, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations, announced<\/a>, after the agency had been tracking the disease from the start, that WHO made the assessment that day that COVID-19 is a global pandemic.<\/strong> Though definitions of “pandemic” vary, change, and are debated (here’s<\/a> the WHO’s from 2010), pandemic etymologically means all people<\/em>, indicating plainly that all humans, including you and me and everyone else, are at risk of exposure. Dr. Tedros’s announcement of the disease’s global pandemic status came in his opening remarks during one of the frequent novel coronavirus press briefings<\/a> WHO has been holding. His announcement is a document well worth reading, short and well written and well structured, and it should be looked back upon by future historians. Dr. Tedros called for immediate intelligent action everywhere, what his announcement terms a “whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach” planetwide. Also, Dr. Tedros said this is the first pandemic in history that, in his judgment as WHO director general, can be suppressed and controlled, i.e. by humans acting knowledgeably (I presume he’d say this is because of the Internet<\/a>\/global communications<\/a>). Below, the full 59-minute video of the Wednesday 11 March 2020 press briefing. Dr. Tedros’ opening remarks are from 1 minute to 9.5 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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