Coronavirus

Sing it to the tune of The Proclaimers song

It did! But I wasn't walking.

It wasn't one way, It was a round trip from Renton, WA to North Bend, OR and back.

The contingency plans have been thought out. The problem is that not everything is taken into account, and that skews the actual response. There are always going to be a certain number of things that go wrong, no matter how well prepared we are. To take this back to movies, I think Dr. Malcom in Jurassic park talked about chaos theory, and how little things that we couldn't possibly anticipate as part of a reaction can be accounted for.



For example, there was an earthquake in Fukushima, Japan that resulted in a nuclear meltdown and a tsunami. Medical staff knew that this was possible, and had prepared for such an eventuality. Emergency teams were prepared years ahead of time, and none of that preparation was lost. The only problem is that they arrived to find that the roads were destroyed thanks to the earthquake and tsunami, or blocked by the Japanese military thanks to the nuclear reactor meltdown. Those teams were then left sitting in traffic with the only option being to go back to where they came from.



Earthquakes, okay. Tsunamis, yeah... but a nuclear meltdown thrown into the mix threw everything into disarray.



With the coronavirus, there were plans. We've known about them since the black death, and have always had contingency plans. A coronavirus starts killing off large swaths of people, so the plan is to contain and control. Nobody in or out! It's like fighting a fire. You don't try to save what is burning, but try to save what haven't been burnt yet.



Katrina was the stupidest response of all! They had days to bug out! Everybody in New Orleans knew that it was going to be bad, so everybody that stayed were just being stupid. Good for the gene pool, if I'm honest.



As to your idea of getting a bunch of retired or fired couch potatoes to help, all I can say is that I didn't want to go to the hospital when covid hit because I don't have faith in the contingency plans being foolproof in the first place, but getting a bunch of amateurs into the hospitals to help the medical staff wouldn't have given me much faith in the response. I'm sure that Bob and Ben would be great at patching my roof or maybe stocking the walmart shelves with as much toilet paper as could be delivered, but... I think not.

This is an incredibly callous response. What were people supposed to do if they had no vehicles or too many family members to fit in one car? What were people supposed to do if they were bedridden or otherwise medically challenged?

Have you watched When the Levees Broke?

No, I haven't seen it yet. I'm guessing it's not a movie about Led Zeppelin.



Perhaps I am a bit "callous", but I've seen a lot over the years, and what that has taught me is that everybody needs to have a plan. Sometimes your plan might work, and sometimes it might not. The fact is, they had plenty of time to prepare.



If somebody decides to live in New Orleans, you are risking a lot because of a hopelessly corrupt city government, living below the sea level, annual hurricanes, high levels of violent crime, drug addiction, and a large homeless population. That's just the dangers people face on an average day.



There was a man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi. He was working in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. He got lucky and survived, so he bugged out to his home in Nagasaki...

Not everybody has the resources to have emergency plans. And even if they can for 24 or 48 hours, what do you do if you have no money for food or no place to stay?

If you had a frail, elderly person in your care, can you not understand why someone might risk staying at home and boarding up the windows instead of putting that elderly person in a vehicle during a heat wave?

There are a lot of reasons why people don't always do the best thing during/before an emergency. And blanketing the 1800 people who died with a charge of stupidity feels like it is ignoring other important factors.

During disasters, poor people, people of color, and the elderly die in disproportionate numbers (source), and Katrina was no exception. Many decisions were made in the days leading up to and shortly after Katrina that amplified loss of life for these groups. New Orleans is both a poor (23% poverty rate pre-Katrina – twice the national average) and segregated city, and these factors led to loss of life. First, an effective evacuation plan was not in place that accounted for the 112,000 poor, mostly black New Orleanians without cars. Additionally, the timing of the storm at the end of the month meant that those receiving public assistance were unusually cash-strapped. To make matters worse for poor people with children, school had just started so expenses for the month were higher than usual.

The immobile poor were disproportionately left behind and lost their lives. A comprehensive study of evacuees to Houston (who had stayed behind during the storm) found that 22% were physically unable to evacuate, 14% were physically disabled, 23% stayed in New Orleans to care for a physically disabled person, and 25% were suffering from a chronic disease (source).

You kind of just undermined your main point there, man...

It helps to think in terms of conditional propositions. That basically means if x, then y. You've asserted many conditions that really should be thought through so that you can get to an acceptable conclusion.

If one does not have the resources to have emergency plans, then... what would y look like? Perhaps 'obtain the resources to have emergency plans. If you had a frail, elderly person in your care, then have or obtain the means to assist that person.



This is why I said the Katrina response was stupid. Many had not come up with something to come after the word 'then' for the possibility that people living under sea level with crumbling levees get hit with a major category 5 hurricane.



You came up with all sorts of conditions that resulted in loss of life. Whatever the outcome, what happened was the plan, or maybe lack of a plan. Poor, caring for somebody that can't be moved, back to school expenses, etc. etc. etc are all things that should be taken into account.



I remember when covid 19 first hit, one lady asked me what she should do. I told her to watch The Stand.

I don't see how. It's not like I've got some foolproof plan. My point is to prepare the best you can, and even then, it might not be good enough.



He actually survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some call him the luckiest man in the world. I'm not so sure that being nuked twice qualifies for being lucky, but he did survive!

Your solution for people who do not have resources is . . . get resources?

I think that part of why this line of thinking irks me is that the people who did the REALLY stupid stuff (ie not building a levee correctly, not including poor parishes in the state of emergency, not thinking about the fact that over 100,000 people did not have vehicles with which to evacuate) basically got away scott free.

I also fundamentally think that saying that the deaths of 1,800 mostly black, mostly impoverished people was "good for the gene pool" is highly problematic and conveniently shifts the burden of their deaths away from the people who did have the power and resources to help them but didn't.

Those people who did not properly maintain or engineer the levees correctly were hired by public servants who were elected by the New Orleans people. Who should we blame when the local government is hopelessly incompetent? The incompetent politicians that were voted into office, or the obviously incompetent electorate?



I think where we fundamentally disagree is assigning blame. If people want to live in New Orleans, that's their choice. It's not a question of blame, but simply people who choose to live their lives as they want. Maybe they liked the New Orleans music scene, which you're not going to get in other areas of the world. That comes with a risk/benefit analysis. Under the sea level, annual hurricanes, corrupt government, extreme poverty, violence, and wealth disparity, drug addiction, etc. etc. etc.


Not a choice I made, but it was a choice that others did, and they have to live or die by the consequences of their decision. There is no blame to be levied. It's just free men making choices, and dealing with the consequences of their choice. Sometimes those choices are fatal.

50-year resident of New Orleans here. The levees are maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. This is only one of the many things you've been mistaken about so far, so my advice is to shift to another example that you're more knowledgeable about. I don't even remember what point you're trying to make about the virus, but please abandon this topic.

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Captain's Log
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Fair enough. No skin off of my back. Might be something you can worry about, or not.

I’ve seen both (?) Katrina documentaries. Powerful stuff. One image I can’t shake is the little white dog trying to get on the bus that its owner had boarded. Cruel to leave without it, but I’m not judging. This one scene tore me up. And I have photography books of rescue organizations saving cats & dogs post-Katrina. Powerful stuff that is heartbreaking.

IIRC, the nearest shelter was not that far away, but the bus fare was $40 & people just did not have it at the end of the month. For Want of a Nail indeed.

He probably doesn’t remember either.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Nice ad hominem. I didn't know those were acceptable here.



Yes, I remember the original idea, which is that a lot of people are complaining about the coronavirus, but aren't really cognizant of how their choices in this world result in repercussions.



I thought I made it clear that conditional propositions are things that people need to take into consideration. If X, then Y. This is not rocket science. Poor, stupid, it doesn't matter. If you can't take a simple if/then statement into consideration, Darwin is calling.



If you live in a place like New Orleans, you might want to take into consideration why you personally might not feel safe. Obviously Katrina showed a few cracks to the rest of the world. Does it matter who was in charge of maintaining the levees? I was told I am ignorant, so shut up about hurricane Katrina. Okay! I can live with that.


The coronavirus is the same thing. If you live in New York, that's going to mean that you're going to have to put up with a lot more than others who don't live in high population density areas.



At the end of the day, I'm not hurting. Those who are need to think about why they are hurting, while others are not.

Not everyone can choose where they live. A survey of states once showed that Nevada is the state where most people moved in & out and Louisiana was the state where the fewest people left. Interesting, I thought.

If a person from New Orleans is uneducated due to inferior schools, doesn’t have a job, has no family support, etc., etc. that person is not leaving the state & moving someplace else.

This is just an excuse. Yes, you will be leaving any family support behind, but buses leave on the hour.



Maybe I'm just old (I am), but it seems to me that coming up with excuses why people can't move seems like... well, like an excuse. If they're living in New Orleans with no job, no family support, etc. etc., then that might be the right time to leave. Not like there's anything keeping them there.



Excuses aren't a reason.

How old are you?

Ha, I was thinking the same thing.