CV03. Information: Dunning Kruger Journalism, Gender Neutral, CV06. Linguistics: Idioms, CV10. Spirituality, Philosophy: Suffering Equality, CV15. Death: Dying Alone, CV16. Consequences, Social Change: Black's Death, CV22. Longue Duree: Pandemic and Revolt, CV23. Polemic, Myphysis: Crisis of Status Quo, CV23.1. Pandemic in War Game, CV24. Norms: Gender Safety Compliance, CV26. Environment, One Health: CV Endangering Endangered, CV28. Logistics: Discarded Swabs, CV30. Methodology: Comparing Pandemics, Historical Uses, 10 Years Delay, CV31. Futuring: Nostalgia for the Future
PDN Introduction.
CV03. Information: Journalism Without Skepticism. This appears to take a solid journalistic approach the issues of what can happen when you have journalism without skepticism. But there is a massive hole in the approach. The author does not seem to be aware that there is already a thorough investigation into these questions, showing convincingly in my opinion that they* are not genuine. Ignoring other evidence (leveling) because they thinks they already understands it, but doesn’t (Dunning-Kruger) – and so is missing the skeptical take on these issues, dismissive of skeptics as deniers and as closed minded. Then makes a rookie mistakes, that any well informed skeptic could have pointed out. The result is a repetition of long debunked fallacious arguments, but with a patina of serious journalism.
-*. It has long been a practice by the curator of parademic, in fact predating parademic, to tend to use gender neutral terminology. I am so used to the practice that I failed to explain it. This is not for a ideological reason (though I admit a bias), but from the observation that interpretation of information could be significantly changed if the gender, skin color, national origin, sexual orientation, political positions, social status, were known. That source tends to be more important to evaluate information that the information itself.
CV06. Linguistics: The Linguistic Case for Sh*t Hitting the Fan. Idioms have a special power to draw people together in a way that plain speech doesn't. From the shock of a devastating pandemic, to a grim economic future for many millions, to the widespread protests reaching the boiling point over police brutality and systemic racism, it certainly appears that, in the words of that popular idiomatic expression, “shit has hit the fan.” This is especially true for those who keep getting the short (or in some circles, shitty) end of the stick. When we think of the extraordinary mess we’re all in together, it seems to be a particularly evocative way for many to wryly express and understand how we got here, as Hemingway would put it, “gradually and then suddenly”, (bradyoccult).
CV10. Spirituality, Philosophy: Justifying the Means: What it Means to Treat All Suffering Equally. When we are asked to make a moral choice, many of us imagine it involves listening to our hearts. To that, philosopher Peter Singer says, "nonsense". Singer believes there are no moral absolutes, and that logic and calculation are better guides to moral behavior than feelings and intuitions. We talk with Singer about why this approach is so hard to put into practice, and look at the hard moral choices presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
CV15. Death: On Dying Alone: Behind Every Covid-19 Case, There Is a Story.
CV16. Consequences, Social Change: People like Us: How Our Identities Shape Health and Educational Success CV27. Far from being the great equalizer =2= CV15, COVID-19 has disproportionately sickened and killed African Americans and Latinos in the U.S. Many of the reasons for these inequalities reach back to before the pandemic began. This is a 2019 episode that investigates a specific source of racial disparities in medicine and beyond – and considers an uncomfortable solution.
-A. Black Americans Most Interested in Covid-19 News. Black Americans, who have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus, have shown a more intense interest in news about the pandemic compared to whites.
-B. What Public Health Experts Want Critics to Know about Why They Support the Protests. For black folks, their cost of not doing something is a lot greater than potentially getting a virus.
CV21. Syndemic, Concurrent Disasters: It Really Is Different This Time. America was jolted out of its pandemic stupor this week by a dramatic cycle of police violence, protests, looting and retaliation—one that quickly jumped from city to city and crashed, literally, against the gates of the White House. Epidemics Have Often Led to Discrimination Against Minorities – this Time Is No Different.
CV22. Longue Duree: Uprisings after Pandemics Have Happened Before – Just Look at the English Peasant Revolt of 1381 CV23 CV30E↓. As a professor of medieval Europe, I've taught the bubonic plague, and how it contributed to the English Peasant Revolt of 1381. Now that America is experiencing widespread unrest in the midst of its own pandemic, I see some interesting similarities to the 14th century uprising.
-A. The death of George Floyd has sparked protests fueled by a combination of brutal policing, a pandemic that has led to the loss of millions of jobs and centuries of racial discrimination and economic inequality. Where people are broke, and there doesn't appear to be any assistance, there's no leadership, there's no clarity about what is going to happen, this creates the conditions for anger, rage, desperation and hopelessness.
-B. Medieval England may seem far removed from modern America. And sure, American workers aren't tied to employers by feudal bonds, which meant that peasants were forced to work for their landowners. Yet the Peasant Revolt was also a reaction brought on by centuries of oppression of society's lowest tiers. Like today, the majority of wealth was held by an elite class that comprised about 1% of the population. When a deadly disease started to spread, the most vulnerable and powerless were asked the pick up the most slack, while continuing to face economic hardship, What Can the Black Death Tell Us about the Global Economic Consequences of a Pandemic CV05. The country's leaders refused to listen.
CV23. Polemic, Myphysis: Crisis Response When the Status Quo Is a Crisis. If the 2016 earthquake in Italy repeated today, how would the country respond while being on lockdown. If a hurricane like Irma, Maria, or Dorian hit the Caribbean now, what regional and international partners could even respond to help. If a storm like Sandy hit the United States right now, how overwhelmed would New York and New Jersey be.
-A. As the world experiences a global pandemic in the form of the novel coronavirus, the focus of most governments has understandably been on the health implications of this virus, and on the economic fallout of the lockdowns and other mitigation measures taken to stop its spread. But there are two major issues whose careful consideration becomes more necessary by the day: security matters and natural disasters. Criminals are likely to capitalize on new opportunities created by the dramatic change in the status quo. The same is true of terrorist organizations, with regard to both financing and attacks. Yet how much are security forces able to operate or react at the moment.
-B. Even beyond these security concerns, natural disasters may be a bigger threat to exceeding current capacity. Hurricanes, cyclones, and tornadoes will hit, earthquakes will strike, and volcanoes will erupt, pandemic or no pandemic CV30C↓ Now immersed in an indefinite global health crisis, every leader has to answer this question: If the status quo is a pervasive disaster, how can we cope with incidental or episodic emergencies Few states, if any, are ready for the challenge.
-CV23.1. May Madness: Competitive Wargaming in a Pandemic. What starts with the enemy sinking three of your amphibious assault ships, and ends with a toddler interrupting the outbrief to a three star general. A successful wargame in the age of COVID-19.
CV24. Norms: Women Follow Pandemic Rules More Strictly than Men. Compared to other European countries and the U.S., Germans adopted social distancing even before it was encouraged by the authorities. In all eight countries surveyed, women adopted preventive behaviors more than men.
CV26. Environment, One Health: Coronavirus Disrupts Global Fight to Save Endangered Species CV30E↓.
CV28. Logistics: A Maine Factory Says it Will Have to Discard All Coronavirus Swabs Made During Trump's Factory Tour.
CV30. Methodology: Compare the Flu Pandemic of 1918 and COVID-19 With Caution, the past is not prediction. The past however can help develop a cone of forecasts (uncertainty CV17) and analogues of what may happen, and what will not happen.
-A. I first encountered that the past was not a good informative source during my original work in pandemic planning. It is a normal CV24 practice to research previous studies on a topic, but I found little of use and realized that lessons learned CV27 (more likely ignored) from previous pandemics would not be in the same circumstances as we have today: Biodiversity was less CV26; Frontiers buffers were basically non existent (and walls are not barriers or buffers to the microsphere), with anthromes CV32 now abutting wild areas and disease reservoirs; Pollution and contamination that weakened immune systems were global; Vaccines and antibiotics existed, but were starting to be resisted or overused; Transportation and travel CV25 could go further is less time, well within the window of incubation and asymptomatic exposure of others, moving through transportation hubs that would maximize spread; Likewise for communication CV20, which would both spread valid information and disinformation CV03; Global cooperation was still the same as centuries earlier, but the global economies CV05 and commerce were interconnected; General knowledge CV27 related to pandemic, health, ecology, was still generally comparable to a century or more before*.
-*B. This knowledge gap was in part the origin of a newsletter that I started, unfortunately my blogging skills at the time were pathetic as bes,t and having taken over a position that the previous incumbent had done absolutely nothing for 18 months, I had only 18 months to accomplish what was originally planned for three years.
-C. Moreover my audience, the military commands I supported, had not yet fully recognized health and environmental were existential threats to its missions and national security CV23. For those I supported, DSCA CV23B↑ – which specifically states support to but not performance of law enforcement duties CV33 – was a distraction from important issues like bioterrorism, fighting national armies, maintaining US hegemony, being assigned duties that would lead to promotion, and pandemic DSCA was even more pointless. Those who were assigned be the command pandemic planner tended to have the duty as a very secondary additional duty (probably not evaluated for performance reviews), among other secondary and primary duties. Added to this that most of the partnering Interagencies had even less interest, and public health and medical (having a clinical only perspective) tended to view the non medical planners (the social, economic, logistic, personnel, antagonistic if DSCA was viewed as a threat Military Prestige During a Political Crisis: Use it and You’ll Lose it) as unnecessary and because they could handle everything without us. This does not mean any of the people I worked with, or was supposed to work with, were stupid, in fact most were people I respected. Ten years later the world has changed and the very issues we non medical planners tried to raise are abundantly clear (albeit still resisted by an imagined status quo).
-D. This organization milieu is one area that history was analogous. Human behavior has not changed much, and with given the circumstances it was a near certainty that pandemic planning would fail, that building relationships and sharing information would be futile, and what little accomplished would be lost. I almost quit because of this CV12. However the challenge was intriguing, I had the skills and knowledge that could be adapted to the task. It is hard to admit but at that time I was still grieving a personal loss and needed a wicked problem. The when, where, what, who and how were unknown, the pattern of history was clear that a pandemic would happen, exacerbated by anthropogenic environmental change, that humans were not only the seminal etiology – the selective pressure that was creating the circumstances of extinction, (invasive) species migration CV25 and genesis (likely also fatal CV26↑ to previous species) – and aggravate what was already in process of reaching acceleration.
-E. Obviously with the inclusion of Longue Duree CV22↑ I found that the historical perspective was essential to understanding social context of a current biocalamity. Over time as I gained skill is identifying what is, is not, and how far to apply analogous events, whether historical or not. Fact or anecdote became more about in what way is a belief valid, not a dismissal of a belief because it was not a fact, but understanding the foundation of why something is believed despite contrary fact.
CV31. Futuring: The Time Machine: How Nostalgia Prepares Us for the Future. In recent months, many of us have looked back with longing at our lives before COVID-19. For many of us, that world was one of bustle and activity – marked by scenes of packed restaurants, crowded subway cars, and chaotic playgrounds. This audio essay discusses our wistfulness for the world before the pandemic, and why such nostalgia can actually help to orient us toward the future.
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