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What is a good about Covid 19 related?
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SparkyFX:
Why do people think that people actually need to eat bats to get this? There was a study conducted in 2008 (german), with the aim of identifying wildlife animal viruses that have a pandemic potential just like SARS. They found some form of corona viruses in bats over here in Europe too. So when no one ever looks, it is easy to assume everything is fine or somehow a regional thing. It is not.

These viruses might be able to bridge the gap to domesticated animals any time too here, but maybe never had an effect because of cooking properly and good kitchen hygiene (separating raw meat from ready dishes, washing hands). Bad news for Ozzy Osborne type personalities that like their bats raw, but everyone else would be safe. I do rather assume that a lack of kitchen hygiene is more likely to cause such outbreaks than eating (raw) exotic animals. Maybe animal farmers were unkowingly selling infected animals, reluctant to close their facilities early, too, so a larger group of people got infected concurrently which gave this a higher chance to break out.

Outbreaks are not new in western societies as well. Basically the same reasons for how it spreads are here too, the cash cow companies do not want to risk their business even in the light of facts that indicate it would be best to close. Not really anyone's fault, none of them are epidemiologists and usually verdicts require evidence. And no one has the psychic powers to predict 2 weeks into the future. Meningitis cases (60 deaths per year) for example provoke temporary closing of schools or at least make it to the public every few years, it just never becomes a pandemic.


--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 30, 2020, 04:33:50 am ---In other words, the market will swiftly price that $1K per person into every transaction.[...]
UBI is literally one of the least intelligent concepts to be proposed in a very long time. But it sure sounds good to anyone who loves (what appears to be) a free handout and doesn't think beyond that.
--- End quote ---
To make UBI work you would need to fix rents/prices/salaries (which is short of taking away property in some form; harsh limit to an open market), and more or less punish people by taking UBI away.
It would take away the distinction between government, employment and living your life in a way only totalitarian governments used to.
So... such developments end up in pure socialism, where practically every opinion expressed sooner or later becomes a political statement that would be judged for it's consequences regarding the government (that pays the UBI), otoh no one really owns property (one way or the other) and therefore you have a totalitarian socialism, controlling not only citizenship, but also work, how you spend your income and which spare time activities you do. Such systems existed in several countries and were dumped because of exactly these reasons, i can't believe how many people do not see this kind of trajectory.

If unregulated, no one has a benefit, because there will be price gouging and the money ends up in the wrong hands.
Zero999:

--- Quote from: SparkyFX on March 30, 2020, 04:42:01 pm ---Why do people think that people actually need to eat bats to get this? There was a study conducted in 2008 (german), with the aim of identifying wildlife animal viruses that have a pandemic potential just like SARS. They found some form of corona viruses in bats over here in Europe too. So when no one ever looks, it is easy to assume everything is fine or somehow a regional thing. It is not.

These viruses might be able to bridge the gap to domesticated animals any time too here, but maybe never had an effect because of cooking properly and good kitchen hygiene (separating raw meat from ready dishes, washing hands). Bad news for Ozzy Osborne type personalities that like their bats raw, but everyone else would be safe. I do rather assume that a lack of kitchen hygiene is more likely to cause such outbreaks than eating (raw) exotic animals. Maybe animal farmers were unkowingly selling infected animals, reluctant to close their facilities early, too, so a larger group of people got infected concurrently which gave this a higher chance to break out.

Outbreaks are not new in western societies as well. Basically the same reasons for how it spreads are here too, the cash cow companies do not want to risk their business even in the light of facts that indicate it would be best to close. Not really anyone's fault, none of them are epidemiologists and usually verdicts require evidence. And no one has the psychic powers to predict 2 weeks into the future. Meningitis cases (60 deaths per year) for example provoke temporary closing of schools or at least make it to the public every few years, it just never becomes a pandemic.
--- End quote ---
I doubt kitchen hygiene has that much to do with it. Respiratory viruses such as Covid-19 are typically contracted by inhalation, rather than ingestion. No doubt it's theoretically possible to contract Covid-19 from eating raw bat meat, but the stomach acid destroys the virus so any infection will be from the mouth, which will be minimal compared to someone inhaling dry bad faeces in a farm or market. I'm not a doctor or virologist so can't be sure. It's just my basic understanding of the situation.

We don't get Corona viruses here in Europe and North America because we don't have a culture of eating bat meat, but we do get influenza which is hosted by pigs and birds.

As I said before, it's more likely intensive farming practises are to blame, than bad kitchen hygiene. Putting more animals into a small space increases the risk of a virus spreading, especially when the animals are stressed, which weakens their immune systems. Moving live animals around and mixing species also increases the risk of the disease spreading and mutating so it can infect humans. The Chinese intensively farm a greater range animals such as bats, reptiles, cats etc. than the usual pigs, cattle and poultry, hence an even greater possibility of viruses mutating and infecting humans.

Here's an interesting report on factory farming and swine influenza. It's a shame nothing was learned about the 2009 swine flu pandemic. :palm: Covid-19 will be seen as a Chinese problem, rather than due to intensive farming and poor animal welfare/hygiene which are global.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/media/22780/swine_flu_report_05_05_2009.pdf
Kasper:
In Canada, we financially incentivize people to have kids and not work.  They get more welfare money from taxpayers if they have kids and they get less if they get a job.  Some people have lots of kids and teach them all working is for suckers.

UBI should remove both those incentives and a lot of bureaucratic waste.

Right now, governments are creating more and more programs to give money here and there.  It will never be fairly distributed and it will be an enormous amount of work right at a time when governments have other extra work to do.

What is good about covid is it may encourage people to consider simplifying the welfare systems and hopefully at the same time, removing the incentive to have kids and not work.

IDEngineer:

--- Quote from: Kasper on March 30, 2020, 06:19:45 pm ---UBI should remove both those incentives and a lot of bureaucratic waste.
--- End quote ---
UBI is effectively a devaluing of the currency. Just like a rising tide lifts all boats, and deflation/inflation changes the value of all currency in circulation, raising the economic baseline for literally everyone just resets the value of all transactions (as described above). UBI would be rapidly priced into all transactions and the net effect would be basically zero. The only way to help specific people is to help *those specific people*.

I believe that most of the social programs probably started with great intentions, but like all other government handouts it's just too easy for politicians to leverage them for vote buying. It's just too easy to argue that "this special interest should be covered" and "that special interest cannot be left out in the cold". No politician wants to be on the evening news saying that they oppose helping children, the handicapped, veterans, or whatever other group shouts the loudest today. I mean no disrespect to any group - there are legitimate needs in every society - but this has become a one-way ratchet that politics prevents any sort of correction. Again, there's no closed loop providing feedback. And as long as a nation is willing to rack up deficits, with their resulting debt and its interest, that false sense of security allows this Jenga tower to keep getting taller and more rickety until at some point it crashes, as all such Ponzi Schemes do.

Searching for the root cause, the only thing I've been able to think of is the ability to run government deficits which is why I suspect a balanced budget requirement would go a long way toward preventing this problem. Basically it would provide the necessary feedback. It would force painful, but necessary, discussions rather than allowing politicians to just "settle for everything". You want to help that special interest group? Then maybe you need to cancel that defense program. You want to send financial aid to some obscure nation in a part of the world nobody wants to visit? Then you'll have to convince the mothers of the nation that their children don't need subsidized lunches.

Somehow we need to stop spending like trust fund kiddos and restore fiscal responsibility, so we CAN help the actual people who need it - and not just throw money at everyone (as with a UBI), which would just make the problem worse. But doing so requires policitians (and the voters who elect them) to act like adults rather than kids at the candy store with their hands out, and sadly I see a lot more of the latter than the former.
Zero999:
As far as UBI devaluing the currency is concerned. People said a similar thing about he minimum wage, which was supposed to push up prices, negating any pay rises, yet that doesn't seem to have been the case.

There's a strong culture of blaming the poor for their own poverty, perhaps more so in the US, than other countries. In reality most of the poor are ordinary people who have fallen on hard times and are struggling to get out of poverty. Historically people relied on family and those who couldn't turned to begging and crime. A decent welfare programme should aim to get people back into work and avoid crime. It should be seen as an investment, rather than encourage laziness. I appreciate there are some lazy people around who milk the system, but I believe they are in the minority.

I sit on the fence as far as UBI. No government has ever tried it, so it's not proven to work one way or another. Lots of money is wasted in deciding who receives what benefit and UBI could get rid of all of that, but there will still be those who will need more money and are unable to work, such as someone with a disability, who needs an expensive powered wheelchair
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