On here I’ve posted a links page with links to every kind of resource for information about SARS-cov-2 and the COVID-19 figures. The latest is the worldometer page for coronavirus stats and figures. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
There are tables of fairly up to date information you can arrange by any column, and find out where your country sits on the epidemiology scale. Australia and NZ are getting close to the hallowed “no new cases” status, our testing rate is fairly high by world standards, and between these two ANZAC countries and my birth country of Austria the curve has flattened nicely, hopefully for good with no second wave malarkey.
(We just have to maintain our decorum and safe distancing past the triumphal “we did it!” point and then keep a wary eye out for the future.)
Brings me to another point. How long after the Spanish Flu 1918 did the world hold its collective breath? Not all that long I guess because there have been pandemics one after another in between, SARS MERS Ebola Swine Flu you name it and the responses have often ignored the lessons learned in the Spanish Flu, that quarantine, isolation, and masks made all the difference.
But maybe this time the lessons will stick. It certainly seems that people are thinking a bit further ahead than the zeroing of new cases this time. Some people (smart people, wily people, people who want to survive) have this theory that due to global climate change perhaps we’ll see a few more of these pandemics in the very near future and maybe we should keep some of those new social conventions and customs going for a very long time.
We may be on the way to beating many communicable diseases by doing this. There are reports that cases of normal influenza are down by 70% on the previous years, just because people are practising better hygiene. We may yet win the war on the common cold if this keeps up, just by starving it out. Imagine that.
And then you have to wonder. If the various wars always going on around the world were reported in the same detail, with live statistics and social incentives for becoming one of the countries where the war curve has flattened or even zeroed out – could we win the war on war, too?
Begs the question of why there AREN’T any such records publicised and touted in the media as a desirable societal outcome, hammered home to us in daily floods of reports and background stories and TV reportage?
Maybe it’s because many large corporations stand to make a lot of money if COVID-19 is recognised world wide as a new ‘war’ enemy, whereas those corporations stand to make far more money if wars are left unchecked?
But.
Dimly.
On the horizon.
A lot of people are beginning to see the same things, ask the same questions, come to the same conclusions.
A lot of people are going to be a bit shy about shaking hands in future, they’ll get PTSD flashbacks if there are too many people in an enclosed space with them, and they’ll prefer online to in person for work, recreation, socialising, shopping, and managing.
Right THERE is the social mechanism that we need to get happening right now and then keep going. We embrace being online and sharing via social networks and making and sharing our own news. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries is one of those sort of news sources I imagine coming into being. We’re gonna need a whole new search engine for topic-based news like that, and it’s to be hoped that all the rampant commercialism and striving for dollars rather than truth will fall by the wayside.
Because then, aside from self-glorification and narcissism, there won’t be a need to sensationalise or embroider an article. (People like the Orange Shit-stain will still rant on because it’s in their nature, and yes that one in particular seems to hold sway over a fair sized part of the populace over in the US of A but these are outliers and they’ll also fall by the wayside.
Because then, if the world is taking care of one’s needs and livelihood, what need will there be for people like Trump? They become exactly nothing. Minor warlords of gangs of – well, why would there need to be gangs? Most people staying home, things getting delivered to them that you too could have delivered to you just for clicking a check box on a web page – what else do you need?
And finally, because then (unless all governments take the China route of closely managing and censoring their citizens’ Internet use) we’ll be far more organised and coherent as a world wide society. Look what ants and bees can achieve with scent, movement, and a common social ‘culture’ to coordinate their efforts. We can surely do better than that with the right social glue.