Why are people so upset about the Chinese coronavirus? Isn't this an example of nature being nature?

Eh, just another swine flue instance. Nothing to worry about.

People are upset because other people are dying and despite evolutionary science and the history of such things, folks have this thing called empathy.

It is indeed an example of “nature being nature,” but whenever the grim reaper may be coming to visit, NO ONE is happy!

Humans are upset about viruses because we can. We’ve evolved a powerful brain plus we have a vast accumulative knowledge about viruses that allow us to fight back. And win.

Letting nature run it’s course is for the birds.

You seem to be running afoul of the appeal to nature fallacy. But just because something is natural doesn’t mean it is good. In the words of Richard Dawkins: “Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.”

Also, Malthusianism is discredited nonsense. Malthus was a short-sighted pessimist who was unable to foresee industrialization, sanitation, and modern medicine despite living on the cusp of all of them. And lest this seem like an idle criticism, know that his critics—including Godwin and Condorcet—did see these things coming. The simple fact is that Malthusian and neo-Malthusian predictions are always wrong. The population of England alone is three times what Malthus claimed the absolute upper limit to be, and we never got the mass starvation that his disciple Paul Ehrlich warned us of.

The Flu is probably much worse this year.

Could the coronavirus be Malthusian in nature? Too much population, too few resources, Nature reduces population to fit the available resource supply? Ecologists and anthropologists should be welcoming the advent of the coronavirus, as it represents nature and the natural ebb and flow of life on Earth?

War, murder, gang violence, dystopia—all are Mother Nature’s ways of ebbing the population when it gets too large and resources are scarce. Eating aborted babies and playing games like The Purge are other examples of controlling the population and survival of the fittest.

I heard that China is probably underreporting it.

Flu, there’s a remedy for. Flu really doesn’t kill other than the young and the old, and those with immune system compromises.

This virus, we don’t know enough about it to know if there’s a remedy.

What scares people is that not much is known about it. It might be awful or it might not be any worse than a flu, but we don’t know.

There are many variations of the coronavirus. They’re just calling this one “coronavirus” because they haven’t come up with a name for it. (Like SARS)

I think it is scary because you don’t have to do anything wrong to catch it. That includes rich white Americans. Which makes the vaccine and quarantine a priority.

For white only?

@Yellowdog Just tongue in cheek. I forgot the ~ tilde. Rich powerful Asian people included.

Thing is, even without the tilde, @RedDeerGuy1 is not far off.

An epidemic that concentrates on blacks (Africans) gets little attention – think Ebola a couple years ago. But as soon as it moved into Europe, and then to the US, it was taken seriously. Same with Marburg. When it began in Uganda, it was not taken seriously. When cases were found in Germany and the Netherlands, all of a sudden it was a big deal.

So – YES – being white makes a difference.

@elbanditoroso But what if it isn’t a race thing, and only getting attention because it’s spreading? How are we supposed to know and worry about every virus affecting places? I don’t get news articles from Africa. I don’t even read the news that much but usually it’s American news sources.

It’s probably time people stop making everything about race, and start realizing that of course it won’t get much attention, it’s affecting one country and they won’t start freaking out until it really starts to spread.

Can you tell me every virus or disease affecting minority countries without googling? Probably not. You probably haven’t heard because it hasn’t spread enough to get that attention

So —NO—being white does NOT make a difference.

Also, people are worried about the coronavirus because there seems to be some conspiracies emerging.

@elbanditoroso and @SergeantQueen I think it isn’t so much as being a black or white thing as it is a third world, or a industrialized world thing.
The third world, where all those blacks are in Africa, don’t get much in the way of inoculations, and with the warmer climes, diseases travel faster and farther whereas industrialized nations have better health care services that prevent the spread of certain diseases, and are in more colder climes.

^^^^^

@SergeantQueen Just “click” on the “Great Answer!” under the post.

@jca2 ”...Flu really doesn’t kill other than the young and the old, and those with immune system compromises.”

While this statement is reasonably accurate, I think it can leave the impression that the flu is less dangerous than it actually is. For one thing there are a lot of old, young and immune compromised people in the world. In the 2018–2019 flu season (which was apparently pretty typical), 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 people died from the flu. The flu is deadly serious and should be taken seriously. For example, Kaylee Roberts died at 16 from the flu. Get vaccinated. It’s the right thing to do.

The flu or a flu like illness took my sense of smell. It’s nothing to mess with. It’s a little complicated how it can affect you. The right flavor of it can kill health 30 year olds.