The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) announced a "simple, easy to say and remember" system for naming variants of the latest coronavirus. The new system is based on the letters of the Greek alphabet.
The United Kingdom variant, called by scientists B.1.1.7, will now be Alpha. B.1.351, the South Africa variant will be Beta, and the B.1.617.2 variant discovered in India will now be known as Delta.
The W.H.O. adopted similar guidelines in the past to encourage the world to move away from naming diseases by their origin. Still, they haven't changed the names of several prominent pathogens; the Ebola virus is named after an African river, and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is named after, um...The Middle East.
What happens when scientists discover more than 24 new variants of COVID-19, the number of letters in the Greek alphabet?
Has the W.H.O. addressed the potential of its new system to associate all variants with Greece or the Greek people, whose alphabet the system co-opts?
Isn't it stigmatizing all Greeks?
Using the classical Greek alphabet perpetuates the settler/colonialist patriarchy and erases people of color. WHO should take a seat and check their privilege.
Can't we revert to grunts like a caveman to avoid offending anyone?
My favorite term from the generally mumbo-jumbo lexicon of 'psychology' is the verb 'to catastrophize.'
Of all the angles from which this 'pandemic' has been examined, why is it so rare for anyone to question its original veracities by looking at it as primarily a phenomenon of mass catastrophizing?
It always stuck in my craw that the seminal events leading almost immediately to the political fashion trend of the 'lockdown' began with cancellations of championship basketball events, which whether collegiate or professional have to be regarded as the biggest made-in-China imports of all in terms of the vast leverage wielded over their upper management by the Chinese regime, which regards American basketball as just another port of entry into the micro-management of its own subjects' lives given that far more Chinese were viewing these sporting events than Americans and had been for a long time.
By pressuring Big Basketball into setting the first institutional example of what would quickly become a mass fashion trend of hyper-excessive caution informed by no genuine information whatsoever, the regime pulled the ultimate prank on one of the old Treaty Port antagonists of a century past, whose opportunistic plundering of their country has not been forgotten ever since, and who had been forced back from the Chinese border at the cost of staggering loss of People's Liberation Army lives in 1950 to halt the power-mad ambitions of a rogue US general known posthumously as 'The Emperor' or 'An American Caesar.'
It's all well and good to prattle on about things like 'traditional American values' or 'classical liberalism' or whatever other trendy labels one can stick on the American experience while ignoring the costs to anyone who ever stood in the way of spreading American power. It's all well and good to relax in those safe confines and feel protected by such non-realities as easy consumer credit or a system of laws which makes the desired result available to the highest bidder as a matter of everyday routine; it's all well and good to forget all about our own history not so much as a constitutional republic but as an aggressively expanding global empire; and it's all well and good to forget how that empire's historic enemies have longer memories than we do, and will wait as long as it takes to settle scores one way or another.
Cancelling Big Basketball hit American life right where it was the most vulnerable: collegiate and professional sports may well be the last common ground the American civilization remained capable of sharing together without partisan rancor or overt factional dominance governing the rules of behavior among its enthusiasts, and all the Chinese regime had to do was send a couple of memos to a couple of executives, and demonstrate both how fragile a state American coexistence with itself was now in, and how easily its few remaining common activities available to all could be shut down on a moment's notice.
What followed was, I believe, mostly unintentional, but could not have played better into the hands of America's final cold-war belligerent-state enemy (oh and by the way, the Korean war never ended, and Beijing isn't forgetting that either) in its longstanding strategy of causing the self-destruction of America by becoming its most influential and indispensable trading partner until enough leverage over American life had been acquired to enact any number of schemes, using the thoughtless greed and adrenalized sense of entitlement built right into the American self-image, against its longstanding enemy right in its home ground.
What followed was a cascade of catastrophizing behavior, based on little more than an antiquated assumption that since Big Basketball must be this worried about more people catching a cold than usual, it must be something to worry about.
In a civilization which prides itself both on forgetting its own history of conquest and ignoring the legacies of unresolved grievances held by the descendants of those thus conquered, the recent resurgence of a hate-all-things-American posture in liberal rhetoric converging with the first big disease scare of the smart-phone era created a bizarre interpretation that, since America is mostly just a big global villain with no real right to exist but does anyway, at least as Americans we can do something good for the world at long last by pretending to be all concerned about flattening curves, or something.
Whatever the facts about any genuine disease hazard ever were, I challenge anyone drawing breath to present them to me in a completely neutral manner, or to corroborate their sources to such a thorough extent that there can be no doubt about their authenticity. I expect there are actually some facts hiding in plain sight among all the power-grabbing rationales and the chest-pounding self-congratulations which have come to overwhelm them.
Maybe at some point some people might actually have been in danger of catching.... something. Maybe at some point passing it on to others unknowingly was a legitimate, if almost entirely hypothetical, concern in need of addressing. (Maybe a grand piano will fall on my head as I walk down the street...)
But anyone who tries to tell me what the facts are and assure me that their sources were motivated by nothing but a public right to know them, is simply lying, to themselves if they actually believe it at least.
And this 'crisis' has been attended throughout by so many insincere or misinformed voices, citing so many uncorroborated or cynically fallacious sources, that I am utterly at a loss as to why the entire 'crisis' itself is not being examined foremost from an angle of mass behavior, and the incalculable influences of all these unprecedented mass telecommunications capabilities, instead of as the laughably dubious 'crisis' of public health it was all along.
China’s influence is strong when it comes to censorship and manipulation of the planet. I’m learning more and more about their influence over the WHO and the USA. It’s disturbing.
America got played “bigly” with this virus and our response.
You are right with the NBA, but it goes deeper than just them. Captain America, John Cena, got a taste of what happens when you run afoul of China’s propaganda machine. Hollywood is caving to China too.
The more I’m learn, the more “woke” I become. Awakened to the game being played. A game where America seems to be losing.
If you're a Steve McQueen fan, my opinion has long been that 'The Sand Pebbles' was his masterpiece role. But of late I am seeing both the novel and the movie as at least a good reminder of what a festering wound the Treaty Ports era is to the Chinese historic self-image to this day, and some of the lines in the film ring prophetic to me in new ways every time I hear them. The gunboat San Pablo, an antiquated spoil of war from the US invasion of the Phillippines a quarter-century prior, now sails up and down a tributary of the Yangtse advertising the American presence while pretending to protect American lives, mostly missionaries who wish the US Navy would just get out of their way and stop endangering their efforts to minister sincerely to Chinese people while representing the interests of no nation. The boat has long since been overrun by opportunistic local peasants who maintain the entire mechanism top to bottom while the skipper keeps the real crew busy playing war games, for a war he hopes will come along so he can legitimize an obviously sidelined career and a comically insignificant post as its commanding officer.
As the antagonist, McQueen plays the new senior engineer, who first doubts that untrained and unmanageable 'coolies' can be trusted to keep the ship running properly. One of the most notable exchanges is when engineer Holman comes to the bridge unsummoned to inform the captain about a severe mechanical problem that he has just discovered soon after coming aboard. The captain argues geopolitical superstitions, while the engineer argues crankshafts and burned bearings and poor maintenance by an ignorant work force: 'well, it's still gonna give us trouble....sir', says Jake. 'It never has', retorts the skipper.....
But the real prophecy is in the final line, which already has been uttered by various characters with equal weights of oblivion and sense of their own superiority:
'What the hell happened?'
Fast-forward to today, and 'covid' happened, is what.
My favorite term from the generally mumbo-jumbo lexicon of 'psychology' is the verb 'to catastrophize.'
Of all the angles from which this 'pandemic' has been examined, why is it so rare for anyone to question its original veracities by looking at it as primarily a phenomenon of mass catastrophizing?
It always stuck in my craw that the seminal events leading almost immediately to the political fashion trend of the 'lockdown' began with cancellations of championship basketball events, which whether collegiate or professional have to be regarded as the biggest made-in-China imports of all in terms of the vast leverage wielded over their upper management by the Chinese regime, which regards American basketball as just another port of entry into the micro-management of its own subjects' lives given that far more Chinese were viewing these sporting events than Americans and had been for a long time.
By pressuring Big Basketball into setting the first institutional example of what would quickly become a mass fashion trend of hyper-excessive caution informed by no genuine information whatsoever, the regime pulled the ultimate prank on one of the old Treaty Port antagonists of a century past, whose opportunistic plundering of their country has not been forgotten ever since, and who had been forced back from the Chinese border at the cost of staggering loss of People's Liberation Army lives in 1950 to halt the power-mad ambitions of a rogue US general known posthumously as 'The Emperor' or 'An American Caesar.'
It's all well and good to prattle on about things like 'traditional American values' or 'classical liberalism' or whatever other trendy labels one can stick on the American experience while ignoring the costs to anyone who ever stood in the way of spreading American power. It's all well and good to relax in those safe confines and feel protected by such non-realities as easy consumer credit or a system of laws which makes the desired result available to the highest bidder as a matter of everyday routine; it's all well and good to forget all about our own history not so much as a constitutional republic but as an aggressively expanding global empire; and it's all well and good to forget how that empire's historic enemies have longer memories than we do, and will wait as long as it takes to settle scores one way or another.
Cancelling Big Basketball hit American life right where it was the most vulnerable: collegiate and professional sports may well be the last common ground the American civilization remained capable of sharing together without partisan rancor or overt factional dominance governing the rules of behavior among its enthusiasts, and all the Chinese regime had to do was send a couple of memos to a couple of executives, and demonstrate both how fragile a state American coexistence with itself was now in, and how easily its few remaining common activities available to all could be shut down on a moment's notice.
What followed was, I believe, mostly unintentional, but could not have played better into the hands of America's final cold-war belligerent-state enemy (oh and by the way, the Korean war never ended, and Beijing isn't forgetting that either) in its longstanding strategy of causing the self-destruction of America by becoming its most influential and indispensable trading partner until enough leverage over American life had been acquired to enact any number of schemes, using the thoughtless greed and adrenalized sense of entitlement built right into the American self-image, against its longstanding enemy right in its home ground.
What followed was a cascade of catastrophizing behavior, based on little more than an antiquated assumption that since Big Basketball must be this worried about more people catching a cold than usual, it must be something to worry about.
In a civilization which prides itself both on forgetting its own history of conquest and ignoring the legacies of unresolved grievances held by the descendants of those thus conquered, the recent resurgence of a hate-all-things-American posture in liberal rhetoric converging with the first big disease scare of the smart-phone era created a bizarre interpretation that, since America is mostly just a big global villain with no real right to exist but does anyway, at least as Americans we can do something good for the world at long last by pretending to be all concerned about flattening curves, or something.
Whatever the facts about any genuine disease hazard ever were, I challenge anyone drawing breath to present them to me in a completely neutral manner, or to corroborate their sources to such a thorough extent that there can be no doubt about their authenticity. I expect there are actually some facts hiding in plain sight among all the power-grabbing rationales and the chest-pounding self-congratulations which have come to overwhelm them.
Maybe at some point some people might actually have been in danger of catching.... something. Maybe at some point passing it on to others unknowingly was a legitimate, if almost entirely hypothetical, concern in need of addressing. (Maybe a grand piano will fall on my head as I walk down the street...)
But anyone who tries to tell me what the facts are and assure me that their sources were motivated by nothing but a public right to know them, is simply lying, to themselves if they actually believe it at least.
And this 'crisis' has been attended throughout by so many insincere or misinformed voices, citing so many uncorroborated or cynically fallacious sources, that I am utterly at a loss as to why the entire 'crisis' itself is not being examined foremost from an angle of mass behavior, and the incalculable influences of all these unprecedented mass telecommunications capabilities, instead of as the laughably dubious 'crisis' of public health it was all along.
China’s influence is strong when it comes to censorship and manipulation of the planet. I’m learning more and more about their influence over the WHO and the USA. It’s disturbing.
America got played “bigly” with this virus and our response.
You are right with the NBA, but it goes deeper than just them. Captain America, John Cena, got a taste of what happens when you run afoul of China’s propaganda machine. Hollywood is caving to China too.
The more I’m learn, the more “woke” I become. Awakened to the game being played. A game where America seems to be losing.
If you're a Steve McQueen fan, my opinion has long been that 'The Sand Pebbles' was his masterpiece role. But of late I am seeing both the novel and the movie as at least a good reminder of what a festering wound the Treaty Ports era is to the Chinese historic self-image to this day, and some of the lines in the film ring prophetic to me in new ways every time I hear them. The gunboat San Pablo, an antiquated spoil of war from the US invasion of the Phillippines a quarter-century prior, now sails up and down a tributary of the Yangtse advertising the American presence while pretending to protect American lives, mostly missionaries who wish the US Navy would just get out of their way and stop endangering their efforts to minister sincerely to Chinese people while representing the interests of no nation. The boat has long since been overrun by opportunistic local peasants who maintain the entire mechanism top to bottom while the skipper keeps the real crew busy playing war games, for a war he hopes will come along so he can legitimize an obviously sidelined career and a comically insignificant post as its commanding officer.
As the antagonist, McQueen plays the new senior engineer, who first doubts that untrained and unmanageable 'coolies' can be trusted to keep the ship running properly. One of the most notable exchanges is when engineer Holman comes to the bridge unsummoned to inform the captain about a severe mechanical problem that he has just discovered soon after coming aboard. The captain argues geopolitical superstitions, while the engineer argues crankshafts and burned bearings and poor maintenance by an ignorant work force: 'well, it's still gonna give us trouble....sir', says Jake. 'It never has', retorts the skipper.....
But the real prophecy is in the final line, which already has been uttered by various characters with equal weights of oblivion and sense of their own superiority:
'What the hell happened?'
Fast-forward to today, and 'covid' happened, is what.
What is going on?