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These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well! Here’s what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of
by mrfusion 6y ago
These words of CS Lewis seem appropriate in our time of COVID as well! Here’s what he said in 1948 about the mental shift required by living with the threat of the atomic bomb:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
- afterburner 6y ago> age of cancer Well that's just all of time.
- colordrops 6y agoAre you certain cancer rates haven't gone up with industrialization?
- sosborn 6y agoTo be fair, cancer survival rates have definitely gone up with industrialization.
- devaler 6y agoPlease define “survival”.
- CydeWeys 6y agoPeople with cancer survive for many more years now than even a few decades ago, let alone centuries ago. It depends a lot on the type of cancer but for some of them the prognosis now is literally several decades more lifetime on average than it was centuries ago.
- jaclaz 6y agoAnd are you certain that increasing cancer rates are (generally speaking) unaffected by (much) longer lifetimes and (much) better diagnosing/imaging means? I mean, when on average people died at forty or fifty, with all the exceptions for the early age cases, and there were no real means to either diagnose cancer or even making autopsies, documented cases must have been sensibly less.
- afterburner 6y agoDunno why you're being downvoted but it's definitely what I was getting at.
- jaclaz 6y agoI don't know either, it was only a raised (IMHO legitimate) doubt. When we talk of the past we should do more complete analyisis than simply applying our current metrics.
- Balgair 6y agoThey certainly went up after 11:29am UTC July 16th 1945.
- neonate 6y agoThat's kind of his point I think.
- throwaway122378 6y agoAre you also the same type of person that would say we’re living during the lowest poverty, longest life expectancy, most peaceful time?
- macintux 6y agoI find it difficult to compare a discrete catastrophic event with an invisible plague. Hiding under your desk around the clock made zero sense when the odds of being hit with an atomic bomb were fantastically small due to geopolitics. Hiding in your house when there's no way of knowing who around you is infected, treatments are still primitive, and many people are not taking it seriously is a much more rational decision.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoTake ownership of your air. SARS-CoV-2 is ~ 100 nm, room air purifiers with HEPA filters and the filter technology in real N95 masks filter far below this amount. You can make the air cleaner than ever with modern technology to protect yourself.
- macintux 6y agoN95 masks aren't foolproof, require careful use and fitting, and are ideally saved for the medical professionals who are facing a second wave + flu. I'm not entirely hiding at home, but I absolutely don't blame anyone who is, and in fact I'd suggest they're smarter than me for doing so.
- GhostVII 6y agoIn many places, the deaths due to covid per day are less than car crash deaths are normally, especially among younger people. So if you are a healthy relative young person in one of these areas I don't see how hiding at home is a smart decision. Isolation and loneliness kills too.