4 ms·
> In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population
by cinquemb 5y ago
> In the 14th century, the Black Plague devastated Europe. It's impossible to know but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that as much as HALF the population was killed.
If all the variants are to completely overwhelm all the vaccines and treatments (that did not exist then) to render them all ineffective and create this devastation over the next 100 years, time will only tell if half the world will be killed. As of now, we are pretty far from that (but most of the century from the first cases has yet to play out).
> wealth will ultimately get redistributed one way or another.
I agree with what you are saying.
> The ultimate forms of wealth distribution are revolution and war and that's really in nobody's best interests.
I don't necessarily disagree, but is there some kind of shared "best interests" concept that everyone agrees on here that would make the "nobody" true? Are we excluding those who enable war (even to varying degrees) without taking on the higher risk of such (higher share of future resources from those who no longer are around to compete for such, by getting others to take on the higher risk of not being around for such future resources instead of one themselves)?
> It's actually good for everyone if the masses aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck.
This will be largely bounded by whether any given society has enough resources at its disposal to offer an "acceptable" standard of living, the resources to allocate such standard without squandering it between its intended destination, and the choices individual actors make with the current varying resources they have their disposal (not strictly bounded by the physical, but also by those intangible like "knowledge" of cheaper resource allocation in adverse environments).
- Retric 5y agoWe are running a global experiment ideally suited to evolving more contagious and deadly strains. [edited] It’s not that social distancing is a problem in the short term, it’s just we kept adjusting it as he’d immunity crept up so only the most infectious strains could survive. Lucky Delta isn’t significantly more deadly than the initial strain, but that mostly comes down to luck. It’s probably going to be ok, but assuming it stays equally as deadly over time is perhaps optimistic.
- cinquemb 5y ago> It’s probably going to be ok, but assuming it stays equally as deadly over time is perhaps optimistic. No where did I make this assumption, or was I alluding that this may be the case. Even in stats you can see cyclic patterns, with case counts and even with Empl-Pop ratio used in the article.
- jkhdigital 5y agoIn no universe will the current pandemic ever get within two orders of magnitude of the death rate from the historical plague.
- Retric 5y agoThe Black Death was in Europe for every year from 1346 and 1671 it was only extremely deadly from 1346 to 1353. COVID could mutate in to a much worse variety over that timeframe. Modern medicine can do quite a bit, but it doesn’t handle true plages very well beyond social distancing. If the only way to actually slow transmission was the equivalent of biosafety level 4 or 5 and 1/2 of all infected die without significant medical care, everything falls apart. Even just an unusually long incubation period could be devastating.
- jkhdigital 5y agoAre you telling me that the worst version of the Black Death was 3-4 orders of magnitude more deadly than previous strains? Because that’s what would have to happen to this coronavirus for the scenario you are talking about. If this is even remotely possible, then I assume we should also be worried about the influenza virus, or really any other common household pathogen, because who knows what it could mutate into. Or maybe you should keep your doomsday theories to yourself.
- Retric 5y agoEven with modern medical care the worst version of influenza had approximately 60% fatality rate (H5N1). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1 COVID is already significantly more dangerous than normal Influenza so making that kind of jump is far from impossible