[BAWDY BUT INSIGHTFUL PUN REFERENCING THE BEER BRAND CORONA IN DISCUSSING THE CORONAVIRUS TO BE INSERTED LATER WHEN I THINK OF IT]

Plagues are probably the last thing humans are really collectively scared of (other than death itself and other existential dreads). We’ve gotten inured to natural disasters, war and the possibility that an asteroid could just wipe us out at random next week, and we’re in the process of getting inured to climate change right now, but we’re still scared as hell of disease and the possibility that we could end up in a sick ward with oozing sores of some sort that kill us, like how people get sick in the movies. (In reality most plagues are really just higher-grade fevers and respiratory infections, but that’s a lot less dramatic so movies usually give you oozing sores. Also, dying of fever and respiratory infections is bad enough, because you will sweat a lot before you die and that is still pretty gross.)

Hence the media frenzy over the coronavirus. Now, I am not saying that the coronavirus isn’t serious. It’s totally serious! But, because humans are humans, we tend to overdramatize parts of it because we’re all scared of dying from plague. So…

First off, “the coronavirus” is kind of a stupid name, because it is both long and also fairly inaccurate. “Coronavirus” is just a specific type of virus that can cause respiratory illnesses in humans. The last cold you had was probably a coronavirus. The flu shot you hopefully got this past winter was for a coronavirus. SARS was a coronavirus. So the point is that calling this new disease “the coronavirus” is like seeing a red Toyota Camry and calling it “the sedan” - it is vague and sort of meaningless. On the other hand, most people aren’t immunologists and don’t need to be, so calling it “the coronavirus” is good enough for most people from a linguistic perspective, I guess. But, for the sake of simplicity, for the remainder of this post I will call it “Eric.”

Okay, let’s cut to the chase: do you need to be terrified of it? The answer at this point is “probably not yet.” Eric outbreaks have mostly been confined to China, with only a few cases outside China and almost all of them in cities that have significant Chinese populations (and thus a lot of people travelling back and forth from and to China); this is so far more or less the same general outbreak pattern that SARS had in 2003, which makes sense because Eric is a respiratory ailment like SARS was and spreads the same way as most contagious respiratory diseases - coughing and sneezing, close contact, touching surfaces with the virus and then touching your face, etc. All of this is cause for optimism: after all, we mostly know how to deal with respiratory viral outbreaks at this point.

That said, Eric does present some serious problems that make it unique. Current studies indicate that Eric probably isn’t as lethal as SARS or the Spanish Flu of 1918 were, but the problem is that we can’t be entirely sure of that yet for three reasons. First, it’s really early, so getting an idea of Eric’s true lethality is a little premature (although initial outcomes do provide some basis for optimism). Second, Eric is notably more contagious than those ailments were and transmits more easily. And third, Eric can apparently transmit before its carriers exhibit symptoms - in short, it’s possible for people who are infected to spread the disease before they know they’re sick or before they even feel slightly bad, which is something that can happen with some coronavirii (a lot of low-level colds do this), but in more lethal coronavirii tends to be rare because diseases that can kill you typically don’t wait that long to start breaking you down.

All of this is to say that it’s impossible to predict, right now, if Eric is going to be a killer pandemic or not, because nobody knows when a plague is really happening until it’s too late. That said, the question was not “is it going to be a killer plague”; the question was “do you need to be terrified of it?” And, as I said: probably not yet. Given Eric’s high degree of infectious transmission, there’s very little anybody can do to really stop it from spreading: travel bans have repeatedly demonstrated that anything beyond the most draconian measures won’t stop infectious diseases from spreading, which is why most countries take new flus very seriously. So, basically, at this point there isn’t much you can do to avoid being infected other than the usual measures you take during any flu season: vaccines when they’re available, hand sanitizer until it isn’t, and hope it doesn’t turn out to be dreadful.

THIS WEEK IN PUBLIC PROTESTS

Public sentiment against Narendra Modi’s proposed “anti-Muslim” law…

…which, to be clear, is actually a bill that expedites the citizenship application process for undocumented immigrants - so long as they are not Muslim (or Jewish, for that matter) - and which in conjunction with another government measure, the National Register of Citizens, potentially-but-effectively creates a pseudolegalistic route to disenfranchise millions of Indian citizens but only allow recitizenship to non-Muslims (and Jews)…

…is growing steadily across the country. January 26th was India’s Republic Day (their national holiday celebrating the country, the equivalent of Canada Day or Independence Day or the Grand Duke of Luxembourg’s Official Birthday, which is June 23 despite no Grand Duke of Luxembourg ever having been born on June 23; see, you learn things by reading this!) and people celebrated by forming human chains to protest the new laws. The longest chain was in Kerala, was 620 kilometers long and consisted of in between 6 and 7 million people, which - these numbers are insane, and that wasn’t even the only protest, it was just the single biggest one. There were large human protest chains all across India, because Modi’s Hindu supremacy is turning out to be really unpopular with young Indians, because “the kids are all right” is one of those true statements that never stops being true.

THIS WEEK IN PUBLIC PROTESTS II

Puerto Rico again! This time protesters carried a guillotine to the governor’s mansion. An actual guillotine. Really, this particular protest (probably a few tens of thousands of people) is over something shitty but relatively minor (some emergency aid that didn’t get distributed after Hurricane Maria was found in a warehouse not being distributed to Puerto Rican earthquake victims), but admit it, you have to admire the work ethic here. They built an actual full-size guillotine and then carried the guillotine to the governor’s mansion and then installed it just so the governor would know there was a guillotine outside the mansion.

The governor, Wanda Vasquez, fired a bunch of lower-level bureaucrats and appointees afterwards, claiming it was their fault, because the buck stops somewhere over there, it turns out. Probably near the guillotine.

MINOR (BUT PROMISING) CLIMATE LAW UPDATE

Speaking of guillotines, in France a bunch of NGOs and local municipal governments are suing the sixth largest oil company in the world for not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions. Which means we are going from guillotine to legal team. (I think this is an excellent segue and am very pleased with myself about it.)

French civil law includes what’s called the “duty of vigilance,” which requires corporations to be vigilant about preventing clear harms from their actions. Obviously there is a lot of wiggle room under this law because corporations are still, you know, corporations and France has a large and rich economy, but the principle is there, and the NGOs are using it because Total SA, the French petrochemical company (which also owns Elf and Petrofina, among others) has published its carbon reduction plan and the plan is obviously inadequate, not least because the steps it takes aren’t equivalent to the carbon reduction it needs to attain in order for France to meet its Paris Accord obligations. (Which, as I have written before, are now inadequate anyway, but you gotta start somewhere.) So the NGOs are suing to, well, make Total do better.

It’s an interesting application of the law if it works, and I’m optimistic about its chances because French public opinion is decidedly not on Total’s side in this.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Dolittle (2020, Stephen Gaghan, theatre) - 0.5/5

Finished Last Word, a wee little RPG I bought ages ago on Steam because the idea of a conversation-based combat RPG was interesting to me, and while it was interesting it’s nothing RPG fans need to consider a must-play by any means. On the other hand, it is definitely short and has some interesting ideas in it, until they run out and just sort of end the thing.

See you in seven.