F8 accompli: Facebook, Epic Games, Microsoft, Unity abandon conference plans over coronavirus fears Growing concern over the spread of the novel coronavirus has prompted Epic Games, Microsoft, and Unity to announce on Thursday that they are withdrawing from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next month. Facebook has also cancelled the meet-and-greet part of its F8 developer conference in May. "After a close …
China’s human scale, and recent engagement with the world, changes everything on a massive scale. Covid-19 is just a manifestation of this. I think the takeaway from Clovid-19 is that China must change the relationship with what it eats, if it wants to stay in the economic driving seat. Perhaps it will. Personally, I hope this leads to a little diversity of production.
I can't believe someone downvoted the OP. China is not dealing well with obvious realities, now or in the past. WSJ reporters criticized the government's handling of the crisis, and they threw them out of the country for *racism*. 10's of millions are going to die because of 'racism'? Whose?
Can we please return to calling it the Wuhan virus? The reason it exists and is spreading has everything to do with where it started.
Note: a different anonymous, it case it matters to you (if it's China, it matters)
"OP was probably downvoted for writing nonsense like this: "China must change the relationship with what it eats"
Original OP here.... Quite frankly, if wild animal markets and a stupid, national culinary pissing contest involving things like "bat soup" are leading to these new diseases, then yes China does in point of fact need to change its relationship with what it eats.
I would agree with you if there was proof that that is how the virus appeared, but we have no proof on that, just a supposition.
Now, personally, I think that placing wild animals in a food market is quite unsanitary, but that has nothing to do with the kinds of animals they eat. It's just gross in itself.
Did I read yesterday that China is starting to ban the trade in more ... exotic animals ... in a bid to reduce the exposure to animal-borne infections ?
It's an ill wind etc,
Meanwhile. it's been grimly amusing to see all the people who "couldn't possibly give up flying" last year, when the world was on fire, have suddenly discovered they can give up flying. Not much comfort for the aviation industries, but will be interesting to see if it drives a semi-permanent shift in population behaviour.
Unfortunately what you are talking about is the problem with global warming. Even excluding the out and out deniers, its a problem that can't be envisioned as a personal impact on most people living today.
"I need to stop polluting this or at some point some people in the world will suffer and die" is not a threat.
"I need to stop drinking or smoking because *I* might die earlier" is a bit of a threat.
"I need to not get on that plane to Italy or *I* might be dead in three weeks" is definitely a threat.
Personal risk evaluations are something that humans do. Its the key to our species survival, we are good at it, we have evolved to be good at it.
We aren't very good at longer term risks and we don't have a mechanism to deal with risks that are perceived beyond the end of our personal lives, let alone ones which involve the deaths of people that are on the other side of the world.
I'm not by the way arguing that we shouldn't care - we definitely should - just that that is the answer to your point.
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