Coronavirus: Better Call Sol - CORONAMANIA (21 Viewers)

[flashback]

although, if you look at Smallpox's mechanisms of infection and how Variola works, it's amazing that humans were able to eradicate it, ever.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

I guess I'd also be careful about the accuracy of the reports from that era. For example, now, in Ireland, with extra ordinarily good infrastructure / health care / centralized records and so on, we are certainly undercounting the covid numbers. Plus if someone dies, is it attributed to covid, or a (even vaguely) related illness? I'd guess even something as dramatic as stroke, it's hard to tell what or when the initial upstream triggering event was.

Back then medical professionals were... I mean, a bit dubious. There were fuck all records to speak of when it came to unwashed masses, people were digging trenches and horsing entire families in there. There might have been shame associated with getting sick, there would have been fear, and so on.

I can remember reading stuff along the lines of random little flare-ups that would demolish entire villages, or families, that went for for years. The country itself was a bit in turmoil I'd guess, and when whole groups are vanished like that with only a few stragglers who'd probably want to leave that memory behind them, it's easy to have that lost to history.

to be fair, the symptoms of bubonic plague were/are pretty distinctive. while it wouldn't be very granular in terms of exact numbers or timing the records that do exist would be accurate in impact and location.

good point though on the impact on society at large - its reckoned the sheer number of plebs who died in the black death, and the consequent labor shortages/increase in value of labor led to all sorts of upheavals, undermined the feudal order in places etc. (not that ultimately that changed much in the medium term)

an interesting coda in ireland, is that the anglo-norman settlements were much harder hit than the gaelic areas (which while not exactly pastoral were much less congregated) . Combined with the Bruce invasions, and the lack of manpower in England it led to the erosion of control over much of ireland outside what became the pale, rise of semi independent kingpins like the butlers, desmonds etc.

 

[flashback]

to be fair, the symptoms of bubonic plague were/are pretty distinctive. while it wouldn't be very granular in terms of exact numbers or timing the records that do exist would be accurate in impact and location.

yeah, that's probably a good point. I reckon there was a fair amount of shame / hiding going on though. Cancer was considered shameful within my lifetime FFS.

I guess I'm comparing it also to when they were running WWII death camps etc in Europe, those numbers, even in recent (? right WWII is still considered recent I think?) history, are hard to get to because they'd removed entire population hubs. Like, it's tricky to do death counts if everyone connected to the hub being killed are either dead or completely dispersed and traumatized.

 

[flashback]

an interesting coda in ireland, is that the anglo-norman settlements were much harder hit than the gaelic areas (which while not exactly pastoral were much less congregated) . Combined with the Bruce invasions, and the lack of manpower in England it led to the erosion of control over much of ireland outside what became the pale, rise of semi independent kingpins like the butlers, desmonds etc.

Like, I remember reading... maybe one paper that questioned rats as the vector for Y pestis, but let's say rat fleas are the vector, I wonder if what you are saying there could just be a function of there not being much of a rat population within these native Irish type areas?
Just, not as much food, not the same population density, not as many opportunities, fewer / no rat population => very little transmission to humans.


Or is that stating the bleeding obvious, and I'm being slow.

 

[magicbastarder]

that doc i saw suggested the reason it spread so quickly is that it went from being bubonic - and spread by rats - to pneumonic, and spread in a similar way to covid.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Like, I remember reading... maybe one paper that questioned rats as the vector for Y pestis, but let's say rat fleas are the vector, I wonder if what you are saying there could just be a function of there not being much of a rat population within these native Irish type areas?
Just, not as much food, not the same population density, not as many opportunities, fewer / no rat population => very little transmission to humans.


Or is that stating the bleeding obvious, and I'm being slow.

All of the above really - the average Norman punter was more likely to live in towns/villages(large non-ecclesiastical settlements not really being a feature of Gaelic Ireland at the time) , probably had a different diet, farmed differently etc.

 

[taubstumm]

thumped: come for your daily dose of present-day pandemic misery, stay for the sparkling non-ecclesiastical settlements chitchat

 

[taubstumm]

i actually find this all fascinating, keep going please

 

[Unicron]

Who was asking abut updated Covid certs? Mine was just e-mailed to me.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

thumped: come for your daily dose of present-day pandemic misery, stay for the sparkling non-ecclesiastical settlements chitchat

Thumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random info

 

[taubstumm]

Thumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random info

what are non-fungible tokens if not non-ecclesiastical settlements persevering

 

[JohnnyRaz]

what are non-fungible tokens if not non-ecclesiastical settlements persevering

That would be an ecumenical matter

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Thumped - if you’ve a tangent we’ve a half informed nerd with some random info

It takes a special sort of sad bastard to have this on the bookshelf

 

[Cormcolash]

You never talk about the White Death though, you bunch of racists

 

[Cormcolash]

Sorry thought this was the Twitter thread there

 

[magicbastarder]

It takes a special sort of sad bastard to have this on the bookshelf

i'm 90% certain we have a copy of that too.
edit: different book, same author:

The Great Dying: The Black Death in Dublin

Between August and December 1348, 14,000 people died in…

www.goodreads.com

 

[nuke terrorist]

although, if you look at Smallpox's mechanisms of infection and how Variola works, it's amazing that humans were able to eradicate it, ever.

to my unscientific mind eradicating smallpox is the greatest human achievement in science.
after Cortez got to Mexico in 1519 within a few years many millions of people living in the area had died from diseases - smallpox was mostly responsible.

the worst anti vaccine conspiracy I ever heard of linked the eradication of smallpox to the spread of HIV.
that makes me so annoyed.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

You never talk about the White Death though, you bunch of racists

Take it to the snipers thread.

 

[flashback]

that doc i saw suggested the reason it spread so quickly is that it went from being bubonic - and spread by rats - to pneumonic, and spread in a similar way to covid.

ah cool. OK. Huh.

I remember being interested in this at one point. I can't remember the paper with it going airborne... that would be quite bad, but I remember some contention about the vector.
Nice.

By the way, I have access to pretty much everything published in journals. If anyone wants a scientific article, I can probably get it for them.

 

[flashback]

to my unscientific mind eradicating smallpox is the greatest human achievement in science.
after Cortez got to Mexico in 1519 within a few years many millions of people living in the area had died from diseases - smallpox was mostly responsible.

the worst anti vaccine conspiracy I ever heard of linked the eradication of smallpox to the spread of HIV.
that makes me so annoyed.

I dunno, I mean science is basically "stuff you can prove". Lots of scientists are gobshites, I'd probably still be categorized as a scientist? I think? But I'd definitely be a gobshite.

HIV had more or less one trick. It hid in lymph nodes, then dinged the ever loving shit out of the adaptive immune response until you'd literally start having problems spinning up cd4 helper T-cells. Well played, congrats.

Smallpox is like... a textbook in how to fuck with immune systems. Like, you could look at the genome of variola and if it was in there, it was probably some crucial part of the immune response.

Like, Mendeleev famously was so confident with his periodic table that he was able to look at the gaps and say 'there should be something there'. You could take the same tactic with Variola, if you didn't know what the sequence does you could almost rest assured it played some pivotal role in host immune response.