[continued from previous message]

diseases. The question is whether our modern society can knowingly choose
to let 3% or more of its population die when there is an alternative.

Conclusions.

COVID-19 combines a mortality rate that is 50 to 100 times as high as the seasonal flu, with a Base Doubling Period of slightly less than 3 days. At
the same time, most experts in the field and the public fail to see its
danger, leading to slow and failing responses. The cost is very high, but humanity will recover from it. I hope that next time a similar virus hits
us, we will be able to correctly assess its danger, and respond based on its transmission speed and mortality, instead of the number of cases one sees at the moment.

[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/482794-officials-say-the-cdc-is-preparing-for

[2] Tomas Pueyo: "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now", March 10, 2020. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[3] CAIDA Analysis of Code-Red: https://www.caida.org/research/security/code-red/

[4] David Moore, Vern Paxson, Stefan Savage, Colleen Shannon, Stuart
Staniford, Nicholas Weaver: The Spread of the Sapphire/Slammer Worm. https://www.caida.org/publications/papers/2003/sapphire/sapphire.html

[5] Base reproduction number on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

[6] Korea CDC Press Release. https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=3Da30402000000&bid=3D0030

[7] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000164708_00001.html

[8] CDC COVID-19 Response Team: Severe Outcomes Among Patients with
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) -- United States, February 12 --March
16, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

[9] CDC: Disease Burden of Influenza: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

[10] CDC: 2009 H1N1 Pandemic (H1N1pdm09 virus): https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html

[11] https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/24/12-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 13:24:10 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation

George Monbiot, *The Guardian*

*A bubble has finally been burst -- but will we now attend to the other
threats facing humanity?*

EXCERPT:

We have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In
the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world. The wealth we've accumulated -- often at the expense of others --
has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between
capsules -- our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls -- we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.

Now the membrane has ruptured, and we find ourselves naked and outraged, as
the biology we appeared to have banished storms through our lives. The temptation, when this pandemic has passed, will be to find another bubble.
We cannot afford to succumb to it. From now on, we should expose our minds
to the painful realities we have denied for too long.

The planet has multiple morbidities, some of which will make this
coronavirus look, by comparison, easy to treat. One above all others has
come to obsess me in recent years: how will we feed ourselves? Fights over toilet paper are ugly enough: I hope we never have to witness fights over
food. But it's becoming difficult to see how we will avoid them.

A large body of evidence is beginning to accumulate showing how climate breakdown is likely to affect our food supply. Already farming in some
parts of the world is being hammered by drought, floods, fire and locusts (whose resurgence in the past few weeks appears to be the result of
anomalous tropical cyclones). When we call such hazards ``biblical'', we mean that they are the kind of things that happened long ago, to people whose
lives we can scarcely imagine. Now, with increasing frequency, they are happening to us.

In his forthcoming book, *Our Final Warning, Mark Lynas* explains what is likely to happen to our food supply with every extra degree of global
heating. He finds that extreme danger kicks in somewhere between 3C and 4C above pre-industrial levels. At this point, a series of interlocking
impacts threatens to send food production into a death spiral. Outdoor temperatures become too high for humans to tolerate, making subsistence
farming impossible across Africa and South Asia. Livestock die from heat stress. Temperatures start to exceed the lethal thresholds for crop plants across much of the world, and major food producing regions turn into dust bowls. Simultaneous global harvest failure -- something that has never
happened in the modern world -- becomes highly likely.

In combination with a rising human population, and the loss of irrigation water, soil and pollinators, this could push the world into structural
famine. Even today, when the world has a total food surplus, hundreds of millions are malnourished as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth
and power. A food deficit could result in billions starving. Hoarding will happen, as it always has, at the global level, as powerful people snatch
food from the mouths of the poor. Yet, even if every nation keeps its
promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.

Thanks to our illusion of security, we are doing almost nothing to
anticipate this catastrophe, let alone prevent it. This existential issue scarcely seems to impinge on our consciousness. Every food-producing sector claims that its own current practices are sustainable and don't need to
change. When I challenge them, I'm met with a barrage of anger and abuse,
and threats of the kind I haven't experienced since I opposed the Iraq war. Sacred cows and holy lambs are everywhere, and the thinking required to
develop the new food systems that we need, like lab-grown food, is scarcely anywhere.

But this is just one of our impending crises. Antibiotic resistance is, potentially, as deadly as any new disease. One of the causes is the astonishingly profligate way in which these precious medicines are used on
many livestock farms. Where vast numbers of farm animals are packed
together, antibiotics are deployed prophylactically to prevent otherwise inevitable outbreaks of disease. In some parts of the world, they are used
not only to prevent disease, but also as growth promoters. Low doses are routinely added to feed: a strategy that could scarcely be better designed
to deliver bacterial resistance.

In the US, where 27 million people have no medical cover, some people are
now treating themselves with veterinary antibiotics, including those sold, without prescription, to medicate pet fish. Pharmaceutical companies are failing to invest sufficiently in the search for new drugs. If antibiotics cease to be effective, surgery becomes almost impossible. Childbirth
becomes a mortal hazard once more. Chemotherapy can no longer be safely practised. Infectious diseases we have comfortably forgotten become deadly threats. We should discuss this issue as often as we talk about football.
But again, it scarcely registers.

Our multiple crises, of which these are just two, have a common root. The problem is exemplified by the response of the organisers of the Bath Half Marathon, a massive event that took place on 15 March, to the many people begging them to cancel. ``It is now too late for us to cancel or postpone
the event. The venue is built, the infrastructure is in place, the site and
our contractors are ready.'' In other words, the sunk costs of the event
were judged to outweigh any future impacts -- the potential transmission of disease, and possible deaths -- it might cause.

The amount of time it took the International Olympic Committee to postpone
the Games could reflect similar judgments -- but at least they got there in
the end. Sunk costs within the fossil fuel industry, farming, banking,
private healthcare and other sectors prevent the rapid transformations we
need. Money becomes more important than life...

[...] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/covid-19-is-natures-wake-up-call-to-complacent-civilisation

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 13:25:11 -1000
From: geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Subject: Covid-19: 'Nature is sending us a message', says UN environment chief

*Destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis is hurting humanity, with Covid-19 a `clear warning shot', say experts*

EXCERPT:

Nature is sending us a message with the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis, according to the UN's environment chief, Inger Andersen.

Andersen said humanity was placing too many pressures on the natural world
with damaging consequences, and warned that failing to take care of the
planet meant not taking care of ourselves.

Leading scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a ``clear warning shot'', given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and that today's civilisation was ``playing with fire''. They said it was almost
always human behaviour that caused diseases to spill over into humans.

To prevent further outbreaks, the experts said, both global heating and the destruction of the natural world for farming, mining and housing have to
end, as both drive wildlife into contact with people.

They also urged authorities to put an end to live animal markets -- which
they called an ``ideal mixing bowl'' for disease -- and the illegal global animal trade.

Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said the immediate priority was to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent
its spread. ``But our long-term response must tackle habitat and
biodiversity loss,'' she added.

``Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,'' she told the Guardian, explaining
that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife.

``Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbour diseases that can jump to humans.''

She also noted other environmental impacts, such as the Australian
bushfires, broken heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya for 70 years. ``At the end of the day, [with] all of these events, nature is
sending us a message,'' Anderson said.

``There are too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to give. We are intimately interconnected with nature,
whether we like it or not. If we don't take care of nature, we can't take
care of ourselves. And as we hurtle towards a population of 10 billion
people on this planet, we need to go into this future armed with nature as
our strongest ally.''

Human infectious disease outbreaks are rising and in recent years there have been Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Rift Valley fever, sudden acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), West Nile virus and Zika
virus all cross from animals to humans.

``The emergence and spread of Covid-19 was not only predictable, it was predicted [in the sense that] there would be another viral emergence from wildlife that would be a public health threat,'' said Prof Andrew
Cunningham, of the Zoological Society of London. A 2007 study of the 2002-03 Sars outbreak concluded: ``The presence of a large reservoir of
Sars-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a timebomb.''

Cunningham said other diseases from wildlife had much higher fatality rates
in people, such as 50% for Ebola and 60%-75% for Nipah virus, transmitted
from bats in south Asia. ``Although, you might not think it at the moment, we've probably got a bit lucky with Covid-19. So I think we should be
taking this as a clear warning shot. It's a throw of the dice.''

``It's almost always a human behaviour that causes it and there will be more
in the future unless we change,'' said Cunningham. Markets butchering live
wild animals from far and wide are the most obvious example, he said. A
market in China is believed to have been the source of Covid-19.

``The animals have been transported over large distances and are crammed together into cages. They are stressed and immunosuppressed and excreting whatever pathogens they have in them. With people in large numbers in the market and in intimate contact with the body fluids of these animals, you
have an ideal mixing bowl for [disease] emergence. If you wanted a scenario
to maximise the chances of [transmission], I couldn't think of a much better way of doing it.''

China has banned such markets, and Cunningham said this must be permanent. ``However, this needs to be done globally. There are wet markets throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa and a lot of other Asian countries too.'' The
ease of travel in the modern world exacerbates the dangers, he said, adding: ``These days, you can be in a central African rainforest one day and in
central London the next.''

Aaron Bernstein, at the Harvard School of Public Health in the US, said the destruction of natural places drives wildlife to live close to people and
that climate change was also forcing animals to move: ``That creates an opportunity for pathogens to get into new hosts.''

``We've had Sars, Mers, Covid-19, HIV. We need to see what nature is trying
to tell us here. We need to recognise that we're playing with fire,'' he
said.

``The separation of health and environmental policy is a dangerous delusion. Our health entirely depends on the climate and the other organisms we share
the planet with.''

The billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is another part of the problem,
said John Scanlon, the former secretary general of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. [...]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:11:11 -0800
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