The most Bohemian thing William Faulkner ever wrote is his famous passage from Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
What I get from Faulkner's observation that past is not even past is that even though people leave this Earth, their actions resonate for generations. The living must deal with those legacies, for better or worse. The dead and their lives and their conspiracy theories, then, are never really gone.
More updates on and an explainer about the Wuhan coronavirus, which has infected 600+ people and killed 18 so far. This is the not-fun part about being in Asia right now...
Everything you need to know about coronavirus in one place
Here's a rundown of all the facts about coronavirus, and how you can make sure you're protected.
With the Wuhan coronavirus in the news, this is a timely release from Netflix:Pandemic is a 6-part series on the inevitable worldwide disease outbreak and what’s being done to stop it, or at least to mitigate its effects.
Inflamed by past scares and Hollywood disaster blockbusters, few things feed collective panic like a virus, experts said Thursday, as China locked down the epicentre of a deadly flu-like outbreak.
There have been three great plague pandemics in human history caused by the bacterium Y. pestis, spreading from Siberia and Mongolia, across Asia, and into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Thefirst began in A.D. 541 within the Roman Empire, lasted two centuries, and was dubbed the Justinianic Plague. The second, the Black Death, spread from Asia into Italy in 1346 and persisted for 400 years, infecting most of the European population with suchdevastating outcome—50 million people died on a continent then inhabited by 80 million—that for centuries historians referred to it as the Great Mortality. The third pandemic began in the 1850s in China, spreading across Asia with such ferocity that India, alone, lost 20 million people.
As China virus spreads, fear spreads faster ... "Also, respiratory viruses, such as influenza, seem to spread more ... authorities to effectively "counter conspiracy theories and rumours".
More people tested for coronavirus in Australia as China locks down 10 cities
Two patients in NSW and two in Queensland are waiting on test results.
The Guardian
The Chinese government’s response to this month’s outbreak of plague has been marked by temerity and some fear, which history suggests is entirely appropriate. But not all fear is the same, and Beijing seems to be afraid of the wrong things. Rather than being concerned about the germs and their spread, the government seems mostly motivated by a desire to manage public reaction about the disease. Those efforts, however, have failed—and the public’s response is now veering toward a sort of plague-inspired panic that’s not at all justified by the facts.
