FYI, the incident w/ the destroyed vaccines happened in Grafton, WI, not in Colorado. (I'm from WI & and a friend from Grafton was, rightfully, complaining about it & I was confused for a bit that there were two incidents, one in WI & one in CO.)
Yep! I transposed "Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, WI" mentally with "Grafton Medical Center in Aurora," which of course led me to think it happened in Aurora CO. Fixed it as soon as I noticed. Thanks for spotting this, though!
Makes total sense! Grafton, WI is small, it definitely wouldn't be most people's first thought. I mean, it wasn't mine & I've been there & know people from there & who still live there! I'm glad that the same terrible thing didn't happen in two places at least.
Hi, John. By now you've noticed that I am a frequent commenter by nature. Hope it isn't getting obnoxious ... because I am, sometimes, and I know it.
In the Medium article, you wrote, "We now live in a world where news of a disease travels faster than the disease itself ... Really, we’ve lived in that world for more than fifty years now." Yes, in the sense that 200 is more than 50. The "semaphore telegraph" is darn fast (as Larry Niven mentioned in a side comment in Ringworld).
I think we need to be mindful here of the speed at which we learn about new diseases, though. Sure, the telegraph may have been invented in the 19th century, but that telegraph is useless without an electron microscope and sequencing technology to actually be able to detect new viruses. Let's look to the most recent pre-genomics era pandemic to understand how far we've come. AIDS emerged in the 1920s or 1930s. It went unnoticed largely until the late 1970s/early 1980s, when puzzling deaths among gay men were on the rise. It took until 1983 to identify the causative agent, HIV. The disease was spreading for at least 40 years before anyone even knew it existed, and for 53 years before they determined a virus was the causative agent.
Compare this with COVID-19. The first known human case occurred in November 2019. The disease was identified in December 2019. The virus was identified and sequenced a week later. That's a blinding pace by comparison.
Yes, AIDS has a slower progression of disease, but not sufficiently so to explain the sheer difference in scale here. We've come a very long way in our disease intelligence capabilities, allowing us to discover and publicize the emergence of new diseases faster than those diseases can spread. It's not just a matter of communications technology. It's a matter of discovery technology.
FYI, the incident w/ the destroyed vaccines happened in Grafton, WI, not in Colorado. (I'm from WI & and a friend from Grafton was, rightfully, complaining about it & I was confused for a bit that there were two incidents, one in WI & one in CO.)
Wait, you changed it already! Nevermind!
Yep! I transposed "Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, WI" mentally with "Grafton Medical Center in Aurora," which of course led me to think it happened in Aurora CO. Fixed it as soon as I noticed. Thanks for spotting this, though!
Makes total sense! Grafton, WI is small, it definitely wouldn't be most people's first thought. I mean, it wasn't mine & I've been there & know people from there & who still live there! I'm glad that the same terrible thing didn't happen in two places at least.
Hi, John. By now you've noticed that I am a frequent commenter by nature. Hope it isn't getting obnoxious ... because I am, sometimes, and I know it.
In the Medium article, you wrote, "We now live in a world where news of a disease travels faster than the disease itself ... Really, we’ve lived in that world for more than fifty years now." Yes, in the sense that 200 is more than 50. The "semaphore telegraph" is darn fast (as Larry Niven mentioned in a side comment in Ringworld).
Have a happy new year, John.
A happy new year to you too, Carl!
I think we need to be mindful here of the speed at which we learn about new diseases, though. Sure, the telegraph may have been invented in the 19th century, but that telegraph is useless without an electron microscope and sequencing technology to actually be able to detect new viruses. Let's look to the most recent pre-genomics era pandemic to understand how far we've come. AIDS emerged in the 1920s or 1930s. It went unnoticed largely until the late 1970s/early 1980s, when puzzling deaths among gay men were on the rise. It took until 1983 to identify the causative agent, HIV. The disease was spreading for at least 40 years before anyone even knew it existed, and for 53 years before they determined a virus was the causative agent.
Compare this with COVID-19. The first known human case occurred in November 2019. The disease was identified in December 2019. The virus was identified and sequenced a week later. That's a blinding pace by comparison.
Yes, AIDS has a slower progression of disease, but not sufficiently so to explain the sheer difference in scale here. We've come a very long way in our disease intelligence capabilities, allowing us to discover and publicize the emergence of new diseases faster than those diseases can spread. It's not just a matter of communications technology. It's a matter of discovery technology.