Track the Coronavirus Outbreak on Johns Hopkins Live Dashboard — Realtime infection and death data from five sources

COVID-19(Wuhan coronavirus) — Social Media Inoculation

“The crematoria have been running 24/7 since early January in Wuhan.” [9:42 PM, 1/25/2020]

“The crematoria have been running 24/7 since early January in Wuhan.” [9:42 PM, 1/25/2020]

“It’s a disaster of epic proportions,” said my friend in Beijing. [8:42 PM, 1/25/2020]

“Effing Chinese and their crazy penchant for eating freaking wild animals.” [8:45 PM, 1/25/2020]

Chinese Government Forces TV Host Who Popularized Eating Bats To Apologize

As of late January, according to recent reports, the scale of the coronavirus outbreak continues to escalate. 56 million Chinese citizens have now been quarantined, with Chinese authorities claiming that around 1300 people have been infected so far. However, according to one hospital worker in Wuhan, the government is lying and over 100,000 people have actually been infected. https://www.zerohedge.com/

“In my view, one million cases in the US is now “likely,” with ten million possible. This means 150,000 to 1,000,000 hospitalizations this year.” David Siegel March 5, 2020

GREAT REAL-TIME UPDATES DAILY

Track the Coronavirus Outbreak on Johns Hopkins Live Dashboard — Realtime infection and death data from five sources

The interactive map is the work of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins and it shows the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases by location worldwide plus the total number of deaths. On the positive side, the map also displays the number of people who have recovered from the disease.

This tracker from Johns Hopkins University provides realtime information and tracks cases of this novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China, as well as around the world, including numbers of deaths, recovered patients, and countries affected.

The World Health Organization has its own coronavirus dashboard as well, but includes only its own information, whereas the Hopkins team synthesizes data from WHO and four additional sources: CDC, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, China’s National Health Commission, and ncov.dxy.cn, an independent data source maintained by Chinese physicians.

Here we are in a digital meltdown. Even in San Francisco, people have stocked up on food and have become virtual shut-ins awaiting the Viral Apocalypto.

The loosening of reason’s grip upon people has been coming for decades and follows the same perverse moral mathematics that resulted in both BREXIT and TRUMP. I call it Humanist Knowledge.

I found it in prison. Prison operates on lines of force and principles unacknowledged on the outside. Much to my surprise, prison life has brought into focus many of the mysteries I see in modern society as it lives through this Age of Anxiety. They do it ‘old school’ in San Quentin with the tools of tribal life recreated in the prison yard. The same dynamics are at work in the real world, driven by digital social media delivered by smartphones.

As humans, we are organized in social systems. It is human nature to put all data into context in order to tell a story, re-create the world by this means, and thereby be able to predict outcomes (causality). Humans rarely abstract general principles from examples, therefore, we use STORY (a narrative construct rich in retrieval cues, i.e., making use of associations) to help identify and formulate the common strategies and methods that underlie critical thinking.

If we can use Enlightenment REASON to work with any fact pattern (think the coronavirus, 2019-nCoV), all is well. However, modern REASON has been short-circuited by our environment spawned by digital technology. We live in it. It is the principal organizing force of our lives, the GESTALT or unifying form of our modern existence.

INOCULATION

Those who see deep into time have tried to warn us of the coming empathy trap that enthralls the world and has birthed our Age of Anxiety.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual’s own reaction. Pope Pius XII, 2/17/50

Marshall McLuhan recognized the potential impact of modern media over 50 years ago. He identified its “lines of force” and the cataclysmic conflict it would generate. Also, he hoped society could learn to “moderate the fierceness of this conflict by understanding the media that extend us and raise these wars within and without us.” The Gutenberg Galaxy

To assess realistically the modern age and prospects for the future, we must recognize our digital media controls us and we have lost the ability to judge for ourselves. Emotional empathy has replaced cognitive empathy and we wear all humankind as our skin.

While the Enlightenment gave us a new civilization, our digital media now controls our perception of reality. Just as with myths originating from an oral culture, all meanings in our electronic age are SIMULTANEOUS.

We all see ourselves in these seats awaiting medical attention.

To understand these new digital forces, we need metaphorical tools. By characterizing digital media as a technological extension of our senses, we can study its impacts. We must use REASON.

…[I]f a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture. It is comparable to what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque, and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent. The Gutenberg Galaxy 1962, p. 41.

Without REASON, nature makes a complete fool out of us. It uses intuition. A form of false knowing that is the source of our problems. The brain is a sense-making machine and relies on intuition when it has no alternative narrative. To battle intuition, we use the narrative of REASON.

Once again, REASON can become humanity’s supreme tool of survival. Without it, you must depend on those who use it. With it, you become a trader, neither claiming the unearned nor granting it.

However, often we gain false knowing through a story/theory (immersion in the narrative) as well. Modern decision making is using a false reason based on the operations of cognitive predispositions and a two-track brain. Emersion in the Digital Cloud forces us to make choices immediate and based on alternative facts.

Instead of modern reason acting as a judge weighing empirically validated facts, it acts as a press secretary seeking to justify our beliefs. That’s right, “humans are not designed to practice reason. We are designed to make arguments that aim to support our preconceived conclusions, not yours,” according to NYU professor Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.

In AGAINST EMPATHY, Paul Bloom, a Yale professor, reveals empathy (our digital defined) to be one of the leading motivators of our current Age of Anxiety. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. This emotional empathy, unleashed by humanism, has unmoored our society from its traditional REASON.

Allowing intuition’s emotional moral mathematics to guide our ethical and political decisions can lead to perverse outcomes. Watch what happens with 2019-nCoV (Wuhan coronavirus).

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