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11 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

On Quora today, I was asked to answer a question of why Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story "The Masque of the Red Death" can tell us about dealing with COVID-19. It turned out that it was actually very relevant thematically, if not in relation to this particular disease (COVID-19 does not spread so suddenly and with the near-instant fatality of the Red Death) because it is the story of a callous man paying the ultimate price for his cowardice and hubris.

 

For those of you who don't remember Roger Corman's classic film, the story concerns a ruler, Prince Prospero, whose land is ravaged by a near-supernatural plague known as the Red Death.  Rather than try to make things better, he gathers his friends together in his magnificent palace and locks himself away from the plague. In the palace, which Poe describes in exquisite detail what makes the palace itself an ominous presence, the prince throws the wild party to end all wild parties, with all thinking they are absolutely safe from the Red Death and are free to do whatever they want.

 

As it turns out, they are catastrophically wrong. The Red Death does enter the palace, and in nearly an instant the party-goers are annihilated. The Red Death reigns triumphant over all the land.

 

I took a powerful warning from the story. Not that a particular virus would wipe us out, but that we must be wary of our own character flaws -- our pride, our selfishness, our lust for all we survey.

 

Cory Doctorow wrote a modern take on that story and his publishers have made it free to download (on Cory's request).  I will see if I can find a link...

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Just now, Doc Democracy said:

 

Cory Doctorow wrote a modern take on that story and his publishers have made it free to download (on Cory's request).  I will see if I can find a link...

 

As it turns out, it was the audiobook that is free to download.  Possibly better?

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/

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I'm not so much worried about myself; should I perish, the world will not have suffered a great loss and if the price paid for survival is "merely" a compromised lung capacity, well...I wasn't planning on running a marathon in any event. My extended family (and fellow citizens basically flouting good hygiene and reasonable quarantine measures) are what weigh heavily as of late.

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I've not left my neighborhood for close to three weeks; in addition to not really needing to brave the desolate streets, I feel as though I can remain here long enough until life returns to normalcy (or close to it) once I finally decide to venture out. Introversion is apparently good for something after all!

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I normally don't share newscasts -- seems depressing in these times -- but at about 0:49 of this report is something very important about the mental cost of this whole time. We probably all already know this, but not everybody does, and it's vital. If I knew how to edit video links, I'd have just posted that part and left all the rest out, because that is what people -- everybody, really -- need to hear no matter where they live.

 

 

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32 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I normally don't share newscasts -- seems depressing in these times -- but at about 0:49 of this report is something very important about the mental cost of this whole time. We probably all already know this, but not everybody does, and it's vital.

 

We can either have concentrated misery now or prolonged suffering plus more deaths in the near-future. My hope is that people will get the message and start practicing self-discipline: it is the best way to combat this malady until a vaccine/and or treatment is perfected. Besides which, no one wants their neighborhood to be placed under martial law.

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17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Nevada just banned the use of Chloroquine and/or Hydroxycholorquine for treating Covid-19.

 

Seems like that should be up to the doctors.

 

Especially in the severe cases where the potential side-effects of the treatment are ... not dying or - at worst - still dying?

Wow! That is a pretty serious position to take before the science is even finished on it. Talk about knee-jerk reactions. I wonder who's going to be accountable for that decision. Good thing it's an election year.

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