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Showing posts from April, 2020

How better off the world is now in 2020 to deal with novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic as compared to influenza pandemic around a century ago

I am slightly over the halfway mark of viewing a documentary video on 1918 (to 1920) influenza pandemic, which focuses on USA role & impact. It is tough viewing and so readers who prefer not to see such suffering, should NOT view the video. I have already found it to be great teaching material about the pandemic that swept the world around a century ago, and I think viewing it may help to better understand dangers of current novel coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic and how to try to protect oneself and others from it. So I think it is worth the time and worth watching the really tough stuff shown in the documentary video, if one can handle it. The 1918-1920 influenza pandemic infected hundreds of millions of people and killed tens of millions worldwide,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu . 1918 Spanish Flu historical documentary | Swine Flu Pandemic | Deadly plague of 1918, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDY5COg2P2c , around 40 minutes, published on 1st Oct. 2018, has ov

Francis Collins' prescient words on 16th March 2020 about coronavirus pandemic and its impact on USA

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I have an especial regard for Dr. Francis Collins as I was privileged to have short email interactions with him wrt my 2012 transcript of his talk on God & Science in Caltech in 2008 which I have put up as a post here: https://iami1.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/francis-collins-the-language-of-god-a-scientist-presents-evidence-of-belief-transcript/ (and which appears as a top Google search result for search terms like: francis collins caltech talk transcript, and which gets visits every once in while, even today). He is one of the do-gooder heroes of our time who is also a staunch believer in God (Christian faith, in his case). He is the director of National Institutes of Health, USA and so is a key figure in the fight against coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic in USA. NIH chief Francis Collins on COVID-19: Best response one people would find 'too drastic', https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/03/19/nih-francis-collins-coronavirus-questions-answers/2873121001/ , 19th Marc