{"id":105913,"date":"2020-10-05T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=105913"},"modified":"2020-10-05T09:34:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T13:34:32","slug":"doom-on-you-or-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=105913","title":{"rendered":"Doom On You… Or Something"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stoopid Hoomans (snort!)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Occasionally, there is something useful on the interwebs, as in this NYT article linked below, with links to other sources for additional information.<\/p>\n

I have no idea why the NYT focused on a single popular Austrian ski resort, other than it seems to have been awash in carelessness, lack of awareness by the inhabitants, and denial by local officials regarding the severity of the COVID-19 disease and ensuing pandemic. It’s entirely possible that the visitors to and residents of Ischgl simply did not take the problem seriously, hence the wide dispersal of the disease and its subsequent consequences.\u00a0 But that applies to all the other tourist attractions in Europe and elsewhere, not just to a small Austrian ski resort. There is no doubt that if people had been more aware early on, the disease might not have become as widespread as it is now.<\/p>\n

How did the President pick it up, along with his wife and\u00a0 some White House staffers? That is<\/em> a question, but we likely won’t know until he’s out of the hospital. This is not a disease I would wish on anyone, period, so please save the angst-ridden stuff for sniping at the screen during the next debate.<\/p>\n

The origin of the Austrian branch of COVID-19 virus and how it spread is at the link below. I managed to get into it without a problem by using the “incognito” feature when clicking on the link.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/09\/30\/world\/europe\/ski-party-pandemic-travel-coronavirus.html<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:<\/p>\n

The World Health Organization said open borders would help fight disease. Experts, and a global treaty, emphatically agreed. But the scientific evidence was never behind them. (N.B.: Where is their back up for the statement that the WHO said this?)<\/p>\n

ISCHGL, Austria \u2014 They came from across the world to ski in the most famous resorts of the Austrian alps.<\/p>\n

Jacob Homiller and his college friends flew in from the United States. Jane Witt, a retired lecturer, arrived from London for a family reunion. Annette Garten, the youth director at a tennis club in Hamburg, was celebrating her birthday with her husband and two grown children.<\/p>\n

They knew in late February and early March that the coronavirus was spreading in nearby northern Italy, and across the other border in Germany, but no one was alarmed. Austrian officials downplayed concerns as tourists crowded into cable cars by day, and apr\u00e8s-ski bars at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole world meets in Ischgl,\u201d said Ms. Garten.<\/p>\n

Then they all went home, unwittingly taking the virus with them. Infected in Ischgl (pronounced \u201cISH-gul\u201d) or in surrounding villages, thousands of skiers carried the coronavirus to more than 40 countries on five continents. Many of Iceland\u2019s first known cases were traced to Ischgl. In March, nearly half the cases in Norway were linked to Austrian ski holidays.<\/p>\n

BEHIND THE CURVE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This series of articles examines the missteps, misunderstandings and missed warning signals that allowed Covid-19 to spread around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

How the World Missed Covid-19\u2019s Silent Spread<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

June 27, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

Europe Said It Was Pandemic-Ready. Pride Was Its Downfall.<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

July 20, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

When Covid-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Aug. 8, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

Ski, Party, Seed a Pandemic: The Travel Rules That Let Covid-19 Take Flight<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Sept. 30, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n

Nine months into an outbreak that has killed a million people worldwide, Ischgl is where the era of global tourism, made possible by cheap airfares and open borders, collided with a pandemic. For decades, as trade and travel drew the world closer, public health policy, enshrined by treaty, encouraged global mass tourism by calling for open borders, even during outbreaks. – article<\/p>\n

The article itself is quite long, has a lot of photos of the general area of Ischgl and a brief history of how it went from being a “backwater” and quiet little town in Austria to being a mainstream ski resort.\u00a0 However, if the dismissive attitude by locals toward CV19 was pertinent to this (and the authors provide no real back up as a source for their opinion piece), and the spread of CV19 in Germany and Italy was already underway, they need more than opinion to justify pointing the finger at a single town in the Austrian Alps as the source of the spread of this plague.<\/p>\n

If it spread from Italy and Germany into Austria, then Ischgl is hardly Gr9und Zero. It was already present in Chicago, IL, and a few other cities in the USA in January 2020, thanks to international air travel.<\/p>\n

The spread does seem to be slowing down a bit, but that was also true of the Spanish flu on its first go-round in 1918. It returned with a whammy in 1919 and did not completely fade away until 1920.\u00a0 Mind you, I am not<\/em> criticising these people for putting this article together, because it does contain some pertinent information about the spread of this disease and the lackadaisical attitude that existed at the beginning of this epidemic.\u00a0 I think they did try to do a good job. But they’ve presented it almost as if they are writing a novel like one of Stephen King’s spook stories, and he already beat them to it with “The Stand”, which was published back in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

They did seem to miss the point that they were trying to make, which was that Ischgl became a “disease cluster” because no one took the disease seriously. But this was also true of other towns and cities in Europe, in the same time period and prior to the appearance of CV-19 at Ischgl.<\/p>\n

It is interesting, however, as a look at a disease cluster. And it is a long read, so crack a cold one or get a pot of a hot beverage with caffeine and some snacks and enjoy the trip. The landscape in the Austrian Alps is quite beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occasionally, there is something useful on the interwebs, as in this NYT article linked below, with … Doom On You… Or Something<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[484],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105915,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105913\/revisions\/105915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}