EDIT: Please post feed back to the peanut gallery: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...Peanut-Gallery
The COVID-19 pandemic is now affecting virtually every aspect of life. As of the time I write this (9:00 a.m. CT), the number of confirmed infections globally is on track to pass 400,000 in an hour or two and will likely top 500,000 by today's end. In the US, we're currently at 46,000 confirmed infections. Given the recent acceleration in the rate of spread (for 6 days now, our expansion rate has amounted to doubling every 2.3 days), we will be at 6 figures by Friday. Across the globe, governments have been instituting various lock-down efforts to attempt to slow the virus's spread. For many countries, the measures taken have been done so at tremendous and unprecedented economic expense. The US appears to be on a trajectory for unemployment levels that exceed what the country saw during the Great Depression. The stock market has been plummeting and threatens to wipe out accumulated wealth and retirement savings of a vast swath of the populace.
We've all got our own internal mental model of the "big picture": where we are, how we got here, what we're doing about it, and where we're headed (one week from now, one month from now, and one year from now). We also harbor a pretty solid sense of "what we should be doing" (i.e. if Bald Ape was calling the shots, here's what we'd be doing, and here's how "the Bald Ape way" would fix everything).
However, most discussions of COVID-19 (here and elsewhere) focus on individual topics: toilet paper hoarding, PPE shortages, rise in gun sales, Italy's plight, whether "Chinese virus" is racist, etc., etc. Lots of people weigh in on these, but all we see are how these discrete topics intersect with the participants' "big picture". This forces us into the "3 blind men trying to describe an elephant by touch" mode when it comes to understanding where someone is coming from and what they mean when they respond to a thread with a single emoji.
This thread is intended to be an opportunity for each of us to just put out our respective "big picture" conceptions. Some guidelines:
Goals:
The COVID-19 pandemic is now affecting virtually every aspect of life. As of the time I write this (9:00 a.m. CT), the number of confirmed infections globally is on track to pass 400,000 in an hour or two and will likely top 500,000 by today's end. In the US, we're currently at 46,000 confirmed infections. Given the recent acceleration in the rate of spread (for 6 days now, our expansion rate has amounted to doubling every 2.3 days), we will be at 6 figures by Friday. Across the globe, governments have been instituting various lock-down efforts to attempt to slow the virus's spread. For many countries, the measures taken have been done so at tremendous and unprecedented economic expense. The US appears to be on a trajectory for unemployment levels that exceed what the country saw during the Great Depression. The stock market has been plummeting and threatens to wipe out accumulated wealth and retirement savings of a vast swath of the populace.
We've all got our own internal mental model of the "big picture": where we are, how we got here, what we're doing about it, and where we're headed (one week from now, one month from now, and one year from now). We also harbor a pretty solid sense of "what we should be doing" (i.e. if Bald Ape was calling the shots, here's what we'd be doing, and here's how "the Bald Ape way" would fix everything).
However, most discussions of COVID-19 (here and elsewhere) focus on individual topics: toilet paper hoarding, PPE shortages, rise in gun sales, Italy's plight, whether "Chinese virus" is racist, etc., etc. Lots of people weigh in on these, but all we see are how these discrete topics intersect with the participants' "big picture". This forces us into the "3 blind men trying to describe an elephant by touch" mode when it comes to understanding where someone is coming from and what they mean when they respond to a thread with a single emoji.
This thread is intended to be an opportunity for each of us to just put out our respective "big picture" conceptions. Some guidelines:
- This is not a discussion thread: it's a collection of monologues. After posting this, I'll start a peanut-gallery thread so everyone can do what discussion forums are meant to do: tear each other's worldviews to shreds and dance around in the subsequent confetti party.
- These are March 24-March 25 snapshots- what you believe right now. If you're going to contribute, do so before midnight of March 25 (early morning March 26 for the stragglers). I will request the thread be locked in 48 hours (around 9:00 a.m. CT March 26). After that time, editing or deleting of anything written, either by the author or by mods/admins, may be considered a form of unethical revisionism.
- There is no set structure, but do try to cover the big 3: where we are, how we got here, and where we're going; and, optionally, your take on what people/societies should be doing differently
- Take your time. I'm going to submit my post as a follow up, but I don't expect to have it ready until later tonight.
- Before March 26, feel free to edit and polish up your post... fix typos, clarify wording, update statistics, or even expand on subtopics you might have inadvertently excluded. I'm hoping the peanut gallery yields a lot of constructive feedback (e.g. "what did you mean by X?" or "You left a zero off, that number should be 500 not 50").
- Be thorough: omitting a particular topic may be taken to mean you consider it of less import than topics you include.
- Be concise: aim for 500 words, cap at 750 words. (for perspective, this sentence is at the 625-word point of this post).
Goals:
- People can point to their post on this thread if they feel it adds clarity to their take on a specific COVID-19-related subject.
- People can point to others' posts in this thread if they feel someone is being inconsistent with what they put here.
- In peanut gallery thread, we can compare things that actually happen to how people thought they would unfold as of March 25.
- If this proves successful/popular, in 10 days, I'll start an April 4 edition. Basically a chance for people to revise and update their March 25 posts to reflect how things in the world have changed and, perhaps, how their own perspectives have changed.
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