I suppose that we could view the Chinese virus as something that had to happen to thin out a burgeoning population that is wrecking the Earth. Let 'er rip, and may the fittest survive. Let's face it: there are many people making up the 8 billion or so population who are no use to anyone, including themselves. Should we be wrecking our economy just to save people we can do without? I put that idea as a person in his late seventies who could be 'done without'. Why our anti-Christian, unspiritual and not very nice society has not given the idea a thought is beyond me.

ttbn,
I hoped Ebola would achieve something but a cure was eventually found.
Now maybe Cov-19 might.
Any reduction in the gross overpopulation situation will be positive.

Why the Christ do I bother ?

Try this, if you dare:

http://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

No. There isn't a population explosion. Europe, Japan, South Korea and Russia have static or declining populations, which will cause huge problems in a generation or two. The US and Australia would have static populations if it weren't for immigration. China is about to reach 'peak child' and in a decade or so, a static level of population. India is probably one generation behind China.

Of course populations might keep rising because people (at least until this virus) have been living longer: so they're counted amongst the living for longer. World birth rates are stabilising but mortality rates are declining even faster.

So do you mean Africa ? Africa is a very big continent, very lush: it could fit in about four Australias and has probably half the world's rainfall (somebody can correct me on that, please). So of course, if its governments were less corrupt and more civic-minded, it could support far more people.

But are you contemplating the use of some virus like Ebola or COVID-19 or Lyssa or Zika or even HIV to kill off hundreds of millions of people ? i.e. Africans ? Fascism dies very hard, doesn't it ?

Joe

Before there is any prospect of a reboot of the, Cooperative capitalism, economy? We need a few imperatives!

First of all, we need an effective antiviral that inhibits covid-19.

Plus, a blood test that enables a confirmed result in around an hour.

Enough clot-busting medication to give to all ICU patients, to prevent, fatal P.E's!

Need to become totally self-sufficient in PPE production!

With that in play? We could allow young volunteers ( at least 100,000) to acquire the infection, before it becomes full-blown? Treat with staggered, on and off again, antivirals, to allow the immune response to get ahead of the infection, relatively mild?

T cells could also be harvested from the ill/multiplied a thousandfold in the lab/reinjected into patients to further assist recovery/immunity?

[Always providing there's adequate, there's no time to lose, time? Trained lab techs?] We start yesterday!

Then with a large cohort of now immune volunteers, collect their monthly donations of blood. From which plasma could be harvested and used to produce immunity in our front line, essential service workers starting with the oldest first. If our politicians are last in this mind-blowingly massive queue? An assurance there will be no quibbling about cost, etc-etc!

All these things occurring inside various bubbles of quarantined production?

I mean it might be a little tough sleeping under the stars in a swag for various itinerant farmworkers? Or in cubicles in dorms for factory workers who will also live in quarantined accommodation, temporary demountables, caravans, tents, on the grounds of their production facility/factory! In lockdown, but ramped up full production, from inside the bubble!

And only transport able to penetrate? And where drivers are secunded from the immune cohort!

Even so, hygiene cannot be overdone and will need an army of attached cleaners to ensure all production leaves the premises, sans any viral contaminants!

Eventually, enough community immunity will allow this (squashed flat) virus to die a natural death?

Given we quarantine all incoming tourists and students etc? Will never reemerge here!?
Alan B.

Joe: Nailed it in one! Maybe we should just click heels and raise a stiff arm?

Me? With one middle finger extended!

Take care and stay safe!

We need positively informed and sensible thinkers like yourself engaged in the debate! Just to prevent those on the extreme right from having their dehumanizing (white supremacist, apartheid) views prevailing!
Alan B.

Joe's Africa is the very place most of the totally useless people live. It's always been a basket case a and it always will be. The same applies to the Middle East and much of Asia. The West is where the action is; or at least it was prior to globalisation and other Leftist fantasies, like cultural relativity.

In the meantime, it seems that WHO will be without the almost half a billion dollars a year it gets from the US while their shonky, pro-China nonsense is investigated.