Without in any way seeking to downplay or minimize this serious health-related matter which has evidently claimed at least 425 citizens of Mainland China...
...it'd perhaps be useful to put things into a little perspective, such as the fact that every year evidently around 600,000-odd people die from ye ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden variety 'flu' (as in influenza)...
So perhaps for once the Chinese authorities are not so very far off when expressing the utmost concern at the concurrent wave of (anti-Chinese) xenophobia increasingly - if fairly predictably - raising its ugly head in the fallout from the same, supposedly especially in the West...
....whilst at least for once acknowledging the Chinese Government's (c/o its local authorities) responsibilities thereabouts, vowing to bring the offenders to justice, and pledging better measures to prevent the same *'going forwards'...
*Much as I ever and always heartily detest the selfsame cliche, and I'm not for even a moment suggesting said powers that be employed such an abhorrent 'modernism'...
Postscript:
As with a blogpost I posted awhile ago now - vis-a-vis 'Raoul(sp?) Island' off the Bay of Plenty, to wit the tragedy afflicting visitors (mainly tourists) there when the volcano spent its long-gestated fury in no uncertain terms -
I can well appreciate the very tenor of my comments - in particular my long-winded, highfalutin' title - could well have struck some as somewhat insensitive, even heartless in view of the victims of said tragedies...
...and to that I'd have to concede: fair enough - as far as the immediate 'shock, horror' value of said comments and emphases is concerned...
However, vis-a-vis the ongoing Coronavirus, I feel compelled (as indeed I did even as early as over the wee hours following posting the same) to add the following...
...yes, if I can only - somehow-or-other - locate the same...
Postscript #1:
Indeed no less a leading light (luminary) than Steve Maharey, a senior cabinet minister in the Helen Clark Administration of 1999-2008 (here in New Zealand), upon yesterday afternoon's Newstalk ZB 'Gardening Show' with Jamie M(a)cKay, said pretty much the selfsame thing, using if anything even stronger language thereabouts...
...emphasizing the imperative - particularly in view of the (aforementioned) comparative global stats vis-a-vis ye 'good 'ole' garden variety (in)flu(enza) with its rather chilling number of fatalities annually - of keeping things in due perspective, making amongst many other similarly 'punchy' observations, one where he said that...
"There needs to be that caution...[lest we] overreach ourselves...[about how relatively dire this latest epidemic-pandemic truly is]...
...in view of what many of us, myself and clearly himself also, regard as an increasing media beat-up now fast approaching, yea surpassing - leaving in the veritable dust even - a veritable mass hysteria thereabouts...
...it'd perhaps be useful to put things into a little perspective, such as the fact that every year evidently around 600,000-odd people die from ye ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden variety 'flu' (as in influenza)...
So perhaps for once the Chinese authorities are not so very far off when expressing the utmost concern at the concurrent wave of (anti-Chinese) xenophobia increasingly - if fairly predictably - raising its ugly head in the fallout from the same, supposedly especially in the West...
....whilst at least for once acknowledging the Chinese Government's (c/o its local authorities) responsibilities thereabouts, vowing to bring the offenders to justice, and pledging better measures to prevent the same *'going forwards'...
*Much as I ever and always heartily detest the selfsame cliche, and I'm not for even a moment suggesting said powers that be employed such an abhorrent 'modernism'...
Postscript:
As with a blogpost I posted awhile ago now - vis-a-vis 'Raoul(sp?) Island' off the Bay of Plenty, to wit the tragedy afflicting visitors (mainly tourists) there when the volcano spent its long-gestated fury in no uncertain terms -
I can well appreciate the very tenor of my comments - in particular my long-winded, highfalutin' title - could well have struck some as somewhat insensitive, even heartless in view of the victims of said tragedies...
...and to that I'd have to concede: fair enough - as far as the immediate 'shock, horror' value of said comments and emphases is concerned...
However, vis-a-vis the ongoing Coronavirus, I feel compelled (as indeed I did even as early as over the wee hours following posting the same) to add the following...
...yes, if I can only - somehow-or-other - locate the same...
Postscript #1:
Indeed no less a leading light (luminary) than Steve Maharey, a senior cabinet minister in the Helen Clark Administration of 1999-2008 (here in New Zealand), upon yesterday afternoon's Newstalk ZB 'Gardening Show' with Jamie M(a)cKay, said pretty much the selfsame thing, using if anything even stronger language thereabouts...
...emphasizing the imperative - particularly in view of the (aforementioned) comparative global stats vis-a-vis ye 'good 'ole' garden variety (in)flu(enza) with its rather chilling number of fatalities annually - of keeping things in due perspective, making amongst many other similarly 'punchy' observations, one where he said that...
"There needs to be that caution...[lest we] overreach ourselves...[about how relatively dire this latest epidemic-pandemic truly is]...
...in view of what many of us, myself and clearly himself also, regard as an increasing media beat-up now fast approaching, yea surpassing - leaving in the veritable dust even - a veritable mass hysteria thereabouts...
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