9 hours ago, domkle said:

That an Avsim thread morphs into a yeshiva debate about dietary laws is new 😂. Sign of the times ? Anyway, Rambam vs Abarbanel about it : 

https://www.mhcny.org/parasha/1026.pdf

In this as in other matters, I side with the Rambam... leaning a bit toward Prof. Kasher's commentary... and as always, stand ready for more disputation... 😎

8 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Yes I wouldn't consider this a 'religious' context

I have the highest respect for Avsim's policies and will defer to the moderators... but somehow I suspect that this kind of religious argument isn't the kind they're worried about.

If they are - let's just remind them that Maimonides was a physician, and clearly what we're doing here is discussing his health recommendations.

That should work... 😎

  

1 hour ago, Alan_A said:

I have the highest respect for Avsim's policies and will defer to the moderators... but somehow I suspect that this kind of religious argument isn't the kind they're worried about.

If they are - let's just remind them that Maimonides was a physician, and clearly what we're doing here is discussing his health recommendations.

That should work... 😎

Oh, I didn't catch that my post could be read as religious ! I Nothing of that sort indeed 😉. Only that  the reason why certain foods are prohibited by the Torah  was already  hotly debated among Jewish lunimaries of the Middle age and that one of the two most important Jewish theologians ever, who was also a physician  had, nine centuries ago, quite an interesting quasi-modern explanation. 

 

how did Iran get so many cases ?  serious question. someone enlighten me

28 minutes ago, fluffyflops said:

how did Iran get so many cases ?  serious question. someone enlighten me

The Chinese Infestation Team visited!

I think I will be OK. I installed Norton Anti Virus some time ago

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

how did Iran get so many cases ?  serious question. someone enlighten me

A lot of travel between Iran and China.  The ties go way back, but in the present day there's trade, tourism, cultural exchange.

Long Wikipedia entry here - the recent past and modern stuff starts about halfway down.

3 hours ago, domkle said:

Oh, I didn't catch that my post could be read as religious !

Only technically, I think...

9 hours ago, Alan_A said:

Only technically, I think...

What makes posting sometimes tricky is that cultural reactions can be so different from one country to another. My post was in no way religious of course just quoting a well respected (this is an understatement) Jewish philosopher on the very subject raised by Matthew, the interpretation of religious dietary laws (kosher). Europeans are generally cool on these matters (a little less these days though), North Americans are more sensitive.

Humour is the same. It doesn’t travel so well over the internet. 

So one has to strike a balance between total blandness and what could be interpreted as provocative. 

 

New Zealand's largest tourists by far has been China for years now but for some reason the tourists didn't have an effect on us, which is lucky. Most likely people from Wuhan Province isolated themselves early on and we were quick to cancel flights from China as this became an issue, Chinese Tourists was the first part of our tourism sector to disappear. It has now all pretty much disappeared and the few that are here will find themselves stranded if they can't get out soon, which is probably a good thing for them, I think I would rather be stranded in New Zealand then fly back to California or Germany or the UK etc, we are now at only 20 cases and no deaths and heavy restrictions on our borders, being an island nation has its advantages.

59 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

As much resources as we have should be put into getting a vaccine, sending people $1000/$2000 isn't going to help at all, that money would be put to far better use at research centers to get the vaccine tested and deployed.

It's a fine goal, but as I posted in the other thread, spending more money isn't going to accelerate vaccine development.

Spending on hospital equipment and protective gear is more important in the immediate - i.e. day-to-day and week-over-week - term.

17 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Need to keep things in perspective ...

I should have clarified, if you were not from New Zealand and you had the choice to fly home or stay in New Zealand I would choose to stay in New Zealand, reason for that is travel puts you at greater risk, staying put is the best thing to do. Of those 28 cases or whatever its at now you won't run into them hiking through the woods are staying at a campsite, you are in the tranquility of New Zealand far far away from anything else.

My friend from Denmark is doing exactly this, her Visa is good until October and having the option of flying home through Sydney then Singapore (or Dubai) then Frankfurt then Copenhagen or just staying in New Zealand, she is staying, even though she may get stranded for a period of time, returning home is more stressful and puts you at a much greater risk. 

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 9:37 PM, Rob_Ainscough said:

...sending people $1000/$2000 isn't going to help at all...

This is utterly pointless. While average rents in many cities is hovering around $1200/month for a single bedroom apartment, at most even $2000 per adult isn't going to accomplish very much at all except to run the national debt even further down the drain.

On 3/16/2020 at 5:34 AM, Alan_A said:

Could have been that, or it could have been the everyday risks of undercooked pork - trichinosis and such.

Either way, the ancients often knew what to do, even if they didn't know why.

 

 Alan, Are  you  aware of a Rhinolophidae?? 

5 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

 Alan, Are  you  aware of a Rhinolophidae?? 

Yep.  Famous for the first SARS outbreak and of course they're the likely reservoir for the novel coronavirus, too.  Which of course brings us back to China and the wet markets.

Of course, at some future point we're going to have to deal with some pathogen or other that bubbles up in a hot zone and crosses over without anybody's doing anything deliberate to cause it - you know, someone gets accidentally bitten, or it's mosquito-borne, or something like that.

Which means that however much we're holding China to account, which we need to do, we also need to look at the pathetic response to containing covid once it broke loose - which is a whole separate issue.

Lots of blame to go around.

Good article here - long but pretty readable - about how the virus works.  The first part is about horseshoe bats, and animal reservoirs in general.  Worth a look.