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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2764 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I assume you're including tests in the first portion? It doesn't look like they have all that many nuclear weapons.

Monkeypox is currently mostly an STD, especially between men, right? I imagine, then, you could look at the spread of past STDs. Not sure how you'd try to account for evolution of the disease.

States mattering seems ordinarily to be due either to economic power, or to willingness and ability to use or threaten violence in a way that would have an impact on the global economy (e.g. North Korea, Houthis). Are there other major factors? Israel seems like it might be cared about more than by that simplistic analysis. No idea how best to model all that. Clearly culture is big for willingness to use violence.

Yes, the overwhelmingly most likely case is as a test.

Monkeypox is currently mostly an STD, especially between men, right?

Nope, this was the previous strain. This one seems to be spread by close contact as well, e.g., in families, corpses, etc.

Exporting technological and social innovation is another factor I care about. E.g., the Germans experimented with tanks in the Spanish civil war, and this affected the next war; similarly, I'm thinking about how much to care about Ukranian advances, or about conflicts in Africa developing strategies that are then exported to other conflicts.

The DRC had 2,662 cases over the past week, 25 of them fatal. Of cases this year, 58% occurred in children younger than 15,

From: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/mpox/mpox-escalates-africa-officials-launch-response-plan

This one seems to be spread by close contact as well, e.g., in families, corpses, etc.

So is it like Ebola now where ”don’t insist on completely braindead burial customs” is enough to prevent an epidemic?

Ehhh...

It's in some spectrum between Ebola and smallpox. Largest than the largest Ebola outbreak, much smaller than smallpox.

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