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Astrology, Neptune In Pisces, And Coronavirus, Part Three: Last Chance To Panic!

(CLICK HERE for the Introduction of this series)

I’ve gone back and taking another look at the list a major outbreaks of disease that I presented in Part Two of this series. I had a suspicion that Saturn-Pluto aspects might have more of an effect than Neptune in Pisces. Of the nine pandemics I listed, I found the following:

• Cocoltzli epidemic, 1576: Saturn in Sagittarius square Pluto in Pisces
• Antonine plague, 165-180 AD: Saturn in Aquarius square Pluto in Taurus (but for 169-170 AD only)
• The third plague pandemic, 1855 to 1875: Saturn in Scorpio opposite Pluto in Taurus (but for 1866 only)
• HIV- AIDS, first reported in 1981-present: Saturn conjunct Pluto in Libra 1981-1983, and again in 2019-2020.

That’s a little more statistically significant then Neptune in Pisces for these things, but it’s still far from a predictive home run. A bit unnerving though, maybe…

So why am I still not in a pandemic panic about the Wuhan coronavirus?

First: how infectious a disease is can be reduced to a number, r0 (R-zero, or R-nought if you prefer). We haven’t yet pinned down the r0 number is for this virus, but it is somewhere between 1.4 and 5.47, with most estimates hovering between 2 and 3.

Here are some are r0 values for you to ponder:

Mumps, 4 to 7
Rubella, polio, and smallpox, 5 to 7
Diphtheria, 6 to 7
Measles, 12 to 18

So as potential pandemics go, this one may not be quite the Zombie Apocalypse everyone is fearing.

Second, the fact that everyone is so afraid of it, and the fact that China is still dealing with the embarrassment of having let SARS and Avian Flu go as long as they did without admitting there was a problem, is causing an unprecedented reaction. The response to the Wuhan coronavirus is much more robust than it was to either of those diseases.

Finally, I’d like to say that much of the panic about this virus is the idea that it could happen to you or me personally. When Neptune is in Pisces, it is in that Sign for everyone on Earth. But: you are probably sitting there reading these words right now in a place that is relatively free from communicable disease.

Meanwhile, elsewhere? About 120,000 people died from cholera in 2018. Measles killed more than 140,000 people worldwide in 2018. 405,000 people died of malaria worldwide in 2018.

Do you know what those diseases have in common? They break out in places where people can’t afford the sanitation or infection control  — or the vaccines proven to prevent them.

Do, please, ponder that when you’re sitting in the clean comfort of your home, enjoying your indoor plumbing, and swapping memes with your Facebook friends about how vaccines are a dangerous scam from Big Pharma.