I’m struggling to understand the potential chronology of WuFlu’s spread. The first case reportedly was recorded around Dec. 1st. That was when someone had their first symptoms.
It appears as though the Feb. 11 anniversary of the Iranian Revolution was the source of the current outbreak there. One thing that does make me concerned is the Nevada Caucus is this weekend. But I have no idea what’s going on. Lulz! (?)
Given what I know right now, it seems as though when the history of the WuFlu pandemic is written — if we’re still around as a nation (or a race) for it to be written — this weekend will be seen as significant because it’s when we reached another tipping point. America is collectively not only oblivious to its impending doom, we don’t even have enough of a collective response in place to know we’re doomed even if we wanted to be pro-active.
Only three States have WuFlu testing kits. So, it’s possible that people are getting sick and dying of WuFlu (or soon will be) and that metric would read a false negative because it wouldn’t register in the medical system. I have seen a study that there’s no discernable uptick in deaths in general in the States, so maybe people are being misguised with “the Flu” but not dying — yet.
But here are some things to keep in mind.
Economic Hollywood and the newspaper industry are now dead men walking. If no one goes to the movies for six months and all entertainment production halts for the same amount of time, well, lulz? It’s likely that next year — or whenever we reached the post-pandemic era — what used to be the greater Hollywood industry will be nothing more than a barren post-apocalyptic hellscape, with”immersive media” not-so-slowly replacing it. The traditional print newspaper industry will die because no one will leave their home for the same amount of time. I have a hunch drones are going to become ubiquitous far, far sooner than any of us could have ever imagined if there really is a pandemic. It’s also possible that the American — and global — economy could tank in a way even worse than the Great Recession if places like China, South Korea and Japan have to be written off for three to six months. We might have a brief, but extremely deep depression in late 2020, early 2021.
Political This one is kind of touchy. A whole slew of elderly people are very powerful in the States and the death rate for WuFlu among the elderly is pretty brutal. So, lulz? If you wiped out a big chunk of the American political establishment over the course off amount six months, then, yikes. And if it happened in the right — or wrong — sequence of events, then MAGA would say it was a “deep state conspiracy” and start killing anyone they didn’t like. Like me! Or, put another way, if things get as bad as I fear, there may not been much of a 2020 Campaign for us to fight over. Or the end result could be significantly more surreal than anything we could possibly imagine. There are also no assurances that the “good guys” will “win.” Or, if they do “win” the cost of that victory could be so huge, so tragic, that we aren’t exactly happy it at the price we had to pay to get it.
Media The issue for me is, if we actually did find ourselves in the grips of a real live pandemic, inditally it would be marketed as something like 9/11 Redux. That is, of course, until is lingered for weeks and months. Then it wouldn’t be “fun” or “exciting” anymore. It would just be a grim state of existence for millions of people. I fear that Trump would suspend the Constitution at some point and simply arrest anyone — like me! — who wouldn’t simply nod and smile at his tyranny.
National Security If there really is a pandemic, we could see at least three major regional wars occur at the same time. Israel – Iran, DPRK – ROK and India – Pakistan. And it’s at least within the realm of possibility that the DPRK might lob a few H-Bomb tipped ICBMs towards North America which, of course, will greatly increase the number of deaths associated with the the general pandemic event. Also, given how divided the United States is, I don’t really believe we’d make it. I think we’d descend into mass political violence chaos and, if we’re lucky, split into two different nations. One center-Left, one center-Right. If we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, we get American Killing Fields! Lulz!?
In general, I still can’t make an education opinion as to our fate. Maybe this is going to blow over. Or maybe it won’t. Lulz?
It seems to me that Twitter Liberals are embarrassing themselves right now. WuFlu is whipping around the global at an alarming rate and they’re so obsessed with giving us hottakes on the 2020 Campaign that they’re completely oblivious to what’s going on.
What really bothers me is MAGA seems very excited at the prospect of a pandemic. I don’t know what the hell is going on with them at that level. Anyway, if things get as bad as I fear, we’re going to have to start seeing each other as patriots, citizens and humans, not Blue and Red. If we don’t do that sooner rather than later, well, we’re fucked. A lot of people might do for no reason if we don’t get our act together.
The key thing is, we’re not ready on a number of different levels. And one of those levels is the media. If the States finally got sucked into the pandemic blackhole, then CNN would initially try to market it as a 9/11 type event, when, in fact, it won’t be an event at all, but rather a process. It would be more like a war than a battle, in other words. The American press hasn’t had to cover a war in real terms like the one we might face since WWII and so there’s no institutional memory as to what to do. There’s likely to be something of a learning curve for a lot of people.
But that’s the worst case. I think we’ll be fine. The key issue is, how bad do things have to get for us to stop seeing the process through the prism of surreal partisan politics? Probably far worst than we might realize. I’ve always said the only way we’ll get rid of Trump is something “extra political” and gross mismanagement of a pandemic seems to fit the bill. In other words, if Trump completely loses his mind because of a pandemic then, if we survive as a nation and a species, then, well, maybe four Republican senators might vote for witnesses? Oh, sorry, wrong clusterfuck.
For me, the big issue is this chart.
Yikes!
If we have a “Gray Plague” and 3.6% – 15% of the population over 60 croaks rather abruptly, well, that’s a lot of pretty powerful people who run the world right now. That would be the stuff of some pretty astonishing historical change in a very short amount of time. This weekend is crucial. If things clam down by Sunday, then we can go back to cursing the bred and worrying about the Fourth Reich.
First, let me make it clear that I’m not an expert. So, if you use that metric, you should just ignore everything about to say. But, luz! But here you go, anyway.
Should our fears be realized and the worst happens –a pandemic that might one be one day referred to as The Gray Plague — it is not going to be fun. It is also not going to be an event, but rather a process. This means while there might be “battles” now again that would be considered events, in reality, it would be a war-like event that will take place over days, weeks and months until we get a vaccine.
The issue the essentials of life are a social event. So, if the worst happens on a global scale entire industries aren’t going to make it. Hollywood and the newspaper industry will be completely destroyed if no one leaves their house for six months. What’s more things that are seen as “cutting edge” right now, like drone delivery and MX technology, could be pretty much a way of life in a year IF the ABSOLUTE WORST happens.
But, the crux of the issue is life is going to suck for millions if this happens. It will not be fun. It will not be a video game. It will involve fear, death and tragedy on a scale not seen since 1914-1945. Or, if you really wanted to take it to the next level — we’re talking Black Plague – Mongol Invasion bad if the death rate for the elderly of 5%-15% holds up. The Browning of America that would otherwise take decades to occur might happen in months.
I just don’t see the States surviving that, if it happened.
We’d end up with two nations a center-Left United States of Canada and a center-Right Trumplandia. Or something. It would suck. All it would take would be a number of MAGA thought leaders dropping dead in quick succession because of WuFlu and, well, that particular conspiracy writes itself. Or, put another way, you could probably add massive political violence from the Right to the general clusterfuck that multiple hotzones across the States would cause.
It would all happen in a rolling fashion over the course of the months it took to get a vaccine pushed out from the lab. I don’t have much faith that way, way too many people — maybe even me! — may die before it’s over with. And, remember, it could all endup a lot darker than you might ever imagine — The Handmaid’s Tale Scenario, if you will.
I love me some Koreans and I’m growing very concerned that South Korea, the place I called home for a total of five years, is going to implode because of WuFlu. I thought it might be Japan that we were going to have to worry about, but it makes a lot more sense that it would be the ROK.
Korean culture, even more so than Japanese culture, is communal, which, is of course, how WuFlu is spread (being near someone.) Add to this that South Korea is a small, developed nation that’s not only “free” but has an excellent transportation system and well, the CONDITIONS are there for us to be fucked, fucked, fucked on a global scale. In other words, South Korea is not only a big enough economy that if it went the way of Wuhan that the entire global economy would lock up, but given its “complicated” relationship to its brothers in the north, well, look out.
The conditions could be there for not only a significant knee capping of the global economy if the ROK implodes, but also a major regional war in Northeast Asia. It would all happen very, very fast, too. The entire nation of South Korea couldn’t faceplant for too long without Little Rocket Man — who might be facing a similar situation — weighing the change in conditions and going for broke.
Or not. Who knows. North Korea is a blackbox, so anything could happen.
But the key thing is, the conditions are there for 2020 to be the most historic year since the fall of the Russian Empire. The years 1917-1923 were astonishing in their significance and things grow even more concerning when you look at this:
1815-1914 1914-2020
We’re overdue for history to wake up, play in traffic then go back to sleep for 100 years.
After a few days of personal freak out, I’ve grown rather blase about what’s going on in Asia right now. This happening in large part because, well, while it’s all very tragic, the average American simply doesn’t care and won’t care until it becomes something other than an abstract in our collective clueless national conciousness.
There’s a 14% death rate for WuFlu for people 80 years of age.
And, really, it might stay that way. I have come to stay that 1 million Chinese could die in Wuhan and as long as Vox tell us it’s the *flu* we should really be worried about, then, well, lulz. So, as of right now, we might see a little bit of a slowdown in the global economy because of WuFlu, but not enough to stop the Russians from throwing the 2020 election to Trump AGAIN. Trump’s never leaving office, anyway, unless the doofus Crown Prince Don Jr. is assured as his successor at some point. I still think Trump’s going to demand a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment” then turn around and pass American Enabling Acts, but that’s just me.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the absolute worst happens and my fears of a “Gray Plague” become a reality. The chief thing we have to understand is how old most of the most powerful people in the United States government are. And, what’s worst, our political system is about as taunt as you can get — if there was a Gray Plague and a lot of old people dropped dead suddenly, if the sequence of events wasn’t right, the Right would start to blow shit up because they would be ABSOLUTELY SURE the Deep State was out to get people on their side.
Of course, if, say, three major figures on the center-Left dropped, the MAGA fuckheads would gloat, mumble it was all “God’s will” as they worked to squeeze every once of political advantage out of it. If any MAGA person abruptly became president in the middle of a pandemic, they would use the opportunity not to help their fellow man, but burn the nation to the ground and establish a Fourth Reich. The fuckers. But if, say, a center-Left person was put in the same position, a civil war would start immediately because MAGA would assume “muh guns” and kill anyone who was different than what they feel America looks like. I’m not joking, I’m not exaggerating. This would happen.
It makes you wonder how many people would have to die for us to finally look past scoring short term political points to the point that we actually begin to put the needs of the nation first. A million? Five million? 10 Million? 20 Million? How enormous, really, would the human tragedy of the Gray Plague have to be for Sean Hannity to finally shut the fuck up about Hillary Clinton’s email server?
Of real concern is what would happen if the 30 year movement towards a majority-minority America happened not in decades but in months? What if, say, 30-50 million Americans (mostly elderly) died between the first report of a hotzone outside of Wuhan and when the vaccine was widely available? What makes that question difficult to process is it would be more like a war than anything else that we’ve ever experienced as a nation.
If an entire generation of the American political class got wiped out over the course of little under a year, there would be massive implications going forward. Probably what would happen is the country wouldn’t make it. The Second American Civil War that we may face in 20 years, might happen in a matter of months. But, I don’t know. Who knows. Anything could happen.
I can’t predict the future and don’t have reveled truth. Just stay aware of what’s going on.
47 million Americans are 65+. 35%-90% death rate for WuFlu once you hit 65 years of age.
If even 2.1% of that 47 million died it would be, at least to Americans, the greatest event since WWII. If 10%-20% of that 47 million died, then, well, that’s a different matter altogether.
There would be no narrative if a pandemic struck. It would be written later by historians. We would have no idea if we were going to make it as species or not.
If things got bad enough, a number of nuclear-tipped regional wars would likely happen in quick succession. Isreal-Iran, DPRK-ROK/USA and India Pakistan could all happen very quickly and right about the same time.
There would be a massive refugee problem, the likes of which we’ve never seen since the end of WWII.
If China imploded as a result of WuFlu, that would fundamentally change the nature of the global economy.
The movie industry probably wouldn’t make it past a pandemic because people wouldn’t want to go to see the movies and AR/VR/MX would replace the entire industry in months, not years or decades.
Russia, China and the US might have revolutions and or civil wars if the death rate was bad enough. If the browning of America happened in three months not three decades because of a pandemic, the same forces that are tearing the country apart politically would simply tear it apart in a much more traditionally violent manner. You might see Blue States align with Canada and Red States try to reform the Confederate States of America.
You could make the argument that as many as 50 million Americans could die if a pandemic struck because of not just the Gray Plague, but any limited nuclear exchanges between the US and the DPRK, food shortages, revolution, civil war and general batshit bonkers behavior on the part of a panicked public.
The issue of continuation of government might be a real problem for a few months as powerful people through the US government got sick and or died. The ability to hold free-and-fair elections — or elections at all — in November might be put into serious doubt. It would be unprecedented.
A real pandemic would suck. We don’t want it. It’s not a movie. It would be real people, real lives and real tears of a grief. It would likely take us decades to come to grips with how many people died.
Let me make some things clear — first, I doubt we have anything to worry about at this point. We’ve reached the apex of all the issues with WuFlu and as such I can go back to developing my novel now. Also, I really, really, really don’t want the scenario I am about to suggest to happen in any way. But I have a moment of spare time, so here goes.
The key thing is what hasn’t happened yet. There are no new hotzones. There are no deaths in the West from WuFlu. And it definitely seems as though we’ve dodged a bullet on a macro level outside of a slight slowing of the global economy.
I have two metrics to determine if we in the West should begin to worry — the death rate among elderly celebrities and in South Florida. If that began to explode, then something is up. I say that only because the WuFlu death rate among the elderly — from what I can see online, at least — is rather staggering. There are 47 million Americans over the age of 65. If really was a “Gray Plague” they would be the majority of its deaths, hence the name.
Here’s the point where we have some real talk. If the absolute worst happened and over, say, about a year, 50 million Americans — mostly elderly — died from The Gray Plague, what would that mean? Well, first, the United States wouldn’t make it through it. The browning of America, which is on track to wrap up in about 30 years, would happen in less than a year. This would prompt such instability and bent up rage among MAGA that there would probably be massive civil unrest resulting in civil war and the implosion of the country altogether.
What would replace it, I don’t know. It might be something like Canada & a reborn CSA or something. It would not be pretty, whatever it was. But again, that’s rather fantastical at this point. More likely, all the good news we’re hearing from Wuhan is on the up-and-up and we can just move on. I hope I’m right, I really do.
Now that we’re in the Fourth Reich after the acquittal of Trump, what happens to pop culture? I thought at first maybe a sizable chunk of the audience might want some sort of emotional catharsis. But I now think it may be a bit more complex than that.
What’s more likely to happen is we’ll enter a sort of second 70s in that a lot of people are just going to want to dance while other people want to see serious, gritty movies and TV show that address what just happened. I think. I don’t know.
Given what the novel I’m writing is about, I definitely have a vested interest in people wanting Trumplandia catharsis. But we’ll see. I’m writing a novel instead of screenplay because I live in the middle of nowhere, it affords me more nuanced creative universe building ability and just don’t want to write a screenplay right now.
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