by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m pretty good at strategic thinking. That’s my thing. So, let’s wargame the consequences of a major pandemic in the next, say, 28 days. The first thing we have to understand is such a pandemic would be the biggest historical event not since 9/11, but since August, 1945 — the end of World War II. As such, initially, the entire global order would likely lock up and collapse in the beginning stages of the process for lack of institutional memory as to handle such a situation, if nothing else.
My real concern at the moment is the “beginning” of the pandemic won’t be marked by what’s currently happening in Wuhan, but whenever there are reports of multiple “warm zones” across the United States all at once. Initially, CNN’s gut reaction will be to market it as a 9/11 Redux, when, in fact, it’s more like WWII redux — a world war against WuFlu (WWW) if you will. (You might call it WWX, but, then, people would confuse it with World War 10.)
Once we actually descended into the process of pandemic, the first event would be mass chaos the likes of which we’ve never seen in modern American history. Yes, 9/11 caused a lot of chaos, but that was one fucking day! Imagine two weeks of such chaos as we all figured out the “new normal” of the essentials of life being – for the time being — of dubious supply. Add to this that Trump is nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner and, well, Flughazi! If the entire country turns its eyes to Trump and he goes full Col. Kurtz on us and just tweets all day in his bunker behind Mt. Rushmore as three regional wars erupt, go nuclear and even involve the US (Hi, Little Rocket Man!) then, well, there might (?) finally be some political consequences for House Trump? Maybe? MAYBE?
The great tragedy of it FLUGHAZI would be that it would be sometime in 2021 or 2022 before we recovered enough to get around to impeaching and convicting Trump for FLUGHAZI and by that point, lulz! I do, however, doubt the United States (or Russia or China) will make it through a serious pandemic. Just like during the 1914-1945 period, empires will rise and fall if history woke up and ran around in traffic for a few months.
Anyway, the point is — you could not write a worst case scenario if we go full pandemic in the next 28 days. Heroes will be made. Cowards will be shamed. We all remember them all. It is at least within the realm of possibility that not only will we lop of the existing old codger power structure of much of the world, but some pretty astonishing historical figures will pop out of nowhere for no other reason than are giving the opportunity to prove their true personal valor (or lack thereof.)
I hope none of that happens, I really do. But there’s at least a chance that 2021 pop songs are going to be pretty serious songs about love and love lost for tragic reasons. Maybe rock will come back. That would be cool. Sigh.
But we’ve still not reached the tipping point. There’s no narrative to any of this. I have no idea what’s going on. I can’t even formulate an educated opinion at this point.
