by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The issue of the moment is, how would we even know the pandemic had struck us in a big way if we’ve only tested 500 people out of a population of 335 million? The answer is, enough of that 20% of the infected who can’t do anything would grow to be a large enough percentage of the population that the bolts would begin to pop off of American society.
A lot — A LOT — of people wouldn’t show up to work. All at the same time. What’s happening Iran right now is exactly what I fear would happen to the United States. Public officials are now seen on TV obviously ill. The United States is big enough that a COVID19 infection in the general population could grow so deep and wide that it would have something of a horror movie feel to it when we all realized at the same time THAT EVERYONE WAS INFECTED. If this was a movie, then next scene would be of Peter Thiel drinking a cocktail on a boat off the coast of New Zealand as the rest of the world collapsed.
meanwhile, the global order is imploding #covid19 #pandemic #wuflu #coronavirus https://t.co/DnSGBgbchN
— Shelt Garner (@sheltgarner) February 26, 2020
And, yet, the issue is that wouldn’t be the end of some movie. That would be the beginning of a real-life crisis. It’s not like history ended when the Mongols reached Baghdad or we dropped the bomb on Japan. Life kept going. There was a new normal, but it kept going. And I believe that leaders would pop up in the days and weeks after this horrific realization occured.
But it’s not like it would be smooth sailing. There’s a decent chance that might be a few limited nuclear exchanges along the way — one between the US and the DPRK. And, remember, living through history sucks. There’s no narrative. If the lights went out because New York City was vaporized by a DPRK H-Bomb, then we wouldn’t know for along time what had happened — maybe through HAM radio we would know something in bits and pieces, but the EMP would fry all of our electronics and for the time being it really would seem like the end of the fucking world.
I do think, however, that we might be in for some surreal TV footage in the near future if everyone gets sick and yet we don’t do anything about it because we don’t know that anyone is sick to begin with. It’s similar to watching someone turn into a zombie on live TV in a movie or something. Only, it wouldn’t be them turning into a zombie, it would be them obviously being really, really sick. I really hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s a least possible given how poorly we’re prepared.
And, yet, life really would keep going. That’s why panic is not a viable option. When chaos strikes, you have to keep your head about you and do triage. Good luck.
