The crux of what I don’t know about WuFlu right now is why it is that the reported death rate in the city is now 2.1%, while everyone else it’s .5. What’s more, not only is the number of fatalities going down in Wuhan, but for the most part it seems that while WuFlu is all over the place now, generally there are no deaths.
My fear spectrum at the moment.
Or, put another way, there’s an eerie disconnect between the End Times behavior of the CCP in Wuhan and the all-is-well environment in most of the rest of the world. I feel as though we’ve finally reached a tipping point where we have to ask the question: what the fuck is going on?
Is there something that we don’t know about what is happening Wuhan? Something big? Like, something so big that the Chinese government will burn the place to the ground to prevent it coming out? Is it all just one event and now that it’s over no one outside of the city is REALLY in all that much danger?
What we’re facing.
The thing that makes me nervous is the exact opposite scenario. The other scenario is the other shoe is going to drop on humanity’s head and Wuhan’s present is our future. You simply could not do what I’ve seen the CCP do in Wuhan in any Western community. There would be armed revolt the moment you even tried.
So, I dunno, guys. I can’t even form an educated opinion at this point.
1. What, exactly, is going on in Wuhan? 2. How many people are really dying in Wuhan? 3. What is the exact reason why the reported death rate in Wuhan is about 2.1% but only .5% outside of the city? 4. Why does it seem as though Corona Virus is being spread all over the world by tourists and yet no additional hotzones have popped up anywhere else in the world? 5. How many people have WuFlu in the DPRK? How are they handling it? How would they handle a hotzone vis-a-vis their tense relationship with the ROK? 6. How much does the US Federal government know that it’s not telling us in hopes of avoiding a panic? 7. What data points do we not know that would explain the difference in the CCP’s reaction to WuFlu in Wuhan and the rather blase events related to the virus in the rest of the world? 8. Is it possible there is a “shadow” pandemic happening for various reasons? The current scientific data doesn’t support an uptick in deaths of any sort outside of China.
Though the novel I’m currently developing is supposed to be dark and serious, when it comes to actually developing it, generally, if something makes me laugh, I throw it into the mix.
And right now, I find the idea of a my female romantic lead being inspired by a specific famous person who is easy to do research on HILARIOUS. It’s just a hoot. And it gets funnier to more research I do because given the conditions of the scenario I have setup on an existential level in the novel, it it actually IS within the realm of the possible that my Hero could snag a woman otherwise so incredibly out of his league.
It’s very, very funny.
I mean, usually, constructing a character is hard work. You have to think up all these things about them to make them seem “real.” But since this character is inspired by a famous person who is quite open with their life, then it’s a lot easier to crib off of what is publicly known. And, as I’ve said before, this character is something of a treat to me for all the other hard work I have ahead of me.
And I like the idea of seeing if I can pull this off. I like the idea of SHOWING how life as an expat in Seoul leads to some surreal personal connections that otherwise would never, ever happen. The whole thing definitely lightens the mood whenever I look into how I can base the character in reality as much as possible and to see if I can make it believable that this otherwise bonkers thing (at least to outsiders) might actually happen.
Anyway. I’m sure I’ll see that person from Washington DC (is the FBI monitoring me?) or that other person from Sweden (ex boyfriend?) or that other person from Great Britain (member of her “team?”) snooping around my website in the paranoid fear that I’m some sort of crazy person when, in fact, I’m just a harmless writer looking for a bit of entertainment for myself.
As of this moment, things are going fairly well with the novel I’m developing. That could change rather abruptly for any number of reasons, but I’m trying to enjoy this moment while it exists.
I have a lot of really interesting characters that I smash up against each other in interesting ways. I’ve made a number of clever editorial decisions if I do say so myself. I’ve created a number of characters who are an amalgam of a number of people I’ve crossed paths with over the years. I’m looking forward to writing the story for no reason than to simply see these characters come alive on the page.
I have one character who is inspired by one specific famous individual and it will be a lot of fun to see how realistic I can make the character in the context of how surreal the situation I’ve come up with would be in real life. But I’d like to think readers will grade me on a curve. That character is something of a treat I’m giving myself for all the hard work I have to go through over the next months.
I hope to start writing the official first draft no later than, say, April. I’m going to try to keep this first draft close to my chest as possible. The second draft I’m going to show to some Beta Readers. That probably will be August 2020 at the earliest before that happens, though.
Wish me luck. This is a really tough job that I love.
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.
I have no idea what’s going on with WuFlu right now. In some respects, it seems as though we may have dodged a bullet. Or, to put it another way, there aren’t any new additional hotzones as of yet anywhere outside of Wuhan itself.
And, yet, there definitely is a general sense that any moment that might change. A lot of cases are popping up all over world now, but there’s no existential explosion in cases from any one place. It’s a real headscratcher.
It’s possible that while there might be additional cases of people getting sick, we’re pretty much over any growth in deaths. I just don’t know. That’s the outcome I hope for. I just can’t bear to think what the alternative might be. It’s possible that at any moment we’re in for a major escalation in cases all over the globe at the same time –a pandemic.
The only thing that is really bothering me at this point is how at-risk the American elderly population is. The WuFlu mortality rate among the elderly is pretty brutal — it’s in the 75%-90% range. But I just can’t imagine it could get THAT bad. That would be astonishing on a historical level.
More likely, it’s going to be simply the perception of a pandemic — and the associated slowdown in the global economy that we have to worry about. A million Chinese could die and as long as one American doesn’t die, Americans will be too busy enjoying the “humming economy” to care why suddenly it wasn’t has humming anymore. Nothing matters in the Fourth Reich, don’t you know.
I keep saying the next few days will tell us what’s going to happen and then…nothing happens. I do have a novel to develop, so I really need to just focus on that for the time being.
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