by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now what.
Things are still about two weeks from getting astonishingly bad if we go the route of Italy. It’s possible that things won’t get nearly as bad as we fear because we’re acting now.
But there’s also a chance things could get just as bad as I have long feared. If the death toll in NYC and LA goes exponential and we see daily deaths in the thousands, then the effort to lock down the country will grow ever more dire. I honestly don’t know which scenario to expect. My only concern is we’re just too big a country to do an Italy-style complete lockdown until it’s way too late.
I have long suggested that we simply ignore any short-term economic issues and just do whatever is necessary to save as many lives as possible. In the short term things are going to suck, but when we finally get over this, things will come roaring back. 2021 could be pretty great, other than Roe and ObamaCare being overturned by SCOTUS, but still pretty great. A lot of babies will be born. A lot of art will be made and produced.
But we have to get to that point first. Between then and now, things are going to be very, very bumpy. Very surreal at times. And there are not assurances that the bad guys won’t win completely. There’s a real chance that in the end, all the problems we have as a nation will be solved because House Trump crushes any dissent. They already want Congress to give them the right to detain people indefinitely because of this pandemic, they could very well simply use ICE to round up people the regime doesn’t like and put them into the existing ICE camp infracture.
That’s a very real possibility.
Or, one thing to remember is history, once awoken, rarely goes in a straight line. Even if the “good guys” “win” in the end, it could definitely look as if the bad guys are going to win and it’s going to scare the living shit out of everyone.
The next two weeks could be historically dramatic in the United States as the death toll rises in major urban areas and then bouncing into Red States because, well, lulz.
The real question, of course, is what will we look like once this is all over with? Is this a New Era, or is it simply a speed bump. I would say there are two issues to think about — duration and war. The long this clusterfuck lasts, the greater its significance. Meanwhile, if wars start to break out because of the general instability the pandemic has causes, then, well, yikes.
Two places I’m worried about are China and the DPRK. China could definitely strike in the South China Sea or against Taiwan. Meanwhile, the DPRK might either implode or explode. Implode, and there’s a mad rush to seize its army and territory. If explodes, then you have a major regional war in the middle of a pandemic.
Anyway, good luck everyone. We could have had a taco stand on every corner instead of a tragically mishandled pandemic.
