by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While I’m not predicting that people will stop dying of COVID should there be a major war between Russia and Ukraine, I am suggesting that our perception of COVID19 will change dramatically.
But one big caveat — I don’t think there’s going to be a war between the Russians and Ukrainians. Or, at least, not a big one. All of this is just another very expensive power play on Putin’s part to get a summit with Biden. He’s getting that summit on Tuesday and so, lulz, everything should calm down after that.
And, yet, let’s imagine that didn’t happen.
Let’s imagine that a huge war breaks out between Russia and Ukraine. We need to appreciate that it’s possible that COVID19 would go from being seeing a unique pandemic to a regular part of life — or endemic. A lot of this would depend on how big the war was, how long it lasted and what it’s endgame turned out to be.
But there is a finite amount of media attention. If the eyes of the world are on a big chunk of Ukraine being eaten by Russia, it’s inevitable that the sexxy COVID19 pandemic would be seen as simply endemic and something we have to put up with from here on out.
The only way this would change in the future would be if a REALLY BAD new variant of COVID popped out and we were talking about millions, not thousands dying from it at any particular moment.
I guess the whole point of this is — a major regional war in Europe would jiggle everything in a big way. Everything from the January 6th insurrection investigation to all of the other Trump crimes we’re looking into to the COVID19 pandemic would be pushed off the front page in favor of a huge war.
But none of that has happened yet. We’ll have to wait and see if it does.
