Corona Virus – Page 3 – The Trumplandia Report

#COVID19 Threat Assessment For March 9th: Back In Black

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There must be a psychologically term for when you reach the crisis moment you’ve feared and then think to yourself, “Gee, this isn’t as bad as I expected.” I felt that a lot today. Psychologically, I’m about two weeks ahead of everyone, and I’m feeling rather calm. It was interesting, however, noticing how many cable news anchors were wearing black today. They were taking the pandemic seriously, if no one else.

The Economy
I have said for some time now, that our metric should be saving lives at this point, not the stock market. I would, in fact, write it off for the time being. Do whatever is necessary to save as many lives as possible, even if it spooks the markets. But, in a sense, we’re now so far beyond the ability to warn the market in advance about this that, well, we’re all very fucked. We should have let the steam out of the market slowly over the last, say six weeks, not wait until the entire economy implodes over a 48 hour period as the severity of this situation grows apparent and extreme “social distancing” is mandated by state after state.

Continuation of Government
This is, for the moment, a low level threat. Trump is so oblivious as to his own personal risk that he’s freaking out about some Deep State operative journalist intentionally getting infected to hurt him that he doesn’t realize that he should stop shaking people’s hands altogether. But there he was, shaking people’s hands. We know from Iran that it’s possible for the power structure of a nation to become immobilize by COVID19 and given how poorly we are managing this situation, there’s on reason to believe the same thing won’t happen to us. All of Congress — especially the older members — may be, well, “indisposed” pretty soon. We’re not prepared for what happens when COVID19 lops off the entire Federal government’s political command and control infrastructure.

A Political Gray Plague
Don’t sleep on how history is often made by some rather prosaic events. That a bunch of bonkers CPAC attendees were not on Capitol Hill at this point could be huge. They could endup being some of the only law makers not knock out of commission as the crisis advances. They will, of course, use this to consolidate power and, like, found a real-life Gilead. If you think this is great possibility, then, well, fuck you, you piece of shit. If you think the best case scenario of a pandemic is a dystopian state the, fuck off and eat shit. Or, they could simply be overwhelmed by the crisis and be responsible for the military stepping in to keep the nation safe. There are a lot of known unknowns on this front. I just don’t know how bad things may get. If we go the Iranian route, they will get very bad, indeed. It gives me no pleasure to contemplate how dark things may get on that front.

“Crisis”
Remember, history is still asleep right now. The Queen is well. The President is well. The Pope is fine. Biden is fine. Sanders is fine. All is well. No one has dropped from the WuFlop in America, or at least recorded having done so. There is no indication that the Kirkland rest home situation has been replicated elsewhere. If we manage to get through the next two weeks without some jaw-dropping history being made, then, great. I’ll be quite content. I do have a novel to develop. The next two weeks are crucial, however.

“Death Cult”
I just don’t know on this one. For MAGA thought leaders to distance themselves from The Dear Leader, things would have to get so horrific that it just wouldn’t be worth it. For them to finally, like, tell the truth and stop worrying about Hillary Clinton’s email server, things would have to be so demonstrably dire that it just wouldn’t be worth it. That’s the thing that Twitter liberals keep missing. They’re so exciting about a pandemic giving them a potential policy advantage they they totally miss the astonishing human toll we would all have to go through to get it. It will be a tragedy and we will only give it value later, out of desperation and grief.

Trump Hasn’t Bit Bonkers…Yet
Trump isn’t taking this seriously, yet. While his plutocrat friends are nervous, the base is obviously not concerned. When THEY are concerned, then, well, YIKES. When the base makes it clear that they are unhappy with his performance — if that ever happens — then Trump could snap mentally in a rather dramatic fashion. Historic fashion. Like, oh my God, what is happening fashion.

Anyway, no one listens to me. I have a novel to develop.

#COVID19 #Pandemic D-Day: March 9th

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is now the conventional wisdom of Twitter that today’s the day. Today will be the “event” that pushes us into the rolling crisis of the COVID19 pandemic. It’s the day that will be up there with Dec. 7th and Sept. 11.

The reason is, we finally have a metric that the average person who is otherwise preoccupied with raising their kids and paying their mortgage can understand: the economy .

Or, more specifically — the stock market.

And that’s why Trump is so obsessed with the stock market, it’s a metric HE can understand.

And, really, what people on Twitter are probably thinking is if the stockmarket crashes in a big way today, that will be the event that causes Trump to switch gears and go from ignoring the crisis to exploiting it in order to consolidate power.

The thing I missed in all my thinking about this eventuality is that very thing — I didn’t think about Trump’s natural inclination to scare the shit out of people to political advantage. So, in the end, it may be Trump himself who causes the most damage.

He’s going to be the one who scares people about Asian people by calling COVID19 “Wuhan virus.” It will be he who whips his followers into a frenzy such that they start murdering liberals — and maybe even staging coups at the state level.

But also, some of that talk is the basic acceptance that Trump is probably going to flip out today or sometime soon. He’s going to go transactional with his insanity out of fear of losing the 2020 election.

I am very alarmed at the prospect of Trump / MAGA switching gears today and blaming Asians (and liberals) for all of this. That people like Hugh Hewitt are already laying the groundwork for that is pretty astonishing. MAGA really is a death cult. They really are prepared to get us all killed in the service of the Dear Leader.

It’s rather shocking, once you realize how obvious it is. Yikes!

‘危機’ — #Pandemic Era America #COVID19

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While MAGA “thought leaders” like Hugh Hewitt are begging us to remember that COVID19 came from Wuhan, China, that’s not the reason why I put the Chinese in the title.

As I understand it, ‘危機’ are the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.” In other words, while the next, say, two weeks are going to suck, there is also some opportunity for those willing to take a risk and show some courage and leadership.

The first thing to do, of course, is to admit that there is, in fact a crisis. Once you do that, you can readjust your thinking accordingly. We’re probably going to have something of a “re-calibration” of society and the economy over the next two weeks.

But the fundamentals of the global economy are strong enough that once the re-calibration wraps up, things will bounce back. Though, I will note, American psychology is pretty unusual. It is so extremely alien to us for there to be a mass, rolling crisis like this, which is comparable to, say, an invasion, that some pretty long-standing habits and traditions may simply melt away.

Add to this how polarized America is and how House Trump is prepare to lie, cheat and steal to maintain power and that “danger” character may get something of a work out. In other words, this could be the thing that doesn’t give us Universal Health Care, but Gilead.

It could really be that bad.

The point is — this is going to be a massive tragedy. So massive that we will only give it value long after the fact out of desperation. Hopefully, maybe, we might come together after it begins. But more likely than not, there will be political violence on the part of MAGA fucktards who think it’s all some sort of weird Deep State conspiracy.

Or people like Hugh Hewitt will endup stirring up forces they might — just might live to regret. If fucking MAGA decides to start murdering Asian people out of a fear of “Wuhan flu,” then, well, we will know whose hands that blood will be on. They will whine that they aren’t responsible for other people’s actions, but history will record the truth.

But once we make it through this crisis, we may have something of a return to the 50s as everyone decides they want to settle down and have kids after getting the shit scared out of them for 18 months.

A Political Worst Case Scenario #COVID19

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is the worst political situation in American history since just before the Civil War when James Buchanan let the South seize Federal forts without a shot as they seceded.

Here’s what’s going on:

Trump effectively is a lawless Emperor on a political level after he escaped justice because of callow Senate Republicans

The election is a bare nine months away.

The opposition is divided, weak and without effective leadership.

Trump is at a high risk of losing his fucking marbles in a rather dramatic fashion and the 25th Amendment is effectively a dead letter.

Meanwhile, there’s a good chance the next two weeks will lay bare the cold reality that Trump is criminally incompetent to such an extent that his vainglorious reponse to COVID19 has put the national security of the United States in dire peril.

Both The Gray Plague and the Wuflop may occur domestically in the United States over the next two weeks, maybe far longer. There’s a very good possibility that we might see days of 10,000 dead on a regular basis if COVID19 strikes hard into the 15,600 rest homes with 1.4 million residents.

Trump’s only metric is re-election. That’s it. Anything he cares about beyond that (the Dow) is simply in service of that goal.

As such, there’s simply no end game. I can’t given begin to sketch out what is going to happen. My best guess is given how big a self-own artist Trump is, he’s going to go nuts in an astonishing fashion. A historically jaw dropping manner. It will happen in a manner that is so depraved, so obscene that every American, be they Red or Blue, will hang their head in shame at the mention of Donald J. Trump.

Or not.

Trump could lulz the whole thing and use it as an opportunity simply consolidate power quicker than House Trump might otherwise.

Add to all of this the very real possibility that bad actors might use the fact that a fucking huge number of people in the United States are sick or dying and, well, lulz! Probably something called WW3 will happen, possibly involving the entire world trying to contain a healthy China who decides to make a major land grab against Russia.

What’s more, there’s ALSO a good chance of unprecedented political violence in the United States as well. My home state Virginia would be a prime candidate for a “beerhall putsch” of sorts by crazed Confederate gun nuts.

Lulz?

Real Talk: How Would We Process ‘The Gray Plague?’ #COVID19

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarnert
In the past, a lot of major disasters involving horrific loss of life have involved, well, at least in the eyes of MAGA, “scary brown people.” Be it the 100,000 who died in Southeast Asia from the tsunami a few years ago or the thousands who died in Puerto Rico last year from a hurricane, MAGA has lulz such tragedy from being racist fucktards.

But now we face a different situation. As I keep ranting, 1.4 million elderly Americans live in 15,600 assisted living facilities across the nation. As we see in Kirkland County, Washington, once a rest home gets COVID19, it pretty much culls a sizable portion of the community. It’s logical that if it can happen once, it can happen again — or a thousand more times.

So, let’s pace out the absolute worst case scenario and within say, the next two weeks, what happened in Kirkland County is replicated across the nation with horrific speed. How would we process it?

Well, the reason why it would be difficult to lulz this on the part of MAGA is who would be dying — old white people within the borders of the United States itself. It wouldn’t take too many days of 1,000, or 5,000, or 10,000 reported deaths for there to be a national freak out of historic proportions. The natural inclination of the mass media would be to at first to freak out, but as it became obvious it was just going to have to run its course, they would probably attempt to quietly hide it from the public so as not to spawn a panic.

And, in a sense, that would be the most transparent scenario. What would probably happen is at some point early in this catastrophe, the Trump administration would figure out way to hide it from the public. We wouldn’t learn about it for, like, 50 years until AOC’s junta overthrew House Trump’s regime and the truth, at last, came out.

It’s not like I want this to happen, you know. But I’m of the believe that if you can articulate your fears, make them concrete, they aren’t as scary. They’re manageable.

Anyway. Good luck.

‘To Schlapp’ #COVID19 #Pandemic #CoronaVirus

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As any student of history will tell you — the writer’s have a wicked sense of humor. In fact, I would say whomever is writing human history definitely likes irony. Before I go any further, let me stress that while I hate MAGA’s idology with a white hot fucking rage, I have nothing personal against any of them. I don’t want any physical harm to come to any of them, though I would squeal with glee if Trump spent the rest of his life in prison.

So, imagine how my eyebrows rose when I heard that the Dear Leader’s favorite cock holster Matt Schlapp not only hung out with some dude who went to CPAC with COVID19, he shook POTUS’ hand at some point later. I would go so far that if we could somehow prove that any potential COVID19 infection of POTUS came from that contact that we might have a new verb in the English language: “to schlapp.”

When you schlapp, you harm the thing you love the most.

I really don’t want any physical harm to come to Trump, or Schlapp, for that matter. Trump is doing his best to destroy himself all on his own without me hoping for any physical harm against him. Live long and prosper, Trump…in prison.

But, as I have said repeatedly, nothing as of right now gives me any indication that after all is said and done, Trump will still in be in power being a tyrant. And even if he somehow does leave office, his replacement will be someone equal (Pence) or worse (Rep. Steve King.)

Though, if really wanted to get surreal and dark, you might say if we start to have any continuation of government issues — which I definitely don’t want — that we may endup with a President Ivanka.

Ugh.

Realpolitik: Would A Healthy China Strike A Sick World?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

COVID19 cases in China continue to drop, just as cases outside the Middle Kingdom continue to rise dramatically. This leads to a scenario where what we all know is inevitable — China replaces the United States as the center of the global order — happens now, not 30 or 50 years from now.

It could happen a lot quicker than any of us might want to think, like, in two weeks. If the United States buckles sometime just past The Ides of March, you might see China make it clear who owns some pretty valuable islands in South China Sea. That would be just the beginning. They might attack Taiwan while they can. They might also gobble up North Korea if that nation collapses for some reason.

If they got away with that, then they might go for broke and make a huge land grab in Russia’s Far East. If Russia is just as incapacitated as everyone else by this point, then Siberia itself might be in play. Russia without Siberia is a major European power who might have a sudden reason to be far more nice to everyone around it. Maybe any election interference in the Untied States they do has a far different objective?

Or, really, you might even see any major land grab on the part of the Chinese as the thing that totally changes everything — suddenly Russia, the United States, India and Europe all join forces to control China. A pandemic might be just the thing to give China reason to believe they could strike Russia in a big way without fear of being vaporized.

Who knows. It’s interesting to think about.

#COVID Gray Plague ‘Cognitive Dissidence’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m always wrong. Always. I come up with these scenarios — usually the worst case — and I’m wrong. This happens all the time. But when it comes to my rather dire warnings about The Gray Plague striking the nation’s 1.4 million seniors in the 15,600 rest homes across the country, I struggle understand what I’m missing.

All the conditions are there for a horrific event in our nation’s history, and, yet no one is listening to me and I get the sense that no one else thinks this is a big enough risk to do what should be done — locking down all such facilities until further notice.

This must be one of those things where Maggie Haberman can just talk to Dr. Trump and he’ll tell her some reveled truth. I’m just a hayseed rube in a remote portion of a fly over state, what do I know? But here are the datapoints that are alarming me right now.

15,600 nursing homes in the United States
1.4 million patients.

The elderly 65+ are most at risk of succumbing to COVID19.

People in close proximity to each other (like a cruise ship or…a rest home) can be all infected quite quickly. (A mental institution in South Korea saw something like 90% infection rate).

We’re totally luzling this in the United States.

About 47 million Americans are 65+.

A rest home isn’t like a prison. You actually want to go there. People from all over the country visit them to see older relatives. It makes sense that, as such, we could see rather abrupt spike in infections across the country as the contagion uses each of the rest homes as an “signal amplifier.” The contagion will be far, far stronger than it might be otherwise because people will unknowingly visit these facilities during the incubation period, get infected and spread it even farther into the general population.

And, yet, I must be missing something. I’m always wrong. Something about the Kirkland County facility must be unique, the conditions different than everywhere else the nation.

That’s all I got right now.

Of #Pandemic Terminology

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, real talk. I am well aware that in the early days of AIDS, it was often referred to as “The Gay Plague.” I have thought a lot about my use of the phrase, “The Gray Plague” in that historical context and I feel comfortable using it going forward.

The reason is, while “The Gay Plague” was proscription, “The Gray Plague” is descriptive. AIDS is actually pretty hard to get and a lot of people who weren’t gay got it in the early years because of tainted blood transfusions. And calling AIDS “The Gay Plague” was often used to harm the gay community and make people even more homophobic than they already were in the 80s.

Meanwhile, it’s not like people are going to avoid old people because of The Gray Plague. Going forward, the vast majority of people who die from COVID19, are going to be, well, old. So, yes, I guess is sounds rather tabloid to call it The Gray Plague, it is also a reasonably accurate description of what’s going on. It really is a potential massive culling of older people along the lines of the Black Plague.

The other term is “Wuflop.” Now, there’s a medical term for this that I can’t find. But I’m growing leery of using WuFlop because, well, MAGA are a bunch of fucking racist who will likely hop on the term to do God-only-knows what to Asian people of all stripes. So, I will continue to use the term in a sort of gallows’ humor fashion until I find out what the actual scientific term for the event is.

Whatever its scientific term, the WuFlop is eerie as hell and Americans simply aren’t prepared to see it happen here.

I have completely stopped using WuFlu outside of some things I step early on in the pandemic on this Website.I started using it at first because I thought it was an amusing reference to Wu-tang Clan. MAGA shitheads are trying to brand it the Wuhan Flu so they can blame the Chinese government and continue to suck Trump’s political cock.

I look forward to spitting in the eye of the Fourth Reich ICE agent who arrests me for these posts before he puts a bullet in the back of my head. Good times!

My Current ‘Gray Plague’ Death Toll Prediction

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

At a minimum, within one (1) year, I believe about 1 million elderly people in the United States will have died preventable deaths. Or, put another way, at a minimum, whenever the COVID19 vaccine is approved and is being used that’s how many elderly people would otherwise be alive if, say, Trump was an actual traditional president.

Here’s where I get that figure.

If 1.4 million high-risk elderly people are in 15,600 homes across the country, then that’s probably (maybe) 600,000 people who may die rather abruptly and in a very alarming manner over the course of a few (early) months. That 1.4 million people are sitting ducks to die from COVID19 as things stand. As COVID19 bounces around the general population, a lot of people with COVID19 will visit their elderly relatives while unknowningly sick with COVID19.

But that’s just the beginning. There are 47 million Americans 65+. Roll that around in your head for a moment and it’s not too far fetched to assume at least an additional 400,000 elderly people will die who might not otherwise have died with an abundance of precaution.

Now, if you really wanted to get dark, you would say that rest homes are really just a means to an end. Each one of those 15,600 nursing homes will be strategic superspreaders. Before we even realize what’s going on, not only will a horrific number of at-risk elderly people die, but the general contagion will be signficiantly amplfied across the country from people who have gone in and out of one of those facilities before we even know what’s going on.

But, before a Twitter Liberal tweets this to prove how I’m a “dangerous charlatan” spreading bad information as a part of “fear porn” — please don’t listen to anything I have to say. I just like running scenarios and writing. Hence, this post.

I’m probably wrong. I’m always wrong. But the above is my general sense, as of right now, as to how potentially bad things might get. It could be less severe, it could be worst. Who knows. I can’t predict the future.

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