I’m struggling to understand the potential chronology of WuFlu’s spread. The first case reportedly was recorded around Dec. 1st. That was when someone had their first symptoms.
It appears as though the Feb. 11 anniversary of the Iranian Revolution was the source of the current outbreak there. One thing that does make me concerned is the Nevada Caucus is this weekend. But I have no idea what’s going on. Lulz! (?)
I continue to believe that the next 48 hours –between now on Thursday evening and, say, until just after the Sunday chat shows are over — will determine a lot about our fate. If we’ve essentially stabilized and nothing troubling happens by that point NYC time, then, well, we can all go back to contemplating life under the Fourth Reich.
But if my fears are realized, then, well, yikes! So, let’s go through a risk assessment given what is known right this moment.
South Korea My fears of exponential growth weren’t exactly assuaged just now when I learned there are 45 new cases reported just in the last 24 hours (3 in Seoul.) If that number jumps to 100+ tomorrow, then, well, watch out. AND, remember, there are 500,000 soldiers under arms in South Korea and if you can’t prevent them from getting sick en mass, then we may be looking at a shooting war between the ROK and the DPRK because 1) the DPRK may be imploading, too, 2) a sick army can’t fight effectively 3) the leader of the free world is a deranged, moronic lunatic. I have a theory that a problem in Korea is either solved in a very strange way or via a fistfight and a war caused by a pandemic would check off both those boxes in a macro historical sense.
Qom Not really getting any sense that this is a new hotzone. Yeah, I’ve heard that as many as 9 people have died there from WuFlu, but that’s it. No sense it’s a hotzone. May be a one-off of some sort.
Wuhan This seems — at least from the data I’m aware of — to be under control and slowly burning itself out. And, really, there still haven’t been that many deaths outside of Wuhan, so lulz? I guess Vox will tell me so eventually.
Blue Check Liberals These guys are embarrassing themselves right now on Twitter. They’re so busy preening over their campaign 2020 hot takes that they are missing what could be the biggest new story of the year, if not the decade. They’re really living in a 9/10 mentality when a rolling, months-long 9/11 may be just about to strike in the next few days. But I guess it’s a lulz to them right now because what if it’s just another 1970s swine flu type of situation? They don’t want to look like fools, I guess. And, really, it’s very possible *I* am going to look like a fool getting so animated about all of this when it fizzles out. But I’m used to looking foolish and, generally, no one listens to me anyway. And I have a novel to work on. But we still don’t know yet. We just don’t know what’s going to happen.
Conclusion This is still a moving target and no sense of what all the disparate datapoints mean. There’s no concrete sense of what we’re seeing. We haven’t reached the “inciting incident” when we’re like, “Yeah, this is a pandemic.” This weekend — the next 48 hours — will give us a real indication one way or another if we’re going to avoid any type of immediate threat.
First, let me make it clear that I’m not an expert. So, if you use that metric, you should just ignore everything about to say. But, luz! But here you go, anyway.
Should our fears be realized and the worst happens –a pandemic that might one be one day referred to as The Gray Plague — it is not going to be fun. It is also not going to be an event, but rather a process. This means while there might be “battles” now again that would be considered events, in reality, it would be a war-like event that will take place over days, weeks and months until we get a vaccine.
The issue the essentials of life are a social event. So, if the worst happens on a global scale entire industries aren’t going to make it. Hollywood and the newspaper industry will be completely destroyed if no one leaves their house for six months. What’s more things that are seen as “cutting edge” right now, like drone delivery and MX technology, could be pretty much a way of life in a year IF the ABSOLUTE WORST happens.
But, the crux of the issue is life is going to suck for millions if this happens. It will not be fun. It will not be a video game. It will involve fear, death and tragedy on a scale not seen since 1914-1945. Or, if you really wanted to take it to the next level — we’re talking Black Plague – Mongol Invasion bad if the death rate for the elderly of 5%-15% holds up. The Browning of America that would otherwise take decades to occur might happen in months.
I just don’t see the States surviving that, if it happened.
We’d end up with two nations a center-Left United States of Canada and a center-Right Trumplandia. Or something. It would suck. All it would take would be a number of MAGA thought leaders dropping dead in quick succession because of WuFlu and, well, that particular conspiracy writes itself. Or, put another way, you could probably add massive political violence from the Right to the general clusterfuck that multiple hotzones across the States would cause.
It would all happen in a rolling fashion over the course of the months it took to get a vaccine pushed out from the lab. I don’t have much faith that way, way too many people — maybe even me! — may die before it’s over with. And, remember, it could all endup a lot darker than you might ever imagine — The Handmaid’s Tale Scenario, if you will.
Oh boy. The next 24 to 48 hours will be crucial in determining our collective fate. If what I fear what will happen, happens, and the nation I love second only to the USA — South Korea — effectively implodes from an exponential growth in WuFlu cases, well, fasten your seat belts.
We’re out of the blue and into the black.
What I mean by this it will be South Korea that marks the “inciting incident” in the real life horror movie we may be about to lurch into. If by Monday the entire economy of South Korea has ground to a halt because of either cases or the fear of getting WuFlu, I have a feeling that someone in the United States might finally notice that there’s something going on other than the circle jerk of the 2020 Election Campaign.
Source: Twitter
By this coming Monday, the global economy could be exactly where it would be if there was a war between the DPRK and ROK. In fact, we don’t even know what’s going on in the black box of the DPRK. We could very well have an actual fighting war between the Koreas far, far sooner than we ever imagined. Or, put another way, you can’t have exponential WuFlu case growth in the ROK without some serious consequences.
And, yet, let’s step back. I’m making some assumptions. It’s possible that I’m getting way ahead of myself. Things may — as everyone in Trump Administration wants me to believe — fizzle out and we can all go back to praising the Orange Calf of Trump. I keep screwing up — and just being flat wrong — so I’m not prepared to say my end times scenario is in anyway actually going to happen.
But, like I said, the next 48 hours may be crucial. I only say that because of what’s going on in South Korea. They seem to have a perfect storm on their hands and things are moving so fast that the government may simply not be able to control the situation now.
One important thing to note — there are still very few deaths associated with Wuflu outside out Wuhan itself. I keep hearing reports of what sound like a new hotzone in Qom, Iran…but….I dunno yet. Those numbers may be the result of bad translation or bad reporting, or both.
To make our general fears concrete, let’s go through and assess where things stand in real terms given the available datapoints.
While in general datapoints remain scattershot, there are three situations that we need to evaluate right now.
Wuhan To date, this is the only WuFlu hotzone on the planet. There have been just around 2,000 deaths in China, I think, at this point. The only issue is the numbers the CCP is giving out are widely considered to be a lie. And, given how Wuhan is now a dystopian nightmare, it does definitely give one pause for thought. What, exactly, is going on there?
South Korea From a global order standpoint, the apparent “warm zone” happening in South Korea is probably the most significant. Given how South Korea is almost an ideal situation for exponential growth in cases, it is within the realm of possibility that the entire nation will implode within a fortnight. So many people will be sick that no one will go to work and, as such, there would be an abrupt slowdown in the global economy as a cascading series of failures in the global supply change occured. But it’s early yet. It could be what I fear happens, won’t happen. If what I fear will happen DOES HAPPEN, then, well, buckle up because we don’t know what’s going on in the DPRK and things may get messy.
Qom This is an odd one. The city is apparently featured in some sort of apocalyptic Muslim text. That the two people who died have no direct connection to Wuhan at all is…unsettling. Only because no one is reading this blog do I wince and say, “What if this a 12 Monkeys type situation? How would we know?” I think the answer would be if another “random” but strategic place suddenly became a hotzone. We already have China, and maybe a strategic religious and oil site with two fatalities. If I was an evil genius, I would strike another pressure point in the middle of nowhere — maybe a mining town somewhere in Indonesia? Something to get the point across? (This is just me crazy talking.)
Assessment For the time being, I would say while there may be a lot of fear floating about, it could be all the have to worry about is the global economy slowing down a little bit. There’s no reason to believe things are going to get worse. And, if they do, it could be just a lot of people get sick, but don’t die. And as long as no Americans get sick, those all-important Twitter liberals will lulz it.
I had something of a scare a moment ago. I heard a report that we had a total of seven WuFlu cases in Qom, Iran. But it seems like it’s only 2 deaths and 5 cases, which is a different issue altogether.
So, I think if it’s just 2 dead in Qom, it’s not the super-scary thing I thought it was: a new hotzone outside of Wuhan. But here’s a video I did before I knew this new information. I may add a follow up soon, as well. Just remember that this is a slow-moving (in the age of Twitter) process, not event.
This one is better, but also crazier because I run a rather hysterical scenario about what’s going on. That part of it is meant for “entertainment purposes only.”
Here’s some crazy ranting I am doing for a different post. I just love scenarios, and this one would be the “12 Monkeys” Scenario.
Qom This is an odd one. The city is apparently featured in some sort of apocalyptic Muslim text. That the two people who died have no direct connection to Wuhan at all is…unsettling. Only because no one is reading this blog do I wince and say, “What if this a 12 Monkeys type situation? How would we know?” I think the answer would be if another “random” but strategic place suddenly became a hotzone. We already have China, and maybe a strategic religious and oil site with two fatalities. If I was an evil genius, I would strike another pressure point in the middle of nowhere — maybe a mining town somewhere in Indonesia? Something to get the point across?
I love me some Koreans and I’m growing very concerned that South Korea, the place I called home for a total of five years, is going to implode because of WuFlu. I thought it might be Japan that we were going to have to worry about, but it makes a lot more sense that it would be the ROK.
Korean culture, even more so than Japanese culture, is communal, which, is of course, how WuFlu is spread (being near someone.) Add to this that South Korea is a small, developed nation that’s not only “free” but has an excellent transportation system and well, the CONDITIONS are there for us to be fucked, fucked, fucked on a global scale. In other words, South Korea is not only a big enough economy that if it went the way of Wuhan that the entire global economy would lock up, but given its “complicated” relationship to its brothers in the north, well, look out.
The conditions could be there for not only a significant knee capping of the global economy if the ROK implodes, but also a major regional war in Northeast Asia. It would all happen very, very fast, too. The entire nation of South Korea couldn’t faceplant for too long without Little Rocket Man — who might be facing a similar situation — weighing the change in conditions and going for broke.
Or not. Who knows. North Korea is a blackbox, so anything could happen.
But the key thing is, the conditions are there for 2020 to be the most historic year since the fall of the Russian Empire. The years 1917-1923 were astonishing in their significance and things grow even more concerning when you look at this:
1815-1914 1914-2020
We’re overdue for history to wake up, play in traffic then go back to sleep for 100 years.
Only once in the post-WWII era has living through history lived up to its hype — the fall of Communism. That was kind of “fun-interesting.” Few people got hurt and it was a made-for-TV moment of hope that happened out of nowhere.
And now we have a potential pandemic in the guise of the WuFlu outbreak in Wuhan. I’m seeing a lot of “giddy” people wallowing in fear porn about the prospect of, well, the end of the world and these people are, to say the least, rather misguided. There’s a reason why the phrase, “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. Living through history sucks. When history wakes up like during, say, a war, it sucks on an human, practical level. The narrative of the history books can be extremely disturbing as it’s happening in real time.
Hence, if whatever is stopping people dying from WuFlu changed rather abruptly, it would suck. It would not be fun. It would be an process, not an event that would cause a huge amount of global instability for months with aftershocks that would last years and decades. It would be referred by future generations the same way WWII has been referred to for the last three generations: the moment when everything changed.
We’re just not prepared on a practical level for something that’s not a day-long event like 9/11 was, but a process that is measured in days, weeks, and months. Empires of various sorts — political, technological and otherwise — would rise and fall by the time it was all over with.
My guess is if the worst happened — which I neither believe will happen, nor want – things like Hollywood and the newspaper industry would collapse and we’d have a few years of us all struggling to figure out what just happened and how we were going to adjust to the new normal where VR, AR, MX and everything Elon Musk has been working on suddenly were the core part of life.
Anyway, as I keep saying, something dramatic has to happen. It’s out of our hands, too. WuFlu is all over the world at this point. For some reason, only people in Wuhan itself have a real risk of actually dying. If you’re outside of that city, then, you may get sick from WuFlu, but your chances of actually dying from it are actually pretty low.
What — to date — has made WuFlu different in Wuhan remains a mystery to me. But to go back to the point — while I would be concerned and informed about WuFlu, it’s looking like it’s going to fizzle out by April as predicted.
If it doesn’t it’s going to suck. The basics of life may be put in danger for months and existing governments of major nations like China, Russia and, yes, even the United States may fall to be replaced by new, unexpected styles of government altogether. I wouldn’t sleep on the idea that the United States is going have a revolution – civil war — division in months, not decades, if there was a pandemic. America’s political system is extremely taunt and we’re already in the Fourth Reich. A pandemic might push us into something far darker.
The point is, please refrain from indulging in fear porn on Twitter. This is real. This is real life — and death.
A good chance exists that WuFlu is going to be seen as something of a dud by verified Twitter liberals. A million Chinese people could get sick or die and Vox would somehow poo-poo the concern of people like me in 2020 over WuFlu by pointing out no one cared during the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution, either.
But how should we common folk look at what’s going on? What should people without a blue check on their Twitter account measure things? I have three metric that I use to get a sense of things.
Perception Response Fatalities
Let’s look at Japan and how it’s our firebreak going forward.
I feel it is now beyond our control to prevent a pandemic. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not. The main question is, of course, what about Wuhan makes it so special that that’s where the vast majorities deaths have occurred? Was the Wuhan outbreak an “event” and what’s going on around the world simply a side effect of that event, or, what? I’m not one to ascribe to conspiracy theories, but I do think a tipping point has come whereby we need to start asking that question — the fate of humanity may rest on it.
But back to Japan.
Japan is important because it’s a Western-style liberal democracy that couldn’t go China’s End Times route when it comes to WuFlu without us at least knowing why. And, Japan has a lot — a lot — of old people. Wuflu has a pretty brutal fatality rate for the elderly, enough that I say it has the potential to be The Gray Plague.
Not good.
So, if, for some reason, whatever is happening in Wuhan began to happen in Japan, we would at least know why. We would at least have some sense of what is really going on. The reason why that is so important is either Wuhan is a unique outbreak and is completely separate from what is going on around it, or it’s present is our future. That’s rather chilling because, well, I find it unlikely you could lock people in their homes like the CCP is doing in Wuhan in, say, Alabama, without some pretty serious consequences. And if they started doing that in Japan, then their social contract is strong enough that they would be screaming at the top of their lungs to explain why they felt forced to do it. It wouldn’t be some sort of surreal, mysterious over-reaction like it is in Wuhan.
Let’s look at Japan using my metrics.
Perception Right now, our perception is the Japanese have everything under control. While, yes, their numbers are growing concerning, to the outside world it’s still a lulz. Vox is still more concerned about telling writers like me to NEVER “fridge” a female character for ANY REASON.
Response The Japanese seem to be doing a decent job of responding to where things stand with WuFlu in their nation. The few, brief, times I’ve been in Japan, they seemed to be extremly professional and polite in everything they did and so they’re just the type of people you want on your front lines as the fate of Mankind begins to be potentially put at risk.
Fatalities There are few, if any, fatalities in Japan right now. If a lot of people get sick, but don’t die, then we’re ok. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world and if they get sick and don’t die, then we, again, will know Wuhan is “special” for some reason and things just aren’t going to get as bad as we may have initially feared.
Something dramatic is going to have to happen for me to get all that worried about WuFlu. There’s a good chance that WuFlu — until a vaccine comes out sometime next year — will be seen in the global consciousness as something like lyme disease — a bad illness, but not the end of the world.
I would definitely keep an eye on Japan, though. We’ll know one way or another soon enough. WuFlu is all over the globe right now, but people just aren’t getting sick that much and even fewer are dying. If that should happen to change sometime soon, that’s a different matter altogether.
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.
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