One of my conservative relatives — who I love dearly — continues to be enraged by the COVID restrictions of several years ago. They talk about how much they think they were “lied to” by the elites, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah.
Whenever this relative mentions grievance –which is often — I note to him that that is not how Republicans will win the 2024 election. Unless there is a significant uptick in COVID cases that leads to an attempt to bring by COVID restrictions, people in 2024 are going to want 2024 solutions, rather than someone who looks back at what happened in 2020.
Apparently, there is some belief within Righwing Twitter that those restrictions are coming back this fall. I find this fear delusional for a number of reasons, the chief of which is there just is no political will to do such a thing. Thousands of people could be dying a day from COVID this fall and winter and, lulz, there will be absolutely no political will to do anything about it.
It does make you wonder what will happen if some sort of pandemic happens in the future that is far, far worse than what we experienced with COVID. There is a real risk that if some sort of Big One happens that it could be that not until 10,000 people are dying a day will we manage to have any sort of political will to lock the country down.
I’m the red headed step child of my family on a political basis. My family is made up of bed rock Traditionalists, while I’m the paste-eating libtard weirdo. I would note, however, that it’s only since the rise of MAGA that the lines have hardened. I’m not really that liberal, but I’ve been forced to pick a side and I fucking refuse to ignore that MAGA is run by a fucking moron who is thisclose to being an autocrat.
Slings and arrows, and all that.
Something I find myself talking to the Red people in my life a lot these days is COVID. It is very interesting how different the two sides see this particular macro event in our nation’s history. I see it as a national health crisis, while my Red family members are just tired of it and want to move on.
One issue that is a bone of contention is when does the pandemic become endemic? When do we just take COVID for granted and see it as just another risk associated with being human? Even under the best of conditions, talking about this with my Red family members can seem like going in circles. They want to compare 1,000 people dying a day to other forms of death. And I keep saying, “But is cancer contagious? Is heart disease contagious ? Is an accident contagious ?”
I totally get why people are so tired of the pandemic. I get it. I really do. And we’re so divided as a nation at the moment that there will likely come a point when 48% of the population shrugs and decides COVID is endemic, regardless of what libtards say while 48% will still see COVID as a national health emergency.
I am not an expert. You probably should aggressively ignore anything I have to say.But I am pretty good at running scenarios, so let’s go through what would be a few “tipping points” on the issue of Omicron (or something similar) that would force us all to sit up and take notice.
We Learn Vaccines Aren’t Working Vaccines are our first line of defense. But I am hearing conflicting messages about Omicron. I’m hearing that it’s a lulz if you’ve been vaccinated. And I’m hearing it has significant breakthrough data. So, I don’t know. It seems we pretty safe for the time being on that front.
It Spreads A Lot Faster This definitely seems to be something going on with Omicron. If your community is unvaccinated, it moves a lot faster within your community.
The Mortality Rate Is Far, Far Higher In the end, I again use the metric I used with COVID19 when it first came out — how many people are dying or getting really sick? I thought it was going to be A LOT of people, when it turned out to be far less deadly than my initial belief. So, for me, at least, we would have to have the three strikes of blowing past vaccines, spreading a lot faster AND the death rate being a lot higher (even for the vaccinated) before I would grow too concerned.
For the time being, I’m taking a wait and see approach, as should you. Grab a towel. No need to panic.
Each time COVID bounces from one person to the next, there’s a chance it might mutate into something along the lines of the virus found in The Stand. It’s an admittedly microscopic chance, but it does exist. Throw into the equation people from all over the world in Tokyo at the moment and it’s easy to imagine a Stephen King-size clusterfuck.
So, it’s at least possible that at some point in the next few months (years?) we’re going to have to go through all of this again because an Omega Variant breezes past all our vaccines and starts killing people not in the thousands, but the millions.
But that’s all very speculative. It’s just if the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that when you’re dealing with a virus, all the narrative management in the world isn’t going to save us.
And, yet, it could be I’m over thinking all of this. I’m often wrong. I hope I am this time, too.
Editor’s Note: This has been edited some since its original publishing.
Each time COVID bounces from one person to the next, there’s a chance it might mutate into something along the lines of the virus found in The Stand. It’s an admittedly microscopic chance, but it does exist. Throw into the equation people from all over the world in Tokyo at the moment and it’s easy to imagine a Stephen King-size clusterfuck.
While it definitely looks like we’re out of the woods — least in most of the First World — when it comes to COVID19, it’s still out there bouncing around with opportunity after opportunity to mutate. It makes you wonder what the reaction would be if COVID19 mutated into something far, far nastier than it is now. Given that August is the shittiest month, I’m working on the assumption that if it happens, it will pop out around August, 2021.
A lot would depend on how this speculative “Omega Variant” popped up. If it was localized to one place at first, then nations are on edge enough right now that it would probably be fairly easily controlled. But my fear is if an Omega Variant appeared, it would appear all over the world at the same time and all we could do is simply attempt to do some triage to an End Of The World type situation.
If variant of COVID19 appeared that was far more deadly than anything out there now, at first, the whole thing — at least in the English-speaking Western World — would, again, be seen through the prism of politics. The Right would scoff, saying “Here we go again.” They would do everything in their power to obstruct the American government from doing anything to mitigate a looming disaster, just like they did the first time.
It would not be until the Right saw some potential political gain that they would switch gears and start to demand something be done. Then, of course, it would be too late. Instead of 600,000 dead, we may be looking at something closer to 10-30 million. If things started to get that bad, it’s very possible MAGA would start to angle for a way to seize power via a coup — or something. They’re already halfway there now, if the country was felled by a severe second wave of COVID19, they might attempt to step into the breach.
So, it’s at least possible that at some point in the next few months (years?) we’re going to have to go through all of this again because an Omega Variant breezes past all our vaccines and starts killing people not in the thousands, but the millions.
But I’m wrong all the time. I’m sure the monster won’t come back for one more round. We’re going to cruise into a new Roaring Twenties, at least until we have a civil war or turn into a MAGA autocracy. This is all very speculative. It’s just if the COVID pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that when you’re dealing with a virus, all the narrative management in the world isn’t going to save us.
Don’t sleep on the nation reaction to the State of Washington’s reaction to COVID19. As I have repeatedly said in rather grandiose, poetic manner, when it comes to COVID19, “Heroes will be made. Cowards will be shamed. All will be remembered.” There’s a reason why Trump was so weirdly personal recently against Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, calling him, of all things, “a snake.”
Trump knows Inslee is something he will never be: a leader.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee
I have also said repeatedly that much like 9/11, when Rudy became a national figure because, well, George W. Bush was busy hiding out in a bunker, so, too would there be a number of political heroes be made in the wake of Trump being nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner.
Another thing — we are one “WuFlop” away from an unprecedented public perception crisis. The average American simply won’t be able to comprehend it when they finally see happening on a American shores. It’s very eerie everytime I see it. And the person doesn’t have to actually “flop.” Just seeing someone abruptly faceplant for no reason is also rather unsettling.
America, for all our might, is not immune to basic math and physiology. And, so, when we do get the WuFlop, or The Gray Plague really gets bad, it will be men — and women — like Jay Inslee who will keep the country going while we figure out what to do with our doofus criminal who tweets all day and generally being a Russian operative.
If history is any guide, in about two weeks, there’s a good chance that the United States will have multiple hotzones growing exponentially and the death toll will skyrocket. I fear, because of the criminal incompetence of the Trump Administration, that an event that might have been “The Little One,” is going to turn into “THE BIG ONE.” In other words, it’s going to be a real life horror movie.
Within months, we may be talking about not thousands, or hundreds of thousands but MILLIONS of people sick, dying or dead. Of course, given how slow this crisis is moving right now and how, how large a geographic area we’re talking about and the size of the population involved it’s going to take a while for this to happen. Until it doesn’t.
The reason why I believe we need to “recalibrate” our high end of this disaster is we had two months to do something about this issue and we didn’t do anything. So, just wait until 20 nursing homes are reported to be hotzones. Or the prison system gets involved. Or the ICE Camps. Or, the homeless in California.
I don’t mean to scare you. This is not fear porn. Fear porn, in my opinion, is when you use end-times confirmation bias to draw conclusions that aren’t based in fact — you just want people to freak out. But what I’m suggesting is based on what’s going on in Italy and Iran RIGHT NOW.
Or, to put it yet another way, we’re going to need a lot more people like Jay Inslee and a lot less people like Donald Trump to make it through this crisis which, through sheer criminal mismanagement on Trump’s part may be seen in hindsight as the biggest domestic crisis in American history since the end of the Civil War.
I keep hearing chatter about how COVID19 isn’t “The Big One.” Well, all things being equal, it isn’t. And, yet, maybe it is. The Trump Administration is criminally mismanaging this situation to such an extent that, at least in the United States, it really might be The Big One.
Each nation has a different dynamic to it when it comes to fighting this pandemic. What is rather unsettling is we probably should have shut down all passenger flights some time ago if we were really serious about stopping COVID19 from being The Big One. In the popular imaginnation, because of things like The Stand, we assume that a lot of people would have to die for it to be The Big One.
What if it was just a lot of people got SICK. Like, a huge number. So much so that entire nations (ex: USA) became incapacitated. I think you could call THAT “The Big One.” Trump really is doing everything in his power to screw this up on a massive level. He’s doing a criminally bad job of not only mitigating this situation, but preparing the populace for the next step — triage.
There may come a point when we have to a national “family talk” about some pretty dark things. Like, what do we do when COVID19 rushes into the prison system? What do we do, if anything to save those people? What happens when the health system collapses and people with serious, non-COVID19 illnesses can’t get help? Who pays for all of this? What happens to people who are too sick not to go to work and they can’t go to work? Who feeds their children and keeps the lights on?
And that doesn’t even begin to address both The Gray Plague and the perception crisis that a lot of recorded instances of WuFlop would cause. Those two things in combination in the United States would likely be, in itself, The Big One in the American popular imagination. It would dwarf 9/11 in our culture for no other reason that if 11 million people died, many of them elderly, someone, somewhere might notice and hold Trump, at last, accountable. I DON’T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. But if it tragically did, I’d at least like our naked emperor to be held accountable on a political level for once.
We’re just not prepared to answer those questions right now. A lot and I mean A LOT of preventable suffering is probably going to happen pretty soon. Sometime between now and The Ides of March is my guess. You can’t lulz something this serious without there being some consequences. The United States is setting itself up for an enormous — preventable — disaster on a pretty historic scale. So much so that it may be “The Big One” to Americans to an extent it is not elsewhere in the world.
Or maybe not.
Maybe Trump’s plan of messaging the base, hoping COVID19 will “burn itself out” and “magically vanish” in April as it grows warmer will work and he’ll use its return in October as an excuse to suspend the Constitution and put me in an ICE Re-Education Camp. Lulz!
Sept 11, 2001 was a unique event in American history because within minutes of the first attack happening, the entire country was thinking about the same thing at the same time. This almost never happens given how large the United State’s population is.
Given that we’re not doing any mitigation, what would it look like when we slice the boil and have to start doing triage? What would that event look like?
The only thing I can think of is, The Gray Plague would occur rather abruptly in the guise of a lot of powerful or well known celebrities dying in very quick succession. Like, within hours of each other. If, say, 40 well known elderly people from across the spectrum of American public life simply dropped dead, that might be noticed by someone, somewhere. Even if we didn’t know why they died, it would be alarming if that many elderly people dropped dead.
Another thing that might spark the event that pushed us into a massive domestic crisis might be reports of the “WuFlop” happening in the United States. I’ve already gotten snookered by a fake news report of this happening in the United States, so I’m feeling a little touchy mentioning it. But, I have to. The WuFlop is so eerie, so disturbing, that if the American public saw it happen more than once across the country within, say, a 48 hour period, it might be enough to cause some serious panic. Of course, it is unlikely the broadcast news shows would even show such events. But it would likely be spread widely around social media and, as such be an extreme version of the Clinton Blue Dress situation where everyone knew something but it wasn’t reported on TV.
I can’t predict the future. I don’t have revealed truth, but I can read. And, I know what’s happened in other countries. Places like Italy and South Korea have had significant outbreaks of COVID19, EVEN WITH “social distancing” and testing. Places like Iran, however, have been less transparent and less proactive on those fronts and have suffered the consquences.
The great tragedy of COVID19 in the United States will be we were given two months to prevent and mitigate its spread and we blow it. We totally blew it. Trump is — and always has been — nothing more than a historically lucky Right Wing Twitter troll, so, lulz. And his only metrics are greed, power and cruelty, so, really he doesn’t have our best interests at heart and we’re going to have to fend for ourselves.
I would also suggest that Trump may snap. In fact, it could be Trump finally going completely fucking bonkers that is, in itself, the crisis that prompts our descent into chaos. If Trump whips his cock out and starts stroking it. Or starts to use the Presidential Alert System to send us all cock pics. Or if he pretty much just says the N-word all the time, then, well, that would be a crisis. And there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it. There’s just not the political will to address that the emperor has no clothes.
It’s possible that whatever happens won’t be a 9/11 type event. It might be more a rolling clusterfuck. It might be more like what happened in the book Nine Days That Shook The World. It could be a week in which things get worse and worse in the United States to the point that some people will begin to wonder if its the Rapture, or the end of the world or whatever the fuck else people think when they lose hope in the real.
I do think, however, that something akin to martial law is going to happen in the United States out of sheer desperation. All passenger flight will end rather abruptly. In fact, cities may be put on lockdown and all movement WITHIN IN THE UNITED STATES may be — briefly — highly regulated. As I have mentioned before, if you’re still worried about the Stock Market, well, you’re living delusion.
Wall Street will come roaring back in about a year, but in the short term it’s going to be moot.
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