Trump Administration #CoronaVirus #Pandemic Metrics, The Gray Plague & The #WuFlop

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Other than working overtime to re-assure the stock market, the Trump Administration is doing effectively nothing about COVID19. This is because of the metrics they are using.

Keep The Markets Happy
All Trump wants is the “German Industrialists” to be happy so they will continue to give him a pass on policy. So, in his mind, “it’s just the flu.” As such, given a lot of people die from the flu each year –as Twitter liberals keep telling me — as long as he has an effective messaging strategy and plutocrats make a lot of money then lulz. A million people could die unnecessarily and, well, that’s not really that much more than the flu, right? Trump has such a lack of the ability to comprehend any form of empathy or compassion that as long as the economy is humming and he and his shithead plutocrats are making money, the poors can fuck off.

Win Re-Election
This goes hand-in-hand with the above. He’s extremely paranoid about the evil liberals with their evil fact-base science “weaponizing” reality to “bring him down” that he, again, would rather withhold valuable information from the public in the hopes that, in effect, people will forget about it. It’s just the flu. All your old relatives died because of “the flu” so shut up and vote for me, you mouth breathing knuckle dragger. In other words, as long as the base believes it’s “just the flu” and remain locked in, then everyone else can fuck off and drop dead. Power for power’s sake. Greed for greed’s sake. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

Consolidate Power
And, really, if you wanted to kind of dystopian, you could say there are people like Stephen Miller who simply see the prospect of The Gray Plague as a means to an end — consolidation of power far quicker than they could ever imagine otherwise.

There are two ways to look at these metrics. One, Trump’s going to yet again evade any political consequence because the base is so afraid of the browning of America that Trump can send the whole country over the precipice and, well, lulz. And, I guess, there’s a decent chance that might work out. A lot of people — especially older people — may get sick and die, but if you can stay on message that “it’s just the flu” then lulz, no political harm no foul. It will be a more deadly edition to a string of Trump self-owns that have happened over the years. This is why Mike Pence is in control of the American response to WuFlu now. He’s a complete suck up who wants to stay on the ticket in 2020. He has every reason to prevaricate as need be to have people simply shrug this off and go back to raising their kids, paying their mortgage and, most of all, voting Trump 2020 in the fall.

And, yet, there’s another option. What if instead of simply “burning itself out,” COVID19 gets really, really, REALLY bad in the States to such an extent that the usual Trump ratfucking at last collapses? Now, Trump would see this initially as a win because he will have an excuse to get rid of Pence and maybe name Don Jr. his veep. But there are some additional problems his poor addled brain can’t comprehend because, despite Maggie Haberman’s cooing about this all the time, Trump isn’t a political genius, he’s just historically lucky.

In other words, Trump may finally meet his political match if, well, America is brought to its knees on a level not seen since the Civil War. A number of things might happen if Trump strictly follows the metrics I laid out above. The 20% of the infected who get REALLY REALLY REALLY sick may reach such a high percentage of the American population that, well, the economy locks up because no one is well enough to go to work. The health care system locks up and collapses. Even then, however, Trump would probably blame liberals, or MS-13 or whatever the fuck that idiot can come up with. And the base, thinking Trump is Jesus H. Christ himself who is the only person who can stop the general historic tend towards a minority-majority America, will abide by it.

But there are two things Trump can’t control — the WuFlop and The Gray Plague.

The WuFlop
This is the rather dramatic — and eerie — event when someone who seems healthy abruptly faceplants and, sometimes, begins to writhe uncontrollably on the ground like they have a xenomorph in them about to pop out. It wouldn’t take too many recorded instances of this happening around the United States in the next two weeks for, well, there to be some political consequences for House Trump. Each time I’ve seen the WuFlop videos on Twitter, I’ve gasped. Initially, of course, these videos wouldn’t be show on TV. But if enough WuFlops happened, there would come a point where they WOULD show up on TV. That would cause a panic and we would, at last, realize that Trump has not clothes and he’s lead us all into a very dark situation with no ready solution in the near term.

The Gray Plague
If thing get as bad as I fear, then a whole lot of elderly people are going to die. A whole lot. A huge amount. A shocking amount. And a lot of powerful people are elderly. Of course, Trump would at first see this as a win because if a dozen powerful elderly center-Left people died rather abruptly, then he gets to consolidate power faster. But, “death be not proud,” so a lot of elderly center-RIGHT figures could die, too. If things got bad enough, Trump, at last, might have finally met his match because it will rather abruptly dawn on everyone that it was directly because of his obsession with owning libs that an obscene number of Americans died for no damn reason.

Before you get too excited, we have to think about Trump’s reaction to this. He’s probably going to snap. He’s probably going to, in a panic, shut down the Internet, order passenger planes be shot out of the sky, suspend the Constitution and declare martial law. The question, of course, is what the reaction would be, in practical terms to all of this. I find it doubtful that the US Military would follow any of these crazy orders, but the MAGA base WOULD likely begin to hunt down and murder “libtards”– like ME! — like members of a Cultural Revolution group. I know that sounds rather panicky and hysterical — maybe I have Trump Derailment Disorder — but the we won’t know until that time comes, now will we? We’ve never had a POTUS go bonkers and so, I guess, anything is possible.

The Gray Plague & TMZ’s Moment Of Journalistic Glory

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Someone read one of my posts about possibility of The Gray Plague and was quite sure I had “Trump Derangement Disorder” the likes of which they had never seen. First, fuck that guy. Second, if you ain’t got haters you ain’t poppin. And, second, I think we definitely need to keep and eye on South Florida. If we started to get reports of an unusual number of deaths there then, well, we know my fears of a Gray Plague are being realized.

I only think this is even possible because we don’t have any metric for how many cases are in the United States right now. While South Korea has tested 20,000 people, the United States has tested about 500. So, the only metric we will have to measure if it’s here or not is any unusual levels of sickness in the general populace. While I have been talking about how I think Iceland will suffer for the sins of our healthcare system because of how many Americans visit there in a year — I also think there’s one thing we would notice: a lot of old powerful and well known people dying in a rather abrupt fashion.

If you had between 1.3% and 15% of the elderly population of South Florida — or the rest of the country for that matter — being to die at a rather rapid rate, someone, somewhere would notice. The one organization that would likely benefit briefly by a surreal number of elderly celebrities dying would be, of course, TMZ. They would be something of our trip wire because they would the the one organization that would break the news of 40 elderly celebrities dying in 24 hours. One thing I just don’t know is how many elderly people, in real terms, would die if the absolute worst happened. Are we talking 1 million? 10 Million? What? I can’t imagine it could possibly be 10 million, but who knows. I know I don’t.

Or, put another way, we are likely about to enter about a year of unprecedented instability on a global scale. Living through history of such a a scope will suck big time. When it’s all over, some basic assumptions about life that we have now may no longer be accurate, for better or worse. I would prefer a few hundred thousand old people not die in the next year directly from COVID19. It would be a tragedy just like the Civil War or the first two world wars. I hope everything works out and I can, at last, give my full attention to the novel I’m developing.

‘3W:’ Trump Heads To India & Wondering Who 3W’s ‘Rudy’ Will Be

Great risk brings great opportunity.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


When I heard Trump was going to fucking India today, I thought it was some sort of joke. You could not write a worst scenario — the president not only leaves the country just as a cases of a pandemic may be about to strike the country in a big way, he goes to a nation that may get one very soon itself.

It’s the setup for a nightmare scenario whereby POTUS is out of the country when the pandemic strikes with 9/11 level force and that’s just the beginning of the process of pandemic. Imagine if 9/11 happened while Bush had been in India. And what if Bush was on the edge of losing his mind, anyway? How would that have worked out? It makes you wonder who our “Rudy” will be? I think it depends a lot on where the first hot and warm zones are. It could be NYC Mayor De Blasio if things work out. But one thing is for sure, 9/11 proved that the need for leadership is almost it’s own force — it will find someone, somewhere to pick up the slack when it’s not there at the top.

I’m reminded of a number of pop culture scenes of sudden mass chaos. The War of The Worlds and Cell both have scenes in them that give us some sense of how fragile and thin our grasp on civilization is. And, really, that’s what the first “phase” of the process of 3W (World War WuFlu) would be like. That would be when, because, well, Trump is a deranged moron and Twitter liberals have been willfully oblivious about what’s going on outside of the States right now, we all get on the same page as to the crisis the nation now faces.

One thing that bothers me is how people are engaging in fear porn on Twitter without at least trying to articulate what their fears are. It’s not going to be a movie. It’s real life. So, even if the absolute worst happens — and it may — life will keep going. Life will find a way. Those with hope, tenacity and vision wills survive and prosper if fate shines its eyes on them. People who panic and run around like a chicken with their heads cut off, not so much.

So don’t panic. Believe. Keep the faith. Fight the good fight.

Let’s rock.

The Gray Plague: ‘We All Bleed The Same Colored Blood’ #WuFlu

Don’t Panic!
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


It seems to me that Twitter Liberals are embarrassing themselves right now. WuFlu is whipping around the global at an alarming rate and they’re so obsessed with giving us hottakes on the 2020 Campaign that they’re completely oblivious to what’s going on.

What really bothers me is MAGA seems very excited at the prospect of a pandemic. I don’t know what the hell is going on with them at that level. Anyway, if things get as bad as I fear, we’re going to have to start seeing each other as patriots, citizens and humans, not Blue and Red. If we don’t do that sooner rather than later, well, we’re fucked. A lot of people might do for no reason if we don’t get our act together.

The key thing is, we’re not ready on a number of different levels. And one of those levels is the media. If the States finally got sucked into the pandemic blackhole, then CNN would initially try to market it as a 9/11 type event, when, in fact, it won’t be an event at all, but rather a process. It would be more like a war than a battle, in other words. The American press hasn’t had to cover a war in real terms like the one we might face since WWII and so there’s no institutional memory as to what to do. There’s likely to be something of a learning curve for a lot of people.

But that’s the worst case. I think we’ll be fine. The key issue is, how bad do things have to get for us to stop seeing the process through the prism of surreal partisan politics? Probably far worst than we might realize. I’ve always said the only way we’ll get rid of Trump is something “extra political” and gross mismanagement of a pandemic seems to fit the bill. In other words, if Trump completely loses his mind because of a pandemic then, if we survive as a nation and a species, then, well, maybe four Republican senators might vote for witnesses? Oh, sorry, wrong clusterfuck.

For me, the big issue is this chart.

Yikes!

If we have a “Gray Plague” and 3.6% – 15% of the population over 60 croaks rather abruptly, well, that’s a lot of pretty powerful people who run the world right now. That would be the stuff of some pretty astonishing historical change in a very short amount of time. This weekend is crucial. If things clam down by Sunday, then we can go back to cursing the bred and worrying about the Fourth Reich.

Corona Virus Cognitive Dissidence

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


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.

Gray Plague: Back-Of-The-Envelope Apocalypse Notes #Coronavirus #WuFlu

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

47 million Americans are 65+.

35%-90% death rate for WuFlu once you hit 65 years of age.

If even 2.1% of that 47 million died it would be, at least to Americans, the greatest event since WWII. If 10%-20% of that 47 million died, then, well, that’s a different matter altogether.

There would be no narrative if a pandemic struck. It would be written later by historians. We would have no idea if we were going to make it as species or not.

If things got bad enough, a number of nuclear-tipped regional wars would likely happen in quick succession. Isreal-Iran, DPRK-ROK/USA and India Pakistan could all happen very quickly and right about the same time.

There would be a massive refugee problem, the likes of which we’ve never seen since the end of WWII.

If China imploded as a result of WuFlu, that would fundamentally change the nature of the global economy.

The movie industry probably wouldn’t make it past a pandemic because people wouldn’t want to go to see the movies and AR/VR/MX would replace the entire industry in months, not years or decades.

Russia, China and the US might have revolutions and or civil wars if the death rate was bad enough. If the browning of America happened in three months not three decades because of a pandemic, the same forces that are tearing the country apart politically would simply tear it apart in a much more traditionally violent manner. You might see Blue States align with Canada and Red States try to reform the Confederate States of America.

You could make the argument that as many as 50 million Americans could die if a pandemic struck because of not just the Gray Plague, but any limited nuclear exchanges between the US and the DPRK, food shortages, revolution, civil war and general batshit bonkers behavior on the part of a panicked public.

The issue of continuation of government might be a real problem for a few months as powerful people through the US government got sick and or died. The ability to hold free-and-fair elections — or elections at all — in November might be put into serious doubt. It would be unprecedented.

A real pandemic would suck. We don’t want it. It’s not a movie. It would be real people, real lives and real tears of a grief. It would likely take us decades to come to grips with how many people died.

Let’s hope none of this happens.

‘The Gray Plague’

Shelton Bumgarner

Something to think about.