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It makes 9/11 look less dramatic by far… and that was a pretty wicked period that had it’s lasting effects. And this time forget the psychological, social psychological and trust issues…hey, I still get randomly searched almost every time I hit security. Much worse is that the world bought into the fear and started spending more money than we need to run the planet on making airline traffic “safe again.” Except it did nothing of the sort. Nothing changed for the better. The governments of the world got a lot more power and it was easy to accomplish because of fear. Power once seized rarely is relinquished. Have you noticed how the U.S. has literally been at war since 2001? Why? War Powers for a President are broad in scope and expansive. Wonder who we’ll be at war with later in 2020?
Key: Once a government takes Civil Liberties from you, “they” usually don’t give them back. (Remember “for the people, by the people?” When that phrase becomes meaningless what does it mean for the future?) Civil Liberties come at a high price and then they are generally taken quickly. Never underestimate the power of REACTANCE which is the fear of extraction of freedom (of some kind).
And before you get too upset at people for not wanting to be told what to do with their freedom, remember that freedom’s have come at a very, very high price in the U.S. in the last 200 years. Slavery, civil rights, freedom from a “draft,” you name it. The stronghold of the U.S. government was loosened in a lot of ways historically but in the last 20 years of course, since 9/11 that has changed. Now there is Homeland Security and TSA (my personal favorites in “why?”) and other groups that violate your constitutional rights ad hoc and often.
Don’t be surprised if 10 years from now you’ll still be getting checked at security for disease, viruses and the costs to the citizens of the planet will be overwhelming. My first guess it that the panic and all things related to it will kill far more people than any virus can pull off. And in my guess is correct, the price you pay going forward will be outrageous.
As always there will be criminals who will take advantage of people, like the governments are now, but next up it will be the street thugs and regular people who turn to scams to survive.
CV19 and WHAT IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN NEXT, is rather like The Zombie Apocalypse. All the speculative fiction is now playing out in real life. Some stores in the U.S. still have organic foods on the shelves. So it’s not TOTAL TERROR in Minnesota. When I went to Target this morning, there was 80% less produce than normal. All ripe bananas were sold out, but there were still 50 (out of 1000 typically there) unripe bananas in stock. There were about 5 steaks left. I bought 3. There was no chicken. A little pork but I don’t eat pork. (Two days later I was able to pick up steaks, salmon and chicken. Restocking was not an issue.)
No toilet paper although Kleenex was in stock to a small degree.
Soft drinks are all there. Stock is low, but there for bottled water.
But Amazon… you can’t even order toilet paper for future delivery. Same with Office Depot. You can find Diet Coke at Amazon but can only buy one 12 pack per order. Paper products are pretty much gone from Amazon. Delivery times that were 2 days are now 2 – 4 weeks. Things slow down in the Apocalypse.
Last month the buzz was that CV would be gone in a month or two. Now the news seems more logical based upon all the “apparently’s” above. Late summer is more likely for a place like the U.S.
I remember the good old days when there were only a few big government scams. Medicare, Social Security, Military (not the guys who make about 10% of the entire budget in the U.S.) but the black hole stuff, (we spent it, where’d it go?) And of course forever welfare.
Then there were the guaranteed scams like “homeland security” (now a classic shell game…pay a trillion for nothing), “TSA” (a hit they keep on playing and citizens keep giving into) “guaranteed student loans” “guaranteed loans for homes” “universal health care” and a few other dandy trillion dollar projects…. Trillions that don’t exist so as the house of cards gets taller… oh my, it might actually sound bad when it falls. And now will come the International Safety for the Health and Welfare of our Planets Children so we don’t ever have the flu again, or at least travel with it. Living in a world with more boundaries and walls than could have been imagine just a few months ago.
I’m relatively optimistic about the physical health of the humans on the planet in 2021. I’m incredibly pessimistic about the mental and emotional well being as well as the financial crush and crash that could be of epic proportion. Because fear is difficult to trump in a card game. When people are afraid they FIGHT, FLEE or FREEZE.
Right now the planet has entered and is entering a deeper FREEZE mode. 45 degrees there, 24 degrees over on the other side. Absolute inconsistency and everyone is impacted by everyone else’s results. This will be the turning point of life going forward because this won’t end on April 15 or April 30… If the “lockdowns” and similar carry on into summer…well life will dramatically change.
It will likely stay there until fear turns into fear plus anger. Then of course the residents will fight or flee. And then of course you flee until you have to fight and then you fight.
It’s moving toward that stage where things become interesting.
1) How many people contract the flu bug that apparently everyone has no immunity to even though the vast majority of people are asymptomatic is not important.
2) How many people die from the bug that apparently everyone will get is not that huge of a deal. 2% of the human population on earth is 160,000,000 people. (No I don’t think it will be anywhere near that many people, not by a long shot but it’s still nothing to what the PANIC of the Pan-demic might bring.
See as people are held in their homes and away from others because people will NOT get well in even spacing’s of time or place. For example. Some people will be fine NOW. MILLIONS have almost certainly had this bug in their system and it’s long gone. They are FINE but hey, they could be CARRIERS! That’s fear induction. And what if they are? You think they will magically stop being carriers? Yeah, you’re smarter than that. So even after things start to get better as far as the flu bug is concerned things will NOT get better as far as the SOCIAL situation.
How an Apocalypse Just Might Begin
Polarization, Fear and Anger. You need all three pieces.
Here’s a snippet from a life scene, maybe only in a movie, that I imagine later this year…
John’s kid came to Bill’s house, gave Bill’s kid the flu. You know, possibly. He was the last person to play with Bill’s kid, right? That’s not good because Bill is convinced that his kid will die. Bill kills John and John’s kid for good measure. John’s family is not happy about this. They take retribution. A few weeks later, John’s kid is playing playstation as no one is in school….
See how that happens. Notice how you’ve already had those FEELINGS and THOUGHTS about the CV? Notice how fear and anger play together.
But one heat of the moment homicide does not make an apocalypse.
See John’s wife wasn’t happy and told her family. Her family killed Bill and his family, except the kid playing Playstation. And everyone told two friends who told two friends and so on and so on.
Civil War has broken out. It might be localized or spread like wildfire through a nation.
It’s been 160 years since the U.S. had one of these conflicts.
Before I continue, please don’t assume I THINK that the U.S. will fall into a Civil War. I don’t “think” anything. I simply look at models of what could happen and then you assign probabilities to each scenario, realizing there are many, many scenarios you can’t even imagine. I DO think it’s fair to assume that out of the 200 countries on the planet all experiencing somewhat parallel experiences that some percentage, say 10% (a made up number) might have a Bill/John scenario playout to the tipping point, which would likely be pretty minimal, and poof, you have a few Civil Wars.
But WAIT, why not good old fashioned international wars or wars that COULD BE, like Russia vs. the U.S. or Pakistan vs. Afghanistan.
Nope. Governments have convinced us that social distancing is an answer and you can’t even fly to Poland right now… so there is no INTER but INTRA as of today. All enemies aside from “the Chinese” are internal to each nation.
Now in say 90% (a made up number) of nations, there is no war but instead you have OCCUPATION. Government control OVER citizens. Here you could have civil war (government vs. citizens) so long as the citizens have a way and means to clash. And so it goes.
As citizens run out of money and food they get VERY fearful and very angry.
But citizens can’t print money, the one thing everyone needs.
Governments control MONEY (which is food, shelter, clothing) AND POWER to back up their dictums. Money and guns is pretty much all it takes to have martial law. The people become like dogs and cats or worse and there does come a break point where even the oppressed out monied and out gunned decide to throw their lives down to fight. And history shows that a large percentage of the time this is what happens. The results are never pretty but necessary of course to regain a balance of power in a nation.
Even in these situations things are bad but even with 10% of a population dying in a war or civil war, you still don’t have an apocalypse.
It’s bad, but life goes on for the 90% even after the CV is long forgotten about.
But the zombies haven’t come to play yet. That comes next week.
Until then, remember no predictions are being made here. The critical point before we get to next week is that people must do a lot more than prepare for the FLU. You have mental illness, intranational distrust and family against family.
Next week, we dig a little deeper and see who all those zombies will be….or will there be any at all?
You can survive a Zombie Apocalypse and if things get really bad in the ever evolving CV19 world, some of the strategies will be important. And of course SOME PEOPLE will thrive.
We’ll talk about that next week.
