by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
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.
