February 2020 – Page 6 – The Trumplandia Report

#WuFlu Feb 21 Threat Assessment: America’s Coming Apocalyptic Rock Fight

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given what I know right now, it seems as though when the history of the WuFlu pandemic is written — if we’re still around as a nation (or a race) for it to be written — this weekend will be seen as significant because it’s when we reached another tipping point. America is collectively not only oblivious to its impending doom, we don’t even have enough of a collective response in place to know we’re doomed even if we wanted to be pro-active.

Only three States have WuFlu testing kits. So, it’s possible that people are getting sick and dying of WuFlu (or soon will be) and that metric would read a false negative because it wouldn’t register in the medical system. I have seen a study that there’s no discernable uptick in deaths in general in the States, so maybe people are being misguised with “the Flu” but not dying — yet.

But here are some things to keep in mind.

Economic
Hollywood and the newspaper industry are now dead men walking. If no one goes to the movies for six months and all entertainment production halts for the same amount of time, well, lulz? It’s likely that next year — or whenever we reached the post-pandemic era — what used to be the greater Hollywood industry will be nothing more than a barren post-apocalyptic hellscape, with”immersive media” not-so-slowly replacing it. The traditional print newspaper industry will die because no one will leave their home for the same amount of time. I have a hunch drones are going to become ubiquitous far, far sooner than any of us could have ever imagined if there really is a pandemic. It’s also possible that the American — and global — economy could tank in a way even worse than the Great Recession if places like China, South Korea and Japan have to be written off for three to six months. We might have a brief, but extremely deep depression in late 2020, early 2021.

Political
This one is kind of touchy. A whole slew of elderly people are very powerful in the States and the death rate for WuFlu among the elderly is pretty brutal. So, lulz? If you wiped out a big chunk of the American political establishment over the course off amount six months, then, yikes. And if it happened in the right — or wrong — sequence of events, then MAGA would say it was a “deep state conspiracy” and start killing anyone they didn’t like. Like me! Or, put another way, if things get as bad as I fear, there may not been much of a 2020 Campaign for us to fight over. Or the end result could be significantly more surreal than anything we could possibly imagine. There are also no assurances that the “good guys” will “win.” Or, if they do “win” the cost of that victory could be so huge, so tragic, that we aren’t exactly happy it at the price we had to pay to get it.

Media
The issue for me is, if we actually did find ourselves in the grips of a real live pandemic, inditally it would be marketed as something like 9/11 Redux. That is, of course, until is lingered for weeks and months. Then it wouldn’t be “fun” or “exciting” anymore. It would just be a grim state of existence for millions of people. I fear that Trump would suspend the Constitution at some point and simply arrest anyone — like me! — who wouldn’t simply nod and smile at his tyranny.

National Security
If there really is a pandemic, we could see at least three major regional wars occur at the same time. Israel – Iran, DPRK – ROK and India – Pakistan. And it’s at least within the realm of possibility that the DPRK might lob a few H-Bomb tipped ICBMs towards North America which, of course, will greatly increase the number of deaths associated with the the general pandemic event. Also, given how divided the United States is, I don’t really believe we’d make it. I think we’d descend into mass political violence chaos and, if we’re lucky, split into two different nations. One center-Left, one center-Right. If we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, we get American Killing Fields! Lulz!?

In general, I still can’t make an education opinion as to our fate. Maybe this is going to blow over. Or maybe it won’t. Lulz?

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

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.

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.

The Gray Plague: #WuFlu #CoronaVirus Threat Assessment For Feb 20, 2020

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.

Life During WARS Time #CoronaVirus #WuFlu

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Ugh.

’28 Hours Before: Train To Daegu’ #WuFlu #CoronaVirus

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

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.

Anyway. Buckle up.

#WuFlu Threat Assessment For Feb 19, 2020 #CoronaVirus #Qom

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

The Gray Plague: What The Fuck Is Going On In #Qom? #CoronaVirus #WuFlu

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Will 2020 Be Another 1917? #WuFlu #CoronaVirus

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

The Gray Plague: Living Through History — Such A Potential WuFlu Pandemic — Would Not Be Fun

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

Japan & My Personal #WuFlu #Pandemic Metrics

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

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.

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.

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