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.
Hollywood, we got a problem. It’s at least within the realm of possibility that not only will all entertainment production shut down soon because of a pandemic, but people will stop going to the movies for a solid year. If you work on the assumption that for about a year — until a vaccine is finally approved and mass produced — some fundimental assumptions about everyday life will be suspended then Hollywood as we know it is a Dead Man Walking.
By the time things go “back to normal,” we may not even have a traditional Hollywood anymore. “Immersive media” in the guise of VR and AR may pop out of the rubble and take over the entertainment world. But another thing to remember — when will the crisis reach such levels that there aren’t live studio audiences for late night talk shows? Or everyone on TV starts to wear a mask? The issue is if you see the coming pandemic in the United States as a process, not an event, a “new normal” will happen at some point where we move past the “event” stage into the “process” stage where everyday life begins to come back, albeit in a dramatically different form. It will be surreal, at first, but it will have to be done.
The whole thing is going to suck. But at some point The Powers That Be are going to encourage “normal” TV to come back for no other reason than to make the life of pandemic — where everyone has to stay inside — at least a bit more bearable. Remember, whatever the pandemic is called will be, will said in the same breath as the Civil War and World War 2. So, eventually, inevitably, we’ll figure out some way to go back to “normal” while we wait for it to end.
But one thing that will be interesting to look at will be the rise of Immersive Media. How fast will that happen? Telepresence will be a huge growth industry in the middle of a pandemic. It will be interesting to see how that will work out specifically.
I am curious what will happen to music. Will someone write a pop song that alludes to the effects of a pandemic? How would they pull it off? I’m tempted to write some doggerel. But I see writing song lyrics a huge waste of time when I have a novel to develop and write. But someone should start thinking about that.
In the end, even with a pandemic all around us, life will go on. People will have sex. Babies will be born. People will die.
While it seems pretty obvious that we have a pandemic on our hands, it seems rather slow moving at this point. I guess it’s possible that it will burn itself out or otherwise not being the staggering clusterfuck catastrophe that people like me are beginning to think it may ultimately be.
Let’s look at what is known about what’s happened. China has gone to extraordinary lengths to stop the spread of COVID19 in their nation. To date, they’ve been quite successful. There’s the ironic chance that they will be REINFECTED from the outside despite all their hard work. That’s the problem with a pandemic — at least in my “Brian Fellows” view. It kind of feeds on itself. That, in a sense, is what a pandemic is.
So, right now, South Korea, Italy and Iran are the three major “warm zones” with a lot of people getting sick. Only Iran seems to be something close to a “hotzone” with the number of people actually dying growing exponentially. Iran is the one nation right now that seems like it might actually have some sort of historic political event take place because of this pandemic. You can only have so many major political figures dead, dying or really sick before historically bent up political pressures explode to the surface.
Italy, meanwhile, seems on the verge of collectively faceplanting. It’s possible that the entire nation of Italy will have to be written off by the end of the week. Things are bad in South Korea, yes, but not AS BAD as they are in northern Italy right now. And the rest of Europe is well on its way to being ravaged by COVID19 soon enough.
And, yet, America to date hasn’t seen any hot or warm zones. We have some cases, sure, but it’s not like New York City and LA are imploding like northern Italy. America is a lot bigger than a lot of other nations and, as such, the bigger they are, the bigger they fall and all that. My current belief is Iran’s present is our future — people are going to start being physically ill on TV. Or, put another way, there may be a pretty huge gap between what people are actually experiencing first hand and what the American media is reporting.
That hasn’t happened, but it’s possible. It’s as if there was a stealth zombie apocalypse. We already have a big gap between what we know to be true on social media and what MSM reports, so if things got as bad as I fear they will in the States, then that difference will grow rather extreme in a rather surreal manner. It’s going to get dark, like a real life horror movie.
Of course, because we’re leaderless and everyone is a doofus, what’s likely to happen is once we realize that 20% of the American population — especially the elderly — are REALLY SICK — then we’re going to freak out and panic will set in. Things are going to get really dark, really quick. But I do believe that leaders will begin to bubble to the surface.
It’s just human nature. We got this. It’s going to be scary at times, but we got this. We won WW2. We can win WWC.
The thing that so many Twitter Liberals are completely oblivious about is Trump shares the view of another autocrat, Russia’s Putin, when it comes to his relationship to power: as long as he’s still in power when the sun sets, it’s a win. If your only metric is still being in power, then you can, as a Twitter Liberal, nash your teeth all you want to — Trump’s never leaving office for any reason.
And, yet, there’s something of an “act of God” bouncing around the world at an alarming rate right now — the COVID19 pandemic. Even then, I am reluctant to assume that Trump will, in traditional terms, face any type of political consequences. He’s escaped conviction by the Senate, and he will do whatever necessary to stay in power as long as he likes — even call a Constitutional Convention, if need be — so lulz. Even if the COVID19 pandemic caused a sharp, brief global recession and many died in the States directly because of his bungled response, it would still be 2021 – 2022 before we got around to attempting to get rid of him again. So, for the time being, Trump’s a tyrant with absolute power in the United States. Lulz?
It does, however, make you wonder how bad things would have to get before people like Hugh Hewitt might change their tune on Trump. They might have a momentary pause — in private — about their support if we entered horror-movie territory. But more likely, they would become rather giddy at the prospect of Trump consolidating his power even more as notable center-Left figures got sick and maybe even died. Or, put another way, even the gates of hell opening and Satan telling us that Trump REALLY WAS the anti-Christ wouldn’t be enough to make people like Matt Schlapp stop sucking Trump’s political cock. I guess, maybe, if 20 million old people died because of Trump’s poor leadership they might think about it for no other reason than their base of angry old men would be dramatically reduced in size.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, slow your roll Twitter liberals. Trump’s not going anywhere for any reason unless his enablers feel they have, at last, gotten every fucking thing they could possibly get from him. Then Mike Pence — or Don Jr, or The Kooch or Steve King or Kris Kobach — will swoop in and finish the job of turning America into the Fourth Reich.
The issue of the moment is, how would we even know the pandemic had struck us in a big way if we’ve only tested 500 people out of a population of 335 million? The answer is, enough of that 20% of the infected who can’t do anything would grow to be a large enough percentage of the population that the bolts would begin to pop off of American society.
A lot — A LOT — of people wouldn’t show up to work. All at the same time. What’s happening Iran right now is exactly what I fear would happen to the United States. Public officials are now seen on TV obviously ill. The United States is big enough that a COVID19 infection in the general population could grow so deep and wide that it would have something of a horror movie feel to it when we all realized at the same time THAT EVERYONE WAS INFECTED. If this was a movie, then next scene would be of Peter Thiel drinking a cocktail on a boat off the coast of New Zealand as the rest of the world collapsed.
And, yet, the issue is that wouldn’t be the end of some movie. That would be the beginning of a real-life crisis. It’s not like history ended when the Mongols reached Baghdad or we dropped the bomb on Japan. Life kept going. There was a new normal, but it kept going. And I believe that leaders would pop up in the days and weeks after this horrific realization occured.
But it’s not like it would be smooth sailing. There’s a decent chance that might be a few limited nuclear exchanges along the way — one between the US and the DPRK. And, remember, living through history sucks. There’s no narrative. If the lights went out because New York City was vaporized by a DPRK H-Bomb, then we wouldn’t know for along time what had happened — maybe through HAM radio we would know something in bits and pieces, but the EMP would fry all of our electronics and for the time being it really would seem like the end of the fucking world.
I do think, however, that we might be in for some surreal TV footage in the near future if everyone gets sick and yet we don’t do anything about it because we don’t know that anyone is sick to begin with. It’s similar to watching someone turn into a zombie on live TV in a movie or something. Only, it wouldn’t be them turning into a zombie, it would be them obviously being really, really sick. I really hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s a least possible given how poorly we’re prepared.
And, yet, life really would keep going. That’s why panic is not a viable option. When chaos strikes, you have to keep your head about you and do triage. Good luck.
Today was different because it definitely felt we crossed the Rubicon when it came to public perception of what’s actually going on. It definitely seems as though a lot more people realize that it’s very possible a pandemic may strike the United States in the next few days. My fear right now, of course, is that it’ll show itself through a lot — a lot — of people getting sick to such an extent that we realize something horrible is going on.
Mardi Gras A lot of social events have happened in the States the last two months, so there’s no reason to think Mardi Gras is going to make any difference at this point. But given what’s happened to Iran, it does make you wonder if whenever the pandemic does finally strike the states — if it ever does — a lot people who get sick will have some connection to tonight’s Mardi Gras celebration. But, what do I know.
The Mad King Trump’s doing exactly what I have long predicted he would do — lie, lie, lie. So, he’s still in the first stage of may be his ultimate political demise. (Just kidding, he’s going to name himself Emperor Caligula II and force Ted Cruz to fuck a horse in the well of the Senate!) The second stage will be, of course, Trump freaking the fuck out. He’s going to go hysterical.
But, really, even that isn’t going to make any difference. What is likely to happen is Trump will go bonkers — maybe even bungle a limited nuclear exchange with the DPRK along the way — and he STILL will win re-election. The only thing that could possibly bring Trump down at this point is so horrific I barely want to think about it — millions of elderly people dying as part of The Gray Plague. That’s it. That’s the only way Trump will ever be removed from office other than him shuffling off this mortal coil in some peaceful fashion 10 years from now when he’s changed the Constitution and his doofus eldest son is the Crown Prince.
Or, the thinking behind the above rant is this. Trump is an avatar for some existential problems with the American Republic. In fact, Trump, personally, is the end of the Republic. So and Act of God that was both historically cruel and astonishing would have to happen that was so devastating to everyone, both Blue and Red that finally realized maybe having a Right wing celebrity Twitter troll as president MIGHT not be the best course of action right now. That’s never going to happen, so, lulz. See you in the Trump-branded ICE reeducation camp!
Europe It seem as though Europe — because of a major outbreak in northern Italy — may be about to implode. If Europe goes, then that’s yet another huge H-Bomb dropped on Trump’s precious stock market. The global economy simply won’t be able to hold up if China, South Korea, Japan, and Europe are no longer functioning, even if the US somehow miraculously manages to dodge a bullet because, I dunno, Trump is actually the second coming of Jesus H. Christ and is single-handedly warding off the Gray Plague by him being both man and God? If that’s NOT the case, then, well, lulz! Guess what, America, you’re in for a sharp — if brief — depression-type event.
The Global Economy I think because the fundamentals of the global economy are still sound, that any significant decline in the global economy will be sharp, but brief. I would say — just as a casual observer — that there are several major industries that are Dead Men Walking. Hollywood. Newspapers. A few others directly connected to social events. So, it’s at least possible that early 2021 will be a media wasteland while we wait for AR, VR and MX in general to spring into the gap left by all those empty movie theatres.
WARS & Rumors of WARS It seems to me that if my fears come true about the amount of pandemic chaos caused by COV19 that there’s a good chance there could be as many as four regional wars in the next few months. Russia-Ukraine / Iran – Israel / India – Pakistan / DPRK – ROK. That’s pretty much the absolute worst case scenario, but it’s reasonable to assume that the liberal global order that’s existed since 1945 is just about on its knees as it is because of fucking Trump and so a pandemic would likely push us into the void again until we straightened things out. Or, put another way, it might not even be COV19 that kills the most people in the next, say, 18 months, but rather all the fucking wars it causes. Which would flip the script from 100 years ago when it was the Spanish Flu that killed a lot of people during The Great War.
Iceland To date, my fears about Iceland haven’t come true. So, maybe they won’t. Maybe my notion that it would be Iceland that sufferent for the sins of our for profit healthcare system may prove to be unfounded. I really like Iceland. So, I hope I’m wrong. Their tiny little Nordic nation wouldn’t deserve to be brought to its knees because Americans would rather go to their country that pay for a doctor’s visit.
Iran I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Iran. It seems the worst off of any nation outside of the China hotzone. It definitely seems as though Iran may be in contention for the first nation to face actual political change becasue of COVID19. That, in itself, would be historic. That Iran is now being consumed by COVID19 definitely indicates that the major social events that occured in Iran over the last two months probably led us to this point. Given that the Grammys, the Oscars, impeachment and the Superbowl all happened in the United States during that same time period is enough to give one pause for thought. Add to that the surreal lack of cases in the States and…whoa buddy.
My birthday is Feb 26th. I would prefer it not be seen as a 9/11-type moment in our nation’s history when we all wake up to the cold hard fact that 60% of the American population is too sick to move.
We will make it, but in spite of Trump.Shelton Bumgarner
by Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
When I was living in Seoul, I tried to save my favorite bar one memorable night. I didn’t think about it. I saw it as on fire a raced to the scene. And now one Donald J. Trump has a fire of his own — one quickly consuming the whole world — and we’re learning what is natural inclination is when he and he alone has to make a decision.
And, guess what!
As expected, his national inclination is to lie, dishimble, prevaricate and, most of all be as cruel and greedy as possible. And, so, while COVID19 may not turnout to be nearly as bad as we fear, we pretty much know who the president is right now – a creedy, immoral, liar. We already knew that, of course, but it’s a bit jarring to seeing confirmed so blatantly.
But that’s where we are. The Trump Administration is pretty much putting all its chips on the idea that lulz, but you’re still making money, right? So, if the economy global economy locks up because of a pandemic they can….blame liberals? Declare Martial Law, suspend the Constitution and not have an election so Trump can finally name himself God King for Life? I wish these were just my personal rantings not very connected to reality, but have you looked at MAGA recently? They sure do look like they believe Trump is within his rights to do just that.
That we could very well go the Handmaid’s Tale route and not Age Of Liberal Progressive Aquarius is why this pandemic could be a high risk – high reward proposition. The risk is revolution, counter revolution and civil war. Throw in the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange with the DPRK, well, lulz? And the fate of the United States — and the world, sad to say — rests of a barely functioning man-child who is president because a bunch of aging white people hate the browning of America and Russia tipped the scales for good measure.
In a sense, that Trump is POTUS is, in itself, a worst case scenario. He simply incapable of showing any leadership or rising to the occasion. He is a historically bad POTUS now faced with a historically enormous crisis. If we make it, it’ll be because of luck and the hard work of every day people willing to show the type of leadership that Trump, sadly, won’t or cant.
My birthday is coming up and I’d like to be able to celebrate it without the nation I love being brought to its knees on that date. But, lulz! So it does, however, look like the next 48 hours will be pretty dramatic. I can’t predict the future, though, so, lulz. Maybe it’ll be next week when enough Americans are sick that we can’t ignore what’s going on around us. Maybe it’ll be April. Maybe it will never happen.
But let’s going through a back-of-the-envelope threat assessment for COVID19 right now.
The Global Order Just like until 1914 there was the world order established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, it’s definitely looking like the world order setup after WW2 about to faceplant. If things improve with COVID19, then Trump will end it in this second term. If they don’t, then COVID19 will do it and something new will take its place. My best guess is we’ll have four major regional wars in the next year and we’ll sort out the New World Order after that. A lot depends on how crazy Trump becomes and how much of a tyrant he finally goes along the way.
Italy I don’t understand what’s going on with Italy. How it is that just northern Italy is imploding and not taking not just the rest of the country with it, but the rest of Europe as well is a bit odd to me. Should all of Europe be consumed by COVID19 in the next few days (maybe a week or two) then that will definitely cause otherwise blase Americans sit up and take notice.
Hollywood As I’ve written before, I think Hollywood, as an industry, is a dead man walking. You can’t stop all movie going — or production — for about a year without there being some consequences. It seems as though MX (VR & AR) will fill the void left by traditional passive entertainment and the era of “immersive media” will have arrived. The process through which this happens is going to suck and be a tragedy to such extent that no one will be happy about it.
Iceland I still think Iceland — or some other small nation near the US that is a major tourist destination — is going to be the canary in the coalmine about how bad things really are in the USA.
There definitely is a general trend towards a pandemic everywhere else. But things could also get a lot better pretty abruptly and we will look back and chuckle at how ready we were to freak out.
We still don’t know how bad the spread of COVID19 is going to get. It could fizzle out and I can — finally — turn my full attention back to developing my novel. Here’s a back-of-the-envelope assessment of what might happen between now and when things “get back to normal” in about a year, or nine months at the earliest.
Putin’s Russia Russians are extremely difficult to figure out. Why they finally revolted in 1917 is probably because of an extreme set of circumstances. I’m not expert, but it seems at least within the realm of possibility that if Russia made a major land grab against Ukraine in the coming days, using COVID19 as a cover, that that could lead to some major instability int Russia going forward. Add to that a pandemic and, well, lulz?
Xi’s China If China imploded because of COVID19 then that would be a gut punch to the global economy and the global order. I have no idea that is going to happen in China going forward, but it is something to mull. If we really do descend into a pandemic then China could be one of the big three to collapse as part of the general chaos associated with the pandemic. I have no idea. But keep an eye on that situation
Trump’s America I’m of the general opinion that the United States isn’t going to make it through a pandic. Either we split into two different countries or a Handmaid’s Tale type situation occurs. It’s up to us which one happens, I guess. A lot depends on the exact sequence of events. If a lot of elderly MAGA people get really sick and or die in quick succession, then MAGA is going to start murdering people — like me! — in cold blood. But if it’s a series of powerful center-Left political figures who drop then MAGA will cry crocodile tears and be not-so-privately giddy at the prospect of their final consolidation of power. Of course, given that, as the Bible says, “Death be not proud,” at some point both sides are going to suffer so much that maybe we’ll finally see each other as patriots, citizens and humans, not Blue or Red.
But that’s going to be far more down the path than any of us imagine. And, even then, if we do manage to survive as a nation, the moment things go back to normal, we’re likely to be back at each other’s throats. I think any pandemic in the Untied States is going to get a lot worst than we could ever imagine for a number of reasons, making it something of a “perfect storm.” But here are some ideas as to how you would know it was about to strike.
If the reason the States hasn’t had any noticeable uptick in WuFlu cases is they’re not getting picked up because of a combination of societal and general government screw up, how would we know that Corona Virus was actually here?
Well, what’s so chilling about the conditions of that scenario is how bad things would have to get before we realized what was going on. A few things would likely tip us off.
My current theory.
One, popular vacation spots for Americans in the general North America area would faceplant one by one.
Two, notable elderly people would begin to die an alarming rate, which would make news.
Three, people whose job it was to be somewhere — say, TV anchors — wouldn’t show up to work
Lastly, so many people would be really, really sick that it would be difficult for us not to notice that something was up. The frightening thing about this it would make us realize that our entire medical infrastructure had failed us on a massive scale. By the time we realized what was going on, a huge, deep swath of the population would have been infected multiple times by multiple people.
It would be the biggest crisis in American history that history would mention in the same breath with the Civil War and World War II. I only suggest this is even possible because COVID19 is whipping around the globe at an alarming rate and, yet, to date, there have not been any major flair ups in the States.
The World Economic Order It seems to me that even with 1K in declines in the Dow, the global economy has a good, solid nine or 10 months of pain ahead of it. The pain could be so sharp, so painful that Trump will simply bribe human Electors to stay in office because, well, lulz, fuck you. Trump’s going to finally go transational in his insanity and take the whole country with him before this is over with. And, really, there’s nothing we can do. The entire global order is a dead man walking at this point. What replaces it is any one’s guess. It lasted about 75 years, which isn’t too bad.
Campaign 2020 All things being equal, we need to cancel the 20202 campaign in the USA. Or, put another way, it’s probably going to effectively be canceled at some point if things get bad enough. Once the shock wears off when we finally wake up to 12 hot and warm zones across the country, we’re all going to have to come to grips with the new normal where being in a social situation of any sort is problematic for a few months which will roughly coincide with remainder of the 2020 campaign. There may, if things crest at just the wrong moment, be talk of “postponing” the 2020 Election until sometime in early 2021.
Regional Wars I can think of four places in the world where cold wars could turn hot. Korea, the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East and Ukraine-Russia. If all four erupted at the same time, then, well, you got what would be marketed, at least, as World War Three. This would especially be the case if any — or all — of these regional wars went nuclear in some way.
Really, we’re careening towards a few month of global instability not seen in about 75 years. It’s going to be a war, of sorts. A war against COVID19. I used to call it 3W, but I guess WWC would be more accurate — World War COVID19.
The world is burning and the United States remains on Lulz mode. My concern is it won’t event be America that first has an existential crisis from COVID19 in the near term — it’ll be somewhere like Iceland. It could be any number of places connected to American culture because of tourism, but Iceland seems like the sweetspot for a major outbreak for a number of reasons.
Let me note at this point, that I’m nothing more than Brian Fellows when it comes to all of this and you’re free — in fact encouraged — to ignore anything I have to say with extreme prejudice. But the point is: if Iceland (or somewhere similar to it in, say, the Caribbean like Puerto Rico ) is in the crosshairs of a potential significant outbreak of COVID19 for no other reason than many, many people from mainland USA come through it on a daily basis. It seems like Iceland would be in the crosshairs because of all the oblivious — and infected — Americans that would stay there fora few days then leave. The natives who work in the hotel and restaurant industry would be repeatedly infected and when they all collectively got sick from this exposure, it’s likely to be rather dramatic.
And, yet, maybe I’m reading too much into things. Maybe this is all going to fizzle out and I can go back to working on my novel. That’s what I hope will happened. I really don’t want to have to fight for survival instead of developing a novel. The entire global order is on the cusp of collapsing and that would suck. It would not fun. It would not be exciting. It would suck.
There’s way too much fear porn on Twitter right now. But one thing that isI do know — all the data points are pointing towards a major outbreak in a place very connected to the United States. I think there’s a good chance a shadow pandemic is happening in the States and it would be somewhere like Iceland that felt the brunt of that shadow pandemic if I’m right.
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