Yes, it's "surprising," Jake and Sanjay, but the effects of noncompliance are worse than you note. Much, much worse than just directly Covid-19-related effects.
The literal survival of our society is on the line, and not just because of Trump. Since I was born in 1970, decades of neoliberal policy has hollowed out society, as predicted, until when the inevitable — and this or something like it, was inevitable — hit, we were already in serious trouble. Trump, as in so much else, made the chronic issue worse, and then when it went acute, did nothing. But it’s far from all him, all the GOP. Not even close. As usual, they took bad and made it much, much worse.
The thing is, if the med system crashes, people will die from ALL THINGS OTHER THAN COVID-19, too, whether they were infected with this or not. And if first responders go down, or as they do, your fires won’t be put out; your break-ins won’t be stopped; your ambulance won’t be coming. To that precise extent. Period. To the extent they’re unprotected and go down, for weeks or for forever.
Ditto any supply chain that matters: the more supply-chain workers go down, temporarily or permanently, the less there will be. Of everything. Period. You can’t just replace people with years of training. It's impossible. All the heroic volunteers on earth can’t go be doctors. Or nurses. Or cops. Or help run power stations. Or: anything that requires training.
So, like, wash your hands. A lot. And socially distance all you can. And nailgun this into everyone’s head you can, fast.
All of this needs to be emphasized. I see it almost nowhere outside of professional and academic circles.
All that is required to minimize the impact and maximize our chances is self-interest. Not altriusm. Not even all that enlightened a self-interest: just, self-interest.
But decades of hyper-individualism has blinded us even to that: we need each other for our own selfish survival. People don’t need to give a shit about anyone but themselves, and they’ll still do the right thing. That's the one bright spot here.
They just need to remove their heads from their colons. And drop the neoliberal ideology that has seeped into every fold of the grey matter.
Not that hard, but not enough are doing it. My cat gets this. We don’t, and probably won’t in time, because neoliberalism is now a death cult. That’s no excuse not to try.
It always was a death cult; it’s just much sped-up now and affecting the non-poor. And what we have to do may well be permanent. It will certainly last months into years. All predictable.
You (my non-existent readers) remember me going on about emergent diseases (and nukes and carbon). As a boy, I knew this. Talked to Stephen Jay Gould about it (he and my dad grew up together). He wrote about it. No one cared, essentially. Didjya see me go into public health or anything like that? Anything that might have stopped nukes and global warming? Nope. Coulda. Didn’t. I, like Cheney, had other priorities. Chomsky’s been screaming about nukes and climate change nonstop. Even lefties mostly don’t get it.
And now Sanders people are freaking out because Biden won; too many saying they’ll leave the party or not vote against Trump, in order to let Trump win to “get back at” the Democrats. It’s called DemExit, and I don’t know how widespread it is, but it’s all over social media, at least YouTube. It’s appalling: and in the middle of a global pandemic turbo-charged in this country by the Trump who is, as Krystal Ball tells us, the "shoot me or stab me" equivalent of Biden. A pandemic that could easily tank society, period, mind you.
Well, it’s nice she’s a left-populist and against The Establishment. That makes up for it.
And since relatively few have stepped up to reality, too few are being the hyper-vigilant OCDers they need to be to keep the worst from happening. Honestly, no different from denying that the Nazis were really that bad. So we don’t need to leave the country; and I’m sure these trains will take us far from the Allied bombers. Plus, we’ll all get showers! How nice of them.
All-too-human, but who cares? I’m not into people’s fee-fees right now. Or excuses.
Honestly, if people who don’t care or keep denying would just nicely die or suffer outside the healthcare system, the first-responder system, well, other than the problem of removing corpses, I’d say, great. Have at it. I have no sympathy for these people. They may, literally, destroy society; they will definitely cause massive deaths, not just their own. Problem is, they’ll enter and help tank the system. While we bust our fucking asses trying to do the right thing. They’re not all rightwingers, but most rightwingers are still blowing this off, with a whole lotta company, and they’re leeching off society about a thousand orders of magnitude worse than any welfare-scammer.
Life is full of ironies. Sometimes they're mildly annoying, as in this case.
I get the situation now, and I did in January. What’s so hard? I have no special knowledge or skills, really. My cat gets it. Here is a picture of my cat getting it:
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| Holy fuck. And I thought you apes had big brains! |
Who cares about excuses when it’s now or never? I’m contacting everyone I know to evangelize social distancing and hygiene, etc. Contacted the RI Department of Health with questions to make sure they know we know. I got shunted to an ex-reporter PR person who gave me a Trump-level pile of equine feces. Because honesty is not important in a pandemic, as all public-health professionals (or anyone with two working neurons) know.
We can’t even get a just-closed hospital in Pawtucket reopened. Why? Hasn’t been inspected. My god, it hasn't been inspected, Doug? You want to overturn the whole inspection system for a measly pandemic?
Some dude who cares and whose head is not currently marinating in his lower intestinal tract can’t get even 2000 RIers to sign a petition. I’ve pinged my rep and the two Senators. The governor. I got the governor’s office on the phone. Dude said, file a complaint. I said, that’s what I’m doing right now. Heads. Up. Asses.
Right now, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, Doug’s like that. Love him [just go with it], but an overemotional over-reacter.” I don’t even mind.
But to whatever extent you think that, and you don’t close this window and start insisting, “social rules” be damned, that your friends, family, and coworkers cut the bullshit and get on board, in whatever mode and tone you like, including if it works interpretive dance, you’re helping the problem. The virus couldn’t care less about our rules and mores and fee-fees. We’re in pure exponential growth phase now. Most will deny it.
Here’s how I satirically put it the other day:
Here is your future.
Oh, I’m sorry: it’ll be worse as the numbers exponentially spike and the system tanks. My bad for dangling this false hope in front of your faces.
Myself, I cling to one thing, and one thing only: that we all (most of us) somehow get through this with our society somewhat intact so we can continue to burn carbon, deny healthcare to all, and keep making nuclear weapons while tearing up all nuclear arms control treaties.
Don’t burst my bubble, people! This is what gets me through the days of hand washing, wiping down surfaces and incoming packages, etc.
We all need dreams and hope to survive, OK?
And I believe in a place called hope, full of compassionate conservatism, where it’s always morning in America, and in which heroic pilots with big ears and funny names who withstood torture as war prisoners make sure to maintain that vision thing in which all that hopey-changey stuff is workin’ out for us as we make America great again, because I’m with her. [Sexy wink.]That’s really about it.
Let’s roll!
One other thing. If my wife and I make it through, and Trump is re-elected, despite this, we’re gone. Gone. ASAP.
We have almost no debt, no kids, four Ivy degrees, and many skills. No real connection to bullshit status and things and money. We liquidate and move — to New Zealand. Canada. Wherever works. Honestly, if we make it through, and Biden wins — and nothing much happens but “a return to normalcy” — we’re still gone.
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| That's pretty much the thing. |
We can await climate catastrophe and/or nuclear war and -winter in some society that at least comparatively cares more than our own. Like perhaps the one at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey:
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| At least we share the tapir, if only among our own tribe! |
Donna might even be able to keep the same job; half the people she works with every day are in Bangalore. And she’s all-remote now, constantly video-conferencing.
(Why everyone has to be naked, I don’t quite grasp. She says it’s something to do with “e-collaborative mind-sharing,” but I notice she can barely suppress a laugh as she explains it to me. Nor was I aware that Pornhub was the platform of choice. Well, to be fair, I’ve been out of the corporate world for a while. I know HR has changed things pretty radically.)