I mean, everybody knows that humans behave admirably and with great restraint when confronted with extreme resource scarcity. They don't kill each other over toilet paper or egg rolls or anything like that.
Everybody knows that humans confronted with multiple existential threats will just sit passively waiting to be saved or waiting to die, whichever comes first.
Ask any evolutionary biologist — there's nothing to worry about here!
I mean, what could go wrong? We didn't need global civilization anyway.
I mean, c',mon — we're not animals, right? It'll be fine!
With this exuberant C'ant DoCan DoSpirit, listen to this week's Spiked podcast.
Enlightened California Governor Gavin Newsome just ordered all state residents to sequester themselves until April 19th, which is 30 days from now. They can leave the house for food and drugs. That is, until they die of starvation well before that date in millions of cases because working people living paycheck to paycheck are no longer receiving a paycheck.
These are working Americans. They've been fucked over by neo-liberal globalist elites for 40 years now! They don't have any god-damned savings.
And I guarantee you families can easily starve to death well before the Federal Government manages to send them a paltry $1000 or whatever it will turn out to be. By that point sometime in April they will probably be too weak to cash the fucking check.
This will not end well, I fucking guarantee it. If your kids were starving, what would you do?
Thinking about that question—actual thought is a rare commodity these days—the better question is what wouldn't you do?
In one story about this catastrophe, the key paragraph appeared somewhere in the middle—
Newsom said he made the decision “based upon some new information” and projections that came in from Johns Hopkins University.
This is what happens when you let hysterical health care ego-maniacs run your economy as they bask in their 15 minutes (weeks?) of fame. More on this in the 2nd video below.
First, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of The Hill explain what the fuck I'm talking about (skip the fluff, start 45 seconds in).
I think you get the picture.
I was only able to watch the first 40 seconds of the video below before I went in search of a bucket to throw up in. This is Dave Rubin interviewing unhinged Dr. Nicholas Christakis (Harvard, M.P.H., Public Health; M.D). Watch as long as you can stomach it.
If you heard those first 40 seconds, you heard incoherent gibberish. He starts from the premise that 100,000 people are going to die altogether, in the next month or during the next year. The number 100,000 is used for the sake of argument.
Then he asserts that it is somehow much better (for whom?) if they die over the next year rather than in the first month. Of course, if they die in the next year instead of the first month, to facilitate that outcome, we'll have to commit economic suicide like California has. That's what clueless assholes like Christakis are recommending.
Then he contradicts himself by saying that "many more" people will die than would have died if the hospitals are overwhelmed in the next month. Huh? I thought you said 100,000 will die altogether regardless. So, if 100,000 die in the next month, then more than 100,000 altogether will die in the next year?
Which is it, fuckhead?
OK, I made myself watch some more. After the 4:00 minute mark, the unhinged Harvard asshole opines that if we push the mortality (death) curve into the future by "social distancing" now and making everyone stay home without a paycheck, then maybe only 90,000 people will die over the next year instead of 100,000.
Gee, that should make everyone feel so much better! Pennsylvania, where I live, has implemented the same policy that California has. Other states will no doubt commit economic suicide as well
All we need do to achieve the miraculous outcome Christakis wants is to put maybe 100 million people (including millions and millions of children) at risk of dying in some other way.
By now you've probably heard the term — social distancing. In short, the call is for humans to isolate themselves from others to prevent an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases.
What's the quickest way to drive a human crazy? Well, one of the fastest, most effective ways is to put them in solitary confinement. As I've stressed in the past, humans are social animals. With the exception of true introverts like me, humans thrive around other people. Humans get energy from social interactions. If those interactions are cut off, humans become angry. If they are helpless and thus can not fix the problem, they become depressed and despondent, which often serves to mask their anger. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
But wait, there's more. I'll use my local situation as an example. I'm in Pittsburgh. It's pretty typical of what's happening in the United States.
Can I go to a movie? Nope. The theatres are closed by state decree.
Can I go to my local bar? Nope. All the bars are closed by state decree.
Can I go out to eat? Nope. All the restaurants are closed by state decree.
Can I go out to hear some music? Nope. All such venues are closed by state decree.
Can I go to see a hockey or basketball game? Or watch one on TV? Nope, the NHL and NBA have suspended play.
Can I go anywhere outside the house to be around other people? Nope, unless it's a gathering of less than 10 as decreed by the state.
Can I at least go to a liquor store to buy some wine and drink it at home to let off some steam? Nope, the state-controlled liquor stores are closed by state decree.
Now, if you combine stressful social isolation with the cutting off of nearly all modes of socializing or the standard modes of coping to ease life's pain, what do you think is going to happen?
Here's what I think is going to happen: the big brains of a lot these stressed out humans are going to go haywire. And lots of those humans own guns here in the United States. There's been a run at the grocery stores on bottled water, toilet paper and other paper products, canned goods and frozen vegetables. At Walmart and other big box retailers, there's also been a large run on guns.
And the longer this goes on, the greater the chances that people's big brains will go haywire. Sorry, but that's just how humans work.
Well, Dave, you might say, most humans don't live alone like you do. They have roommates and family around them. Yes, that's right, but the truth is that humans living in close proximity with other humans is always a tenuous and potentially dangerous situation which is only mediated and made tolerable by access to social or work opportunities outside the small group (outside the house).
And if you add the stress of forced unemployment, which perhaps 20% of working Americans are looking at right now, and cut off every social or work opportunity which allows them to get through life, then the probability of emotional or physical violence skyrockets.
You would think that the so-called medical experts who seem to be driving state and national policy would understand something as basic as mental health.
Unless you're comatose, you know that the world is looking at a COVID-19 epidemic (coronavirus, Wuhan Flu, etc.).
Over the last 2 weeks in the United States, having done too little too late to prepare for the inevitable arrival of the virus, the instinctual response has been as expected — total panic and overreaction.
Most Americans (including me) are hunkered down "sheltering in place" or enduring forced unemployment. The most expert opinion I've found states that COVID-19 has at most a 0.6% mortality rate (here, after the 8:00 mark). The elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions are the most vulnerable. The large majority of people will have mild symptoms or no symptoms.
You've probably heard all sorts of hysterical estimates about the mortality rate — 3%, 4%, 7% and so on. Humans and Reality are permanently estranged and always have been.
Everyone is being urged to stay home because health care experts have told our wise political leaders that the health care system may get overwhelmed by a flood of new COVID-19 sufferers, most of whom would recover if they get the hospital care they need. If the hospitals have to turn people away because they've run out of space, some of those victims will die. In that case the mortality rate will creep up. Nobody prepared for this in advance of course. The idea is to "bend" (flatten) the new case curve so it doesn't go exponential. This will allow the hospitals to keep up with acute reactions to the virus.
Humans are self-defeating fuck-ups in this particular case because here in America and in Europe and elsewhere, humans are destroying the global economy in response to COVID-19. Their already compromised minds are overloaded. This invisible and therefore ever-present virus is construed as the only threat of any real importance now. They've got self-defeating tunnel vision. Ironically, it seems that anything or anyone can be sacrificed in the name of fighting COVID-19.
But by and large, the virus is not an existential threat to the vast majority of humans. For that vast majority, the existential threat here is the destruction of working people's livelihoods and the longer-term demand destruction which will follow. The hysterical response includes the ongoing crash of the stock market and the growing insolvency of the banks, which no longer have cash reserves requirements. The credit markets are imploding.
Can you say Déjà vu?
It took 10 years to recover from the crash of the global economy in 2008, but the crash we're seeing now may be much worse. It is certainly happening faster. I hope it isn't worse, but the longer the COVID-19 panic goes on, the worse the consequences will be and the longer the terrible effects will go on.
In the end of course, if the economy is well and truly fucked over the longer term, only the Big Money Boys will get bailed out just like the last time we went through this kind of human-created disaster.
In so far as virtually nobody is saying any of this because of that tunnel vision I spoke of earlier, I thought you might like to know what your future may look like.
