TEOTWAWKI

 

Welcome back to the scuttlebutt, 

Pull up a chair, have a drink, take that silly mask off your face and let’s talk.

 

TEOTWAWKI, also known as “The End of The World as We Know It” seems to have been a basic theme for my entire life.  It’s always coming down the pike right now, just about to kill us all!

 

I’ve seen and lived through too many of these to take it at face value anymore.  This seems to be a damn unpopular position with the blogosphere right now, but hey, I’ve taken unpopular positions before.  Some times I’m even right! (OK, usually, but hey…)

 

Let’s see, when I was 1 we were all going to die because the Cuban Missile Crisis was going to kill us all, when I was in school, we were constantly “15 minutes from nuclear annihilation,” there was some comet that was supposed to whack into us about the time I was in High school, then there was the great alignment of the planets that was going to scramble the poles and flood the world, then there was more “we’re going to get nuked,” oh and we were going to get our ass kicked by Iraq, (Worst prediction EVER) and Y2K, and Korean EMPs and Swine Flu, and Bird Flu, and… Shit, I don’t remember them all.

None of them ever happened.

 

People, there are folks out there that are selling fear.  They’re offering it real cheap. It’s a bargain!  That doesn’t mean you have to buy the shit.  Much like a cheap printer, it doesn’t work that well, and the upkeep on it is ruinous. 

 

In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m talking about the “COVID-19” the Wu flu, the Kung flu, call it any of the names I’ve seen, that thing from China.

 

Yes, I know, people have died from it.  SO WHAT?

 

People die from the flu every year.  Lots of people (56,000 is the CDC’s estimate) die from the flu each year.

 

Yes, I know “this is a new strain and we don’t have antibodies!”  We didn’t have antibodies for the Swine flu either.  

 

Look, China screwed the pooch, and they’re lying about what’s going on internally now… Gosh, what? A surprise?  People it’s a communist country. They lie about whether the sun is coming up. Much like the scorpion in the story, it’s in their nature.

 

Yes, I know, there’s a new cluster coming out of Iran… OK really? You’re going to base what’s going to happen in the modern industrialized world upon IRAN and China???  Come on, China is still using bear gallbladders and powdered rhino horn as serious medicine, and Iran has Mullahs telling the faithful to eschew the evils of western medicine and drink camel piss!

These aren’t exactly twenty-first-century populations there… 

 

Yes, the flu may take a toll on China (hell if I’m really lucky, and have made Thor and Odin smile, it may take their government down, which would be enough that I could die a happy man, having seen the fall of both the Soviet Union and Communist China. At the least, it may give Hong Kong a shot at freedom.)  Yes, in this global economy, China’s getting a hiccup will mess with us a little bit. Why an organization I belong to, that was going to buy cups for the members to buy with our logo on it, had to go find a different company, because the cheap outfit we were going through is in China and now can’t deliver.

OH NO! We can’t get cheap coffee cups with a custom logo!  What EVER shall we do?

 

Look, I know it’s more serious than that, it’s them not buying food that we sell because there’s no one shipping and fewer people buying… We are going to see a hit on the market.  But people, it’s not going to be black Tuesday.

 

As for the disease itself, yes, the Flu can kill you, either the Coronavirus, or the “normal” flu can do it.  Here’s the thing though, “Palliative care” IE keep them warm, keep them hydrated, keep calories coming in, even if it’s broth and honey tea, is enough for the vast majority of people to survive.  When the flu kills it’s usually from secondary infections.

 

If you’re healthy, getting the flu sucks a little, if you’re less than healthy it can suck quite a bit, but unless you’re facing an already compromised immune system (AIDS/HIV, Hep, some forms of Chemo, taking immune suppressants due to transplants…) you can ride it out at home.  If you’re part of one of the aforementioned groups and get it, you’re probably staring at hospital time…

 

1918 got so many because 1) we didn’t know even palliative care (oh doctors knew it, but in 1918 we still had the vast majority of people doing shit like putting butter on a burn, and mustard compresses… You know, Rhino horn and camel piss type shit.) and 2) we weren’t as healthy on whole. 

 

Then there’s the whole “we’re going to be sending massive amounts of sick people together across the country, and putting them in tents in a field somewhere while we teach them how to be soldiers thing.

 

If we hadn’t been mobilizing for war, the ’18 influenza wouldn’t have been nearly as nasty, and remember, medicine circa 1918 wasn’t very damn far off Civil war shit.  Oh, we had “germ theory” but no antibiotics, nothing like a Pedialyte or other good hydration and maintenance drink, and frankly an LPN now knows as much as the average doctor of 1918 about medicine in general.

 

Look, panic and fort up in place if you will, but I reserve the right to laugh at you in six months when this is all over.  (you may reserve the right to laugh at me if all this End of the World shit actually comes true this time.) A better question for you to wonder about, is “who’s selling this fear, and how do they profit from it?”

 

Until next time, 

I remain,   

Yours in service

William Lehman

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