The Coronavirus

[Dustinw5220]

(07-17-2021, 04:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-16-2021, 07:18 PM)Dustinw5220 Wrote:

(07-16-2021, 05:10 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The problem is that too many places failed to enact any of the appropriate measures. I have seen billboards in Michigan that read "Have fun in South Carolina!"

Yes, 'Rona will be stalking you there.  

Suffocating while hooked up to a ventilator is not my idea of good consequences for anything.

And their inaction may all but insure that it takes us at least the rest of this 4T Crisis era to fully defeat the global menace known as Covid-19! As long as the Republicans and the anti-vaxxers are allowed to have their way, there will likely continue to be more variants (possibly even ones that are more resistant against the vaccines), things will get worse again (they already are in many parts of the country and the world), and we'll be right back at square one in our fight against this pandemic!

One of the ironies is that after the usual drama of a 4T that forces fundamental change in political structures and ways of doing things, a 1T is a placid, conservative, and comparatively-uneventful time. Each 4T is different. Because the Big Enemy this time is a virus instead of a hyper-villainous person, this one may end in a whimper instead of a bang.  The SARS-2 virus isn't going to agree to some treaty that confirms a reality beyond denial (Treaty of Paris, 1783), dissolution of an enemy because it has no viable means with which to fight (the Confederacy after it ran out of troops with which to defend Petersburg and hence Richmond), offs itself in a dreary bunker as one of the major enemies closes in (we all know who), or sees itself in economic and military collapse. That enemy will not surrender; it can only be exterminated. 

People are going to pay a high price even if they survive the virus. There will be organ damage. People will get diabetes. People will endure sexual dysfunction. Is brain damage a possibility?

People will have shortened lives, and they may be far less competent at what they did before they got COVID-19. Those who did the right things may be in a far better position in which to pick up the pieces in a  world that better favors them. 

Ideas that prove to be on the wrong side of history die. The United States came into existence because the recently-independent former colonies  could have become republics competing for the same turf only to sell out to some foreign power to get what they want. The vast tract of territory west of the Appalachians could have been big trouble had the states as independent republics warred against each other to decide who would control what turf. The Civil War demonstrated that slavery was inconsistent with Christian morality and modern economics. Fascism has become one of the vilest words in the political lexicon because of Axis atrocities... and even if there are alienated fools adopting Nazi symbols and rhetoric such people are obvious losers who impress us all the wrong way. 

It may be hard to imagine America becoming a more collegial, rational, and egalitarian society that does far better in spreading the prosperity than it has been... but that would solve many of the problems that we now have. When political polarization puts cherished institutions at risk from domestic terrorism, then it must go away. 

Doing things on the cheap may be satisfying for powerful people for an indefinite time, but indefinite times come to an end. Neoliberal economics came with a promise to create such extreme prosperity that economic inequality would be a triviality. It has culminated in severe regional differences in prosperity, with many communities once prosperous  (like Rochester, New York; South Bend, Indiana; Dayton, Ohio) being ravaged economically and people who got consigned to cheap labor finding increasing distress as life goes on. Neoliberal economics depended upon the proposition that the only way in which to reliably create prosperity was to make people already filthy-rich even more filthy rich, to indulge the worst tendencies of the very rich, and to enforce the will of the economic elites. 

We are going to need to change environmental policies just to prevent such a disaster as the heat wave that recently bedeviled the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. What is to say that the next such heat wave won't appear over the Great Lakes region? -- at least I think this in Michigan. We will need changes in tax laws to promote the foundation of small businesses that have some potential for growth instead of propping up businesses on the downside of their corporate lifespans. (Those firms make high profits as the result of monopolistic concentration or cartelization of their markets or sweetheart deals with the government and they have large bureaucracies staffed with glorified clerks who would rather drive a Buick and live in a McMansion than question the meaning of life). Yes, I have a thread on the business lifetime. Do you remember when the brand-names Sears, Kodak, and Polaroid impressed you? They don't now.  

(I have a thread on the lifecycle of businesses, and I can tie that to the Crisis. In the last 1T, the Silent did relatively little formation of small businesses. The most prominent figures of Silent founders of big businesses were Dave Thomas (fast food), Ross Perot (government contracting), Mike Milken (insider trading), T. Boone Pickens (oil wildcatting), and Warren Buffett (shrewd buys-and-holds). The rest is entertainment and professional practices. Professional practices can make life great for the professionals, but they create comparatively few jobs after their formation. The Silent did little to found manufacturers that could create the blue-collar jobs that really underpin a prosperous society. Consider this: the factory is the most reliable means out of individual poverty. Educated people have proved more job-takers than job-creators.

A 4T brings to an end many failures -- practices that have either limped along until the reality of one last 4T euthanizes them... and recent fads that fail. Many of the assumptions that we have held throughout our lives are going to prove unsustainable. Many of those will not be missed.

What are some of your theories on how our upcoming 1T will be different compared to the last one, and how will it be different compared to what I've known my whole life (I was born in 1992, basically smack dab in the middle of the Millennial generation)?

If things continue to get bad enough over the next few years, do you think there's any chance some of the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic will end up becoming permanent, or at least until the next Awakening Era starts to relax social mores again? I know that's not what happened after the 1918 flu pandemic, but that took place in a 3T Unraveling Era, our deadly global pandemic is happening in a 4T Crisis Era (when the consequences and impact on society could potentially be much longer lasting).