Greetings from the most current end of the world. Are you chafing under the oppressive yoke of jackbooted thugs? Do you fret that political schemers are expanding their power (as opposed to the magic long ago imaginary time when they weren’t expanding their power)? Or are your merely taking generic flu season precautions with a bit more gusto? Perhaps while idly noting the press employs “journalists” who can’t do fractions yet write articles about infectious disease modeling? For me, it’s the latter.
Let me go on record as saying regular flu is awful and Ebola about made me shit my pants, but this is a fart in a windstorm. I may be wrong. Time will tell. In August, if this isn’t starting to feel like Y2K, I might reconsider. I predict that by late summer the press will be bored with articles about toilet paper and go back to baying about the imminent impeachment of Trump. What reason this time? Who knows? Whatever new improved reason they’ve invented from whole cloth will surely be entertaining. Secret Bolivian Nazi collusion amid dead voters on Facebook in Chicago?
If not, and we all die, I’ll acknowledge my error in judgement. Also, I’m comfortable supposing COVID19 (which is inexplicably less racist than calling a flu that originated in Wuhan the Wuhan Flu… because Orange Man Bad) is neither shit nor a fan but I’m taking prudent measures. I remain in voluntary self-quarantine (and not a bullshit half-ass version either).
I’ve been through several dozen flu seasons (you have too). They all suck, especially if you have kids. Public schools dip children in a bath of what I can only assume is Calcutta ditchwater and snot. Then they send them home; uneducated, indoctrinated, and drooling. It’s like having a kid in college, but with more germs. Meanwhile, Gladys at work sneezes her unholy pestilence on your workspace and the pierced wonder at the coffee shop shares her lack of hygiene with your coffee cup.
You can set your clock by it. Each year, around this season, everyone does everything they can to deliver disease directly to my face. Each year I withdraw a bit hoping to avoid it. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t.
This year is different. I’m seeing a teeny tiny bit more considered behavior. Faced with a flu that is theoretically devastating (but still an unrealized threat), everyone turned the dial to eleven and freaked out. Most of it is pure bullshit but there’s a core understanding I like. Everyone is on board with my way of thinking; if you’re sick, stay the hell away from me. It’s a motto we can all appreciate!
Which is to say, this is the first fake end of the world that has been in my bailiwick. No wonder the media is awash in fake end of the world stories… they pick their own reasons to freak out and that means they can freak out over the things they like. This is why they’re prone to hyperventilating over Nazis. It’s some 75 years after WW2 but flaking over Nazis is fun for them. I finally get it.
In my next post I’ll explain how this relates to ancient Roman gold.