A friend asked "what if the conspiracy is global, and is a mask for something worse?" I certainly worry about the One-Worlders who capitalise on these types of things to centralise power and concentrate economic interests. The world should have seen clearly the evil alliance of big money with big government, but when the supper rich at Davos embraced the New Green Deal and Little Miss Chicken Little, they should have seen clearly that it has gotten, ironically, out-of-control. Always in the back of mind is how these One-Worlders are working tirelessly to consolidate power and enrich themselves. So I am constantly suspicious that this kind of thing could have been planned out in advanced, that there are sinister forces behind the curtains pulling the levers and making a fortune off the panic of people.
Could this have been a lab-created virus designed to be weaponized? Perhaps. Could this have been a Chinese blunder or concerted effort to infect the West? Perhaps. Could there be some awful secretive organisation that knew the contagious nature of this virus and intentionally spread it? Perhaps. Could this be just a typical outbreak of a particularly contagious and deadly virus that will be contained and cured soon enough and that all these steps we've taken are overkill which have tanked our economy and sends us into a deep recession? Perhaps. Could it be that the people who just wanted for the economy to worsen in an election year to discredit the strongest case for Trump's reelection have a vested interest in stoking the hysteria and making things worse? Of course. Could it simply be what it appears to be, a new deadly, highly contagious virus that has spread across the globe because people travelled from Wuhan to other parts of the world and infected others who travelled even farther and so now hotspots have flared up and threaten to become a epidemic of catastrophic proportions? Sure.
But whether some or all of these things are true or not is secondary to the facts on the ground. We may not trust the data coming out of Iran or China whatsoever, but we have good reason to trust our friends in Italy, Spain, and South Korea, and what they're dealing with is the example from which we ought to be working. We may have this thing beat pretty quickly, but we may go through something far worse than what Italy and Spain are experiencing at the moment. We have some pockets of population in America that are terribly vulnerable and are ripe for a contagion. That these sectors have yet to have an outbreak makes me think that perhaps there is not some sinister hand behind all this orchestrating the epidemic. But evil masterminds are very patient. They may have this thought out ten steps ahead of us. And they may care far less about the spread of the virus than they care about the collapse of our economy. In some ways they have already won.
If it were entirely partisan, I would tend to believe the conspiracy theorists, but I simply have heard too many credible people on the Right sound the alarm and explain the threat carefully. Sure, some of this is assuredly overreach and is just politicians trying to cover their butts, but I think that if Trump really believed this were a hoax, he wouldn't let it continue to spook the markets and tank our economy. And that leads me to the best evidence of all; the market itself is usually way ahead of the rest of us. Its predictive perspicacity is second to none. Now, again, there could be a few evil masterminds selling short knowing what was coming, but I've not seen signs or heard of them yet, so I believe the markets' collective wisdom is simply getting ahead of the curve. If not, then now is the time to buy! Surely, the market often acts irrationally and is often skittish and quick to start a stampede of bears, but there is usually a foundation of sanity and steadiness that has its hand on the rudder (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors). It seems however, that we have piloted the ship right through that sustaining foundation of sanity and landed ourselves in the basement. I am shocked at the unprecedented loss in value (almost a third of its value in three weeks), and by the wild volatility we're seeing (the Dow's up today by a thousand after losing three thousand yesterday).
So, where am I heading with this? Sometimes man himself is in the saddle and driving history. Sometimes that 'man' is humankind in total, but sometimes it is just one man, as in Napoleon or Hitler. But sometimes history is in the saddle and driving men. That's what's happening now. History has broken like a dam and we are all caught in the current. This is a novel thing for most of us. I'm a grown middle aged man and never have I felt like I am being carried by the events. What's happening is happening whether we like it or not. We are left with only one option: bear it. We can decide whether we suffer it with grace and do what we can to affect a better outcome, but we have to go through this before we can find out what's on the other side. The contagion could catch on like a bush-fire and prove the predictions correct, but we might get this fire put out quickly by the massive emergency response we are making combined with the infinite number of little things each of us little people are doing to curtail the spread.
If that best possible outcome happens and this kills fewer people than the Swine Flu under Obama did, the government and the media will be utterly discredited, We the People will be totally pissed, and Trump will claim a heroic victory and sweep reelection in a landslide. And the market will rebound quickly, but without recovering from the undeniable loss of economic activity. -That is, if we don't slide into a deep recession or depression precisely because of that economic loss. Brexit is an example that even the most entrenched country can muster the strength to break free of the One-Worlder's stranglehold. If this turns out be some big hoax perpetrated on us, the cause of subsidiarity, and divesting government of its power will get a big boost. Regardless how this ends, the movement toward disentangling us from China is underway. And that's a good thing.
Again, I don't believe China's numbers for a second, but they are reporting almost no new cases now after only 3200 deaths. They might actually be on the downhill side of it. And while Italy's official numbers will exceed China's within days, it may be a sign that this won't last as long or cut as deeply as we've been told it will. For now, the numbers are on the rise and people are dying. It's not catching on much faster than a regular flu during flu season, but one week might change all of that, if we are to look at its performance in Italy and Spain. Our testing will always be insufficient because we'll never be able to test enough people to know how many had only moderate symptoms but were never confirmed and far less will we be able to make credible estimates of the number of cases of asymptomatic carriers. What is clear is that far more people are recovering from this than are dying, but the fatality rate ticked up to 9% today from 7% two days ago (accounting only resolved cases).
Clearly most people who get it never get sick enough to be counted, and most of those who are confirmed with it end up recovering. But what matters most in tracking this outbreak is the number of people who are getting really sick, whether we are nearing the tipping point of capacity to treat them, ; how many of those critical cases recover, and how many people are dying. When the number of people recovering from it exceeds the number of new cases of it, we may see that as a sign of the curve cresting. But we'll not be on the downhill side of this until the number of new fatalities starts to come down. Until then we just don't know how bad this might get. Keep saying your prayers and doing your part.
