Self Assured Destruction
May 30, 2020·32 comments·Politics
The United States pursued a total lockdown strategy against Covid-19 without building capacity to manage the disease long-term. Now, with no coordinated testing infrastructure or contact tracing systems in place, the country faces an endemic virus it has no tools to control. Other developed nations achieved the same disease suppression through measured escalation, leaving them with options. The US does not.
• The strategy was all-in with nothing held in reserve. A government response with only two settings - do nothing or total war - leaves you defenseless when the enemy persists. The virus didn't disappear after the initial lockdown. It adapted, spread, and remains potent.
• This created a dependency on a single outcome. Economic policy, political stability, and social order are now betting everything on a vaccine arriving in the next six months. If that timeline slips or the vaccine proves less effective than hoped, there's no fallback plan and no institutional capacity to manage daily endemic disease.
• The real problem emerges at distribution, not development. Even if an effective vaccine exists by late 2020, months will pass before billions of people receive it. During that gap, thousands will die from a now-preventable disease. The question is how populations under weak or authoritarian governments will respond.
• Scapegoating becomes inevitable under these conditions. When Modi's regime, or Bolsonaro's, or Trump's must choose who gets limited vaccine stock first, someone will be left behind. History shows what happens next: governments find an Other to blame rather than admit their own failures.
• This creates the conditions for what comes after the pandemic ends. Incompetent or pseudo-fascist leaders facing domestic unrest and blame have always responded the same way. Not through accountability or better policy. Through war, whether allegorical or real.
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Comments
“500 to 1,000 Americans dead.
Every day.”
Sorry Ben, but your numbers, are pathetically on the fan the panic side……
Something maybe be killing more people in the US rather than in Far east Asia [ex Communist China], but it isn’t the Covid 19…….
Either side it’s still garbage in, garbage out, except compost (after a time).
Addendum after reading below: apologies for being flip - I should have realised you had been impacted so personally. I’m just looking for something other than death to be true. Sincere apologies
More than 1,000 Americans died yesterday from Covid-19.
I personally know four people who have died from Covid-19 over the past month alone, including my best friend from childhood - 56 year old in excellent health. Like you, he was a Covid-19 denier … then his lungs filled up, threw off a clot, and he was dead of a stroke within 5 days of the first symptoms. So I say this with as much of a full heart as I can muster, which isn’t much: you’re pathetically wrong about this, and you make me very, very sad.
All good, and I understand “looking for something other than death to be true”. My reply wasn’t directed at you, but at the parent comment here.
Hong Kong - This is my hometown, I live here, was born here.
1087 cases since January.
4 fatalities.
No lockdowns, & quarantine only on those tested positive .
Bali, Indonesia - I have been here since mid February 2020
Since numbers are suspect, we can look at proxies instead.
No increase in hospitalisation, no additional traffic at crematoriums, so far everyone seems healthy and fit.
No lockdowns, quarantine for those tested positive.
I can only speak about my own experiences and draw my conclusions from them.
I don’t trust mainstream media, & in Hong Kong it is a firm part of the long now.
You speak from your experiences, including one of personal loss….fair enough… [and my condolences]
Rusty said it best in his “First the People” as did you, very eloquently in “A truth that’s told with a bad intent”
The entire government bureaucracy has failed you.
Your Oligarchs and Best & Brightest are attempting to take advantage of the chaos and fear to impose well meaning but misguided ‘solutions’ upon your people.
As long as they can engender fear in you, and then take advantage of that fear, your system will not change, it will get worse.
Perhaps the ‘Covid Deniers’ can demonstrate that there is another side to this, that you as a father with responsibilities cannot afford to take a chance on [ I get that, I have married friends with kids who may agree with me but nevertheless stay on the safe side –indoors]
No need to feel sad for me, I’m doing just fine so far….
What I feel sad for,is the hollowing out and downward spiral of the greatest country in the world, the United States of America.
It mirrors the descent [possibly into oblivion] of my hometown – I have always believed it to be the greatest city in Asia.
Gentlemen & ladies – It doesn’t have to be this way…….
I’m truly happy that the Covid-19 experience of other cities and regions has been largely benign. That is not the experience of most countries in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Don’t tell me that this disease is not killing thousands of people, all over the world, every day. Don’t tell me that Covid-19 is all just way overblown and an excuse for the gov’t to put one over on us. It’s insulting and just wrong.
Yes, gov’ts are putting one over on us. AND this is a horrible, deadly disease.
I’ve noticed among the people I work with there is a distinct proximal cognitive dissonance. For those of us that are fortunate to not have close loved ones affected (I’m one for now), brace yourself, it’s coming. Ben, I feel for you man. Something I’d like to see you write about that will be helpful for all of us is how lockdown and quarantine have unhealthily interrupted the grieving process with potentially devastating consequences: Can’t visit in hospital, no large group event’s, etc. Maybe too personal, but I don’t see this story being told anywhere.
It’s my thought that government officials establishing the “Yay! Vaccine!” narrative from T = 0 in the US was patently irresponsible because we baked in a politically expedient low-risk expectation nationwide that is inherently fragile. Think of the panic and instability when the officials have to publicly announce “so we have a vaccine, but the virus has mutated into a strain that the vaccine we produced is not effective on. We have to start over from zero.”
God this was good.
Or Bad.
I’m not sure.
But this sucks either way . . .
Thank you Ben. It will take a while to digest that one! Thank you for everything that you do.
For some reason I hear David Bowie singing in my head: “We could be heroes, just for one day”.
Observations and conclusions:
THERE IS NO VACCINE!!! THERE PROBABLY WILL NEVER BE A VACCINE!!!
First the shill doctors on the news said covid patients make antibodies. Then: antibodies produce immunity. Then there are different kinds of antibodies. Then we don’t know if antibodies confer immunity. THEY NEVER KNEW!!! They are bureaucrats. Even kindly Fauci. The childish naivete of the public is ever increasing in pubescent ignorance. It shows no signs of improving.
The only catalysts for change are war and economic devastation. Read 1984. Read Brave New World. Read The 4th Turning. The right and the left rationalize their viewpoints but never address the problems or solutions. The pack is ?more than 100,000 strong. The masses are hundreds of millions. Resolution will be as it always has been. Succeeding generations making changes to assuage their emotional needs with minimal care for consequences. And time will move on.
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