Let’s get Ebola out of the way first, because it’s short.  Cases continue to dwindle.  Control of the outbreak is close.

Ebola update done.

Coronavirus will get a slightly more detailed update.

–In the “Tale of Two Viruses” update recently, I said that either humanity got insanely lucky, or there were “missing cases”–chains of infection from the large number of Chinese people who were traveling since November, some of whom had the disease, and all of whom would have been in long before travel restrictions and testing.  They would have gotten sick, not even necessarily hospitalized, but infecting others around the world.  I said these next couple weeks would be critical, because IF that had happened, we should start to see some case rate blow outs around the world as those transmission chains started to get critical mass.

–I would very much preferred humanity had gotten insanely lucky.  We did not.

–Cases in South Korea and Italy are exploding, including more deaths outside of China.  There is good evidence of sustained transmission in South Korea.  Samsung is shutting down cell phone production.  Iran has a huge problem.  North Korea almost certainly does.  Indonesia’s numbers are every bit as believable as China’s, and Singapore and Japan are highly likely to fall to a major blow out next.

–I would expect some sudden Italy-like blowouts elsewhere too.  But I don’t know where.  The US, Canada, the EU, the UK, Russia, India, Africa, Australia… all equally likely.

–The WHO can talk about a closing window for containment–that window is closed.

–THIS WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE A PANDEMIC.

–The virus has flu like symptoms and transmits like the flu.  If we could isolate the first countries in Asia to get the flu every year, and stop flu transmission that way, we probably could.  Spoiler alert:  we can’t.  What your government does or doesn’t do at this point won’t matter.  Every traveller is suspect–you don’t know where the next Northern Italy is currently raging undetected.  This will spread across the globe like the flu.

–In some ways, if we are lucky, it already has, and the number of patients who have been exposed (but were either not sick or only mildly sick) is enormous.  Otherwise, YOU ARE LOOKING AT A DISEASE THAT SPREADS LIKE THE FLU, BUT IS 2-5X MORE LETHAL (case fatality rate ~1%).  We may still get lucky.  As we hypothesized here, there are published reports coming out now suggesting that human to human transmission in Wuhan may have been occurring in November at least (that may still move forward another month or two). 

–There is nothing your government, wherever you are, is going to be able to do to stop spread at this point.  Maintaining travel restrictions on the worst actively hit countries and screening, as many are trying to do, will help keep the flow of cases manageable.  Again, you DON’T want so many at once that your hospital system is overwhelmed.  That has been China’s big problem.  But don’t count on your government to be all that helpful if you do get quarantined, and don’t expect them to be able to do anything to keep the virus off your shores.  They’re doing a solid job if they can just control the flow of cases.

–Furthermore, given the countries that are being hit and forced into at least partial shutdowns to keep the flow of virus manageable, SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION IS A MORTAL LOCK AND WILL BE ROLLING PROBABLY ALL YEAR LONG.  Unless the virus miraculously does not do well in the summer heat.  Don’t count on that right now.

–AGAIN, GET A N95 RESPIRATOR OR SURGICAL MASKS NOW.  The N95 respirators are still a little easier to source right now.  If you go that route, you do need to make sure the fit is correct.  Here’s a video on how to do that:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05wyH1-mLGk  You can also go off the beaten track a bit to find those respirators if you just can’t find the masks.  The same kind of respirator is used a lot in woodwork and stonework, where sanding kicks up a lot of fine particulate matter that can damage lungs when inhaled.  Check hobby sites if you need to.

–ASSUME A QUARANTINE MAY COME YOUR WAY.  Get AT LEAST a month’s supply of non-perishable food.  MEDICATION SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION IS PROBABLE.  Get a month’s supply of any necessary medicines together NOW too, paying attention to expiration dates.  Don’t assume the water treatment guys will show up to work in a quarantine either.  HAVE A PLAN FOR CLEAN WATER, JUST IN CASE.  Power is transmissible over longer distances at least.  Still, you may want to think about that too, depending on where you live. 

–AGAIN, ROLLING SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS ARE LIKELY, GLOBALLY, AND FOR LONGER THAN YOU MAY CURRENTLY THINK.  Already in China, because few businesses have the kind of free cash flow that lets them pay salaries during a month long quarantine where no one is working and no sales are being made, some workers are not getting paid.

–HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO COVER AT LEAST A MONTH OR TWO OF EXPENSES SET ASIDE.  Start that now.  Your employer’s sales may be hit enough that they have to skip paying you for a bit.  Better safe than sorry.  You can always splurge later.  I don’t expect banks to flat out shut down, but you may want to have some extra cash on hand.  In Zombieland, cash is king.

–There is a Lancet paper out looking at clinical features of survival for patients with severe pneumonia from coronavirus.  Again, MOST patients don’t require this (defined here as “requiring significant ventilator support.”  My short take on that article is that there are no big surprises.  Mortality is high if you are sick enough to need the vent.  Younger patients do best (only one patient under 49 died in the study set).  Mortality is highest in older patients with underlying significant disease, such as lung, cardiac, diabetes, kidney disease, immunosuppression for other reasons etc.  If you develop signs and symptoms of sepsis, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome or organ dysfunction (sudden renal shutdown, heart damage etc.), you are much more likley to have a bad time.  The rate of sepsis in this population is about average versus other diseases; the mortality of the sepsis in this setting looks about average to me too.

–Lastly, “when should I put on the mask?”  That’s a popular question lately.
Here’s my problem–I’m not going to have a good answer for you.  Certainly, if a quarantine comes to your area, go masks up.  But by then, you have already been exposed.  In fairness, you may already be exposed as you are reading this.  Your chances of running into somebody with active, infectious coronavirus are still lottery level given travel restrictions and the global population.  But they “improve” day by day.  If you are someone with high risk for severe disease IF infected (i.e. long term steroid use, or even short term steroid use, significant asthma or other lung diseases, smoker, cardiac disease, diabetic, pregnant, very young, very old etc.) have a lower threshold to put a mask on.  If you have a job requiring a lot of international travel, maybe have a lower threshold to put a mask on.  If you have a job requiring you to meet a lot of strangers, if you are in health care, especially primary care, urgent care, or emergency care, have a lower threshold for a default mask.  Otherwise, pay attention around you.  If people are seeming like they are having lots of cold and flu symptoms, maybe think about going masks up.  The call for when you won’t feel ridiculous for being the first, or nearly first, to wear a mask vs. your comfort level with the risk of possible exposure is up to you.  But again, this ISN’T the Black Death.  Most patients will not have severe disease.  It’s just a really, really dangerous flu.

–Again, keep your baseline immunity up.  Sleep well.  Exercise.  Don’t smoke.  Consider vitamin D or some sunshine daily.  Wash hands like you are going into surgery and religiously.  Don’t share food, water bottles, etc.  On planes, skip the snack or at least sanitize the hell out of the drop down and wash your hands before and after your snack.
Finally, I am going to update the “life when confronting a pandemic” section from years ago during the West Africa Ebola update series, when Ebola was starting to jump borders to big cities below:

We’re going to start by talking about the Black Death.  UNDERSTAND THAT CORONAVIRUS IS -NOT- THE BLACK DEATH AND IS NOWHERE CLOSE, BUT THIS IS A WELL DOCUMENTED PERIOD OF SEVERE, GLOBAL INFECTIOUS DISEASE, AND SO ILLUSTRATES A FEW POINTS.

First, it’s important to understand the socioeconomic setting of the Black Death, because the societal component weighs heavily when a significant portion of the population is sick with an infectious disease with limited treatment options.  In the 14th century, trade was global, although slower than today, with goods from the Far East (India and China) moving along the Silk Road to the Middle East, particularly present day Turkey, Syria, Israel and Jerusalem.  Ports in the Middle East were largely controlled by the greater Mongol empire ruling over the mostly Muslim population it had conquered in many of the key port cities.  Italian traders, particularly the merchant fleets of Venice and Genoa, had made important in-roads, and brought goods from the West to the East and then vice versa.

The West was keeping the best records at the time, so we know more about the Western underlying situation, which I will expound on.

The 1200s were at the tail end of the Medieval Optimum.  This was a several century global warming out of a mini-Ice Age, and had seen consistent bumper crops.  Greenland, for instance, was relatively devoid of glaciers (yes, that’s happened before and without internal combustion engines).  More and more farmland was under the till, and peasants were enjoying relatively prosperity as crops were larger, and more farmland was being converted for them to farm.

The population got larger.  Then the 1300s hit, and the weather turned.  This caused a significant constriction in agricultural yields.  With more mouths, and less food from 14th century agricultural methods, the price for food went up significantly.  The landed aristocracy did quite well, raking in money hand over fist, and the surplus of labor meant wages were relatively low.  More than one commentator on the period described Europe in the early 14th century as reaching a Malthusian limit.

A series of famines stretched across Europe starting from the early 1300s right up until 1348 and the arrival of the plague.

Needless to say, rising inflation coupled with loss of real wage growth and dimming future prospects for the majority of the population was straining the existing feudal governance institutions, as well as the Church, which was also landed and increasingly seen as aligned with the feudal system.  As wealth gains accrued heavily towards those already well off, resentments were building, and institutional control of the situation would be precarious–those institutions, faced with a crucible such as severe infectious disease, MUST pass them, or would be swept aside.

If you are asking yourself if I am describing the 14th century, or this one, the answer is “yes.”

The Bubonic Plague arrived right when the fundamental fairness and ethics of the societal institutions were under question (we note again Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself), and when the population had rampantly bad nutrition and thus poor underlying health. 

Public health measures had difficulty being effectively enforced until everyone was sick, especially when political leadership (aristocracy and some of the clergy) took off for the hills when plague started getting really bad in their town.  Unlike the modern era, however, hygiene was almost non-existent, and the medical system was a branch of philosophy rooted in study of Aristotle with a theory of disease based on imbalance of the four “humors”. So there’s a least a -few- differences for you.

Over in Asia, near Mongolia, are several persistent (even to this day) foci of plague–caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis.  Yersinia pestis prefers to kill rodents–any rodent, not just rats.  It’s found in squirrels, rabbits–really, any member of the Rodentia clan.  This clan includes marmots, with whom Yersinia pestis has been locking in mortal evolutionary battle over the past millenia:

Image credit: By Inklein, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2675916

Y. pestis has an equally fascinating relationship with fleas.  It breeds so well in their foregut the bacteria literally close off the entrance to the flea stomach, and it begins to starve.  Starving fleas then run around biting all the things, including species, like man, they ordinarily wouldn’t touch–unless starving.  As an added pleasantry, by blocking off the stomach, the bacteria force the flea to vomit what it tries to eat right back into the cut it made in the target’s skin, spreading the bacteria even more.

So the danger of endemic disease around the world is vividly illustrated.  A cycle of Y. pestis goes extra bad near Mongolia, releasing a particularly virulent strain of the bacteria with strong tendency to get to the lungs.  Chinese trappers, increasingly moving into the area in the mid 1340s don’t know to let dead marmots lie.  Records are sketchy, but graveyards on the Mongolian-Chinese border fill with unusually large numbers of markers corresponding to the mid-1340s around this time.  Starving fleas infect a wave of humans and rodents spreading into China.  Then they infect the Mongol hordes and hop on the Mongolian pony express, which the Mongols use to control the probably largest ever contiguous land empire.  At the far reaches of the Mongol Empire, the present day Middle East, the plague hops into trade routes to India and the Middle East.  In the Middle East, it ends a trade dispute in Syria between the Genoese and a Mongol Khan, the latter of who had besieged the former with an army to better discuss some contract particulars.  The Black Death absolutely melts the beseiging Mongol army.  Legend states the embittered Khan then launched plague-dead soldiers of his own army over the wall, infecting the Genoese in the first recorded instance of biowarfare.  The Genoese, now plague infected, hopped on their fleet and returned to Europe–with their equally plague infested rats and fleas in 1348.  By 1350, the Black Death had spread along interior European trade routes, carried by man, but more importantly the spreading armies of infected rodents and fleas (and very likely the human body louse given the high prevalence of them back in the day) across all of Europe.

An estimated 24 million in just Europe died, and the population loss is second only to WWII in terms of -nominal- total deaths.  As a percentage of total living population, there has been no greater calamity in all of recorded history.  And that’s just the Black Death of ’48.  Less famous, but equally deadly, were the aftershock outbreaks now that Yersinia pestis had a new home among the rodents of the world.  These aftershocks continued for literal centuries.  The first aftershock plague, about 12 years after the Black Death started (going back to Y. Pestis’ 10-12 year cycle of nasty permutation), was called the “Children’s Plague”, and was noted for extreme mortality among the very young and very old.  A mere 20% of the total remaining population of Europe (after the ~30% the Black Death clipped) died in this new plague pandemic.  In fact, aggregate population loss was so severe it wasn’t until the 1600-1700s before most places in Europe saw again the population they had in 1348.  Depopulation, not inexorable population expansion as before, ruled for the entire 14th century.

Those threatened societal institutions, already suffering simmering crises of legitimacy, largely collapsed.  The secular power of the Church broke, and serfdom effectively ended in all but the most Eastern portions of Europe (aka “Russia and Poland”).  Medical education was completely overhauled–in no small part because they were out of living priests to do the old traditional “infectious humors” teaching. The scientific method was born.

Medically, the Black Death comes in three forms:
–Bubonic, which was overwhelming the most common form in the Black Death, with mortality of 20-40% when untreated.
–Pneumonic, which was especially popular in cold, wet climates–ironically, most of Europe since the mini-Ice Age snapped, and since the strain was marmot-born, somewhat more common than your average plague, with mortality of 95-100%.
–Septicemic, which was very rare even in the Black Death, with 100% untreated mortality, usually in 3-14.5 hours from onset of symptoms.  Yes, hours.

Of the three, bubonic (again, the MOST COMMON FORM), -cannot- be transmitted person to person.  It ABSOLUTELY requires the flea (or louse) for infection.  The corollary is that without the vector (which the philosophy-based medical community of the time completely whiffed on) of rats and fleas, the bubonic plague could NOT have spread as it did.  Person to person was impossible for it.  The vector matters too.

Pneumonic plague is highly contagious person to person as an airborne, coughed up bacteria.  Septicemic is also airborne, but frankly the afflicted are down and dead too quickly to be too contagious to anyone except those handling their bodies or garments. 

Overall mortality was an estimated 30%, with local death rates up to 60-80%.  Occasional villages were reported as entirely wiped out.

For comparison sake, “On Thermonuclear War”, which is the Cold War treatise on how to fight nuclear war and win, estimated that total mortality from the worst case exchange of nuclear weapons at the height of readiness and total warhead counts would be 50%.

This history provides necessary context, because while history may merely rhyme instead of repeat, people absolutely DO repeat. 

What has always mystified me, for instance, is why England ever got the plague at all during the Black Death.  The disease hit Southern Europe and moved North, and the English were well aware of it, fighting wars in France at the time.  Yet at no time were English ports nationally closed to Continental traffic, even as the Black Death grew ever closer.  I’ve never seen a historian try to tackle the question of why the English (and Irish) didn’t seal the islands completely.  It may have been the preference of the well-off aristocracy and monarchy to place trade over public health until absolutely proven otherwise. 

No modern equivalent to that anywhere, amirite Xi?

After all, the Mongols thought it a disease of the Chinese, the Muslims a disease of the Mongols, the Genoese a disease of the Muslims, the English a disease of the French and the Scots a disease of the English.  In fact, the Scots gleefully raised an army in early 1349 to sweep into their plague stricken neighbor, with Mel Gibson and the facepaint and the bagpipes and the “FREEEEEEEDOMMMMMM”– only to have fleas melt their army instead.  It could also be that weakened political institutions would have been unable to stop the allure of smugglers getting that -last- shipment of iPhones and Galaxies French goods across the Channel, bringing the fleas with them.  Thus, why try a quarantine you couldn’t practically enforce?  Regardless, this wasn’t the sole instance of insufficient control measures from flailing institutions founded on wild optimism permitting wider spread of the plague.  It is merely the most puzzling, as the British/Irish islands -should- and -could- have been cordoned off. 

On a more personal level, Black Death historian John Kelly wrote:
“In plague, fear acts as a solvent on human relationships.  It makes everyone an enemy and everyone an isolate.  In plague every man becomes an island–a small, haunted island of suspicion, fear, and despair.”

Camus’ towering work of his existentialist philosophy was “The Plague,” a well-researched exploration of a town facing bubonic plague.  Camus’ choice of disease was no accident, revealing the utter isolation at the heart of existentialism.  In a town facing high mortality infectious disease, as the persistent and consistent records of the Black Death demonstrate, you may expect the following of the citizens:
1.  One group will become fatalist, and live solely for the day, engaging in all manners of debauchery, without regard to the exposure risk of the actual disease.  “Eat, drink and be merry–for tomorrow we all may die.”  You may recognize this as “YOLO” or “yeet yeet”.
2.  One group will run.  Out of the area, as far and as fast as the money will take them.  (Hey–look at that.  “Unprecedented demand” for private jets out of Asia making wires this morning…)  Alternatively, they will fort up in place, stockpile resources, and attempt to wait out the disease avoiding all potential exposure to others and disease.
3.  One group will largely go about life as before, just a little more cautious to avoid foolish and unnecessary exposure to the infectious agent.

Alright.  Now, let’s choose your own adventure!  Imagine yourself in the time of the Plague, with the town around you dying 3 in 10 or 6 in 10 at a time.  Which of those three groups would you join?  What would you do?  I’ll tell you how your choice fared versus the others towards the end…

During and after the Black Death, law and police were typically too shocked, or fled themselves, to have the same level of enforcement prior to the infection.  “The Walking Dead” mantra of “fear the dead, fight the living” is very apropos.  The contemporary records of the Black Death made it quite clear that liberties were taken of the comparative anarchy.  They are a long list of theft, rape and murder during and in the immediate aftermath, until order was restored.  The towns of the Middle Ages relied on steady influx of food from the surrounding countryside to eat.  When plague broke out in a town, no one came to it with food.  Prices for basics became astronomical, and prolonged infection in some regions meant fields went fallow as industrial activity essentially halted, accelerating the temporary institutional and societal collapse. 

It is worth noting that unlike the Middle Ages, very few of us even garden anymore.  A snow storm or hurricane warning can clear supermarket shelves entirely in hours.  The Teamsters Union is unlikely to ask members to deliver to quarantined modern towns–and those who do will be setting their own pay rate, which will inflate the cost of whatever foodstuffs do enter.  Other basic utilities should not be taken for granted either if utility workers get sick in huge numbers, or just don’t show up to avoid getting sick. 

As far as medical care, some doctors ran, some stayed.  Mortality rates were average to slightly above average for those who stuck by their duty in the Black Death.  What hospitals and monasteries there were got overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases though.  We have more healthcare per capita now, and coronavirus is nowhere NEAR the mortality of the Black Death.  Doctors and nurses are unlikely to abandon their posts on this one, despite having already lost a few in China.  But as we have mentioned, worry if the hospitals are getting overwhelmed.

When it was over, though, humanity marched on.  Although killing many, the Black Death did not kill all, and humankind went on to the Renaissance in the West, particularly as the failed institutions were swept aside and greatly reformed over the next several hundred years, and then on to all we have in modern society today.  Yersinia pestis gave it one hell of a shot, but did not extinguish humanity. 

Now let’s turn to Covid-19.

We have antibiotics to treat bacteria like Yersinia pestis.  We have vaccines against many viruses, including some of the worst like smallpox, Ebola, and the flu, but for viruses without vaccines, we don’t have much outside of a few antivirals, which are custom designed for very specific viruses.  Unlike antibiotics, they may not be as effective against viruses they were not deisgned for.  Although they have been trying antivirals, such as those used in HIV, against coronavirus, they may not be effective. 

Vaccines will take about a year to be developed and mass produced.  There is only so much that additional funding and resources can do to speed that up.  As one of my microbiology instructors used to say, “Whenever the clinical team calls me for a culture result, I tell them I can yell at the petri dish for the bacteria to grow faster, but they don’t listen to me.”  There will be similar biological constraints on the speed of vaccine and antiviral infection.  At least for this year, unless by some miracle some already approved drug for some other indication works well clinically against coronavirus, don’t hold out hope for vaccine or anti-viral help.

Prevention will be paramount.  

The major threat of Covid-19 is that it is an airborne virus, spreading like the flu, looking like the flu, but with higher rates of pneumonia and a higher case fatality rate than the flu.  This “worst flu ever” is the major threat of the virus.  This is NOT the Black Death in terms of fatality rate.  It’s nowhere close.

It is a very dangerous nuisance though, with the potential to kill a lot of people because it is MUCH easier to catch Covid-19 than bubonic plague or Ebola etc.

The virus is out, globally, and there is a very good chance that quite a lot of people are going to catch Covid-19.

Again, by the best available data we have, the vast majority will have no or mild symptoms.  Up to 20% may have severe respiratory disease.  A smaller number of those will have critical respiratory disease–these are the patients where the mortality is happening.  If enough people catch Covid-19 at once, the sheer number with severe respiratory disease can overwhelm a hospital system though, and with suboptimal care, more of those with severe disease will develop critical disease.  That’s what is happening in China.
Your biggest risks from Covid-19 are that it is -highly- transmissible, and already global.  Pockets of very widespread disease are forcing quarantines to avoid or minimize hospital systems getting overwhelmed.  These will pressure supply chains because of the places involved already.  The supply chain disruption will be as uncomfortable as the virus, and you should be preparing for that as much as you are preparing for Covid-19 popping by for a visit. 

You MIGHT catch the virus–you WILL catch some of the knock on effects in the global supply chain. 

Get prepared now.  This is going to be an awkward and uncomfortable spring, if not year (and that’s before a month long quarantine may come to your town to keep the virus from spreading too fast once it hits).  Plan on travel disruption especially.  There is only so much authorities can do to limit spread, and frankly, it is already spread too far in too many places to be easily contained now. 

But just remember–this isn’t the Black Death.  It’s not even close.  The -major- social disruption and panic will NOT come from the sheer mortality of the disease, like it did in the 14th Century. 

It -will- come from the economic fallout, because our world is far more interconnected.  In the world of the 14th century, you could make or grow everything you needed locally because you had to.  Transportation technology advance means we no longer make everything we need locally–we ship it in from either the highest quality and/or lowest cost producer, globally.

We are much more fragile than the 14th century to economic shock and pressure.And if you are a government that gets caught lying about your response to coronavirus, or letting your healthcare system get overwhelmed, or just generally charlie-foxtrotting your quarantines, screening, and response ON TOP OF the fact that your government can only do so much to mitigate global supply chain disaster?  Well, you, my friend, are a government that is going to have some problems.

Because globally, no one really trusts you right now anyways.  Again, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself.

So there are some lessons from life in the times of the Bubonic Plague–but that history will only rhyme. 

Look for the obvious rhymes.  Prepare accordingly.
Oh, and back to our “choose your own adventure”–because this relates to “when do I put the mask on?”

Think back to your choice if you were in the Middle Ages in a plague infested town.

Did you say “we’re all going to get it, I may be dead tomorrow” and go party like it was the last days of disco?  Did you try to run further and faster than everyone, knowing that you only have to be quicker than the next guy to avoid getting eaten by the bear?  Did you cut off all ties and obligations to society to fortress you and yours from the disease?  Or did you keep calm and carry on, like London in the Blitz, ignoring the death around you to maintain duty and normalcy as best you could?

Here’s the secret the history tells us:

In terms of your personal survival, your choice didn’t matter.  All three groups were infected and died at approximately the same rate.  In epidemic or pandemic, the terrible truth is that by the time clinical disease is present in some poor schmuck in town, it is already potentially everywhere, just not yet showing symptoms. 

For Camus, this was the absurdity of life–the choice didn’t matter.

That bears repeating.  If you are in an untreatable infectious epidemic or pandemic, you will either get sick or you won’t.  If you get sick, you will get better–or you won’t.
The mask will at least improve your odds of NOT getting sick -and- NOT dying–assuming you did NOT catch the disease before you put it on.  So get one, and if the time comes, wear it.  You might get lucky and get mask up BEFORE you meet Covid-19 face to face.

Now, the Black Death teaches us that you can COUNT on everything economic shutting down for some time.  Be prepared to handle that. 

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, BE AS PREPARED FOR THE ECONOMIC FALLOUT, given the structure of the modern world, AS YOU ARE FOR THE VIRUS ITSELF.
However, the law and order disintegration, and anarchy in the 14th century streets, was an artifact of the extreme mortality of the Black Death.  This will NOT rhyme with Covid-19–UNLESS your government utterly screws up its response and/or lets the healthcare system get overwhelmed.  If your government does, there is the possibility, but NOT the certainty, that folks may take to the streets about that.  

No matter what, remember this:  The Black Death was so severe that I can chill you by its mere mention at the top of this section.  Your very genes were there and they remember.  They remember the time when Agnola Di Tura wrote “today I buried my wife and five children with my own hands.” They remember when the Church bells rang for days, weeks, without rest.  They remember when all the world was pestilence and death, and desperate prayers rose to every God known to Earth.  They remember when all mankind was convinced its final night had fallen.  And yet, try as Yersinia did, it could not complete the job.  Some of those it struck won, and were still standing when the dawn finally came. 

Covid-19 is NOT a species threatening event.  Not unless we grossly overreact to it–or try to pretend it does not exist, and do stupid things.  It is dangerous.  It will make things very uncomfortable–probably soon–and probably for awhile. 

The wave is coming. 

Brace for impact now.

And then, just as sudden, the wave will be gone.  Make no mistake about it–we will still be here.  Covid-19 has no chance to finish where Yersinia pestis failed.

I will wager that we will ultimately be stronger for it.  We will remember we can provide for ourselves and others.  We will re-learn that no government is truly omnipotent (and those emperors so often have no clothes).  We will, maybe for the first time, truly understand the inherent fragility of global supply chains, and just in time inventories–and that the local artisan existed for so much of human history for a reason.  At least one can hope.
I will do my best to warn you when to go “masks up.”  But I cannot monitor everyone’s local circumstances.  I cannot guarantee I will be right. 

Don’t wait for me.  Make the move that works for you and yours.

And never, ever, ever touch a dead marmot.  Ever.

Back to a semi-regular schedule on these this week.

<Paladin>