Do two inadvertent pandemic experiments — define a form of societal stupidity?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

28 May 2020

 

 

In the intentional absence of . . .

 

. . . investigating and collecting SARS-CoV-2 information, the United States has evidently decided to run two uncontrolled societal experiments, instead.

 

 

Experiment 1

 

For this one, note that no one (in American power) prepared to cope with a coronavirus epidemic that was (exceedingly obviously) running wild in China in January of this year.

 

I guess Americans thought that only Chinese folk would be vulnerable.

 

When the virus spread outside China, I guess we thought that only 'Asian' people would get it.

 

Then, when COVID-19 spread to Europe, we must have rationalized that only 'effete' Europeans would succumb and certainly not our stoutly stalwart American stock.

 

And finally, when COVID-19 eventually did come to the United States in an attention-getting way, it killed 100,000 or so (so far) people.

 

Notably, during this time, 'ain't nobody 'Muhrikan' did much of diddly squat — in the public interest — to thoroughly and scientifically investigate the virus and its pandemic's characteristics:

 

 

Here, I'm referring to doing studies and gathering information to see how the virus spreads and targets some people (and not others) for rough times or death.

 

And especially, examining how we might get through this, without being killed in droves, or impoverished by the millions.

 

 

Curiosity, competent analysis and public protection are not, we should probably infer, American societal traits.

 

Caught without medical protective gear, necessary supplies and protocols, as well as relevant epidemiological research — all this despite three months of warning — we locked a good deal of the country down.

 

The lockdown crashed the economy and squashed Liberty. The latter, maybe for forever.

 

And even after doing all this and maybe gaining a pause in the pandemic's advance — we still did little or nothing to see how one might modify these lockdowns and still achieve their life-saving purpose.

 

Finally, a combination of boredom, economic fear and mental inertia generated Inadvertent Experiment 2.

 

 

Experiment 2

 

After two to three months of being locked down, we are reopening the country.

 

Under pretty much precisely the same novel zoonotic conditions that we originally closed it.

 

 

In sum

 

The result of all this frenzied milling around has been two uncontrolled societal experiments to see which:

 

 

still uninvestigated method of pandemic-coping

 

kills more people faster (or slower)

 

and

 

with less (or more) 'collateral' economic effect.

 

 

I guess that was (and still is) the point to doing (and having done) these curiously mindless mob things.

 

 

An aside — relevant semantics

 

The concept of "herd" immunity makes sense in the above-described "milling" context.

 

We are certainly acting like a herd of airheaded fur and meat bearers.

 

 

Am I too harsh?

 

Not a chance.

 

 

Consider this

 

Not an iota of the American Military Industrial Complex — and its associated (read metastatic) national security apparatus — prepared for this.

 

This so, despite the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is acting exactly as a novel zoonotic (or a biological warfare agent) might.

 

Across recent decades, in the name of national security, the United States has spent trillions of dollars and killed millions of people.

 

All this on the basis of concocted or inflated happenings that never posed an existential threat to us.

 

However, this same 'security' leadership did not prepare (at all) for something easily predictable — like the coronavirus that's flitting around us now.

 

For relative perspective, consider these two points:

 

 

If 100,000 Americans had died in one of these previous (strategically silly) national security engagements, you would have heard an uproar.

 

If a foreign power had threatened to (Great Depression-like) slam the American economy the way that COVID has and will — we would be incensed.

 

 

Nevertheless, no one in American power thought to come up with research, plans and materiel on what to do — if what has happened, were to happen.

 

 

Keep in mind that

 

A pandemic like COVID — whether associated with a simple zoonotic or a malevolently intended biological warfare — was 100 percent certain to occur.

 

Sooner or later. Biology, especially nucleic acid biology, is like that.

 

Yet (repeating myself for irritated and irritating emphasis), American Government did nothing to prepare.

 

Decades of nothing.

 

 

Are you beginning to appreciate . . .

 

. . . the gargantuan enormity of our apparently ingrained American cluelessness?

 

Or is it something else?

 

 

The moral? — Our two inadvertent pandemic experiments . . .

 

. . . in distributing death and/or impoverishment — pretty much define our society's fundamental lack of public-protecting will.

 

Talk about 'US national security' is propaganda. This brainwashing is intended to get us mad at allegedly dangerous foreigners, so that American plutocrats can get rich by feasting on Perpetual War's profitable harvest.

 

Virtually none of American security talk (and spending) is actually about defending America, or Americans, from anything real.

 

If security propaganda really was about coping with Reality, COVID would not have happened to the degree that it has.

 

We can blame Fat Cats, politicians and the Deep State in all its permutations.

 

On the other hand, just how much respect can one have for an innately and inanely partisan 'herd' culture that contentedly eats the nonsensically paranoid propaganda that most of us do?

 

Is it possible, assessed from this broadest perspective, that the United States is just a stupidly acting culture?

 

And — if we are easily manipulated ignoramuses — how long will we be able to survive in a world where other societies are (arguably) not quite so scarred with brainlessness's effects?

 

Concluding with a visual metaphor, it is within probability's chances that someone will grace our National Funeral with pink, rather than black.

 

Pink being the color of a Celebes Crested Macaque monkey's behind.

 

Makes ya proud, don't it?