BindleSnitch — This COULD BECOME an Extinction Level Event

There are a number of potential extinction-level events that scientists worry about. There’s nuclear war, of course, and meteors, climate change…and pandemics.

The Pandemic Extinction Level Event just because a lot more feasible because it could be happening around us as you read these words.

First, the good news. We have no idea how many people have already been exposed to COVID-19, but the number is probably already in the millions. Since we haven’t been testing right along, we have no idea of what the actual infection and fatality rates are from this disease. So, this might be a lot less dangerous than it could be.

(I just saw the mayor of a city in New York that is under lock-down announce that he had just taken his family out to lunch in the middle of the hot zone. This man is a complete and total idiot. I guess he believes the good news.)

Now, here’s the bad news.

While we were worrying about Bernie versus Joltin’ Joel, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the climate crisis, equality issues, and all of the other things that have distracted us, the truth has sneaked up on us.

The truth is this: in a world where worldwide electronic communications has completely subverted our ability to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, we have simply ignored the corollary:

THE WORLDWIDE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM THAT NOW CONNECTS ANY TWO PLACES ON THE PLANET IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS OF TRAVEL TIME HAS CREATED AN ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL PANDEMICS. AN EPIDEMIC ANYWHERE IS A PANDEMIC EVERYWHERE.

This was a totally predictable disaster that we are completely unprepared for.

It occurs to me that people still don’t understand the depth of this crisis. HERE ARE JUST SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

No city in America has more than a two-week supply of food.

No supermarket in the United States has more than a seven day supply of food on the shelves.

The vast majority of the food in American stores is transported by trucks driven by truckers who are just as susceptible to the virus as anyone else is.