Day 3753

Isn't it time we stopped calling this a pandemic and started calling it a plague? It's probably time we stopped blaming people for what has happened too. A plague is a force of nature. Like earthquakes, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, I doubt that we'll be able to stop it. Humans have never been very successful at stopping a plague before. Even the medical experts will tell you that "flattening the curve" is a temporary measure at best. If people rebel at being confined before the virus has run its course, the disease will spring up all over again, just like a forest fire that wasn't completely extinguished.

At some point we will have to decide whether preserving the basic fabric of society is more important than saving lives. Maybe we can do both, but there is a breaking point. Civilization can survive with fewer people. It can't survive for long with mass chaos. Nobody is talking publicly about civil unrest, but behind the scenes, I bet leaders in every country are more worried about this than the disease itself. They know people want a return to normalcy and very few are looking forward to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome becoming our new reality.

I think we have to accept that life will never completely return to normal after this virus has burned itself out. The Black Plague in the 1300's fundamentally changed society. It took 200 years for Europe to fully recover. We are determining what the future will look like right now and I hope we get it right. You simply can't place the entire world on pause for very long and expect a good result.

I hope we are able to determine who is immune to the disease or has developed an immunity very quickly. We need these people to keep the world running. If we can reliably determine who is healthy and who is sick it will become much easier to help everybody. At the moment everyone is a potential carrier of the disease and nobody knows how to stop it.

Right now I'm just a bystander following rules set by people who probably don't have a clue what is really going on. Nobody knows what makes this virus so contagious or how to stop it. Unless someone makes a breakthrough discovery, we are just postponing the inevitable. It's not all bad. I'm actually enjoying the lighter traffic. I can finally get out of my driveway again. Unfortunately, there is no place to go.

I hope we all learn something from this. I've never been a fan of globalism. When the world becomes "too big to fail" what happens when it does fail? I think we are finding this out. We all need to become more familiar with the concept of redundancy. Complex machines like rockets and nuclear reactors usually have built-in redundancy. If the primary system fails, a back up system takes over immediately. So what would a redundant world look like? I think there would be lots and lots of small independent countries that were completely self sufficient. If one country screwed up and failed completely, the others wouldn't be affected and would continue on. Who would be the last ones standing if something really bad happened. Who knows? It could easily be the segment of civilization still living in mud huts.

No answers on anything today. We were still able to take our walk in the park and had a really nice dinner. That's probably enough for one day.

Lexi is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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