So... the world has gone kinda crazy in the past few weeks. I think that I'm just talking about the obvious here. If you've been following the news at all, you've heard that the world is currently experiencing a global pandemic of a coronavirus, dubbed Covid-19 officially; although colloquially it's just known as "the coronavirus." I've debated making a journal on this or talking about this in depth for a variety of reasons.
Many people, the world as a whole is locked in fear at the moment, and for a very good reason. This virus pandemic is truly something to be frightened with for a variety of reasons. And to add on top of that, this is all our 24 hour media news coverage is talking about. Combine that with many sources of escapism being cancelled or postponed, I can imagine that a lot of people are not in a good place emotionally at the moment.
And... I don't like to spread fear, despite a perception I may have spread. I don't make things like Technocracy because I think it's... funny or whatever to make people scared. I talk about these things because I feel that not talking about them would lead to a worse outcome. And I do feel that here. Lemme tell you the situation that I've been in for... the entirety of the year.
I've actually been following news about this for quite some time; since around January. You know, back when the media said that to worry about anything was an extreme overreaction, and the WHO actually reported that the disease didn't spread from person to person. So, I actually did my "prepping" and panicking awhile ago. In the worst case scenario, I'd just be eating a lot more sandwiches than normal from my 5 pound jar of peanut butter. Yes, I bought that. Mostly because I vastly underestimated how big that was. I tend to buy a lot of my stuff in bulk anyway. It's cheaper in the long run to do something like buy all of the popcorn you might want for a third of the year than to buy it individually each week.
If you're wondering how I knew about this ahead of time, it's because I was following YouTube personalities and independent reporters who have been giving information on this; so, I personally know about much of what's happened during its spread: the Diamond Princess cruise ship, its explosion in Italy, what happened in Iran, and much of what is going on in the United States. And despite this, despite them being right, YouTube is demonetizing the people on YouTube talking about this, giving out
vital information. There's a lot of disgust about this whole event, but let's just say that there's a special hatred I have for a website that does something so stupid as to what YouTube is doing. Sorry, it just strikes me as the wrong move to give this "learn more about Covid-19" blurb under videos, the exact same place they put tags on conspiracies. Seriously, it looks almost exactly the same as YouTube tagging videos talking about chemtrails or some shit like that.
For the past months, there's always been a debate as to whether or not to talk about this. I can't say that I'm glad I didn't, but I know that the majority of the people I told wouldn't believe me. Because that's what happened to the people who did talk about this. Everything you do before a crisis seems like an overreaction and everything you do after seems like an underreaction. Now I don't want to keep on talking about this because I don't want to compound worries, and let's just say... I have a lot of worries about this.
Let me put it like this, if you're wracked in anxiety right now, this might be difficult to read. I can tell that this is going to be particularly hard on people with hypochondria or OCD/other types of anxieties.
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There are three main camps of concern I've found myself in. Number one was the physical, number two was the social, and number three... let's call it political/societal. And I want to say that before I go any further, I'm not a doctor, medical expert, or anything like that. I'm just giving the best advice with the information that I've got and my own concerns here.
As for the physical; I think many people are worried of getting the disease. Like I've said, a couple of times during this whole ordeal I've had a cold, and yes I am a bit of a hypochondriac. It's important to know the symptoms of this virus. The three main ones are a cough, fever, and shortness of breath. The first two are pretty objective, and hard to imagine, but the third symptom is most prone to wondering. I'd highly recommend that everyone makes sure that they have a thermometer. If you feel that you may have the virus; take your temperature. If you don't have a fever, you are likely in the clear.
What has allowed this virus to spread all over the world is that it has a particularly long incubation period. This isn't the only disease in the world that has it; Chicken Pox has an incubation period of two weeks. Covid-19 can have an up to 14 day incubation period, so this is why it has escaped quarantine. People have been asymptomatic and have still been able to spread the virus. Wash your hands, frequently. Every time you come home from anywhere, that's the first thing that you should do. Those medical face masks that everyone's been wearing. Only wear those if you have Covid, or you are caretaking someone who may have it. These are
not to prevent you from getting sick; they are there are to prevent others from getting sick, and many medical establishments are running low on them and other supplies.
Stay indoors if possible, and work from home if possible. You've probably heard this time and time again for awhile. Some of you may be in countries where leaving your home isn't currently legally possible. Oh, and remember that paper towels or moist towelettes are
not substitutes for toilet paper and should not be used in place of them. You do not want your sewer system backing up during the middle of a quarantine.
I was prepared physically going in. For the most part. I had the supplies that I would need to be fine for the coming weeks or months or whatever. Even then, things weren't perfect. But if my only regret is that I didn't get my hair cut when I had the chance, I think that I'm in a good place. What I didn't prepare for was the mental/emotional strain, because it sounds weird to me.
I spend most of my time at home; I work from home, and I don't often go outside. Especially when it's March and cold as shit. However, the strangest things have been taking a psychological toll on me. My state hasn't had a shelter-in-place order or a quarantine as of yet; there's been no state order to shut things down. People are just doing it of their own accord, and that... feels. It feels too normal. When things that don't go together are placed alongside each other, it's mentally unsettling. When outside feels
too normal when the rest of the world is going crazy, it feels off in a way that I can't describe. And it's not just seeing traffic or anything like that. Just seeing birds flying around, free and without any concern; it gives me thoughts I don't want to think about.
I've mentioned the hypochondria, but there are other things that can take a mental toll. Even if no one you know gets Covid, it's probably still going to affect people you know in some way, shape, or form. I've already had a couple of family members lose their jobs over this. The feeling is compounded when you have relatives in the medical professions. Or someone far away.
Be very cognizant of your morale. It's a very fragile thing. And even moreso, make sure that you deal with it in healthy ways. I've been using the pedometer in my 3DS, walking around the house because exercise is incredibly important. Healthy mind in a healthy body. Just been trying to play a lot of games lately. It's like... the best possible time for a game like Animal Crossing to come out
now of all times. Social media is a weird one. There's a mixture of it doing psychological harm, like it was doing a couple of months ago, but needing to stay updated.
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Social concerns. Young people are not immune to getting this virus or being hospitalized from it, but it is less likely than someone older. Of course, old people don't want to think that they're old and now we've got just everyone thinking that they're immune. People in my age range thinking they can't catch it, and people older than my age range thinking they're in my age range. How badly do you want to take a chance on your life? Stay home. Even if you think you're immune to this, which you aren't, you can easily infect the vulnerable people you surround yourself with.
Even with that being said, I don't think that the most concerning effect on all of this is actually getting the virus. One thing that I think is that... many people who have the virus might not think that they have the virus and thus don't get checked out. After all, it can come across as mild or even asymptomatic. Which means that it is possible for the virus to have a lower death/hospitalization rate than we believe, which is good. With more frequent testing we will get the information that we need to make that determination.
One thing that we've already seen as a social effect is scalpers and hoarders and that kinda shit. I mean, it's human nature, but it does make my heart sink. We're not talking about amiibo. We're talking about necessities people need to keep themselves safe and protected.
I expect people to get more agitated as time goes on and this situation ends up being longer than they predicted. It tends to be what happens when people are cooped up for a long time. In times of panic, when many forms of escapism are removed as they have been, it has bad psychological effects. With nothing to do, many people turn inward which leads to existential dread. Which is fun. Except it's not.
Not helping is the knowledge that it's going to get worse before it gets better. One of the most... things about Covid-19 is that we're only seeing its past because of its long incubation period. So... any measure that people do to curb it will look immediately ineffective. It takes time to see what's working. Which is... look, it's a bad cocktail. Keep your morale up.
I'd also recommend not going to the hospital unless you absolutely need to. At the moment, if there is a place you're likely to get the virus it would be at a hospital. And if you haven't noticed, many medical institutions are nearly full to bursting. Another term you've heard a lot is "flattening the curve." Through physical (social) distancing, we're trying to spread out the cases over time so we don't get them all at once. You should also keep in mind this doesn't just apply to Covid-19 cases. Only go to the doctor if you really need to in this situation.
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The 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic is one of those events that fundamentally changes the course of society. Remember what I said about existential dread and not being prepared emotionally? Yeah, mind's been in some bad places. But I do think that this is something that needs to be talked about. Probably not the best to talk about it in the midst of the pandemic, but I'm done with waiting on things.
So... over my lifetime, a lot of history has happened even if it doesn't seem like that. But the only single event that has significantly changed the course of society up until now was the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. A lot of society we exist in, at least here in the United States, is because of that one event. That's an event that (mostly) involved one country though, and just had ripples in other countries. This is an event that is a shockwave throughout the entire world; something of which has not happened within my lifetime. Yes, there have been other pandemics. H1N1 swine flu happened just a decade ago, but this is much more serious and much bigger.
And it has... ramifications. It's hard to know what those ramifications are, and a lot of it depends on the pieces still in play. What happens in the upcoming months will define what happens in the remainder of the decade. Some things I think are certain; some things are very uncertain. It's pretty certain that we will have a recession, if not a depression. A lot of people not working for a long time and overwhelming other social programs like unemployment is going to hurt in other ways, for instance.
Some of the ramifications are going to be good, and some of them are going to be bad. While political partisanship is never going to truly go away, I do think that the 2020's won't be as politically divided between left and right as they were in the 2010's. Both sides know what the problem is, and both sides are trying to do whatever they can in order to solve it. It's the first time that people have agreed on things in a very long time. Like... a
very long time. People do come together in times of tragedy and it's important to remember that, and embrace that.
Media, of course, is still throwing smears at both sides, but... I've been numb to it for awhile now, but for the first time in a long time, it really is disgusting me. As I've said before, I'm not a fan of most the people in Washington. It's okay to not like them. But many of these pundits seem to want the politicians to... not succeed in what they're doing for a "gimme". Which is just about the most disgusting thing I think they could be doing here.
Let's talk about China. This virus did originate in the Wuhan district of China. It is a Chinese virus. No, it is not racist to call it as such. Many diseases are named after their location, such as Zika or Ebola or West African Sleeping Disease. And let's talk about why it is important to understand where this virus came from. The CCP, Chinese government, didn't tell the world about this virus for over a month to save face. They could have prevented the worldwide pandemic. And in their failure to control it, they harshly abused their people.
People are concerned that racism towards Chinese people will rise. And yes, it is wrong to be racist towards Chinese people, especially now. They were fucked over by their government more than anyone else in the world. The Chinese government literally sealed someone in their own apartment. They did that, and people starved to death because they would not let them out.
However, the Chinese government is responsible for this problem. They did it to save face. They did it to keep their place as the economic center of the world. Because if that place fails, then they will be held to account for all of their human rights violations, like imprisoning religious minorities. And of course, China stopped sending things like those medical masks to other countries because they can do that. If the Chinese government is able to save face throughout this, the world will be in a worse off place. Their government
must be held to account.
And let's talk about some of this anti-racism stuff. I've heard it said/tweeted or whatever "unless you call Spaghetti noodles Chinese food, you shouldn't call this the Chinese virus." No, Spaghetti is considered Italian food, even though the noodles were invented in China. Kinda like the Spanish flu is named after Spain, but it also originated in China. In February, to cub stigma around the virus, Italy had something called a "hug a Chinese person" Actually, no, it was just "hug a Chinese." They also refused to do anything about the virus itself for a long time because they considered doing so racist. And now Italy is the most hit country outside of Asia.
It's wrong to be racist, and it's also wrong to be stupid here. During this pandemic you shouldn't "hug a Chinese" because you shouldn't be
hugging anyone you don't know. I'm bringing this up, because if the people fighting to keep this racism under control are either a. stupid or b. responsible for more deaths, more people are going to be racist to a larger degree. Chinese food doesn't cause coronavirus, and a lot of Chinese people are definitely being subject to a lot of hard times right now; a lot harder than most of the rest of us. It's unfortunately what happens during pandemics. Be kind, be compassionate, but don't be stupid.
This pandemic is going to color the future's perception of globalization. If you want a crash course on globalization, here's two:
[link] [link]. In practice, it's basically countries becoming more interdependent and relying on each other more than themselves. It does a lot of good. It makes things cheaper, for one. And it makes war a lot less likely. On the other hand though, it makes things cheaper to move a factory to say... China, where the entire factory becomes a sweatshop producing goods for pennies. Well, cheaper monetarily. There's the carbon cost of shipping the raw ingredients to China and then the finished product back to the USA. And of course, the risk of pandemic was always there. Oh, and if a country manages to become the economic center of a globalized market they're able to exhibit social control on virtually every industry and country within it, causing them to ignore its human rights violations.
I have a feeling that... globalization is going to have the view that a lot of environmentalists thought our propensity to pollute would have. "We were so short-sighted, we should have seen this coming, and because we didn't we have to live with untold consequences." It's inevitable that countries are going to become more insular. On the plus side, many industries that were outsourced will be brought back to various countries. On the downside, isolationism... leads to problems. And I mean, with many airlines very obviously going to go bankrupt, travel will be down, obviously.
Either people are going to be a lot more social after this, or a lot less. No between. And I don't mean... physically in contact with each other. I'm talking about like... online communication. When the only people you get to see are online, and all you really have to do all day is communicate with them, it will affect people. On the other side, there's definitely going to be a bigger stigma against... just close contact. Social etiquette's gonna be a little weird for awhile.
On the flipside, working from home is going to become more standard. And that might mean a few more things. A lot of what I worried about in Technocracy... might not come to pass. After all, removing someone from the internet
now, whether it's deleting an account of some kind or whatever... it would obviously have dangerous real world ramifications. I think that a lot of these big social media sites are going to reevaluate in the upcoming months, out of necessity.
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If you want a sign of hope. While there are stupid people out there, a lot of people are coming together in some way, shape, or form. Our two-party system here in the US is working together, for the first time in like... two decades. A lot of people are afraid of this pandemic, and they have reason to be; but... this is possibly the biggest preventative act in human history. Combine that with how well connected people are via the internet, and our modern medical and scientific apparatus and there is clearly hope on this one.
Things are going to be... weird for awhile. I do have a strong feeling that... instead of things going back to normal after this... we're going to be going into a "new normal." That being said, we get to determine what that normal is going to be. I will say that these aren't my concerns, but I think that I've ranted enough on this. Do your part on this one; try to keep up morale, and look to a brighter future instead of a darker today.
