I've Got A Book I Want To Discuss With You Guys · 12:17am Aug 9th, 2020
Alright. The book in question is called The Last Centurion, By John Ringo. He's actually a sci-fi author whose novels I've read and enjoyed. The Last Centurion isn't so much a sci-fi novel as it is a Twenty Minutes Into The Future Near-Apocalypse Military Campaign tale. The story takes place in a supposed near future where a combination of a mini-ice age and a global pandemic strikes the world, and due to government mishandling, things got really bad for a while. The main story is largely about an officer "Bandit Six" trying to get his troops to survive being borderline abandoned in the Middle East, then returning home and helping set the nation straight in recovering from the disaster.
Now, here comes the meat of the issue, and why I'm wanting to discuss it right now. See, the entire bit about the pandemic in this story is like reading like a Nostradamus Prophecy about the current global pandemic that was written on Opposite Day. It's one thing that a story could predict a bunch of things wrong, it's quite another to consistently predict so many things the opposite of right. In hindsight, the book is darkly hilarious about how consistently "opposite of right" it is.
Spoilers for the book below, so don't scroll down unless you've either read the book or don't intend to.
Alright, so here's the deal. The first and foremost is that the US government in this book is headed by an extremely liberal woman that I'd swear is a Strawman Substitute for Hillary Clinton. She consistently makes the wrong moves in regards to things like handling a moderately-effective vaccine that she has distributed across the country at the start of the pandemic (Sending out the vaccine to public health offices instead of hospitals, when most public health offices don't have the capacity to store these MUST KEEP REFRIGERATED BEFORE USE vaccines. Because of this mishandling, the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of doses of vaccine ended up being rendered useless across the nation. This extremely liberal president continuously claims that the people are behind her in spite of the fact that she has very clearly messed everything up, but no one can do anything about her because it's still near the start of her four-year term, and worse, she consistently ignores the warning of experts and does what she thinks is right, even when it is consistently wrong.
Instead in the real world, we've got the pandemic hitting near the end of a very conservative president's term, and while it is largely being mishandled for very different reasons, such as funding to the CDC being cut, and numerous programs that the Obama administration had put into place specifically to protect the USA in case of a global pandemic being axed by the president. Before you say it didn't happen, please be aware that this is all a matter of public record. There are other things like the fact that, less than two weeks after telling everyone that they should wear a mask, social-distance, etc, the president started treating anyone who did so like they were doing it to spite him, rather than because they were following the mandated state and federal ordinances that had been advised by the president himself. Worse, the president consistently tells Americans to do things that contradict the world's top leaders in the fields of pandemic control. Additionally, when he held rallies to drum up support for his reelection bid, all of his supporters in attendance did not follow any of the recommended guidelines, and within two weeks after, we started seeing massive upsurges of the virus, largely in states that were highly conservative. In fact, of the three states being hit hardest, Florida, Texas, and California, both Texas and Florida are heavily Red states, and in California, there's a very strong upsurge of conservative support in spite of it largely being a Blue state.
And let's talk about California for a moment. In the book, California gets hit extremely hard by the pandemic largely because a huge load of vaccines is deposited at a public health office with no way of getting them stored, and instead of taking immediate, responsible action, the liberal state government holds an extended meeting discussing options, while one guy is constantly shouting that they need to do something immediately because the vaccines are thawing and going bad as they speak. By the time someone steps in and takes care of it, it's been hours and the vaccines have largely thawed and gone bad in the hot summer sun of California.
Instead, in reality, we're seeing that the government of the state of California is strongly urging the populace to follow the basic quarantine procedures, but we're seeing a lot of people ignoring those warnings and do things like go to crowded beaches, restaurants, and other social gatherings, causing the numbers of infected to skyrocket. The government of California is doing its best, but it's largely the irresponsible actions of its citizens that are causing the state to have such high numbers.
Let's talk about New York. In the book, because the virus started largely in California, there was plenty of time and warning before the pandemic hit them, the liberal Governor acted responsibly and ignored the orders of the ultra-liberal president, and instead choosing to do something that, while liberal, was also extremely well thought out and responsible and ensured that the entire state was one of the success stories of the pandemic, and in spite of the narrator being pretty conservative, admitted he'd gladly vote for that governor if he ran for president.
In reality, New York, especially NYC, was hit first and hardest, well before the virus was well understood by the general public, and a ton of people have died. The liberal governor of New York has done his best but has had to work with a president who, candor forces me to admit, is extremely paranoid about the idea that said governor may by planning to run against him in the next election in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and New York is working to improve in spite of the president and his administration, rather than because of him.
Next, let's talk about the virus. In the book, the virus is a fast and hard-hitting super-flu that is also airborne, and the main reason it spreads is that you get hit with it, then there's a brief lull where you're feeling a bit better so you go out to try and get help, then it kicks into high gear. It's highly contagious and there's not much most people can do to keep from getting infected. There's no quick and easy test to find out if you have it, and it hits so fast such a test would be useless. It's a mutation of an existing illness, and there are vaccines that having varying levels of effectiveness, ranging from the one that's handed out to the general public and only has something like a 60% chance of working, to an experimental one that was initially first only given to the military that's over 90% effective. The virus has a very high mortality rate (Above 50% without a vaccine, if I remember right) No one tries to make the virus a political thing, but instead, everyone treats it as it is, a threat to every human being on the planet. However, the virus itself is fully understood very quickly, everyone quickly knows and understands how it works, everyone believes it is real, and the main reason it spreads as fast and as hard as it does is basically due to liberal ineptitude and the airborne and highly contagious nature of the virus. The one good thing was, once you caught the virus, it was over and done. You were immune if you survived.
Instead, in reality, you've got a virus that basically sleeps in your system for two weeks before hitting you, and you're contagious nearly the entire time. It isn't a flu (Seriously, as a former essential worker in the medical field, I promise you that it isn't just the flu), but closer to a mutated variation of SARS. There's no current vaccine, but one is being developed. There are tests that can detect the virus so you know to quarantine and get treatment well before it fully hits you. The problem is, it was not well understood from the start, and a lot of people get sick and even die due to operating under old and incorrect information ("It's just a flu", "it only kills people who are old or infirm", etc). Worse, there are people who refuse to believe it exists, even when they get infected and are dying from multiple organ failures caused by the virus. Some people are getting sick and dying from it because they were trying to "prove" it was a scam, intentionally did things that would get them infected, and then discovered to their shock that it was very, very real. And I'm talking healthy people, like a 30-year-old woman with no prior health problems, or a guy in his 20s who went to a "COVID Party" where people went to see if they'd get infected, then was put on a ventilator two weeks later (His last words were "I thought it was a joke"), and died three days later. Again, as a former essential worker with access to information from people who actually know what the virus is, I can promise you that unless you're working off of the current information from the World Health Organization or CDC, you're probably wrong, potentially fatally so. Age and preexisting health conditions can be contributors to mortality, but the main thing that kills you seems to be virus load: The more you're exposed to the virus, the greater the chance of mortality or permanent harm to the body. The less virus there is, the less of it there is to multiply, so the less of it there is to wreck your body. Logically, it makes a lot of sense. So, the people who take maximum steps to avoid contamination are statistically the least likely to die from COVID-19 since they've had the least amount of contact with the virus. Odds are, they'll get a relatively mild case. Meanwhile, people who take no precautions and get exposed to a wide number of vectors have a much higher chance of either dying or being damaged for life in some way. This is why a lot of essential workers are dying: They're exposed to the largest number of people with the virus. Perhaps worst of all, people are politicalizing taking basic precautions against the virus, and because of that, we're seeing large numbers of infected in states that are highly conservative. I live in New Mexcio, with a Republican governor, but she's one of the few in her party that refuse to treat the virus as something political, and instead treating it for what it is: A threat to everyone. Because of that, we're surrounded by crisis states without being one ourselves. There's also the illusion of the mortality rate. COVID-19's current mortality rate is not 1%. It's closer to 5%, last I checked, but it's hard to get an exact percentage right now. Doesn't sound like a lot, right? But 5% of 7 billion is 350 million, more than the population of the USA. And you can catch the virus multiple times, and each time you catch it, it'll have a higher chance of killing you. So, let's say that after the first go around, it goes and infects everyone in the world again. Of the remaining 6,650,000,000, only 5 percent die, that's another 332,500,000 of the global population, that's around the population of the USA. And it could keep going over and over again. We could potentially lose the equivalent of the population of a large 1st world country every time the virus makes its rounds if it is left uncontrolled. But the real threat is the danger to infrastructure: There does not exist a single country in the world that can handle the majority of its citizens being sick, and we're seeing the states being hit hardest literally running out of hospital beds due to how many people are catching COVID-19. There also aren't enough doctors to go around. And that's the real threat: The current death rate is largely based on being able to receive medical care. If you can't get medical care, your odds of dying from a severe case of COVID-19 goes up drastically.
Sorry, a bit of a rant there. Again, as someone who has worked in the medical field and has had access to the actual facts from day one, the misinformation that is consistently killing people who'd otherwise have lived is my biggest pet peeve right now.
Anyway, I wanted to get this off of my chest, because it keeps striking me as darkly hilarious that a book that predicted the global pandemic years ahead of time, and predicted that government and social mismanagement would cause it to become far worse than it was, consistently managed to predict correct outcomes, but consistently got the causes of those outcomes so perfectly wrong as to be a backward prophecy.
Wow thanks for the new info. I knew the virus could be bad, but now I understand how bad it could get even better. I'm glad you got away from the heart of the mess alive. As for the book what a thing it is, and I think it's funny is such a blackly funny way.
You see, that is the positivity we need in such dark times.
Never change
OMG YOU'RE HERE!
https://m.Anyways this videos title is a bit click baity, but I thought it was interesting.
First, it's a book. It's a good book. I've read it twice. It is also a science-fiction book, not a book of prophecy. Ringo points out things that can go wrong, that will probably go wrong, and naturally includes a lot of straw-man arguments in the process because otherwise it would be fifty pounds of paper and nobody would make it all the way through. (The world's a complicated place)
First, the bad news. We live in a world where science has alllllmost reached the point where custom germs and viruses can be printed. Fire up the computer, print out the right pairs on your 3-d microscopic printer, and you have Cholora or Diptheria or whatever else you have a template of to print. Pull up an editing package, stack ACTG proteins the way you want, and any wanna-be terrorist who can order stuff off Amazon can print their own custom killer virus. It hits close to home, because I've got a cousin in the business in Washington, and the new National Bio and Agri Defense Facility is literally being built in my city.
Now for the worst news: People are dumb, and people high in the food chain for pandemic response are still people. Worse, the press is made up of people too. Every single point in this has been cranked to both ends of the spectrum by the press and idiots.
-We should shut down the entire economy and everybody hide in their basements until a vaccine is distributed/we should ignore the disease and carry out our daily lives.
-Masks should be required by law/Masks do no good in public
-HcQ can cure this all/HcQ will kill you if you take it (All the way to Fish Tank Cleaner couple)
-The disease has a 10% fatality rate/COVID has a lower death rate than the flu
-Trump is to blame for all of the US deaths/Trump was taking action on this even while the Dems were impeaching him
-We're going to need ten times the ventilators we have to survive/putting people on vents is killing them
-We should release most prisoners so they don't catch it/... Ok, there's no good other end here
To be honest, the only person to do a worse job of describing the current situation and what needs to be done than Trump is Doctor Fauci. How in the world did he get to that position and *stay* there for the last few decades? Oh, I take it back. The White House press corps has managed to mangle whatever sanity you can get out of the daily briefing and turn it even crazier. Or maybe we should count Governor Cuomo top in the mess for overhyping his state's need for vents until he got an unused hospital ship, then shoveling COVID+ patients into retirement homes where it went through the vulnerable population like wildfire.
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oh, you reminded me of a story i read:
a government agency wanted to educate people about computer viruses. so they made a website full of viruses.
ACTUAL FULLY FUNCTIONAL VIRUS PROGRAMS that anyone could ACTUALLY USE!
Homemade virus? How about the "Black Tide Rising" series?
Starts with "Under a graveyard sky." by John Ringo
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-We should shut down the entire economy and everybody hide in their basements until a vaccine is distributed/we should ignore the disease and carry out our daily lives.
Both extremes aren't good, but quarantine and lockdown were clearly working, since the number of people infected per day during the initial parts of the lockdown was very low, compared to the catastrophic rise we're seeing now. Going back into lockdown is looking more and more like the only way we're going to stop the rapid rise, due to the fact that there are just so many people who are refusing to be responsible.
-Masks should be required by law/Masks do no good in public
Given that almost every state has put into effect a public health order that everyone out in public should wear a mask, and the states that don't, or were late to implement one, are facing huge upsurges in COVID-19, I feel the facts speak for themselves.
-HcQ can cure this all/HcQ will kill you if you take it (All the way to Fish Tank Cleaner couple)
Trump has repeatedly said that he's got a good feeling/gut feeling about Hydryoxychloroquine, but given that he isn't a doctor, pharmacist, virologist, or anything else that would qualify him, his gut is about as trustworthy as mine, especially since most studies done have either been inconclusive or getting questionable results. HcQ is used to treat some illnesses, but unless the doctor prescribes it, people shouldn't be taking it. As to the Fish Tank Cleaner couple, they're up there with the people who either drank or injected bleach after Trump made an offhand comment to one of his staff members during a press conference. It does more to show the blind, unreasoning worship that a some people put into even the slightest comment from Trump that anything else.
-The disease has a 10% fatality rate/COVID has a lower death rate than the flu
5% is around right, but as I said, that's with competent medical care being available. The biggest problem is the virus infecting so many people that it causes it to be logistically impossible for every person who needs treatment to receive it. There's also the fact that, unlike the flu, odds are around 50% that it will permanently handicap you in some way. Additionally, we're seeing that COVID does things like cause blood clots in even healthy people, along with other effects that weren't known 3-4 months ago.
-Trump is to blame for all of the US deaths/Trump was taking action on this even while the Dems were impeaching him
Trump shares some blame on this, but as I said, a lot of this is falling to people not doing what the experts have advised. I mean, Trump can have all the rallies that he likes, it doesn't mean that you have to go without a mask or pack yourselves in like sardines in the middle of a pandemic. While it was irresponsible for him to hold those rallies without taking minimum precautions, it was far more irresponsible for people to attend them without taking the minimum precautions. He has taken some actions that have been to the benefit of the people (Promoting, and as of today extending, the CARES act so that people who lost their jobs due to COVID-19, myself included, can pay the bills, the economic stimulus checks, etc), but he's been as much a bane as a boon to the efforts against the pandemic from a purely neutral standpoint. We had him stating that he was sending ventilators to Blue states to help that mysteriously being delayed, as well as delaying aid to states that were Blue and antagonistic to him, including New York for the reasons I stated above. At a time when all of America should be coming together, he was seen to be engaging in petty behavior that risked the lives of American citizens, something he ought to be held accountable for. He's the president of all 50 states, not just the ones he likes.
-We're going to need ten times the ventilators we have to survive/putting people on vents is killing them
Ventilators are a tricky thing, as the people who end up on the ventilators are those with the most severe cases. A person isn't, and shouldn't, be put on a ventilator unless it is necessary, but the fact of the matter is, if someone is put on a ventilator for COVID-19, it's literally because they're unable to breathe unassisted and will die without it. If we're needing more ventilators, it's because we're getting more severe cases than the current supply can meet.
-We should release most prisoners so they don't catch it/... Ok, there's no good other end here
The good end there, or at least the reasonable one, would be to greatly increase the precautions taken to prevent infection in prisons because it isn't just the inmates at risk, you've got the guards, and cleaning staff, as well as any other faculty there. If they get sick, their families and friends get sick, and the outbreak spreads from there. In my county, we have a prison and processing center, and those put together have had double the number of infected people compared to the rest of the county. I had a relative who ended up spending a night in jail due to a DUI charge (He refused the breathalyzer test, so whether he was or not is questionable, but the guy was mourning the recent loss of his wife to lung cancer) early in the outbreak, and he said that they were taking zero precautions in the jail at that time. He was lucky not to have caught it, but the outbreak was still relatively mild in my county at the time. Given how many people in the prisons in my state have turned up positive results in the two months to follow, I believe it.
Look, I'm not a liberal or conservative, I'm a moderate. Maybe because of that, I've got a clearer view of what's going on without being blinded by propaganda on either side. The thing is, Canada is doing a better job of handling the virus that we are, they've got a population roughly equal to ours, and with the majority of their population density concentrated along the US/Canada border, they were in a worse position for a wildfire pandemic than the USA is, but they're winning the fight while we're losing it, and anyone watching the news from all sides can tell you that it's as much the fault of the citizens as it is the people in charge. Trump can say that he likes masks or hates them, but it is ultimately the people who decide what they should do, and we're seeing a lot of Americans deciding to act like spoiled, petulant children, rather than responsible adults.
More to the point, back in 2002, we had the SARS pandemic. During that time, we had a conservative Republican in the White House, G. W. Bush. Bush wasn't a genius, by most accounts, but he was smart enough to know what he didn't know, and he listened to the advice of the experts, and did what they recommended. Because of that, we barely saw SARS, and within two years, SARS had literally ceased to exist, with zero cases worldwide. It doesn't matter if it was a Republican or Democrat in the White House, it just mattered whether or not they were competent.
From an objective standpoint, Trump hasn't proven himself to be very competent. Trump has put up a border wall that the Mexican side has contests to see who can climb it the fastest, with the record being well under a minute. This is after having professional rock climbers test it and saying to Trump that it was unclimbable. We've got video clips of chunks of it getting knocked down by strong winds on the border. The man spent billions of taxpayer dollars on a wall that can't keep people out and can't stay upright in rough weather. He's made Twitter posts about how anyone who takes a vacation shouldn't have their job when he's spent about four months out of the last three years on various retreats and golfing trips.
Trump has made numerous claims that no president in history has had as hard a term of president as he has, even though we've had presidents who were in charge during literal wars, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the British army burning down Washington DC, and even assassination attempts. Teddy Roosevelt once got shot in the chest and literally just ignored it and gave a speech over an hour long. The worst Trump has had as president is just a bad year due to a global pandemic that coincided with an election year and gravely reduced poll numbers.
if you wanna get more from Mr. Ringo try his Black Tide Rising series.
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Maybe im just a rambling fool but...
I, for the most part try to be a neutral, with a decent lean twordards conservative. Partly because the liberals are even attacking their own people for a JOKE they made more than a decade ago...
But still I try to see both sides as equal, i fail sometimes... at this point i kinda hate lables like feminist, liberal, conservative, democrat, gay, straight... alot of people are using them as an excuse to be offended or angry instead of seeing the bigger picture and solving the issue at its root.
I guess it's easy to be angry at someone, who you THINK has the power to fix your problems without any negative consequences...
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- this points at problem of our (ultra)hierarchical behavior, and realistically into more-NOT-working-than-working development/upbringing ... of humans.
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Here is a grain of salt, from a humble fast food worker nerd who likes tv, movies, video games and TECHNOLOGY!... and HATES how most news and media operates nowadays, not that they can help it in the end...
NONE OF THIS IS POINTED AT ANYONE IN PITICULAR... except maybe myself...
Maybe I'm just an idiot like the 'rest'... whatever that means. Maybe im wrong... maybe im just ignorantly hopefull... but, I'm not going to pretend I'm smarter than everyone else, to pretend like I know how to solve problems that people with twice my IQ have tried to solve, and they still couldn't find a way to make everyone happy.
I feel like most people are smart enough to think for themselves... when they aren't being told that unless they think a certain way they are wrong. But then the few that aren't smart enough and/or willing to think things through go and screw everything up, causing 'society' to have to force a mindset. Spending freedom in order to preserve general safety and comfort.
I feel like some/alot of us forget that most of life is personal preference, It is opinion, it is experience. No one thinks EXACTLY the way you do. I think Most people aren't spoiled, but the few spoiled ones are the ones we hear from the most. (news, Hollywood, people with the time and money to make videos talking about these things, etc...)
I feel like most people are intelligent, but idiots are often loud. I feel like most humans are just fine living their lives the best they can, but when one screws up, 'they' think its everyone's fault...
I hate it when I hear someone blame humanity as a whole, as if they know every single person in the world, as if they have traveled the world, as if they know how I think... We are doing the best we can with what we have. History often only tells of the bad things that happened, and the bad people that caused them.
You hear people bring up the bad things their government and law enforcement does all the time, but what about the good things. What about the lives that were saved, the lives that could continue in comfort and peace.... that stuff doesnt bring in money, and news and media are still companies. Companies with employees that have bills that need paid just like you... we are in this together, all you have to do is be the best YOU you can be and the world will take care of itself as long as it can. Nothing lasts forever. And just like you can't WIN forever... you can't LOSE forever either. Its up to you to stack the cards in your favor, just try to do so without taking from someone elses deck.
You are not a slave, the services that you supply when you are at your job are not part of an evil system, its people giving eachother what they want in return for something. Money isnt the route of all evil. There was 'evil' (selfishness and disregaurd for others) long before currentcy was a thing. The problem is these people are in the vast minority, most people just want to live life without suffering. But suffering is a part of life, it will happen... and when it does, that's when blame happens, regardless if they are correct in blaming them or not, someone HAS to take the blame, otherwise we have no outlet for our anger and grief. Eventually we realize our folly in blame but by then its usually too late, the damage is done.
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- this is (part) of anarchist views - we become (were forced to be?) oversensitive to orders from ones we assume to be above us ...and those 'above' us abuse it badly, systematically (so, there IS something common among humans). Some Internet manuscript I found resonating, and in sense giving hope in this ..'human nature' thing. But .... it must be practicized honestly, and honesty is not very common among ...humans surrounding us.
- but end result of forced actions of this badly organized human mass still exist. Humans may be different, but there are some common failure modes. So, yes, it must be explained in greater detail.
- yeahhh .. this is why I talk about this generation thing. It sort of hard to make humans switch their behavior IF their behavior linked to their social (and economical) surroundings AND their surroundings in some sense crashed down :( It takes enormous effort to
1) Realize it
2) try to find way out
3) attempt at making it out (up)
4) Control IF you are really going up (in desired direction) or not
5) Rethink whole idea IF it doesn't work in your case
6) repeat until new state is stable.
For all this humans must be .. a bit of everyday social scientists, and most of them not ..so ...... (collective head -> wall.)
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mask-shaming something on 'social change' I found randomly ....
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Fair enough on some points, others I could discuss. I will review this comment in more detail later, after sleep and breakfast.
But I will say, I feel I have missed my own point. I have a habit of not making myself clear and veering off topic. I just post whats in my head and it ends up being chaos. Like I said, grain of salt.
5332105 Um, I believe that actually happened at one time back in the late 80s. The Commodore Amiga had a whole rack of viruses at that time.
5332218 In short, Pandora's Box is humanity's default setting. "Hey, a box marked 'Do Not Open.' Let's open it."
I was hoping to discuss a book I liked...
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Or ill forget...