The Predictable Pyres of India

The pyres of India are burning on overtime. Each day is a new record of people dead or infected. Battles rage over medical oxygen. People reportedly die in the streets. Things aren’t going very well, to say the least…

It’s a travesty. A tragedy. Naturally. But I have a hard time feeling sad about it. I find sympathy in short supply for the beleaguered Indians. Because this development isn’t surprising to me. Not one bit.

Seeing as the memory of the public, and the internet even more so, is spotty and inconsistent at best, let’s remind ourselves of a few of the scenes we’ve seen out of India for the past few months. Religious holidays attended by tens of thousands. Bathing in the Ganges, as just one example. Or why not look at the ongoing farming protests outside New Delhi, that have been crowded and tumultuous since September. Or the sometimes raucus demonstrations against violence on women.

If there’s one painfully apparent lesson to all these occurrences, it’s that it has proven near impossible to instill a practice of social distancing upon the subcontinent. For practical, financial, religious, habitual, and demographical reasons, surely. But also for a lack of leadership and discipline. I loathe to use the s-word, but it seems clear that India has failed to adapt to the current pandemic. And now, the country is paying for it.

And all the while, the Bharatiya Janata Party, with prime minister Narendra Modi channeling the same wavelengths as Bolsanaro or Trump, beats its chest and proclaim the pandemic defeated through sheer force of cultural virtue.

It’s easy to condemn, from up here in a Norse ivory tower, as a privileged westerner. It’s easy to judge when we here have the opportunity and capacity to properly socially distance until the vaccines are doled out sufficiently. But no matter how easy it is to sneer at foreign social norms that have been unable to adapt to a new world order, the facts stay the same. India is on its knees. On Friday, India sported nearly 400’000 daily cases. Nearly half a million people in just one, single, solitary, day. And those are confirmed cases, mind you. I imagine there being quite a few unconfirmed ones as well in a nation as financially and socially diverse as India.

And I have not a tear to shed. I’m sorry, maybe I’m callous, but I can’t. Because from what we’ve seen out of that nation, this seems naught but fair. No; people don’t deserve to die in droves because they’re unable or unwilling to distance themselves from each other. No; people don’t deserve to die because their elected leadership is a criminally belligerent nationalistic mess. But what do you expect? The virus doesn’t care whether you’re too poor to socially distance, too pious to avoid public gatherings, too easily fooled to elect capable leadership, or too uninformed to undertake proper precautions. Those are all relative terms which an absolute plague doesn’t give a fig about. And if it can get you, it will get you, regardless of your finances, education, religion, or intelligence.

To add insult to injury, with every unnecessary or easily preventable infection, the state of the war on Covid deteriorates with new mutations, creating a steeper challenge for governments and doctors and nurses to stop the spread. So, not only is it a tragedy that Indians are dying en masse, but also that by doing so, they’re putting everyone else at greater risk too.

So in lieu of sadness or sympathy, I feel frustration and anger. And it doesn’t matter if that’s unfair or cruel or mean. Because the plague’s running rampant in India. The implications of which are thousands of dead, and an increased risk for the rest of the world. The reasons for which is a population of people incapable or unwilling to take precautions. Which in turn can be traced back to a government or society that has proven utterly unprepared to handle and unwilling to adapt to handling a pestilence like this. Whoever you want to blame, be it Modi’s and the BJP’s leadership, the socially dependent and tight-knit communities, the dense demographical and socioeconomical circumstances, or the recklessness of an uninformed public, the results are the same. Dead people, and a biological wild-fire out of control. All of which we could see coming a mile away.

/Sebastian Lindberg 5/4-2021

The Vaccine Roadclot

Vaccines: The single-handed reason that saying “bless you” when you hear someone sneeze no longer signals a genuine fear that that person might drop dead any moment. A scientific marvel that slowly but surely, disease by bloody disease, mutation by soddin’ mutation, is turning the human race immune to the vehement embrace of Grandfather Nurgle.

Vaccines are neat! Especially so one year into the Covid plague, with vaccines on the horizon that promise a return to social interactions, movie theatres, and late nights at the pub.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, as of time of writing, Thailand begrudgingly agrees to continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine, after shortly joining a slew of nations that have halted the Astra inoculations. Just as there’s an acute vaccine shortage all ’round the globe. Just as China is setting its diplomatic hooks into populations and nations with offers of its own Sinovac vaccine.

There’s got to be a good reason to cease vaccinations though, right? Rumours abound that the British AstraZeneca vaccine is causing blood clots, rumours that Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Iceland, (and just ahead of publications also Sweden), and briefly Thailand, have all taken to heart. But according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), there’s no reason to believe that the 30-some cases of blood clots among some 5 million Astra-vaccinated people in the EU is anything but a coincidence, and just represents the normal amount of blood clots among the general population. But why then has at least (at the time of writing) nine countries world wide halted the use of the vaccine if the clotting is perfectly natural?

Let us take a look at a few what-ifs to sus out what to make of this controversy. And to do that, let us make some working assumptions. From conversations with doctors, I am lead to understand that stage three trials of vaccines are usually composed of some 30’000 people. Once these 30k have been vaccinated, you document the found side-effects and what level of immunity the vaccine affords, and presto it’s off to the races.

Potential circumstances #1: It’s as the EMA and WHO says. The reported events of blood clots have nothing to do with the Astra vaccine. It’s just stupidity-hysteria. If you don’t have a pharmacological degree or an administrative responsibility for human civilization to survive a deadly and stupefying plague; trust the authorities and shut up.

Potential circumstances #2: AstraZeneca found among their 30k testers the possibility that the vaccine could cause blood clots. Which means, that eventuality should have been on the package. Which means that Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Belgium, and all the rest knew the risks. Bitching about it now seems immature. There’re always risks with pharmaceuticals. All medical drugs are basically poison. They’re just hopefully the right kind of poison at the right time. In such a scenario; chin up and shut up and get on with the program you reactionary twits.

Potential circumstances #3: The blood clots are caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the odds are real fucking low, seeing as they didn’t even show up during testing. If a side effect is to reliably show up during stage 3 trials, the odds of them occurring must be higher than 1 in 30’000 cases. According to the data that this hysteria is based on, the odds are 30 in 5’000’000 of clots occuring. In shortened form, that’s 1 in 166’667 cases. Obviously, it’s possible for Astra to have missed that eventuality in QA, considering it’s more than five times rarer than the least probably side effect that you can expect their trial runs to find.

Potential circumstance #3.5: Okay, we need to keep in mind that people are absolute garbage at internalizing statistics. We’re shit at it. Just plain suck. Confirmation bias, a lack of perspective, and an inability to understand numbers over like 20, makes us woefully ill-equipped to accept long odds and probability. I mean, if we were any good at it, there’d be no money in gambling. But there is! There’s a metric shit-ton of money in gambling. Which would indicate what I’ve been saying: That people are incapable of understanding basic statistics.

So what when you have a vaccine, a vaccine that’s supposed to save human civilization from a slow smother, and the idea is that you’re going to vaccinate some 70% of the world’s population, you’re going to come across some weird effects. Inevitably. Even the really, really, really, really, really, REALLY, unlikely ones. It makes a statistical impossibility a practical inevitability. And that’s fine. It’s okay if thirty people have complications if it immunizes 3.9 million people (seeing as the Astra vaccine is reportedly like 78%-proof) from a deadly disease. How deadly? Well, assuming that all 3.9 million of those people would otherwise catch the bug, it would save 86’848 people. And that’s not counting all the people that those 3.9 million might pass the bug on to. So what we’re weighing here is 30 lives against over 86’000 lives. That’s not even a contest for any responsible government.

In which case, stop being such fucking reactionary babies, you immature shits, and cease your virtue signalling during a global crisis, please okay thanks and bye.

Potential circumstance #4 (the least likely one): AstraZeneca has lied about their stage 3 trial results, and there’re a bunch of problematic side effects that their vaccine can cause. And if so, fuck ’em. Burn AstraZeneca at the stake of public opinion. Chase them off across the English Channel and let them peddle their poison to the politically proven pinhead population there.

Look, things aren’t ideal. The world is not an ideal place, even before the Wuhan Virus gummed up the works. We’re tired of staying at home, we’re sick of social distancing, and we’re fed up with restrictions. Even we who aren’t stupid enough to still believe it’s all a hoax. Everyone wants this nightmare to end. And the solutions aren’t always going to be gentle or nice. The AstraZeneca vaccine is proving itself to be a problematic one, seeing as it can cause a pretty rough flu reaction (especially among those that have already had Covid-19). But it’s still better than the alternative. And even though there’re plenty of different vaccines out there (Moderna, Pfizer, Sinovac, Sputnik V, etc.) everyone’s raging for doses.

We’re not spoiled for choice right now. We need to take what we can get to make it through this global crisis. And we can either whine like little bitches about our world not being perfect, or we can nut up and shut up and get on with the program. You can either be a trooper and do your part by getting vaccinated if/and/or when one is made available to you, or you can be a Belgian baby about it and whine that someone once told you that maybe there’s a statistical impossibly small chance that doing your diligence could maybe be dangerous to you personally. It’s your call.

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/3-2021

A Smoke Screen Face Mask

Face masks. The fresh new fashion trend coming out of a new world order of germ spread prevention. A little piece of gauze over your mouth (and sometimes even nose). Putting people back on the streets and keeping tailors in business since the spring of 2020. An aegis for the public to hide behind as the angel of respiratory distress passes along them. A sign of caution, respect, and consideration for your fellow man. At least, that’s the sales pitch.

It’s a curious fad, one born out of fear and paranoia. And sadly, maybe it’s a fad that’s about as useful for public health as nipples on body armour.

You see, the medical community is split on the practical relevance of public face masks. Despite the fact that many countries (such as France, Germany, Turkey, Austria, etc.) have made the masks mandatory in public areas, the World Health Organization has been… luke warm on the use of masks (which, granted, they may be pushed to change in the near future (note that The Guardian is not a trusted source of news)). Sometimes arguing that effective face masks should be reserved for health care professionals who are more exposed than the random pedestrian, and at other times arguing that the public just don’t know how to use a mask properly. But still, countries are coming out in favour of the public covering their noses and mouths, regardless of whether the individual is sick or not. To make matters even muddier, studies and criticism have come out on both sides. Some mean that masks are better than nothing, others that they only supply an ignorant population with a false sense of safety, which may turn out worse for them than them cowering in fright in their homes.

So… why exactly is this such a big thing? What’s the huff in the midst of the global economy tanking and death tolls rising? Why would governments push for the public to engage with a dwindling supply of safety equipment best left to professionals? Or why would our leaders try to convince the public that this particular brand of tin foil hat will save them? Well, I believe I just gave a credible answer in a sentence above. The economy is failing… and governments around the world are desperate to salvage it. Or at least prolong its suffering for a few more months.

But who are they kidding. The economy has been failing for quite a while. Years. Decades. Perpetually kept on life support so that it can truck on for a little longer. Make the powers that be a little more money. Before it finally passes violently into that good night. Exponential growth, speculative investments, housing bubbles, trade wars, resource shortages… even if you don’t want to admit that the economy has been terminally ill for a very long time, you should at least be able to agree that it has been a very sickly beast, beaten to within an inch of its life by a fever pitch of greed.

Its death throes have been a long time coming…

Wait, hold on a second, what the fuck does the inherent unsustainability of the global market have to do with Wuhan Virus face mask usage?! Well… nation states tend to want to keep turning. They want to squeeze the last toothpaste out of the tube. That would be a sure-fire way to explain why countries, from Germany to the US and China, are eager to get people back out onto the streets. Out to spend. Out to generate taxes and profits. Why else would they jump onto face mask obligations without solid scientific support for it? Why would your government want you to become infatuated with a protective measure that might not actually protect you very well? Why would they push out scavenged mouth-curtains when they damned well know that the general population neither has the discipline or the education to use these masks with any amount of efficiency?

Look, face masks have their uses. They have the potential to save plenty of front line lives. But efficient ones aren’t made from your last-year-collection of sun-flower tops. Your old shirts were never woven to be able to keep micro-particles out. And even if they were, such masks, able to withstand the onslaught of germs, only stay good for a little while. And both you and I know damned well that you’re not going to keep cannibalising your wardrobe every damned time you intend to go out. The WHO, the absolute human authority on pathological prevention, make it clear that face masks are only a truly effective foil in the hands of trained professionals. And lets face it; most of you out there are neither trained or professionals.

True, we don’t rightly know exactly how Covid19 works. It seems like a weird bug, supposedly leaving millions unaffected, demolishing our ability to smell for some stupid reason, and it’s even under debate whether or not surviving the infection actually makes us immune to it, like what any damned other viral malady does. Even the actual lethality of the contagion is still up for debate. But that’s no damned reason to start praying to Asclepius or any other such superstitious nonsense. And yes, putting your faith, you health, in the hands of a flimsy piece of bargain-bin fabric is tantamount to making a sacrifice Dhanvantari. Because these face masks that are supposed to save us all? They’re at best a fickle rampart, useless on their own, and at worst not much better than a fire-extinguisher as protection when cliff-diving into a volcano.

Look, I get it. I want to get back to the way things were too. I want to go out, have a pint with the mates at the pub, sit in a park, go to the cinema… Shit, I had a line on Yusuf Islam playing live this summer! I haven’t seen my special someone in four weeks due to quarantine! But no matter how much I want to get back to the way things were, I don’t want to put my neighbours’ lives at risk to do so (a priority that our governments just don’t share).

So; face masks. Sure… use them all you like. If you use them right, they might even do you some good. But they’re a compliment. Not a compensation that would let you go on as if nothing’s changed. Remember that obliging you to wear one is just a government gambit to get you back to generating taxes; a gambit that makes you and your loves ones’ health play second fiddle to the bottom line. If you’re not sick, the face mask alone probably won’t save you. And if you’ve got symptoms, you should stay the fuck home anyway, which means you’re not gonna need your massacred summer dress covering your face. Because if the flu was as easy to stop as just to stick your nose into your shirt, I’m thinking we wouldn’t be in this position to begin with…

/Sebastian Lindberg 18/5-2020

Just let them have more Kool-Aid

Quarantine’s rough on everyone. Jobs are lost, people are getting the jitters staying at home, and mental health is even harder to maintain when you’re locked up inside than it was before. But Social Distancing seems to be working to slow the spread, even if it’s not nearly enough for some health care services around the world.

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how things could get worse. Unless you’re living in the Fragmented States of America. Then, over the weekend, it got real easy to imagine how things could get worse, as the most belligerent parts of the nation brought guns to a epidemiological fight.

All across the US, people took to their cars and their MAGA shirts and hats to close down their cities and towns in an effort to protest and threaten their leaders to cease the shut-down in effect. Some even brought their obscene automatic rifles on display on the steps of civic buildings, chanting that not even a global pandemic and international health crisis would stand in the way of their corn-syrup-soaked privileges. In Denver, Colorado, it even went so far that the already beleaguered health worker professionals had to leave their posts to perform a silent counter-protest; blocking the Trump-fanatics in their rage-filled, slow-moving cavalcades.

Nurses and doctors who labour day and night to stem the tide had to go on strike to take a stand against the most putrid people of the Republic. That is absolutely staggering.

“Give me Liberty or give me Covid-19”, one plaque in Olympia, Washington, said. “Freedom or Death”, another one cried.

Okay then. Sure. These bible-humping, Trump-totting, ignoble ignoramuses can have it. It is just a shame that the Wuhan Virus isn’t lethal enough to plausibly make a dent in their numbers. Or discriminating enough to target these gaps in the gene pool. If people want to make themselves a part of the problem, then let them. I’m liberal enough to see the philosophical virtue in letting people put themselves at whatever risk they want. You can’t force people to not become part of the problem. All you can do in such circumstance is to also treat them as part of the problem…

Deny people health care if they won’t follow quarantine protocol. The US has already proven that it has no inherent problem with letting people die on the doorsteps of hospitals, and that its health care administrations are woefully unprepared to meet this challenge. I am sure that the insurance industry would just absolutely love to void a whole lot of flimsy insurance claims because the claimants have disobeyed the stay-home ordinances of many states. Cordon these cretin off from all the horrified masses that prefer not to subject their health services to back-breaking pressure. With any luck, the stress of having broken their contract with their government will send these profanely armed death-cultists and Rapture-chanters into a mindless frenzy and kill each other off.

You think I’m being too harsh? What we have here is a sizeable minority of the population that have turned ignorance and indignant rage into a revered virtue. Galvanized by a criminal and unconscionable president. These creatures are a threat to every single other being that comes close to them. As if their evangelical fanaticism wasn’t bad enough. As if their armaments and love for The Gun wasn’t bad enough. As if their rage and stupidity weren’t bad enough. Now they are on the verge of taking up arms against their elected leaders just because they want to make themselves carriers of a potentially lethal, nation-breaking virus…

Is it really I who am too harsh when I think that a vast majority of the US population would be better off without them? Am I the one being too harsh when I think the world would be better off without them? I am humanist and liberal enough to see the ethical problem of just smothering them like the political wild-fires that they are, but here we have a circumstance where they want to expose themselves and their loved ones to a decimation. To me, it seems like a problem that comes with its own solution.

Sure, the virus isn’t all that lethal. But its lethality increases with obesity, nicotine use, underlying health concerns, and when official health guidelines get ignored. Maybe Lady Luck and her a-romantic companion Statistical Probability would be on our side this time.

Of course, we would never be that lucky. No excommunication is going to happen. If they have to, I bet Jared Kushner and the Orange House would even use their “own federal medical reserves” to save a good portion of their precious base. No, with so many military grade guns in so many belligerent and angry hands, with white supremacist support from an orange despot and his converted political establishment, with a soft-core plague running rampant and supply shortages abound, with overworked government staff and idle hands among an insanely armed population, odds are instead high of insurrection. Civil war. Just like what the Orange Hydra has insinuated calls for from his ivory throne. Just like all the great Empires of Earth’s days passed, so do the Discordant States of America seem to be fated. In fire and blood, and not a clean sweep.

Either way, all us international onlookers can do is to by proxy experience all the shame that the ruling minority of the US seem completely alien to feel on their own, and to keep face-palming our way through the new millennium.

/Sebastian Lindberg 20/4-2020

The Expendable Essentials

Under lock and key. Seems a fitting way to sum up the collective policy of the western world in handling the spread of the Wuhan Virus. Shut down, stay indoors, close down anything but the life support functions of society. Embed within people the urgency of Social Distancing. Effectively kick the ladder out from under the spreading disease. Cut off the ways of transmission. Which seems like a plausible strategy, if we’re to judge from the South Korean and Singapore examples.

While the Wuhan Virus in most cases just presents like a mild cold, or even asymptomatic, it most definitely has lethal potential. Mostly to the old. Or those that have already compromised their health, like smokers. But also, strangely enough, to some of our youngest, whose immune system seems to be sent into complete overdrive as a response to the disease.

So, to protect our eldest from this new threat, the world closes down. Borders are shut. Travel is restricted. Events and venues, ranging from festivals to restaurants to retail and hotels, are shut down. All to prevent the spread. Public gatherings are outlawed, with Germany and the UK leading the charge by limiting congregations of more than two people by threat of fines. The quarantine is nearly universal. Global. People should stay at home, work from home or lose their jobs, not see each other, and just hold on until the flu passes.

But there’re exceptions, aren’t there? There are always exceptions. Just as the general population is asked and required to follow social distancing guidelines, another set of people are demanded to break protocol. Our doctors, nurses, transportation workers, infrastructure technicians, in some countries also our teachers. All of whom are exempted from the sometimes draconian measures of Social Distancing. Because they have been deemed “Essential”.

At first, it felt validating. To know that one is indispensable to the workings of society. Despite sometimes being low-paid, already exhausted from mismanaged work-loads, or marginalized and looked down upon, it’s nice for the world to realise just how important, nay; fundamental, you are.

Until you realise that the validation you just got is attached to a callous disregard whether you live or die as a result of your tireless work.

Essential Service Workers, doctors or teachers, or nurses or transportation workers or grocery employees, are all forced or required or strongly encouraged to keep society afloat, while the rest of the population hunkers down. Yet, these same Essential Service Workers are denied or refused proper gear to protect themselves. In some states, it has even gone so far that retired health care workers are being pushed to return to work. Retired health care workers, whom I might add, are in exactly the group most at risk of having fatal consequences if infected.

Statistical analysis out of hard-hit Italy seems to suggest that continued exposure to the virus might even raise the risk of dire complications. But do any of these ”essential” people receive proper protection to do their job? No, largely they don’t. The free market has run out of essential protection, so there’s none to be had without paying ”too much” for it. Doctors and nurses recycle one-time-use masks, or go without, wearing the same depleted protective gear for days, weeks, months. Work until exhaustion clocks them out, cowering in corners or stacked together on any flat surface theyr can find. And that’s just for the health care workers. All the other essentials? They’re left to wrapping their faces with scarves, or stuck with depleting bottles of hand sanitizers.

It’s nice to be needed. When a government or a company for years have been undermining your sense of self worth with inhumane schedules or meagre pay, it’s nice to for once be told that life wouldn’t work without you. But do you know what’s not as nice? Be told that you’re not only essential, but also expendable. Because that’s what governments say that you are, when they push you to continue to work without providing you with other ways than isolation to protect yourself. They tell you that you’re expendable. More expendable than the non-essential business executives, lawyers, insurance salesmen, bankers, politicians, et. al., that are all oh so important to protect, shut away as they are in ivory towers to await the passing of the storm.

Because even in an equal society, some are more equal than others. And as it turns out, some people in society are more important to protect than others. Even when those ”others” are considered ”essential”.

/Sebastian Lindberg 7/4-2020

An Apocalyptic Appetite

As the Wuhan Virus, aka. Corona Virus, aka. Covid-19, is shutting down production lines, putting billions of people into self-isolation, and thousands into body-bags, the second-worst part of the disease is people’s hysteria about it. Granted; the contagion can be dangerous to a slim minority of the world’s population (a minority that still equates to some millions of people mind you!), but by and large it’s not a Spanish Flu or a Bubonic Plague. Not yet, at least. But that hasn’t stopped people from treating it like the end of days, stockpiling toilet paper and flour and other amenities as if this spring will be last they’ll see of modern comforts.

So, if the virus isn’t all that dangerous, and people’s hysteria is causing more havoc than the actual disease, why do people insist on acting like it’s doomsday-o’clock? Would it surprise you terribly to learn that a sizeable chunk of the world’s population actually want to the world to end?

Sound controversial? It ain’t. Not really. For about a decade, apocalypse media has been some of the most popular art that’s around. With zombie invasions and nuclear holocausts to vampire parasites and desert road trip rock concerts crowding our sensoriums, it really shouldn’t be controversial to say that people love a good World’s End.

You might think this is a modern predilection. That dissatisfaction with the state of the world, with market economics run rampant, with haves and have-nots escalating have somehow manufactured a desire for things to end. But you’d be wrong. Because if you’d have thought as much, you mustn’t have taken into the account the religious aspect. Because as it turns out, a majority of people on this earth pay homage to the Doomsday cults of Christianity and Islam. The Book of Revelations is basically the origins of modern apocalypse myth, and the Muslim tenets of Yawm al-Qiyamah is just more of the same. Hellfire and brimstone for the unfaithful; the Rapture and eternal salvation for the gullible.

And yet we let Christians and Muslims have a say in matters of sustainability. Funny, innit?

It’s not that “some people just want to see the world burn”. It’s that a whole fucking lot of people want to see the world burn.

Oh, you think I’m making mountains out of mole hills? You think people are just hunkering down to weather a storm? Then why, for fuck’s heavenly sake, are people stockpiling guns and ammo along with toilet paper and hand sanitizer? Because you sure as shining shit can’t shoot a viral infection away with magazine of .45 ACP!

We can see it in almost every facet of human society. In our continued reliance on fossil fuels, even though we’ve known for decades that its usage is a death sentence to our world. In our media and fantasy habits, glorifying and romanticising the end of order and the rise of cannibalism and moral ambiguity. In our religions, with seemingly harmonious and saintly folk openly praying for a cessation of God’s little experiment. Just look at how we’ve developed our world. How we have sickened it. How we continuously ignore pleads for sustainability. We, collectively, as a species, want the world to end. Preferably with a bang.

But I don’t judge. Well, I don’t judge a lot. I get it, I do. Every tale needs an end, and ours is desperately overdue one. I just wish people were more honest about it. I wish our fantasies weren’t so cruel. And more than anything, I wish people could imagine an end that was also a beginning of something else, rather than the hard stop, the short drop, and the long silence that most seem to gun for.

/Sebastian Lindberg 30/3-2020

The Wuhan Effect

When a cataclysmic eco-disaster looms, threatening the long-term survival of every living thing on the planet, world leaders and industry titans don’t give too much of a shit. But when a virus comes a-knocking, threatening the elderly and the infirm, the world turns on a dime.

As the world is hunkering down to weather the onslaught of the Wuhan Virus, aka. Covid-19, aka. Corona Virus, the social distancing and quarantine programs have produced not-totally unexpected fruits. Clear skies over industrial China. Starlit nights in urban areas. And pristine water in the channels of Venice (even if the claims of returning dolphins were an untrue exaggeration).

Turns out that a near-complete shutdown of the global economy is good for the environment. Whodathunk.

Well, everyone with a sliver of sense in their thick heads could have said so. And have said so. Repeatedly. From experts in pretty much every scientific field, to environmentalists and displeased children, plenty of voices have sounded and pleaded with the world industry to slow the fuck down before we crash into a wall. But any such pleads have fallen on disinterested ears, proving that the future of our children is an acceptable sacrifice for a black bottom line. Even when the next generation shames us in tears at a world summit, nothing changes. But the second that those fossilized fucks at the top of the economic food chain get assaulted by a virus that’s really only dangerous to them and not the wide majority of the population, they sing a different tune.

The politicians and the moguls always told us that a reset was impossible. That making the kind of zero-emission u-turn that the climate activists called necessary was in fact impossible. Unfeasible. Disastrously irresponsible. A fairytale fiction. That no matter what global crisis threatened the very existence of the human race, the factories wouldn’t, couldn’t, shut down. They told us this, laughed at us for our naiveté, and went on with their wanton profiteering.

But the Wuhan Virus has proven that they lied. Undeniable proof that the factories can in fact be shut down. That the ships can be stranded. That the trucks can be stopped. It’s just a matter of the right incentive. And global ecological collapse, rising sea levels, hellraising storms, famine and drought, turned out to be the incorrect incentives for the avaricious and the corrupt. The right incentive wasn’t a mass extinction. It turned out to be a little cough. A little cough from mainland China that rocked the world into compliance.

Because the lives and futures of all those that come after us weren’t as important as the withering lives of those precious few that make all the decisions.

But no matter how hard the markets fall, no matter how many companies shutter their doors and lay off their employees, a pandemic passes. Eventually. No matter what measures we take, what failures we commit, eventually the plague passes. A day will come when the Wuhan Virus is about as irrelevant to global society as the common cold. The question isn’t how we get there, but rather what happens then?

Do we go back to an exponential growth economy that keeps hollowing out the planet we live on? Do we go back to stock markets, carbon and sulphur emissions? Back to commercialism, greed and want? Do we go back to spending the worlds renewable resources at double the rate they replenish at? Because that’s what all the economists, politicians and industry giants  contemplate. On how to go back to the twisted, distorted, dysfunctional way things were.

Or do we count ourselves lucky, and keep our production down enough to satisfy our needs without going back to inflating our wants?

It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? If people living in urban China could keep looking up and seeing the sky? Wouldn’t it be nice to see fabled wildlife return to our ports and channels? Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to wear an oxygen supply just to go get groceries? Wouldn’t it be nice if all those parasitic fucks at the top would die off from a little cough, and finally relinquish the reigns of the world to those that prefer to live on our planet rather than profiteer from of it?

/Sebastian Lindberg 23/3-2020

Viral Racism

The pandemic keeps picking up steam. The virus 2019-nCoV, colloquially branded with its family name “the Corona Virus”, has now over 20´000 confirmed cases and some 425 deaths (confirmed as of time of writing, numbers which will only rise by the day). Despite quarantines, lock-downs… and apparently rampant racism?

At first, the complaint over virus-related racism made my eyes roll. Look, it’s not the rest of the world’s fault that several of the modern influenza pandemics have originated from China. And this one from an illegal market dealing in exotic animals for consumption at that; shame on you China.

But then I started seeing reports coming in. From all over the world. Of Chinese minorities being shunned, discriminated against, and even threatened. Despite never having set foot in China.

And you know what? Statistically, almost all of those 20’000 people that are currently confirmed infected are Chinese. Sure, avoiding them pretty much slims down your risks of getting infected to nill. Then again, 20’000 people isn’t a whole hell of a lot out of the near 1.4 billion people living in China. Or the nearly 50 million ethnic Chinese that now suffer harassment around the globe. The odds that someone you meet on the side of the road, Asian or not, of having this dreaded new plague, are astronomical.

But fear doesn’t dig on math, does it? It doesn’t care about crunched numbers, statistical analysis, or percentages. It thrives on imagination. Fear thrives on fear.

Thinking about it, flaring xenophobia on the path of sickness and death (though 2019-nCoV only has the relatively low causality rate of 2.1 percent) sort of makes sense. Add to the general population’s propensity for hysterics, the Chinese government hasn’t done its ethnic diaspora any favours with its hegemonic bullying around the globe. Doing things like putting foreign nationals into torture-holes, suppressing free speech worldwide, ethnically targetted concentration camps, and harassing news media outlets on foreign soil, just to name a few of the latest atrocities that the hostile nation state has committed. Point is, it is easy to hate on the Chinese, because it is easy to hate on China.

But discredit where discredit is due. Not where it’s not. And it is not the general population of China’s fault that this new virus is rampaging. If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame the illegal exotic wildlife trade endemic to China. Blame the government for not stamping out such barbaric traditions as eating rhino dick to improve virility. But do not take this tragedy, and your irrational fear, out on the people that have actually gotten away from the oppressive Beijing regime.

There are plenty of good reasons to hate on governments and nation states. There are never good reasons to hate on whole ethnicities.

/Sebastian Lindberg 4/2-2020