T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
It’s all but official, the media has determined COVID-19 to be the tragedy we have been waiting for (Trump’s Katrina!!). We are all doomed.
As James Lileks reflects, this could well mark the end of life as we know it…at least for a little while.
I suspect this will seem, in retrospect, as the last “normal” week. The one in which there was other news.
This doesn’t mean everything will be actually horrible. It means the news will be horrible, in that it gives a sense of a rapidly escalating catastrophe that produces mass unease and uncertainty.
A few weeks ago, I think, I mused about some previous pandemic about which I’d forgotten, except that I bought masks, and noted a run on rice at Costco, That was the Swine Flu pandemic, of course. It was declared by the WHO to be A Thing in June 2009. I decided to go back to the StarTribune archives to see how it played out. From what I recalled, there was concern, but nothing like we're seeing today. See if you recall any of this, or your local variant. (more)
So there it is, this is how it ends; the media, the second coming of the ruling class, has so declared it. Not by global warming after all but by another manmade disaster - a simple virus capable of spreading, mutating and replicating (alas, as do all viruses).
Greta Thunberg hardest hit.
“How dare you steal my global crisis!”
Wash your hands, sneeze into your sleeve, take cover, self isolate, and do not, repeat, NOT vote for Donald J. Trump!
Oh what the hell, go ahead. We’re all going to die anyway.
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