Who is that masked man?

Gas Mask

I think the corona virus scare is overblown. I might be wrong. We might get a million deaths next year from some new strain, but I doubt it. I don't think we are even going to see a blip on the population graph. On the other hand, the side effects are going to fuck us over but good.

The lockdowns are having an adverse effect on the economy. That and the psychological effects of people being isolated, or even worse, locked up with their 'loved ones', is killing more people than the virus could ever hope to kill. But that doesn't matter, but because we are not operating in the real world, we are operating in a dream world where everyone is wonderful and we all have the same set of pristine values and nobody hates anybody. The parameters of this dream world are all that you can get a majority to agree on, and this agreement is going to have us marching straight off the cliff that is getting closer every day.

People are resilient, so we should be able to adjust to this 'new normal' of never going anywhere and never seeing anybody.  We should be able to find some way to hobble along, but I am afraid of what it's going to look like. 

Homeless camps have started showing up in Hillsboro. We're 30 minutes by car from downtown Portland.

Will the Biden Presidency implode? Given our history, he or his cohorts will blunder along till the next election. Will anything change with the next election? I doubt it, the President is, after all, simply the figurehead on our ship of state, a ship that has considerable momentum. Changing the President isn't going to change our course. No, I suspect things will deteriorate until we have 50% unemployment. Of course, those will be the official numbers. Most of those people will have joined up with criminal gangs who are going to be engaged in all the traditional forms of crime and probably some new ones that haven't been invented yet. At some point some demagogue will capture people's attention and we'll get an entirely new form governmental bullshit. Let's just hope it doesn't include death camps.

Now might be a good time to reread The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.