Happenstance is too close to reality, at least based on recent news in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and elsewhere in the United States. In spite of all the precautions which may only delay the impending pandemic, few places will be safe—not even rural Kentucky.
As an old school friend of mine wrote:
You escaped just in time. Today, the day after you left, 7pm now March 6, they just announced the first Coronavirus case in Kentucky, here in Lexington. Just the one case, and the governor declared a State of Emergency!
Why and What Now?
Panic buying will set in, and that is just for starters. It isn’t just about Kentucky, and what can be seen. Back in the 1980s there was another of those endless terrorist scares, and it had a serious effect on the travel industry and those which depend on it.
It wasn’t that people were frightened of terrorists. They just assumed that every place they wanted to go to would be closed, and being patrolled by armed guards – because if the superpower is panicking, everyone else must be too, because Uncle Sam says so.
Over a week ago I heard a rumour that a patient at the University of Kentucky Medical Centre had the Coronavirus but it was being kept secret. But now, after now the rumor has been declared true, what else might we not be hearing?
Wasn’t that the point of not telling us, and then letting the truth leak out? To make so many people scared of the unknown that they won’t care what “emergency measures” you take to protect them from it?
Remember all those millions spent combating the “Millennium Bug”, that virus which was supposed to destroy all computers and their data when the year 2000 came along and everything was reset to 00/00/00? We still don’t know who exactly got rich off that, even though we know who gets rich from currency speculations.
Governments handed out contracts to their friends, declared the project a success and the millions paid disappeared forever. No Audit Office would allow that in normal circumstances. But you really can fool all of the people all of the time by scaring them, and at the same time remove their “informed consent” for anything you might do.
It wasn’t a hoax … but what comes next?
Guess what! The first covid-19 Coronavirus victim in Kentucky is from Harrison County….near Cynthiana! “And is now at the University of Kentucky, near me, (where I live)” says my source – “so they came from near where you were visiting in the last few weeks, now they’re near me.”
Life is imitating art, it appears. In Kentucky, Cynthiana is now Ground Zero for the real-life Zombie Apocalypse of the Walking Dead. The writer and co-creator of this show, Robert Kirkman, has revealed what started the zombie apocalypse in his fictional series. Turns out it was aliens all along — or rather space spores, which are as near as dammit. Much like a virus from a faraway country, which uses a non-Roman script, and which Americans have been brought up to believe is hostile to their values.
Five (5) cases now in rural Harrison Country, total of 8 in Kentucky, and still getting access to testing is a problem, perhaps a policy decision on the national level, CDC and Federal Government.
If the Chinese are so terrible, why did the US give so much support to those other Chinese, the nationalists in Taiwan, for so long? After all, they must be equally capable of manufacturing viruses. Practically every US household has something made in Taiwan in its kitchen or electronics. If communism is an inferior system, capitalism must be more capable of manufacturing and exporting infections, be they good or bad ones.
Now, like in NY, the Governor of Kentucky has declared a State of Emergency. “Kentucky Gov. Beshear declared a Level 4 State of Emergency for the entire state. It came just hours after Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb also announced a first confirmed case and declared its own public health emergency.”
If one case of coronavirus warrants such a dramatic response, why not shut the roads and railways and ports and everything else owned by the Chinese? There are thousands of cases there. It is a statistical certainty that somewhere along the line all America’s infrastructure has been tainted by contact with infected Chinese. Is this the real reason people are being told to stockpile food and stay at home?
Bad health economics
Already the virus is in 27 States, and it appears that it will spread further. Most likely, little can be done to prevent it from spreading, only to delay its spread, and to reduce panic. Some reactions may seem over the top but are they enough? Take for example what is now happening in some towns in New York, National Guard to lock down New Rochelle, in coronavirus quarantine
But look at all the other deadly things there can be one case of without the authorities telling the public, directly or through their actions how they should panic. Every year a few people die of being struck by lightning. If anyone cared, the electricity grid would be shut down by public order during the rain.
Would any politician dare suggest it?
Australia makes a lot of money out of wildlife tourism, and the romance of the outback. This song may be satirical but contains an important truth about the dangers visitors may encounter, and natives do on a daily basis. But panic would be bad for business, just like letting the Chinese live in a disease free environment, and carry on taking American jobs, is bad for business.
As the virus spreads across the country, some school districts are closing as Americans try to cope with the anxiety the disease brings with it. Businesses which depend on supplies from China are also shutting down, even if only for a short time, and have stopped investing in advertising and anything else they will need for the future.
In Italy coronavirus went from three cases to 3,000 in three weeks, killing mostly the old, average age of death, 82 years of age. It is still debatable what the original source of the virus was, whether it was from an animal or a lab. How interested the US is in investigating whether it came from a lab will tell us the answer in the long run, as only a virus made in a Chinese lab would be a geopolitical gift from heaven.
But that is a moot issue for now, as the world public health system is up to its neck in alligators. Now is not the time to worry over who failed to drain the swamp. That will be left to the virus hunters, as reflected in film. It is all now about how to find and contain viruses before they neutralise us.
Zombies can’t be WASPs.
My first source continues, “The person in Kentucky with covid-19 had been working at the WalMart Deli in Cynthiana two weeks ago. Hopefully you all didn’t go there when you were here. This is not public knowledge – a friend who knows someone who knows the doctor treating the patient told me.”
Is it not in the public interest to inform people that food may have been infected by being handled by a c-19 victim? It is common enough to close restaurants down for “hygiene issues” when there is actually another reason for it, like the owners being in The Mafia. Potential patrons will be protected and will save money. But those who make money off them will lose out, and that cannot be allowed to happen.
I could have been interacting with people who had shopped at that deli during the incubation period of the virus. Another Harrison Country source has confirmed that, according to their knowledge, the victim worked at Walmart. They are not prepared to be directly quoted. They wouldn’t want Walmart to close, particularly now. The worse the problem gets, the more people need the old certainties, even if they created the problem.
A team of doctors and public health experts has been sent to Harrison County to try to piece together information as to how the infected person contracted the virus and who that person has been in contact with. This is considered a good thing, as “there are all kinds of rumors going around.”
In response to the Harrison County COVID-19 case, area nursing homes have barred their residents from receiving visitors, following the lead of Washington State. On the surface, this makes sense. In Harrison County, all the infected patients are linked. One is a woman and her husband (second one) the women’s grandmother is the third. I think there are two health care workers that treated them are the 4th and 5th cases.
Nursing home residents are the population group most susceptible to contracting any type of virus, real or artificially created, due to their age and weak immune systems. One only has to look at the nursing home case in Washington State, a large petri dish, 31 out of 35 recently tested found to be infected.
But as a number of child and elder abuse scandals have demonstrated, the real motivation for keeping the outside world out is not to provide a therapeutic environment for patients, but to prevent the general public seeing what actually goes on in some of these places, and at the hands of whom.
East of Reason
I have heard a story that research labs in China sell their used research lab rats and other animals in the markets, including those in Wuhan, and that people buy and eat them. A broadcast news story shows people in Wuhan buying and eating bats.
There is a lack of evidence that the virus escaped from a lab, but the implication of these stories is clear. The US doesn’t agree with China. So Chinese institutions must do things like this, and American ones not, and as there are Chinese everywhere, and no one knows the real dangers they bring with them, governments can do what they like to protect the rest of us.
We can’t question what those governments do because the risk is too great. But if we did, the main victim would be the control of profit, not human health. Where did the virus really come from, and how has it ended up in so many places?
It could still have come from the Wuhan lab mentioned in various conspiracy articles. The scientist making the claim that it could not have come from there is assuming that all lab workers follow protocol. But if we ask the standard journalistic question, “who benefits”, the lab doesn’t seem such an obvious source. Its main effect is causing panic, which increases the control of those in power. Why do they need to increase their control?
Well, there are some elections in November….
Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.