All of us nerds made zombie apocalypse jokes at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not so sure we’re joking any more. I’m sure as hell not.
Whenever I have braved the Outside World to forage for supplies lately, I get closer and closer to getting into a fight myself. I grew up in the mean ‘hoods of south L.A. so I’m no stranger to rumbles. I’m not scared for myself, but I had hoped for a more peaceful coast to retirement in a tranquil suburb by now.
You can clearly distinguish Team Human from Team Zombie
Team Human are the people who believe in science and reason. They wear their masks and gloves, use sanitary wipes and disinfectant, and keep their distance. They respect the store employees. All of us are out to go about our business quickly and efficiently with the least amount of drama.
Team Zombie isn’t buying any of that. They don’t wear protective gear, and make it a point to get into everybody’s face around every corner. They’re hostile and confronting. They scoff at our “imaginary” pandemic and vaccines and all of our “so-called” science. They’re out to pick a fight at every opportunity.
All of the above are just from the last week, of the early part of May 2020. Remember those starving monkey riots in Thailand a couple months back? People are collectively freaking out just like that now.
Where is the difference between our situation and a zombie apocalypse? Alex Jones is even threatening to eat his neighbors, so you know he’s bit.
I turned the Alex Jones rant about eating his neighbors into a jazz song. Enjoy: pic.twitter.com/Aaa0CDMgWs
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) May 1, 2020
I called it, and I’m calling it some more now
I’ve spent the past twenty years warning everybody about this day. I have railed against the death of civilization, the end of civil society, the intellectual rot of the public mind, the breakdown of civic government, the collective turn to ignorance, and the spread of misinformation.
I’m not even alone in this. As early as 1999, Neal Stephenson noted the information divide with the metaphor of H.G. Wells, dividing society into Morlocks and Eloi. As recently as this year, Paul Krugman has published a book of his NYT columns on politics and economics titled – wait for it! – Arguing With Zombies.
All I need to do now is get these two together for coffee. Then Stephenson and Krugman can compare notes and publish a new work: “Wells Was Only Half-Right, It’s Actually Morlocks And Zombies.” So much for those Eloi. There is no beauty left in this world.
Yes, kids, it’s going to get worse.
It’s going to get worse because the pandemic is still ongoing, showing no signs of peak at all, and the zombies want to end our precautions and go back to football, casinos, and church. Our efforts to contain the spread of CoronaVirus have kept the daily death toll in the US down to a mere 2K or 3K per day.
Second waves happen in pandemics. You might have seen this graphic going around:
That’s the influenza pandemic from just about exactly a century ago, which has repeatedly drawn comparisons with COVID-19 now. Right now, we’re on the little hill to the far left. The way they got the BIG hill was by thinking the pandemic was over and “going back to normal.” We had the excuse of ignorance then. This time we’re blindly repeating history.
The economy is also going to get worse
We have a weird situation right now, with crosswinds buffeting the economy. On the one hand, my little corner of industry on the Internet was never doing better. I don’t mean to be smug, but I find myself in a position of smugness because none of the opportunities I took were closed to a single one of you. On the other hand, vast swaths of the economy are burning down right now.
We currently have inflation of basic goods prices. That is because all the luxury goods have been shut down and people with money have nothing else to spend it on. At the same time, mind-blowingly, we have deflation. This is due to the overall economy, so much of which was propped up by luxury goods and extravagant spending, getting dumped.
If you think runaway inflation is bad news, wait until you see what deflation does! Deflation is rarer. Economies thrive on being stable and predictable: You are confident in what to do with your money when you know that tomorrow will look pretty much like today. We have the opposite of stable, which is hemlock to economies. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, so everybody hangs onto their money to wait and see.
Everywhere in business is a paradox. Gas is the cheapest it’s been this century and nobody’s driving anywhere. People are standing in bread lines in one place while farmers are dumping out food in another. Elon Musk has put Tesla back to work, beseeching authorities to arrest him if need be, and yet nobody right now is buying cars.
It’s not just the United States; economic indicators are scrambled all over the world, pointing every-which-way. But there is one unique aspect that the United States has that isn’t showing up in other countries:
The Zombie / Human divide.
We wanted to stop the zombies before. We might have to resort to Marching Morons tactics now. We are literally doing that now: Our best hope, those of us on Team Human, is to hunker down and keep isolating while we let Team Zombie return to their stadiums and cathedrals, all get sick, and die off. That’s literally what’s happening, right now, whether we want it or not.
I was tired of trying to convert zombies back into humans anyway.
