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The Next Pandemic
Why the next pandemic may well spell the end of civilization even if it’s relatively harmless
Arguably the most revealing feature of SARS-CoV2 has been the viral nature of the media-induced hysteria that has caused hundreds of millions of people to panic, thus driving politicians to flail wildly in search of actions to minimize loss of votes at the next election.
The outcome has been to shut down the global economy, throw 1,500,000,000 people (yes, one and a half billion of the world’s poorest) out of work, cause the starvation of uncounted millions across the Asian subcontinent and parts of Africa, fail to vaccinate 140,000,000 children against diseases far more serious than covid-19 and thus condemn many of them to painful deaths in the years to come, and finally create a self-imposed economic collapse of larger magnitude than the 1929 Great Depression. Which, as few people seem to know any history and therefore need to be reminded, led to the dominance of populism/fascism and hence ultimately to World War II.
All of this for a virus that the data shows clearly inflicts a per capita fatality rate of less than one-tenth of one percent in even the worst-hit nations. And no, lockdowns and facemasks and social distancing aren’t significant factors in this extremely low death rate because countries like…
