linnugripiblog

Okay, let's play a little game. Let's assume that you guys are right, and it's just a little too risky for HCW's to report to work.

What happens then?

If HCW's are too afraid to work, then no one else will work either. Cops, firefighters, national guard, military, utility plant workers (water/sewer/elect), even the good folks who are hopefully working on a vaccine.

Food distribution stops. Oil refineries shut down. No gasoline. Maybe no natural gas. Certainly no propane deliveries for those in the northern states. Rx drugs aren't delivered. Factories shut down. Railroads, airplanes, trucks.

Everything stops. Except the virus.

People die in their homes. Or on the streets. Certainly all those in hospitals and nursing homes when it starts. After all, the staff is going to abandon ship, right?

Each year, roughly 2.5 million people die in this country. Add in the virus, and maybe we're up to 5 million.

But wait, there's more.

As the dead bodies pile up (nobody coming to pick them up, too scared, remember), so does the garbage. Sewers are backed up because the power's out. Water is contaminated because the checmicals needed to purify it ran out after the first week.

People start dieing in their homes of starvation. And of course, dysentery, typhoid, and cholera are on the plate as sanitary conditions deteriorate.

Some people manage to bury their dead in the back yard, but most are unable to, so they haul the dead to the street corners, and pray someone will pick them up. Maybe they dump some in the woods, or in the rivers and lakes. We're talking millions of dead bodies, accumulating at a rate of hundreds of thousands each month.

People release their dogs and cats, because they can't feed them. They feed on the dead. Rats begin to roam the streets, and with them, they bring the potential of bubonic plague. Far fetched? Not really, we see 10 to 15 cases of plague in this country each year. But we do a pretty good job of controling rats, so the last real outbreak was in Los Angeles in 1924. But it's still out there, waiting to make a comeback.

Hanta Virus, rare today, will become more prevalent. Suddenly, instead of a pandemic, we've unleashed a pandora's box of pathogens, because we've let our infrastructure whither and die.

The death toll mounts. Five Million? Ten Million?

And the problem only gets worse.

Hungry desperate people, abandoned by their communities, left to die in the streets, take to looting, raping, and pilaging. There's no law, remember?

People die by the millions during the winter from lack of heat. Starvation is rampant. You want an apocalypse? This is the perfect recipe.

By the time the first wave is over (if it ends), the ability to restart things has been lost. Vaccines won't be manufactured. Food won't be distributed. The utilities won't be restored. The downward spiral will simply continue, unabated.

When does it stop? Maybe after 18 months the virus is gone, but the plague, dysentary, and a host of other killers continue. The system, the infrastructure, is lost. It could take years, maybe decades, to restart.

Maybe you think you can hole up and withstand the ravages of this sort of social breakdown. If so, I wish you luck. I figure, my chances are a hell of a lot greater of dying from the collateral damage than they are from the virus.

So, call me crazy, but I'll go down fighting, thank you.