Department of Defense experts are expecting the coronavirus to reach pandemic levels in 30 days. With cases rising in the United States quickly, it will likely reach pandemic designation this month.
A document from the Department of Defense showed that officials are preparing for the possibility that COVID-19 may have a significant global impact, as President Donald Trump assured the public his administration was properly handling the new coronavirus, by putting ice president Mike Pence in charge of handling the outbreak.
The Grim Reality About Pandemics They Don’t Want You To Know: “No Country is Prepared”
COVID-19 has touched every inhabitable continent, infecting more than 82,000 people worldwide since it was first identified last December, including potentially 65 people in the United States. Of the cases in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed two were of unknown origin, indicating the possibility of community spread. Then on Saturday, a woman in Washington state became the first death in America.
As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, the risk to DoD members deployed throughout the world increases, and one service member has already tested positive. United States Forces Korea (USFK) confirmed Tuesday that a 23-year-old soldier stationed at Camp Carroll, located in Waegwan, South Korea, was the first service member known to have the virus and his wife tested positive on Saturday. –Newsweek
“The DoD is concerned not only the impact COVID-19 has on mission readiness, but the risk to inadvertently spread the virus to the U.S. by returning members who may have been exposed,” a senior Pentagon official told Newsweek. When asked for comment, Jessica R. Maxwell, a DOD spokesperson, said the DoD has “contingency plans in place and are taking steps to educate and safeguard our military and civilian personnel, family members and base communities in preventing a widespread outbreak.” But ultimately, “Commanders of individually affected geographic commands will be and are issuing specific guidance to their forces as their situations may require.”
U.S. Military Prepares For Coronavirus Pandemic
Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said it was inevitable that the coronavirus becomes widespread in the U.S. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Messonnier said.
WHO: It’s Too Early To Declare The Coronavirus A Pandemic, But It’s Not T0o Early To Prepare
So you do not care about it, and will not stay home. You will go to the movie theater,and it will be closed! You go to the mall and it will be closed! Maybe you might find some out of the way tavern that you have been going to for weeks, that has a few cars around it, so you go in and get a beer at the counter. The beer is 3X normal price, due to the trucking industry being hit so hard. After awhile you head back home. Getting ready for bed, you feel kind of feverish. It is up. And you have a tickle in your throat that just wants to turn into a cough. And because of your weakened immune system and your underlying disease, you now have COVID-19. Pneumonia is next! But the beer was worth it).
Of course it is BS they are ready for this. It is not the virus that is the most serious part of the pandemic (public health measures can isolate, contain and treat patients) it is the knock-on impact that is the hazard. The disruption to supply lines, especially food – disruption to income from loss of jobs, inability to make debt payments – all of that will lead to mass civil unrest brought by – drum roll please! – the usual suspects for civil unrest: knee grows, Islamic terrorists, criminal gangs.
The military will not be able to do a damn thing about it. The military will fall back to protecting key assets and the government. That’s it. There is only enough soldiers to do that. And even there they will be stretched with all the overseas obligations to man 1,000 bases plus.
Stop teasing us. So far this has been a very dull apocalypse. I expected more gunfire, explosions, cars flying off highway overpasses.
Like during an ebt outage.
The coronavirus is being blamed for the frauds perpetrated by crooks and liars. The Robinhood trading app went down yesterday and today, Israeli voting app exposed all voters information in a security breech, and the Australian biometrics app was hacked exposing data of everyone that it had obtained data on.
When Nixon was found spying on Democrats in the Watergate Hotel, he did not say, I am not a spy. He said, “I am not a crook.” Because Nixon knew that the only reason that people spy is to steal!
I don’t necessarily believe this virus is particularly nasty in a clinical sense, but I have two concerns about its impact. One, the economy, specifically transportation and supply of goods and services. The other is how it may impact our freedoms. How often have we all heard from officialdom that they never let a crisis go to waste. The rate or severity of infection, and how officialdom chooses to deal with it, will basically determine both these factors.
First, the shipment of goods by sea means goods are coming in from other countries, the bulk from China and the Far East, which are badly affected areas. Goods from this area could dramatically decrease. They make a lot of stuff there, and a lot of it is little more than junk, but they also make almost all of the vital stuff (at least 95%) that must be available every single day like medicines, chemicals, electronics, rare earth metal components, etc. If/when these vital items start to disappear you would see rationing, or prices increase dramatically (law of supply and demand), with vast numbers of people directly and quickly affected for all kinds of reasons.
The US has sold out its once incredibly fantastic manufacturing and industrial base so that the owners of these corporations could increase profits, at the risk of national security. By far, the single greatest reason for the Allied victory in WW II was because the US flooded the world with the sheer magnitude of its industrial and manufacturing capacity. Following the war, the US was able to project power and global dominance, essentially for the same reasons.
Because of the nature of all gov’t, its first instinct is always to apply a dominating force in all situations, inevitably resulting in a curtailment of freedoms. If the rate of infection gets bad, quarantining would be more than local, it could be regional, which means loss of freedom of movement. Vaccinations could become mandatory, and without some kind of paper to prove it you may not be allowed to even leave your home, or even be confined somewhere else (speaking for myself I will refuse to get one). Local news media could be censored. People may be warned by local authorities to be careful of what they say publicly. Even curfews may be enforced and cell phone service restricted. Local economies would be very much impacted. You can bet all local and state authorities will take their instructions from the fed. gov’t. If these conditions last long enough, people may adapt to, or become accustomed to some restrictive measures. The authorities seeing this may use it as an opportunity to leave some of them in place for good, the “public good” of course.
One cannot get too much info; get a scanner, a set of two way radios, and a CB radio. Be extra observant of local events, official actions, etc. Make a way to stay in touch with a friend or relative who lives the farthest from you locally for the purpose of exchanging any possible info.
Hopefully, it only turns out to be speculation, that none of this will happen. But be prepared, because where there is cause, there is an effect.