(2020-04-01) Yegge Opinion Your Biggest Problem Right Now Is Denial

Steve Yegge: Opinion: Your biggest problem right now is denial. A hurricane is coming. Well… it’s really more like a “tsunami that hits everyone at once” in terms of overall destruction — except that you only get a few hours warning for a tsunami, whereas we had months of warning for this. When a hurricane is coming, what do you do? It’s just plain common sense: you tell people well in advance, you give them time to prepare, you facilitate the preparations and defenses, yadda yadda....All the people who know what’s really going on — that is, what’s really going to happen if the world doesn’t wake up quickly — are in broad consensus. Epidemiologists, ER doctors and nurses, university researchers, pandemic experts: The people who have actual on-the-ground expertise with this exact situation, are all saying the same thing. It is a Prophecy. (He has since deleted this page.)

The Covid-19 Prophecy: You will lock down the whole world until a vaccine is ready, and thereby avoid inconceivable devastation.

The prophecy has an ugly side, which is that like most prophecies, few people actually believe this one. There are pictures of people together in large groups all over the world, smugly ignoring the crisis.

The prophecy will come true, of course. It’s a fucking prophecy, not some investment analysis report. But now it will only come true the hard way, after enough devastation has occurred that people and governments are snapped out of their haze of denial, and realize, oh hey golly, we should have listened to the goddamn prophecy.

We actually knew by January 25th. That was the beginning of Chinese New Year.

China cancelled it. That’s unprecedented

*And that should have been, well, prophetic.

They did it too late, though, because their hundred million-person diaspora had already travelled from outside China to inside China, and they were celebrating quietly with their families, even though celebrations were cancelled. Over the next couple weeks they all flew home.*

That evidence alone — China shutting down a huge chunk of their economy and slathering on a huge portion of censorship about a virus — should have been enough to spring us all into action. Then they expanded the lockdown to 60 million people. Sixty million! You’d think that might raise some eyebrows

The WHO, caught between China and the rest of the world, lost much of their credibility early on, before China realized it wasn’t in their best economic self-interest for the rest of the world to fucking collapse.

At this point, you want China’s help. They make all the stuff we use in our homes and our hospitals and pretty much everywhere else. Yes, we were too dependent on China, and yes, that will change over time. But today, at this moment, they are offering to help, and you’d better fucking listen to them when they tell you how to handle the pandemic, or they offer to send aid.

Instead we should be focused on getting through this, not blaming people. And ironically that means shaming, not blaming. Business leaders, churches, local governments, central governments, celebrities — anyone who is denying the crisis, anyone who is refusing to close nonessential activities, anyone who is proudly declaring that they don’t give a fuck — they need to be shamed into changing their opinions. Because it’s urgent

everyone is fudging their numbers. Nearly every single government, with the possible exceptions of Taiwan and Singapore, is doing a half-assed job on reporting. Even South Korea and Italy are not yet testing postmortem for people who pass away in their homes

The US, in comparison, is actively trying to cover it up. The only people speaking out about the ground truth are local leaders, governors, mayors, random officials, and the inimitable Dr. Fauci. President Trump has pushed the problem down to the governors so that he can try to avoid blame. And 50 governors are not all going to make good decisions. Some of them will make very bad decisions and more lives and jobs will be lost as a result.

The Olympics haven’t even been cancelled yet, for crying out loud.

With Covid-19, though: You should be panicking, exactly as if there is an active shooter in your area. Get the fuck inside and stay there.

In western countries, there is an incredibly alarming antagonism towards wearing surgical masks. People are actively against them

That is like being angry at someone who is washing their hands.

And the US Surgeon General should be fired summarily, right now, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Telling people not to wear masks, even if they already own them, and that they are useless in this fight, is one of the worst things that any government has done so far. Yes, we know people are terrible at washing their hands — but we don’t tell them not to do it at all!

Why am I so afraid of the pandemic? Mostly because you’re not afraid. That’s what scares me most. Almost everyone I know is about a 4 to a 4.5 on a “how worried are you on a scale of 1=Bolsonaro to 10=Civilization will collapse”. I’m sitting at about an 8 to an 8.5. Nine would be the Great Depression

If you went to the beach today, or for a hike on a crowded trail, or you went to church, or attended any sort of a public gathering when you could have stayed home, then you are a Bad Person. A week or two ago, you were an Ignorantly Mistaken Person. But now you’re just being plain evil

This crisis will get worse, and it will last until there is a vaccine that has been tested, vetted, and deployed to billions of people. That’s widely predicted to take 12–18 months. I sure hope it’s faster, a LOT faster — but you can’t depend on it. You need to assume the worst, and prepare. We may see 30% unemployment in the US

There is still time to reduce the devastation

It will not be over soon. Give up on that hope.

Your strategy should be to expect the worst, and prepare for it. Expect to lose your job.

Hold your government accountable for not letting you starve. I don’t care how you do it. But if we let them know they are being held accountable, they will act quickly and decisively. Right now you’re not sending that message.

One shorter-term bit of good news is that the world is going to move online to the maximum extent possible, which should help significantly with climate change. The world is also rapidly moving to a deliveries economy, because for the next 12–18 months, deliveries will be the safest way for you to get what you need. That will also help with climate change, because deliveries can be “carpooled” (batched up)

If there’s one thing we can learn going forward from the Spanish Flu, it’s that once it peaks, news outlets are all going to switch to “This will all be over soon.” That’s what the headlines read for 2 years during the Spanish Flu

this world needs to fucking change its governments RIGHT NOW to people who have been advocating for social safety nets before the pandemic started; e.g., people like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Andrew Yang. These are the kinds of people who have your best interests in mind, as will become super obvious over the next few months.