Dawn Pine very kindly sent over a translation of a long post by Roey Tzezana, published a couple of weeks ago. I’m given to understand that he is something of a futurist and an expert in nanotechnology. Dawn took considerable time and effort to translate and transcribe the post from Hebrew into English. Here is the result, with minimal editing on my part. The post is quite a long one but well worth reading all the way through, as it posits several possible scenarios for life after COVID-19 finally eases up and the lockdowns cease.

Many thanks indeed to Dawn for his always excellent contributions and his extensive efforts in bringing these ideas forward.

Recently we have been swamped by opinion and predictions regarding the future, and most of them as we can see, are generating fear. If one searches the web briefly, “experts” threaten us that COVID-19 will stay with us forever, or mutate and exterminate mankind.

The truth is that one cannot know for certain what will happen, and that’s exactly when you turn to Futurists (Future Researchers). In an uncertainty, we develop all kinds of scenarios to assess the problem from different angles. This method is extremely suited to the current time, when no one knows for sure how the virus ticks, which mutations it may acquire, and when (and in which form) it will be back in autumn.

[TMB – as you can tell, this guy has confidence. Futurists should be more humble. It is a good idea to use them, but they are only advisers – one of many]

So all bets are off. That is why I wish to present 3 scenarios. One very optimistic, one very pessimistic and one somewhere in the middle. This makes the third the more likely one.

Let’s start with the more pleasant scenario – the optimistic one.

Everything is Awesome

A wonderful thing happens in the optimistic scenario, and an anti-viral cure, already on the market, is identified and can do two things:

First, it kills off the virus in sick people thus reducing the number of hospitalized drastically, Second, it prophylactic, meaning it can be used for prevention. It resembles the “day after” HIV, in so that if given a few hours after catching an infection, it can prevent it.

This cure will have a major effect on the war on the virus. Mortality rate will drop dramatically, and it can be on anyone coming in contact with a carrier. This creates a circle of defense around any person catching it, thus preventing spread. It won’t completely stop the virus, especially in countries where there are tens or hundreds of thousands of patients. Yet it will greatly inhabit the growth and reduce the cost of it. A year later a vaccine will be developed and the population will be inoculated. That’s about it for the Corona. The virus may mutate, but not enough to change its Vaccine indication, and our immune system will identify it and destroy it.

This is not an impossible scenario. Favipiravir – a drug developed in Japan – is used to deal with new species of flu. According to media reports, which are not backed up by peer-review. Clinical trials on 340 patients resulted in encouraging prospects. It is supposed to be safe and efficient, reducing healing time from 11 days to 4. It also helps to reduce the damage caused to the lungs. Is it the wonder drug we wish for in the optimistic scenario? Only time will tell.

[TMB – every other day I get those types of news, either via the web or on my WhatsApp groups. Most of the time, debunking is available]

Either way, even in the optimistic scenario, one cannot ignore the shutdown of some of the world’s strongest economies for weeks. Recession is coming to the US and Europe. In the US alone, at least 3.5 million people are expected to lose their jobs. Hospitality, restaurants, tourism and entertainment businesses are already collapsing. The US government is preparing a stimulus plan and it is widely assumed that in 2021 the economy will recover, slowly. But until then, expect hardship.

And that was the optimistic scenario.

Now that we’ve looked at the optimistic scenario, let’s look at the pessimistic scenario.

The Pessimistic Scenario

There are 2 kinds of pessimistic scenarios.

The first is the kind that there is nothing we can do about. This is the scenario in which the virus – new, and therefore is not fully understood – mutates to create a new version, more infectious or deadlier. There is no theoretical prevention for this scenario: measles are more infectious, as a carrier infect 18 other persons on average. We know of other deadlier viruses, such as MERS, which has a mortality rate of 30%. There are even slow working viruses, such as rabies, which takes a whole year till it kills its host. Other viruses have those qualities, so theoretically there is a chance that the new COVID-19 may develop those features.

Luckily the chances are slim. From what we know, the virus mutates slowly, so the probability of this nightmare scenario is low.

[The concept of genetic mutation is also poorly understood by the public at large. When genetic code mutates, this by definition means that information is lost, and functionality is BROKEN. So when mutations occur, this is mostly a benign thing – a mutation of a coronavirus that is deadly to humans usually, though not always, results in something LESS deadly. – Didact]

Unfortunately, I believe there is a higher probability for the second pessimistic scenario. In this scenario, the virus does not mutate so fast, but it expand the globe fast enough to yield new variants every year. Those variations aren’t handled by our immune system.

Even in this case, within 18 months the long awaited vaccine, which can stop the new variations every year, arrives.

The problem is the in-between time.

In our pessimistic scenario, the problem isn’t with the virus, but with the nations’ reaction to it. This scenario see the European nations suffering a severe blow, with tens of thousands of casualties in each nation. The Imperial College in UK developed this scenario and estimates that almost 500,000 people may die in the UK alone, and more than 2 million in the US – all within those 18 months. It’s less than 1%, but it means a lot of people.

[TMB – as we know, most of the casualties are old people. This means that they would have died in any case in the next few years. Also, the health organization report everyone who died with marks of COVID-19 as a “corona virus casualty”. That’s misleading as a good number died from non-COVID-19 related sickness]

Every country will suffer in this case, but the main problem is the deterioration of the trans-national unity that Mankind has developed over the past few centuries. The EU nations, hurting and bleeding, will turn to each other for help, only to find that everyone is taking care of Number One. They’ll shut the borders – as they are already starting to – and quickly move on to isolation. It’s likely to guess that given this scenario, at least one other nation decided to have its own “Exit”, and perhaps more than that it may be the end of the EU experiment.

[TMB – This guy is globalist, as are a lot of Futursits. That’s why he missed the writing on the wall. The EU is doomed and it is more a question of WHEN than of WHY]

An extreme example of this could easily happen in the USA. The Federal government has done an embarrassing job of handling the outbreak, third world class. The governors had to accept the challenge, quarantine their states and ready the hospitals and labs. What if one of the states in the US can’t handle the pandemic – and its citizens spread the virus to other states? You’ll see states closing borders within the US. It is possible to imagine a radical situation in which one of the wealthier states – California, which has an economy larger than India and smaller than Germany – declares that the Federal government is not doing its job and shut its borders terminally.

[TMB – as Didact, and other bloggers illustrated, just because California has a large GDP doesn’t make it a rich state. It’s ill-managed and if it secedes they are going to have a lot of trouble managing. A better case is a block of states]

[I STRONGLY disagree that the Federal government did a particularly bad job with handling the outbreak. Dr. Tzezana’s comments immediately after that point about the Federal government make it clear that he is criticising the state governments – which shows that he does not understand the federal system in the USA. The God-Emperor of Mankind has done, on balance, a pretty damned good job overall in handling the outbreak. Also, states are already internally kind of closing their borders; Florida, for instance, is stopping people from Louisiana and New York and forcing them into quarantine. – Didact]

Is that likely? In any normal situation, the answer is absolutely not. Yet, following this WWIII type of crisis, a lot of things can – and should – change.

We can continue to play this scenario onward. Third World regions, such as India and Africa, with far weaker health systems than in the Western world, and less ability to enforce curfew on the citizens, everyone catches the virus. That’s right, EVERYONE. The economic implications are devastating. The population is more densely spread than in the Western world, health systems under developed, low sanitation and harder to rule. The economy is based more on manual labour, and less on white collar occupations, which may have an online option. This means that lockdown will bring the economy to total collapse.

Let’s leave the economy for a second. The implication on governance in those nations is just as important. We accept a sovereign – Leviathan or elected government – because we believe they will take care of us. Now imagine what happens when in every extended family in India one person coughs, expectorates, and suffocates to death – while the government can’t do anything to help. Even a power such as India might disintegrate to rival states, fighting over resources and territory.

[TMB – People in third world, to my opinion, understand that government is an elite game. There is less expectations, since it is a low-trust society. The riots starts when there is either no food/water or when oppression hits critical mass. Is that the case here? I’m unsure]

[I agree with TMB’s points – Didact]

That is the most pessimistic scenario I can foresee for the next 2 years. Is there a high probability for it? Definitely not. Is it plausible? I’m afraid that in case the virus spreads to all nations, causing economic harm and death toll, and if governments choose not to cooperate and help each other, electing to take care of their own and nothing more, the probability rises.

My friend Roy Keidar describes this scenario as a kind of Domino Effect, in which every tile hits the next and collapses it. The first tile represents the massive loss of lives. The second is the economy. The third – society and social structure. The fourth – undermining governance, disintegration of nations and in some cases closing of the borders and extreme nationalism. The fifth tile, which we all hope won’t fall, is the conflict with advance weapons stage.

That one may lead to WWIII.

[TMB – a more realistic scenario would be the rise of local conflicts. All those hushed conflict, such as India-Pakistan, African conflicts, Sunni vs Shi’ite are far more likely that a US-China-Russia conflict]

How do you stop the domino? It requires a well-coordinated response of nations against the virus. Medical aid should be transferred to India, Africa and maybe South America. A global scale leader is required that can coordinate those actions.

Luckily we have exactly that one. His name is Donald Trump. He’ll save us all.

Just kidding. But one can hope, no?

[TMB – told you he’s a globalist]

As stated, this scenario is highly unlikely. So we should examine the “middle” scenario – the more likely one as of now – and check its impact on the world.

The Middle Scenario: Big Brother – For the Sake of Mankind

Sometime between May and June, the Israeli government allows its citizens to finally leave their home and return to the offices and beaches. People went out with great relief, knowing that we – as a nation – succeeded dealing with the virus. The harsh lockdown was severely enforced, and the hospital was swamped with coughing short of breath patients, but most of those hospitalised, survived. We lost a few tens or hundreds of people, in the worst case thousands.

However, compared to the EU and US, that was a cheap price to pay. Those countries who did not shot their borders in time or refrained from lockdowns, discovered their hospitals crashing under the load. Italy’s 6% [right now it’s more like 12.5%, though the data are quite sketchy – Didact] mortality rate was seen by some of the other EU states. People there died by the thousands each day, and the US suffered the same fate.

It was a dark and terrible time. When government disillusioned and started enforcing lockdowns, the spread finally stopped. The virus can’t infect more victims, if people don’t meet on the street, in kindergartens, schools or the workplace. Within two weeks of actual lockdown, the number of new patients shrank. It took an additional month before people were allowed out on the streets again, but victory over the virus was evident.

And then this numbskull from some unknown country in Africa, where the virus was still spreading, arrived and returned the plague to Israel or EU or the US. Maybe it was a different species, or maybe not. Since most of the population was unaffected, people have not developed immunity. Either way, people were catching it left and right, and government knew they were in hot water.

Curfew and lockdown again. This time the counter action was immediate and automatic. Still a few thousands died and the economy was shut down for a month or two. But no one got excited and everyone was accustomed to it. When it became evident that we handled this wave, people patted their own backs and started going back to normal.

Want to guess what happened a few months after? Another new-old virus, a few innocent carriers from Africa or Asia – or maybe from another European nation which was unable to contain the spread. Reminder: Every day of economic paralysis equals tens of billions of dollars globally. No nation can accept this threat. It was clear that a solution to avoid future cases is mandated.

And a new era downed on mankind: The age of constant surveillance.

How to Stop a Virus (and a Few Other Things)

Governments already had monitoring devices; more precisely, they was in the hands of the citizens. They are in our pockets, homes and cars. Every smartphone knows exactly where you have been, and at what time. Many homes have digital assistants, Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant, which are able to monitor the home. The monitoring capabilities are already deployed – what is missing is government motivation to use it, and the legal permission.

The first legal permission to monitor citizens was granted to the Israeli government during the first wave [TMB – That is true, but with restrictions]. Other countries snort in contempt at those crazy Israelis, letting their government spy on them. But following that example, other EU nations started legally justifying monitoring their citizens, as a way to protect the population from the spread. During the first wave, the only information gathered was the location. This was enough to know if the owner crossed path with a suspected carrier. When the first wave was over, surveillance was dropped – as the law required – and information was erased.

On the second wave, fearing that the virus will return in a few months’ time, legal permission to monitor became, de facto, permanent.

The next wave started when with a carrier boarding a plane feeling slightly ill. He didn’t want to report it, to avoid the hassle. He bought some cough syrup and anti-fever medicine and swallowed it up to look healthy. If authorities would have cross referenced his purchases with the coughs his smartphone “heard”, he would be marked as a “high risk”. They didn’t. He entered the country, and the spread was rampant and expected.

[TMB – this is already happening in China]

To protect the public, government decided they not only need everyone’s location, but also purchasing habits and frequency of coughs as recorded by the digital assistants. This info was integrated and assessed by sophisticated algorithms determining the risk potential for an individual to being a virus carrier. If one crossed a threshold, one would be required to isolate oneself – and the devices would report the authorities if the isolation was violated. In order to avoid the scenario of walking around the streets while the phone is at home, that person would need to deep stare at the phone every hour. That will enable a face recognition algorithm to report.

The positive angle was that when third world started to disintegrate, the West had recovered enough to send medical and financial aid. The global meltdown described in the pessimistic scenario did not materialise. Millions of lives saved in the short run, and the global conflicts of the long run were avoided.

Even so, mankind took a harsh blow and have to change its way in many nations. Government started to monitor their citizens, and it is unclear if they can avoid the temptation to use this great force for their own sake [TMB – We know for almost a fact that they will use it for bad. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely]. This great power has the potential to corrupt behavior and democracy, and also threaten civil rights.

Hey, it stopped millions of deaths in the short run, that’s something.

And maybe, just maybe, in this middle scenario, another great opportunity opens up to mankind: The possibility to unite forces.

The Great Union

Call me crazy. It won’t be the first time I’ve been called that. The coronavirus can provide a one-time opportunity for all the world to work together to beat up a great enemy. There was never a scale of threat this big to us. At the time of the Spanish Flu we couldn’t even comprehend what it was that killed tens of millions. The SARS came and went too fast to leave a global mark. The new COVID-19 virus has spread everywhere and is still spreading. This is a trans-national, global problem resulting in border closure and extreme physical segregation, but it also gets a more advanced cooperation. As well as unity and global agreements.

Or not. Maybe the policy will be to close the border and throw dirt at foreign nations [TMB – Holding a nation accountable is a good thing, and badmouthing a nation for the sake of venting is another]. Maybe it will take a few months after the virus for everything to back to normal. That’s more likely. Still, one can hope that for the first time all people have a common enemy. It’s an enemy which is not moved by prayer or pleading. It does not consider skin color, eye shape or the god you believe in. If you are a man, you are under attack. This means something to unite for.

There are some encouraging signs. Chinese sent hundreds of thousands of kits to the US [TMB – those were partially damaged, and were paid for]. International groups of hackers announced they will not attack hospitals. There’s definite movement towards united coalition.

On the other hand, we can see the US president preparing for the upcoming elections by blaming China for the outbreak [TMB – Which is true. It was proven.], and disallowing ships to drop off patients in his territory [TMB – Didn’t Japan do the same?].

That virus is going to bring the best, and the worst out of us.

It is possible that a few visionary statesman will come together to distill the best in creating peace and trade treaties, to create the feeling of unity and brotherhood between nations and continents. Working together to eradicate this virus once and for all, so our children won’t have to experience such an outbreak.

I’ve started with 3 scenarios, telling you that there is not much we can do about 2 of them. The middle scenario is where we have room for maneuver, we can – and should – demand our leaders to put behind them those petty rivalries and work together to win the greater war. The war on the COVID-19 and all other sicknesses.

Good luck to us all.

TMB Comments:

It is obvious our guy here is a globalist. He is naïve enough to not understand global politics, or politics in general. The expectation that people will abandon their short-sight preference to adopt a longer-view is wishful thinking at best, and sinister at worst.

The main takeaway I find is that within a few years’ time, our civil rights are going to be heavily reduced. I can’t say it for a fact, but it looks more like a matter of time. Spengler’s Decline of the West looks more like the prediction was too much into the future (He predicted by the end of the 21st century).

Here are a few thoughts on how to prepare for this:

Start getting use to using your phone less – I had a talk about it with a girl and she was frightened. Told her that she can always turn it off.

Start turning your phones off when you less need it.

Don’t use smartphones – I work with someone who uses a 2G phone. That’s a phone from almost 20 years ago. Yes, he doesn’t have apps, and he is happy about it. He is very productive. This is not for everyone.

Live as if you have nothing to hide – this applies to some of the people who can pull this off. Tell the truth, be honest and prepare for the isolation. If that will be the case, you won’t feel depressed (since you are prepared).

Follow the law, even though it annoys you.

Read the law – It is almost incomprehensible how many people just hear something on the news and now believe it is the law. I argued with people, and had to resort to showing them online the actual new regulations. They thought that because the health ministry GM was on TV and advised something – they will be fined or sent to jail if they didn’t do it.

By reading the law and understanding what you should and can’t do – you are going to have a lot of room for maneuver.

Challenging times ahead.