Can we agree that, as far as the US is concerned, quarantines just don’t work? I’m not an epidemiologist, health professional, or anything like that … what I am is someone who comments on what I observe.  What I observe is that quarantines may work in other countries but I don’t think they’ll work here.

China implemented quarantines and they seem (if you can believe the communists) to have worked. But…China is a nation full of people who are quite used to saying ‘how high’ when the .gov tells them to jump. Many European countries are similar…people are used to a supremacy of .gov and believe that .gov is for ‘the greater good’. Thus, when ‘gov declares a crisis and says ‘do this’, the population usually toes the line.

And then you get the US… a nation whose entire national identity is based on BFYTW. Lots of folks already distrust .gov, no matter who is in office. And when they tell you to do something, our natural inclination is, often, to say “Yeah, no.”

So when .gov tells you, with a straight face and the wagging finger of seriousness, that you ‘must’ stay at home, avoid other people, not go to work, and generally be under house arrest…well, a lot of people are going to say ‘Yeah, screw that..I’m going to WalMart’. Some people say this is socially irresponsible and these people are selfish clowns who should be beaten with cluesticks until they stop putting others at risk….and theres some who say that individual freedom includes the freedom to make bad choices. (Although usually that argument doesn’t include those bad choices affecting anyone else except the individual in question.) But no matter which side you’re on (if there is a such thing as sides in this) I think it’s pretty obvious that quarantines won’t work in this country the way they do in others.

But…that’s why quarantines won’t work in the US. Short version: we are too individualistic to do what .gov tells us to do, and our .gov is quite reluctant to go to the measures that other countries do. The Chinese physically rounded up people off the street. The Italians have Carabinieri at checkpoints. The Germans…well…I don’t know what the Germans have but it’s probably really well-engineered and expensive…maybe some sort of virus-targetting laser robot thing. But the US is not the kind of country (yet) that rolls out nationwide roadblocks and military patrols to stuff coughing pedestrians into the back of unamarked vans for their own protection.

There are plenty of Americans who are obeying the .gov’s requests to stay at home. But those people aren’t motivated by patriotic altruism and obedience, they do it out of self-preservation because theyre in the target demographic for this thing. The young and dumb are out doing the same things as always because youth. And a quarantine is, I suspect like virginity…no grey areas. You either have a quarantine or you don’t. At this time, we don’t. And I don’t think we will, given the lack resolve to step into the jackboots of ugly-times-call-for-ugly-measures.

I am not a fan of big .gov. I’m rather pleased at the seeming impotence of .gov in terms of establishing the kind of control that other countries are exhibiting. Why? Because once you give a power to ‘gov, they virtually never relinquish it and they always find a way to use it. It’s a very personal choice, but I would rather take my chances at keeping my distance from other people, staying home as much as possible, and keeping outside trips to a minimum, by my own choice, and have a higher risk of catching this thing than have a lower chance of catching it in exchange for having guys with guns and uniforms driving around my neighborhood at night spotlighting houses looking for curfew violators.

But, it’s for those reasons that I dont think, barring some seriously unprecedented draconian responses by .gov, that quarantines will work here as well as they have elsewhere.

So far ( and that’s really a key modifier here) this kung flu thing is turning out to be, for the overwhelming majority, a ‘grid up’ scenario.

I don’t know about you but for me most of my wargaming and ‘possible scenarios’ against which I prepare involve a ‘grid down’ scenario. That’s the one where critical utility services are unavailable or strictly curtailed – no water, no electricity, no natural gas, that sort of thing. “The big one” earthquake? Grid down. Tornado? Grid down? Killer ice storm? Grid down. The kung flu is turning out (thus far) to be a ‘grid up’ scenario which, while not something I have discounted, was certainly not what I was anticipating.

Obviously, though, that ‘grid up’ thing can become ‘grid down’ in a hurry. All it takes is a bunch of self-quarantining linemen, power plant operators, electrical engineers, etc., staying home for the delivery systems to get stretched thin. I would guess that if you’re in a place that gets it’s power from nuclear plants the number of easily-replaced personnel running those things is pretty thin.

What’s that mean to me? Well, first of all, and I’m not sure this is a negative, it makes it a bit harder to interpret the current situation as a disaster. I mean, if we’re honest, when we were stocking away freeze drieds and tucking away cans of ammo we envisioned The Big Crisis as one where we would be in the dark and cold, using candles and kerosene lamps, cooking over our grills and campstoves, and heating water in big pots over campfires. Right now? I turn the handle marked “H” on my sink and hot water comes out. I flip on the lightswitch and my room lights up. I press a button on the wall and my house gets warmer. It’s a bit hard to not have a little mental disconnect.

Here’s an example of what I mean – I’m assuming many of you watch The Walking Dead, and if you don’t I am certain you at least know the premise. For the first few seasons our heroes (such as they are) lived in abandoned buildings, campsites, etc, with no running water, electricity, etc, etc. It was a very close to the edge existence. Later in the show they find a haven with running water and electricity….a sense of normalcy develops, despite the fact the zombies are just outside the walls.  My point being that while intellectually I know this is a very serious time, the relative lack of obvious impact on my day-to-day is making it hard to feel like it’s as big a deal as it is.

One thing I had not considered, at all, was the possibility that in a ‘grid up’ crisis those grid up utilities could be manipulated by others to force a control on me. For example, in places that have ordered ‘non essential’ businesses to close, municipalities are threatening to turn off utility services to businesses that don’t comply. That’s only a step or two away from turning off utilities to neighborhoods to force them to evacuate to quarantine locations or to exact some other sort of behavioral change. I never thought of that, had you?

The “Hmm-I-Never-Considered-That” moments are starting to come a bit faster these days. When all of this blows over (or, at least, diminishes a bit) there’s going to be some frenzied activity in the blogosphere as people recount what they should have done and will do differently ‘next time’.