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’.

I don’t know about you, but the Kung Flu seems a little unreal and real at the same time. I mean, on the one hand all the media are talking about corpses littering hospital hallways, government continuity plans, cordoning off neighborhoods, etc…very dramatic stuff. But on the other hand I look outside my window and…traffic continues to roll by, the lights are on, people bicycle along the sidewalk, etc….but then I go to the supermarket and see empty aisles and purchase limits, my classes are shifted to online, and restaurants are closed….but my  mailman delivers my mail, the gas stations are open, the toilets still flush. It’s like a mixture of messages. Its almost like theres not enough crazy stuff happening to push me into panic mode, but there’s not enough normal stuff to keep me from worrying. It’s a very in-between kinda thing.

One problem I anticipate is remaining consistent and vigilant for the unpredictable length of this crisis. As I said, there’s enough ‘normal’ going on right now that it’s a bit hard to immerse myself in a ‘conserve’ mindset. At the same time there’s enough crazy going on to instill anxiety and dread in me that I should be ‘doing something’. And without that very obvious in-your-face threat, it becomes a bit tough to tread lightly on the Pop Tarts, rice, and bleach.

I suppose part of it is my locale. Folks in the big cities, I suspect, see it a bit more on the ‘panic’ or weird side than we do here in flyover country. Perhaps thats the only thing they’ve got going for them…the situation is such that there is no ambiguity, no half-measures.

The key to succeeding at any endeavour is persistence and discipline. I need to stick to the mindset of ‘London during the blitz’ and not let the lack of blatantly obvious dire threat lull me into a state of complacency (or worse – waste).

But…still got plenty of TP.

In Hazlitt’s book, ‘Economics In One Lesson’, which I highly recommend to you, he says “…The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

You could replace economics with preparedness, and event for policy, and have yourself a handy little rubric for wargaming future preparations.

One thing that I’ve always found terribly irritating about many survivalists is the tunnel vision, or, perhaps more accurately, lack of situational awareness in regard to a particular disaster or event. This current situation of coronavirus is a perfect example of what I mean.

This Kung Flu checks off the ‘pandemic’ tickybox on our checklist of “things we prepare against”. Admittedly, it was right down there with ‘nuclear war’ and ‘comet strike’ in terms of probability on many people’s lists. After all, the last time something like this happened was around a hundred years ago…so it really wasn’t on too many peoples radar. We leaned more towards hurricanes, riots, economic collapses, and that sort of thing.

The thing is, while people may have planned for, or anticipated, a pandemic and made some plans to protect themselves, I would wager that a large percentage of them didn’t think through what else a pandemic brings that you need to prepare against.

An example: When Hurricane Sandy hit New York many people lost their vehicles because of the flooding. Most had insurance that covered the loss, so they sat back and figured they were set. Their inner dialogue went something like this:

“Flooding will occur. I’ll probably lose my car. Let me make sure my insurance will cover it. It does? Great, I’m all set.”

And virtually no one had this inner dialogue:

“Flooding will occur. I’ll probably lose my car. Let me make sure my insurance will cover it. It does? Great. But since I won’t have a car I’ll need to make arrangements for a rental. And fuel. And directions to other supermarkets if my main one is flooded out.” etc, etc.

And this is exactly what happened. People lost their cars but when their insurance said “hey, we’ll cover a rental car for you” those same people found that every rental car for fifty miles in every direction was already rented by people who thought ahead. See, they got so focused on the event (losing their car) that they didn’t think about the consequences of the event (no car rentals being available).

It seems a lot of people worry about the event and put little focus into the effects of the event. The Kung Flu is like that. Everyone stocked up on hand sanitizer and toilet paper, but how many made plans for when the kids school is closed, the paycheck is stalled because you’ve been told not to come into work, the guy who was gonna fix your car is out with the Kung Flu, your AirBNB rental income slumped as tourists stay home, your wife’s housecleaning ‘side gig’ drops to zero as people don’t want strangers in their house, etc, etc. And meanwhile, your mortgage, taxes, utilities, and credit card bills are all still due.

You drop a rock in a pond and ripples radiate out, right? That’s a fair metaphor, I think. The disaster occurs and we focus on that point where the rock hits the water and we don’t think about the ripples that emanate outwards. RIght now one of the biggest ripples is the amazing contortions the stock market is going through. I’d wager that no one, when planning a few years ago for Capt. Tripps, had the foresight to think “Y’know, when that superflu comes through and starts doing its thing, the markets are going to tank…I should probably be ready for that.”

There’s that old expression about not seeing the forest because all the trees are in the way. The forest is the larger, greater, overall chaos and disorder that results from a particular event. We tend to get so fixated on the individual events (trees) that we don’t see the entirety of what chaos theyve created (forest).

Hurricane Katrina, fifteen years ago, was a benchmark for disaster preparation. I have absolutely zero doubt that the Kung Flu of 2020 will be remembered as a black swan event that changed disaster planning for many organizations, governments, and individuals.

The lesson to be learned seems pretty straightforward – when you prepare for a particular event, you need to look at all the possible negative effects that event could cause and you have to be ready for them as well. You have to look as far ‘downstream’ from the disaster as possible and try to see what the consequences will be and how you can best prepare for them.

Did I get caught napping? Honestly, yes. I should have had more money sitting in my brokerage accounts to take advantage of stocks and funds being on sale at 25% off. That’s it. That’s all I’d change. I have enough cash in the bank, and no liabilities, to cover me for a few months if I’m unable to bring in income. No mortgage to sweat, no credit card payments to stress over, no car loan to dread, no student loan to fear. To some degree, I’m insulated from the fallout from coronavirus even if I’m not immune to the coronavirus itself.

So, assuming we all survive this, we should analyze the whole thing, start to finish, and see what lessons we learn from it.