There’s a difference between isolated examples of someone shoving someone or going nuts (which happens every day in a population of a third of a billion people) and widespread civil unrest.
The linked article mentions three examples of the former–one in Illinois and two in Michigan–and tries to erect the civil unrest claim on top of it. That is a shaky foundation. This is no 1919 Red Summer with 500 to 1,500 people dead due to riots and racial violence.
I do think that if circumstances were a little different there could be civil unrest. For instance, if COVID-19 were more deadly and hit inner cities, causing hospitals to be overrun amidst a population predisposed to violence that becomes upset that no ventilators are available for family members. There are plenty, probably scores, of disaster novels written about pandemics more deadly than COVID-19 and police not showing up to work, leading to looting and mass chaos.
The problem for the budding disaster novelists out there is that it is difficult to spin a disease that’s not that much worse than the annual flu into “all-out civil unrest.” Now if the government does even more stupid things, supply lines get stretched past the breaking point, and real food shortages happen, then, sure, we’ll see civil unrest. But that would be because of Soviet-esque political idiocy responding to the virus, not because of the lethality of the virus itself.
Yeah and the pot’s being stirred by all the usual suspects, from Soros to Antifa, to whatever LaRaza is called this week, to the DNC, to BernieBro’s, etc. and of course, the media.
There’s a difference between isolated examples of someone shoving someone or going nuts (which happens every day in a population of a third of a billion people) and widespread civil unrest.
The linked article mentions three examples of the former–one in Illinois and two in Michigan–and tries to erect the civil unrest claim on top of it. That is a shaky foundation. This is no 1919 Red Summer with 500 to 1,500 people dead due to riots and racial violence.
I do think that if circumstances were a little different there could be civil unrest. For instance, if COVID-19 were more deadly and hit inner cities, causing hospitals to be overrun amidst a population predisposed to violence that becomes upset that no ventilators are available for family members. There are plenty, probably scores, of disaster novels written about pandemics more deadly than COVID-19 and police not showing up to work, leading to looting and mass chaos.
The problem for the budding disaster novelists out there is that it is difficult to spin a disease that’s not that much worse than the annual flu into “all-out civil unrest.” Now if the government does even more stupid things, supply lines get stretched past the breaking point, and real food shortages happen, then, sure, we’ll see civil unrest. But that would be because of Soviet-esque political idiocy responding to the virus, not because of the lethality of the virus itself.
Okay, maybe things are moving faster than I thought:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd26kufxp6s
Yeah and the pot’s being stirred by all the usual suspects, from Soros to Antifa, to whatever LaRaza is called this week, to the DNC, to BernieBro’s, etc. and of course, the media.