A Pandemic Survivor's Omnibus II

THE “PANIC OF 2020”-4

THE PRESIDENT LOOKED at me with curiosity. “It can't be that simple. Sounds kinda dull for a story. I mean, you're the writer – but shouldn't this build up the suspense a little more?”

I scratched a bit of the day-old stubble on my chin, while peering into my half-empty glass. “You're right, of course. All that entertainment background of yours is showing through. That means we're not really through the second act yet.”

He just leaned back against his Adirondack chair and smiled. “So, then – what other elements do we need?”

“Let's see – there should be more complications. Maybe some lackeys connected to the villain....”

D. J. laughed. “Of course, there's the connections we don't know between Xi and the WHO and the Press.”

“Wait – yes, the Press. Of course! Tell me about how they fit in. Then we can connect back to these others.”

He chuckled again, drained the last of his tea, and watched it refill. “OK, so the Press are pretty simple. They hate me and dream up fake stories about everything I try to do and try to promote rave support for anything I'm against. And I get their ratings up, since the people who watch them like to see car wrecks and disasters. Plus, I'm naturally entertaining and their usual fare is boring.”

I chuckled to myself and shook my head. Any lack of self-confidence wasn't present in our current conversation.

“Alright, then. I was holding these press conferences to keep the country up to date. Even moved them to prime time so that the country would get all the real data we were coming up with. People loved those briefings. And because those made me popular and made my polls go up, that meant the 'lame-stream news' quit airing them after the first week. But they were available from other sources. So we kept doing them.

“The V.P. was head of our task force early on and he's a pretty solid guy. Those scientist-doctor-types were there (the ones who originally brought in those panic-screaming models). And they answered the Press' technical questions. All good stuff.

“Now, the scientific models got revised as we got the data in from our own work and all the other countries' data. We were getting supplies to the states, and to the worst outbreaks. And the Army Corp of Engineers built some great hospital wards for them. Our Navy medical ships were sent to the hot-spots on both coasts.

He sat forward on his chair. “Here's where it got interesting – all those ventilators weren't needed, and the hospital wards stayed almost completely empty, and so did the ships.

“The 'models' kept revising themselves down and down. Those 2.2 million shrank down to less than sixty thousand.

“Meanwhile, the head guy in charge of WHO was giving some weird data. And kept pushing up the Chinese response as something great – when the Chi-Coms wouldn't let us investigate and wouldn't tell us working numbers. On top of that, their crematories were going into 24-7 to deal with their dead, even running out of urns to hold them all. Very fishy.

“About here is where we quit using those models and threw out China's and Iran's data. And that professor's math study started looking more accurate.

“The bottom line – we realized that we'd been scammed. Panicked into doing some very non-sensical things to all these national economies. And it turned out that the advice to shut down every economy came from the WHO.

“Of course, the 'other' party wanted to make sure they didn't 'waste a good crisis'. And took advantage of the panic to delay needed bills. Hunkered down in their mansions with their guaranteed salaries and ice cream. It seems the only thing government does with any efficiency is over-regulate and restrict perfectly good ideas that would help people.

“So the Press were pushing the WHO's ideas, but meanwhile the 'other' party leaders were contradicting themselves. At first, they said I was 'acting too rashly' to close the borders. Then, when that didn't get any traction, they said I didn't act fast enough, and wasn't thorough enough. And got a pass on their hypocrisy by all the other supposedly 'independent' press.

“Of course, then you have the 'typical suspects', those 'star reporters' of those low-viewership Network 'News' programs. They did all they could to screw up the press conferences and twist what anyone said into some gotcha question. Along the line, we even found that there were some Chinese nationals who had somehow gotten into the queue for the few press seats available after all the distancing was taken into account. So we had those self-congratulating propagandists in their midst. That's not even good comedy or drama.

“Eventually, I got a real clue to how bad they were when a simple what-if conjecture of mine – just a few minutes long - was turned into a three-day news cycle, completely fictitious story with completely made up statistics about how people were poisoning themselves because of what I said in thinking out loud. No, they never did find a single case where that happened. Faked the whole thing. All to keep the panic going.”

D. J. shook his head and rubbed his forehead. “I think the phase is: 'you can't fix stupid'. But that phrase was said by a military man while he was trying to fix a natural disaster and dealing with local politicians. So they won't quote him – unless it's taken out of context.”

I just nodded and smiled. “Great set of lackeys for the enemy to use. That's a thought – having a regular Fifth Column going through all this.

“So, what about the connection between this WHO and the Chinese Xi?”

D. J. laughed out loud, all the wrinkles in his forehead erasing. “That's a rich one. So this head of WHO has a doctoral degree. Except it's not a medical degree. Turns out he was a former prime minister and nearly bankrupted his country to – wait for it – the Chi-Com's 'Tight Belt and Bumpy Road' program. But that's a huge scam on its own. In brief, countries pay China to build infrastructure, but have to use Chinese labor instead of putting their own people to work – and give the Chi-Com's tax breaks, plus guarantee them cheap access to that country's natural resources. And if they default on their loans, then the Chi-Coms do things like force them to lease their best harbor to the Chinese government for 99 years. A reverse Hong-Kong setup.”

- - - -

* * * *

WE'D BEEN SITTING AND talking for so long, the sky was darkening in the East and the few clouds in the sky were starting to redden. I could hear the night owls starting their mournful calling as they woke, while the other birds returned to their roosts for the night.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a milk bucket travel on its own to the barn and come back full, along with an egg-basket with the chicken's output for today. I saw the barn cats scamper toward their night's feed while the buckets and baskets traveled there and back. Nobody carrying these – but I knew it was Sal taking care of my evening chores so I could hear out the rest of this story. She probably just wanted to tease me – since we both knew she could simply phase stuff here and there even easier.

“OK, D. J., we're getting close now. There's gotta be a twist in here, a real punchline...”

V“I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”

- - - -