How It Went Wrong: The View From 2030

4 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2020-07-21 20:06

Aristotleded24

The following post is a dystopian speculation about where things could head based on the current trajectory of the covid pandemic:

It all started falling apart 10 years ago. At the start of 2020, news headlines began raising concerns about what was then a new coronavirus that was infecting people in China and spreading to other countries. The World Health Organization declared this outbreak to be a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Nations reacted swiftly. Entire countries and businesses were shut down, and many were thrown out of work. It was very disruptive and painful for the world’s population, with massive unemployment, and a large-scale transfer of wealth from the common people to the super-rich. It looked like things would come under control in the late spring and early summer of 2020. Infection rates dropped in many countries, and even harder hit countries in Europe began reopening during this time.

Sadly, what looks now to be a brief relative calm did not last. The United States, having already been the world leader in coronavirus cases and deaths, saw a massive spike in the summer, starting in the south, that overwhelmed health care facilities across the country. Then-President Donald Trump had shown himself to be indifferent to the suffering and vindictive with those in the medical and scientific communities, whose warnings and guidance he ignored. This, along with unpopularity over what was then a pressing issue over police brutality, sunk is Presidency. In capitalizing on coronavirus, Joe Biden won the 2020 campaign in a massive landslide win. His campaign had blamed the coronavirus toll on misinformation that had been spread about the virus, and he made rooting out misinformation a key component of his campaign. This resonated with a public terrified of Trump supporters openly flouting public health measures while protesting against them, and by sabotaging any local or state led initiatives to reduce spread. To that end, his Secretary of State Andrew Cuomo, along with his FCC Chair Gretchen Whitmer, announced a large-scale task force, to be joined in by the governments of Canada, China, Europe, and Australia, and big tech companies Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Biden had promised to reinstate Net Neutrality during the campaign, however Cuomo and Whitmer argued that it was this which led to unchecked spread of misinformation that had led to so many deaths.

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, having won popularity presiding over a comparatively low coronavirus case count and capitalizing on the disarray of the Conservatives, called a snap election in February 2021. The main plank of his government’s economic response had been a $2000 monthly payment for every Canadian who lost a job as a result of the pandemic, and he promised to turn this into a basic income. That election was a game changer. Trudeau won a 250 seat majority, with the Conservatives failing to elect any MPs in any metropolitan area. Following the election, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced that the country’s finances were in worse shape than anyone believed, and his budget that year unleashed the most painful austerity that had ever been seen before or since. The wealthy received massive tax cuts. Canada Post was dismantled, and in its place, the government signed a deal with Amazon to do nationwide delivery to cut costs. The Canada Health Act, which had guaranteed every Canadian the right to quality health care regardless of income, was rescinded, and federal transfers to health care virtually eliminated. This paved the way for right-wing governments in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec to privatize their health care systems.

Tue, 2020-07-21 20:07

Aristotleded24

The following post continues along the same dystopic speculative fiction mentioned in the previous post:

In Manitoba, a state of emergency was declared over coronavirus in March 2020, and as far as I know, that state of emergency remains in effect. Manitoba was one of the luckier provinces. It saw very little transmission of coronavirus, and only 7 people died from March 2020 to when the WHO declared the pandemic over on September 23, 2021. Despite that, officials in Manitoba took a hard line. Winnipeg had been known for all kinds of festivals, from Festival to Voyageur in the winter, to Folk Fest and Floklorama and the Fringe Fest in the summer, to many summer street festivals. All of these events were cancelled at the start of the pandemic. None of these events were ever held since, nor were there any to take their place. In September, following a brief re-opening, medical officials ordered everything shut down again amid a rise in cases. This shutdown lasted throughout the winter, and affected everything. It had been a tradition in the winter to flood parts of the Assiniboine River for skating, but health officials did not allow that, arguing it was to dangerous to spread coronavirus. Community rinks throughout the province were not allowed to operate, and neither were any ski events. Indoor drop-ins and shelters for vulnerable people were either closed or had very little space available. Pleas from business owners and community advocates to ease restrictions fell on deaf ears. I remember how on edge everyone felt at this time, and when I could meet with people the tension was so thick you could snap it with a pin. On top of this, the period from December 2020-March 2021 was the coldest 3-month period in Manitoba on record. With few places to stay, many people ended up freezing to death in the streets that winter. I stumbled across 3 of them. That misery and frustration finally expressed itself in massive riots in the city during what was a blistering hot summer in 2021. Entire city blocks burned to the ground. Hospitals were overcrowded, and emergency response services were so overwhelmed in dealing with this that far too often, people could only watch helplessly as their loved ones died, unable to receive any help from emergency responders either tied up or in danger of being attacked. There is no longer any life downtown, as almost all offices were shut down with people working from home, and the end of live performances in favour of online experiences, justified as needed to stop infections diseases, meant nobody from outside ever had any reason to go there. All that is left are vacant streets and widespread poverty.

The anti-vax movement, long considered to be on the fringe, took off majorly in the last decade. Despite anti-coronavirus vaccines showing some promise in the summer of 2020, after their use became widespread, there were reports of people vaccinated with coronavirus and experiencing serious side effects from the vaccines. High-profile cases resulted in relaxing requirements, and many jurisdictions no longer required vaccinations to attend school, as was the case when I was a child. Manitoba did away with its vaccine program in 2023. In spite of the dramatic rise in diseases like measles that were once thought to be eradicated, the government has no plans to re-introduce them.

Tue, 2020-07-21 20:07

Aristotleded24

The following post continues along the same dystopic speculative fiction mentioned in the previous post:

Freedom of movement has also been curtailed. Remember the initiatives to fight misinformation that the Biden Administration enacted, along with co-operation from the Canadian government? In addition to that, a large-scale surveillance network was rolled out. The key feature was contact tracing that the government at the time argued was necessary to find and isolate sick individuals before they became a threat to the community. Whittmer and Cuomo openly bragged that the people who had protested health measures under the Trump Administration were no longer allowed to post videos or blogs on the Internet. In time, as someone who fought against climate change, I noticed a chilling impact on my activism. Where I could previously post videos and blog posts on the subject, the rules were changed so that, in the name of stopping misinformation, they had to be approved. It came to the point that none of my videos or blog posts were ever approved. Organizing demonstrations has also become impossible. The contact tracing applications we were told would stop the spread of disease ended up being used by the police to intercept and shut down any demonstration before it could start. Other activists were telling me the same thing at the time. When shutting down the demonstrations, the police always cited health regulation violations that dealt with the spread of infectious diseases. Many demonstrations backed by wealthier interests, such as demonstrations in favour of fossil fuel production, were never and still are not disrupted in this way. It is so much worse now. With facial recognition cameras everywhere, these days if you even go to the corner store without posting an update to Facebook, the police will come quickly and interrogate you. I stopped following news at about this time, because the only news sites I could find were government sanctioned sites that repeated propaganda that I knew not to be true.

I do know that on January 1, 2025, cash stopped being used across the world and all financial transactions became electronic, as per the Global Currency Biosecurity Compact. The rationale they gave was that cash was simply too dangerous to use because of the risk of spreading infectious diseases, even though the WHO itself never said that was an issue. This was also used to curtail freedoms. When concerned citizens in Churchill tried to demonstrate against the construction of an all-weather road to the community on environmental grounds and the threat to the local businesses last year, many businesses and individuals found they could not make any financial transactions for three months after that. Eventually, they just gave up, and the road is scheduled to be complete by the end of next summer.

Tue, 2020-07-21 20:07

Aristotleded24

The following post continues along the same dystopic speculative fiction mentioned in the previous post:

Many in the environmental movement were hopeful that the pandemic would be the catalyst we needed to change from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Despite what we felt was the clear-cut business case for moving away from fossil fuels, they continued to receive massive government subsidies from governments in the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, and India. Following a Supreme Court ruling, the Canadian government completed pipelines to the west coast as one example. These projects continued, unhindered by massive protests like the Global Climate Strike of 2019. If my own experience is any indication, I think the governments got good at heading off these protests before they could start. I can’t tell you exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure we’ve already unleashed more carbon into the air than what scientists think is feasible to maintain human civilization. Christmas 2021 was the last time I saw a white Christmas in Winnipeg, and last winter there was not even a flake of snow on the ground. We saw massive forest fires in the past decade in Manitoba that cloaked the entire province in unbreathable smog.

All of this pales in comparison to the heart break over what happened with my dad. Easter had always been his favourite time to visit with our family, however in 2020, health officials were adamant that people avoid family gatherings during this time at the risk of spreading the virus to people my dad’s age, who we were told were more vulnerable to serious outcomes. Like many, I did a FaceTime call with him. He tried to put on a brave face, but I could tell during this call that he was heart-broken over not being able to see us. He had especially been looking forward to meeting my then-7-month-old daughter. We told him that we would see him next year when this was all over. Sadly, he experienced a sudden, fatal brain aneurysm during the Labour Day Long Weekend in 2020, and never had a chance to meet her.

Looking back, there were several warning signs of where we would go. Why weren’t we more skeptical of media reports over how bad this pandemic really was? Why could we not see the negative impact the social distancing measures had? Why had we allowed government officials to close everything down and opening everything up at their discretion, without demanding citizen input into the process? Why could we not see the hypocrisy of health officials telling people not to visit people during Easter 2020 or sing in church, only to see many of these professionals turn around and cheer the people who were protesting against police brutality in the summer of 2020? Why did we cheer on massive restrictions that we would have protested had they been in response to a terrorist attack? Had we thought about these things, we may have been able to steer a different course. But alas, we are stuck with the decisions we have made. The die is cast, and all is left is for history to play itself out.