As a boy, I\nread Sax Rohmer\u2019s \u201cFu Manchu\u201d novels. The evil doctor came out of China to try\nto dominate the world, using what he described as \u201cfungi and my tiny allies,\nthe bacilli\u201d and leaving conventional weapons to his minions. His opponent was\nthe doughty Englishman Sir Denis Nayland Smith, armed with a Browning pistol\nand occasionally a Colt. The stuff was racist as hell with a lot of \u201cyellow\nperil\u201d overtones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meet \u201cFlu\nManchu.\u201d A lot of parallels there with the COVID-19 virus, ya think? My Brownings and Colts won\u2019t help with this\nstuff. We\u2019re seeing a bell curve of\npredictions. One side points out that most of us don\u2019t (yet) know anyone who\u2019s\ndied from it or even been exposed to it, while at the other end of that bell\ncurve well-credentialed people are predicting as many as half a million deaths\nfrom the Corona virus by summer. We are\nin any case seeing a panic unparalleled in living memory by anyone but\ncentenarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Broadway theatres have gone dark. In Seattle, at least fifty restaurants closed in a mere two-week span. Sports events of even the largest scope are being shut down. In Chicago, one cancelled convention alone cost the hotel industry some 47,000 room-nights of occupancy. Airplane flights are being cancelled for lack of passengers, with jetliners sidelined in mothballs. Store shelves are bare of hand sanitizer, isopropyl alcohol, and bleach (understandable). The toilet paper shelves are almost empty, which has caused some pundits to scoff, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with people? It\u2019s killer flu, not dysentery!\u201d The skeptics need to look a little deeper. Shutdowns of international transportation of product are going to have a profound ripple effect on domestic product transportation. Stocking up on TP actually makes sense. Look at how many people will be working from home in the interim, using their own toilets another eight hours a day instead of workplace restrooms. And, uh, food<\/em>, and all that\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope the\nskeptics are right and it\u2019s all a relative tempest in a teapot. After all, regular <\/em>flu(s) kill up to 60,000\nAmericans a year, and all our society does is have drugstores post signs\nreminding us to get our flu shots. In 2009, it was estimated that 12,000\nAmericans died in the Swine Flu epidemic (and I don\u2019t recall Republicans\nblaming Democrat President Obama for that,\n<\/em>but things seem to be different in that regard now\u2026) <\/p>\n\n\n\n But even if Flu Manchu turns out to be a paper tiger, the damage will be measurable more in dollar signs than in the sign of the caduceus.\u00a0 Witness the plunge of the stock market.\u00a0 My own investments have taken a brutal hit, and I\u2019m sure yours have too.\u00a0 Optimists say it will bounce back, and opportunists see the \u201cbuy low\u201d side of \u201cbuy low, sell high\u201d beckoning. It may indeed be a good time to buy stock in cruise lines and airlines and such\u2026if <\/em>they survive the long shutdown.\u00a0 Service industry staff laid off are looking at time in the unemployment compensation lines.\u00a0 Schools are shutting down all over the place. It\u2019s hitting adult education, too, and that\u2019s what this writer does, so a heavy hit there <\/em>is a fait accompli.\u00a0 <\/em>A few days from now I was scheduled to be running my Panel of Experts on Deadly Force\/Firearms Training for the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association. It has been postponed to August because of the pandemic. (Good news there: folks with the best input from government agencies are indicating that the nightmare should be fading by then.) The Rangemaster Tactical conference has been canceled too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, hey,\nenough of my gloom and doom. Let\u2019s hear from you readers. What\u2019s happening\nwhere you <\/em>are, and how are you and\nyours and your employers and workmates coping with it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a boy, I read Sax Rohmer\u2019s \u201cFu Manchu\u201d novels. The evil doctor came out of China to try to dominate the world, using what he described as \u201cfungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli\u201d and leaving conventional weapons to his minions. His opponent was the doughty Englishman Sir Denis Nayland Smith, armed with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6192,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6189\/revisions\/6192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}