"GLOBAL PANDEMIC!" Yeah, that's kind of frightening. Especially if one is sitting in a hotel room in Washington DC, the epicenter of governmental paranoia. That's where I was for the first half of this week, Washington DC. There is something really freaky about hearing the words "global pandemic" when you are in the belly of the beast. If I was at home in Saint Paul, I wouldn't be so creeped out by the warnings and the increases in "threat level", because I would still have plenty of control of my own destiny. However, as I sit here in Washington National Airport, minutes before boarding my flight back to Minneapolis, I get the feeling that I am narrowly escaping what could have been an absolutely terrible experience.
When the words "global pandemic" are heard on my hotel television while in Washington DC, visions of spooky government folks sheathed in impenetrable isolation suits rounding people up for some kind of "quarantine" rush through my head. [Shit, a woman right next to me with a baby just sniffed!] The visions remind me of one of those really bad made-for-TV movies that gin up some crazy strain of the flu that threatens to kill everyone on the planet Earth in a matter of days, unless the handsome, but mysterious doctor can come up with the virus in a matter of minutes; most likely this movie has the word "monkey" or "strain" in the title. Anyway, you get the drift. It is always in Washington DC where the spooky white-suited dudes are dispatched, the airport is promptly shut down, and everyone goes bananas because they are basically imprisoned there. Not that I am panicking or anything, but in truth, the more I think about what the world might be like if there was an uncontrollable spread of an extra deadly flu strain, the more I want to get the hell back home.
According to the USA Today, that wonderfully trustful paper that gets left outside your door at every hotel in the country (probably the only paper still bringing in a profit), we are now at a "Level 5" on the "flu pandemic rating system." What does that mean? "Significant human-to-human spread in multiple locations." Level 6 is the highest, which means "human-to-human spread is efficient and sustained." The phrase "efficient and sustained" is extra frightening.
In short, it's a little unsettling to think about what the government can and theoretically do with the ability to just lock folks up because they got sick. The vast majority of the people who would contract and die from some kind of pandemic like this are the very same folks who can't afford the necessary preventative healthcare, and will therefore be only going to the hospital if it is literally a matter of life and death. And that's because they know very well how much the private corporations who run most hospitals are going to charge them for what those of us with medical coverage call "basic services." Nothing exemplifies the disparities between the rich and the poor than uncontrollable disaster or epidemic. The poor are the first to die because they are last to receive and/or seek services. And when they die it is kept quiet, because it is shameful, and everyone knows it, but doesn't want to take on the task of changing that reality. When wealthy folks die from a flu outbreak, the government agencies and private hospitals will immediately snap to attention and get the job done. It's the same reason we don't help Darfur, but we are more than happy to support Israel, or any number of other countries with which we have a special understanding they when we help them, we get some of their resources or can use them to advance American hegemony in the region.
What's all this have to do with the Swine Flu? Simple. It is the job of government to take advantage of every possible situation to advance policies that it sees fit for the American voting public. For the Bush Administration, than meant cutting the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers (what I would argue made Katrina inevitable) and passing any other policy they could that took money away from branches of government that were put together to see to the goal of basic economic justice. And so on, and so fourth. In other words, the government, by its very nature, will set out to advance the agenda that it thinks we the people want, and in many cases, what we the people need, according to them.
Perhaps this will not be a problem with Barack Obama in office. However, I am not convinced that our government is prepared for the worst on this one, and because of that, I do fear what they may end up doing with the additional power they inherit from such a situation, in which they - like the people they will be tasked with helping - are underfunded and over-armed.
In any case, I am very happy to be back home and not at the airport in freaky DC. I don't plan to do a whole lot of hanging out in enclosed, heavily secured and policed places like airports anytime soon, as long as I can manage to stay clear of them. I suggest you do the same. And while you're at it, cover your mouth when you cough, and don't be what our dear friend Seinfeld calls a "close talker."
I sense a new kind of online concert becoming a cool, virtual underground thing to do if and when the "global pandemic" becomes real. "Junkyard Empire, LIVE from the Basement! Log in here!" Hmm. Let's think about this.
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