Pandemic Countdowns To 11 Tipping Point Letter-Labelled Days: W.A.G. T.H.E. D.O.G.I.E.

Coronavirus Czar Pence by Nancy Ohanian

-by Waggin' William

The novel coronavirus pandemic is likely to go through 11 tipping point days, which will arrive (or have arrived) on different dates. Each day can be labelled with the first letter of its description. Those first letters combine into the suggestive acronym W.A.G. T.H.E. D.O.G.I.E.

W-Day = Wake-up, by a critical mass of populace, to fact that “this is not just the flu”-- most compellingly because of much higher death rate, and much-much higher rate of patients needing intensive care to avoid death (not to mention emerging evidence that many survivors may have permanent lung damage).

– When? About now.

A-Day = Asymptomatic carrying and spreading is widely understood: people who don’t feel sick (for days, weeks or ever) have been spreading this since late November, in a world of “6 degrees of separation” AKA the “6 handshake rule.”

– When? About now.

G-Day = Government (especially elected) leaders are widely understood to be infected at higher rates than the average person, because of so many hand-shakes and group meetings.

– When? The next few days.

T-Day = Triage in the form of rationing, by “greatest-need” (and “greatest-power/wealth/celebrity”), of tests, treatment, medicines and masks.

– When? Soon triage will go far beyond the first step, which was to announce that “most people should not wear masks-- because care providers need all of the limited supplies.” By contrast, in many Asian countries, where the spread appears to have been increasingly contained, universal wearing of masks (of which supplies were quickly ramped up) has given people confidence that they can shop for food and medicine without getting coughed on or breathed on directly by other people who are shedding the virus.

Face to Face by Nancy Ohanian

H-Day = Hospitals (especially intensive care units) are forced to reject all new patients due to overcrowding by existing patients.

– When? Sooner or later. A few days in Italy. A week or so in some other European cities, and perhaps Seattle. Two or three weeks in many other dense and travel-intensive locations.

E-Day = Election suspensions.

– When? Anti-Bernie forces will fight to ensure that suspensions (in addition to the one suspension already announced in Louisiana) occur only after further cementing of their top-down narrative that “Delegate math makes Bernie a pathless sower of division.” The longer a time period they have, after cementing this narrative, and before the November general election, the more gradually and smoothly they can replace Biden with a nominee who is more electable and mentally competent. If Trump, and/or one or more DNC-hating governors, are sufficiently attentive to this scenario, then they could shorten (and potentially pre-empt) this time period by suspending early-state primaries.

D-Day = Deployment of troops needed to prevent people from mobbing suppliers of tests, treatment, medicines, masks, food, etc.

– When? Federal troops probably a week or so after the first state deployment of National Guard.

O-Day = Orwellian clamp-down on information, with much news about the above being treated as “fake news” to be blocked, financially penalized, and perhaps criminalized.

– When? As soon as a majority of national security insiders agree this is the only way to prevent a majority of voters from saying: “Oh shit-- I should have voted for Bernie’s Medicare-For-All, and now I will not accept pandemic survival or other health being rationed by price.”

G(h)-Day = Ghettoization of actual or suspected infection hot-spots, by increasing or modifying troop deployments to prevent most people from exiting these areas, which will likely include most areas that combine high population density with high numbers of international travellers.

– When? About 48 hours after H-Day in two or three more US cities after Seattle.

I-Day = Intensive care demand declines down to level matching supply.

– When? After sufficient (a) decrease in demand by means of deaths, recoveries and acquired immunity, and (b) increase in supply of treatment equipment and supplies, and in immune healthcare workers.

E-Day = Economic activity restarts, by each individual acting as a purely rational risk-reward-balancing Homo Economicus, energized by their knowledge that the invisible hand will ensure that what trickles down to the poor, from bailouts to the Rich, is more, in the long run, than the poor would enjoy under any healthcare guarantees, safety nets or other bottom-up government policies.

– When? It’s up to us whether the answer is (a) quickly, until the next, even worse, pandemic, or financial crash, or (b) never.

Most of the above days appear to have become inevitable. As suggested by these days’ acronym (W.A.G. T.H.E. D.O.G.I.E.), the biggest uncertainties are as follows:

• Whether Trump will decide that his political position would be strengthened by giving orders to ramp up military action overseas, of which starting a “limited war” against the pandemic-besieged Iran would be the most likely.
• Whether Pence will, long before (or roughly at the same time as) Trump gives such a war order, make himself President by collecting votes from executive department heads to remove Trump as “unfit” under the 25th Amendment.

Troop deployments could be the last straws for Pence (if he has not acted earlier):

• Domestic troop deployment is probably, already now, widely expected to become necessary, making it obvious that Pence’s ability to achieve popularity will be much greater if he delays taking office until after (i) first, the blame for deployment has already been shouldered by President Trump, leaving (ii) later, the more popular fine-tuning, reduction and ending of deployment to be initiated by Pence.
• Foreign hostilities involving troop fatalities have the opposite sequence of political impacts: (i) first, starting them is usually easy and initially popular, but (ii) later, finding a way to manage and end them is very difficult and increasingly less popular.
• Thus, the sweet spot for Pence’s action would be after domestic, and before foreign, troop deployments, but Trump may be too cunning to tee up the sequence so conveniently.
• Pence’s biggest asset (that Trump cannot fire him) will also be his biggest vulnerability if it incentivizes him to wait until things get so bad that the only thing left to be done is share the blame, for Trump’s catastrophic 3-year cherry on top of neoliberalism’s 4-decade hollowing out of public health and government credibility.