AFTER THE AFTERMATH,: WHAT WE SHOULD LOOK FORWARD TO

 My entry yesterday was depressing. But after the next eight months or so, the future will get brighter. In fact, with a little luck, things will be better than any time since the early '60s.

Disclaimers: accurately conjecturing about the future is impossible and depends only on luck. We live in an inherently random universe. What we see as order is only the things our senses are evolved to perceive.

Also, this presumes that the Biden Administration will be somewhat more than competent, that the mutant strains of COVID are at least tractable, and of course, that another deadly pandemic from a different germ doesn't start.

But it's still fun to look ahead and hope.

About COVID aftereffects:

-A vaccination program will begin to turn the tide of the virus in 2022. COVID will continue diminishing waves. PPE protocols will be enforced depending on the severity of the virus.

-Scientific advances made in fighting this virus will yield advances in treatments of other diseases.

-Public health will be taken much more seriously, and receive a great uptick in funding and employment. We'll be more than ready for the next disease outbreak.

-A new healthcare system will be enacted, building on what's left of Obamacare.

-Religion will diminish in both political power and popularity; if for no other reason but because people will be out of the habit of going to church.*1 Once the habit is broken, most won't get it back. For example, for the first time ever reported a decline in active membership. It'll decline, but won't be extinct.

-Those who scoffed COVID will be hit the hardest when the final body count is counted, causing a decline in rural areas, which will be rescued with government programs.

-When the epidemic is over, expect survivors to come out of their isolation to be ecstatic, almost giddy. Expect things to be absolutely nuts for weeks. Expect a sudden, if modest, baby boom.

-Also, when its over, expect businesses to rebound, and wages offered to be great. But there will be big changes, both from industries that won't come back, and brand new industries. A generation's habits will be permanently changed. Also, expect there to be a government programs to start farms and repopulate rural areas and small towns. There will also be programs.

-And kids will actually love to go to school.

-Expect crime to decline.

-As much as I hate to point this out, in the end, survivors will likely benefit economically from the lower population and the change in age demographics. However, this will be diminished by people permanently disabled by the virus.

 And now the consequent outcomes of the Donald J. Trump and the insurrection:

-The court cases over the Trump-initiated attacks on Dominion Voting Systems have led to lawsuits against conservative outlets/commentators who repeated and amplified Trump's baseless claims. Harassed Dominion staffers were targeted by Trump cadres for harassment and death threats. They have sued Fox News, Lou Dobbs, etc, for defamation, and have forced them to retract. However, the harassment didn't stop. With clear malice and demonstrable damage, the plaintiff have a very strong, almost airtight case. It can put the entire conservative propaganda apparatus out of business. This will further the decline in conservatism.

-After the government gets through putting out all the Trump-ignited fires, reforms in our government will be proposed, at least a few will be constitutional Amendments, and many of them will be passed. Among the changes that might be made: a roll-back of the power of the president and executive branch, and laws which prescribe statutory penalties for dereliction and abuse; the abolishment--or at least a change--in the electoral college; statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, a Voting Rights Constitutional amendment which will include further transparency in elections, limits on gerrymandering, and campaign finance reform; much stronger laws about privacy; and, of course, more laws on domestic terrorism and insurgency.

-Section 230 of the 1996 telecom act will be altered. I won't conjecture on type of change.

-Expect a rethink in the design of computers to at least be initiated by 2024. Also, a project for a redesign of the World Wide Web, Internet 2.0 will at least be in the works. The emphasis for both will be on much tighter security protocols. Expect fiber-optic networks to spread throughout the entire country. All of this in anticipation for quantum computing.

-Expect a worldwide conference, and treaties to be negotiated limiting governments' use of hacking, the use of drones, and the disallowing the development of soldierbots.

-A new treaty with Iran will be in negotiation at least until 2024.

-A new international treaty about climate change will be signed, based on the Paris Accords.

-As things get better, and they will, the Trump years will be remembered as either a nightmare, or the worst part of a 20 or 40-year nightmare. COVID-19 will probably called the Trump Virus. I'm more certain that the historically horrible year of 2020 is going to be associated with Trump, just like the year 1929 belongs to Hoover.

For a final note: we lost a lot of time to mitigate the effects of climate change. I won't conjecture on the effects it will have, and it might have some good effects in some places, as a whole it'll be a negative change for the US and the world. I won't conjecture beyond that.

*1 Clergy and ministers know this, know that their revenues will be in decline which is why some are so stubbornly insisting that their followers must continue with weekly church attendance. All this will do is assure that their flocks are hit worse by COVID, and will know attending church caused it. Also, once away from weekly faith reinforcement, ex-congs will begin to notice just how wealthy televangelists have become, and more importantly, they'll resent it, 

*2 The political Right would've opposed PPE even without Trump's influence. Trump has good instincts about power, and knew he could only ahead of the issue by going extreme anti-mask and underplaying the problem. Conservatives sense that COVID is a direct challenge to their individualism, a cornerstone of their ideology. Epidemics can't be stopped without organized measures and cooperation, totally antithetical to individualism. 

Lost in the Vaccination Controversy

Jenny McCarthy, Playboy Model and archvillain: I'm a poser, not a doctor.

Jenny McCarthy's irrational and irresponsible dissent against vaccinations is yielding a measles epidemic. The central vector of it being Disneyland. It's in seven states already, which pretty much means it's out of control and will get much worse before it burns out.

I'm supposing Disney is not happy about this. They're probably thinking of some PSA's and probably having some lawyers look at lawsuits. Probably there will be one attempted sometime against Jenny McCarthy or others leading the anti-vaccine movement. If so, it's probably going to be groundbreaking. It'll be the first suit against someone who provided irresponsibly false information to the public. If the defendants are found liable, that will change public discourse.

Meanwhile, the anti-vaccine people are standing firm, like Gary Monahan quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

"How do I say this without sounding crazy?" he said. "I don't want anyone to get measles … but you have to make it easier for the parents through the health system to do it the right way. Pounding three live viruses into somebody at 1 year old is devastating."

Be careful any time you're tempted to begin a statement, "How do I say this without sounding crazy."

The most important issue has been buried in this debate: what's causing the upsurge in autisms? It used to be rarity, just as lung cancer used to be rare disease until cigarette smoking became ubiquitous. Now, almost everybody knows two three parents who have a diagnosed autistic child, or one with Asperger's Syndrome. I know two or three, and I'm practically a shut-in. A look at the growing prevalence is shocking:

That's a 45-fold increase in autism diagnoses in 35 years. Similar to lung cancer diagnoses after cigarettes were introduced.

Yes, some of this might be due to just having the condition better defined, but I think if autism were so common in the 1930s or 1950s, it would have been much better known, and my generation would have grown up with common knowledge about it. We'd have a colloquial name for it, just as the "the mumps" or "the chicken pox," rather then autism. Those are just indications that autism symptoms couldn't have been that common. When I grew up, I didn't know any family that had an autistic child. Children growing up now all either have an autistic sibling or know a family with it.   

In the face of this, and without any answers being offered, little apparent concern shown by the government, of course parents are becoming hysterical. Parents as group have hair-triggers when it comes to panic over their children's safety. There's all kinds of hysterias that are proof of that. So, of course they're looking for culprits. This is made worse when it's demonstrated that if one in 110 people were coming down with measles, there would be a lot of public health effort to identifying the source and containing the problem. By comparison, autism is much more devastating and costly, and the government does almost nothing. This is a public health crisis, but there's no public health effort to find the reason and remedy it.

Why isn't the government at any level giving a concerted effort to finding out what is causing this huge upsurge in autism?

This is just my guess: our generation is exposed to more exotic chemicals than any other. It's on food, in our cosmetics, in our beds, in our homes. They range from pesticides to flame-retardants, to food additives. Few of them have been studied or tested. Those that are frequently have neurotoxic or neuroactive effects. Many are known to be hormone disrupters.

It might not be any one chemical, but being exposed to the whole cocktail together must have some effect on us, and effect that's seen in the long-term, such as an upsurge in autism. Class comes into it. The wealthy class does not want to know and doesn't people to find out that products that making them  richer could be harmful. This could badly effect their bottom lines, and their goal of getting richer. It's similar to how spreading climate change denial keeps cash flow healthy and prevents a public backlash. 

I'm receptive to the idea in that I have a brother who has Angelman Syndrome, a totally tragic, crippling condition caused by a damaged maternal gene. My parents grew up within a few blocks of each other in extremely polluted St Louis City. For example, my father used to play baseball all summer on a cinder lot. This is where people dumped coal ash from their furnaces. So, he played baseball all summer long on a toxic waste dump, stirring up and inhaling ash that was loaded with lead, cadmium and arsenic. They used to chew tar off the streets, chew lead paint chips, oblivious to the fact that they were damaging themselves. I don't know exactly what my mother was exposed to, but I know St. Louis City, like all urban areas in the 1930s-1960s was in a haze of smoke and airborne industrial waste similar to what Chinese cities are experiencing. 

Even if I'm wrong on my conjecture, the question remains: why isn't the government having concerted studies into the causes of autism?