We live in perilous times. There are no longer guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The allure of the shining city darkens as public transportation forces millions into the gaping jaws of the Coronavirus. Long-distance travel is damned by airplanes beset with sudden clouds of infection, hotels with invisible pockets of doom, Uber drivers with no moral compass. Crazed lunatics foil your solitary morning walk on the shoreline by inundating the beaches. Unmasked hooligans rampage through the markets, dispatching their evil brew. Brain-dead brown-collar workers laugh at their own audacity in convenience stores, scorning all threats. Imbeciles picket the state capitol, outraged they can’t go bowling. Fanatics fill The Church of the Dimwitted Brood.
Society warily opens up because it has no choice. Bank accounts are decimated, parents are broke, children are starving. The government sends money but there is only so much money to send. Struggling businesses put a toe in the water to assess the temperature. Does the sensible man risk a trip to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker? Does he trek to the massage salon or wait for his back to go out? Is the hospital emergency room a life-saving oasis or a potential deathpit? Carpe diem is no longer the battle-cry. Now, it’s Better Safe Than Sorry.
A few things are becoming apparent. In the New World, “Spacing” is the byword. In restaurants, you will no longer be seated close enough to participate in your neighbor’s conversation. On airplanes, obese people’s overage will no longer be allowed to droop into your seat. On ball fields, base-stealing will be disallowed due to the dangers inherent in tagging a thief. No one but her husband will be allowed to kiss the bride.
The man who can truly see the future is sure to benefit from his prescience. With that in mind, The Flying Pie searches far and wide to bring you the thoughtful reckonings of reasonable prognosticators and utter frauds. We’ll let you sort them out for yourselves.
Karnak Predicts….
Warren Buffet: “You can bet on America, but you are going to have to be careful on how you bet. We have sold all of our significant holdings in four of the largest airline carriers in the country. When we sell something, we sell our entire stake. The world has changed for airlines. As for acquisitions by our company Berkshire Hathaway, despite the pandemic and our desire to find acquisition targets, we haven’t seen anything attractive. We are not worried about our banking investments. I don’t see any special problems in the banking system.”
Bill Gates: “Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table and airplanes where every middle seat is empty. Schools are open but you can’t fill a stadium with 70,000 fans. People are working some and spending some but not as much as they were before the pandemic. If in the Spring of 2021 people are going to big public events like a ball game or a concert in a stadium, it will be because we have a miraculous treatment that made people feel confident about going out again. I do not expect our economy to come roaring back, like the president does.”
Laurie Garrett (public health journalist): “I think we’re going to get four, five years from now and there will not be a single aspect of our lives that’s been unchanged. The virus will continue to circulate in the world regardless of whether or not there’s a vaccine---unless we’re committed to a strategic goal of really getting rid of the virus from the planet with the appropriate implementation of vaccine for everybody---7.5 million human beings. All sorts of interactions and behaviors that we’ve taken for granted will be different. We have not yet really felt the effect of the grand depression we’re marching into.”
Peter C. Baker (The Guardian): “There is hope that we might begin to see the world differently. Maybe we can view our problems as shared, and society as more than just a mass of individuals competing against each other for wealth and standing. Maybe, in short, we can understand that the logic of the market should not dominate as many spheres of human existence as we currently allow it to.”
Jenny Anderson (Quartz): “The pandemic is giving tech massive insights at scale as to what human development and learning looks like, allowing it to potentially shift from just content dissemination to augmenting relationships with teachers, personalization and independence. But the way it has been rolled out---overnight, with no training and often not sufficient bandwidth---will leave many with a sour taste about the whole exercise.”
Matt Burr and Becca Endicott (Wall Street Journal): “The traditional office was already fading into obsolescence. The coronavirus pandemic radically sped up the timeline.”
Harry Grabar (Slate): “Americans will never stop going to basketball games. They won’t stop going on vacation. They’ll meet to do business. No decentralizing technology so far---not telegrams, not telephones, and not the internet---has dented that human desire to shake hands, despite technologists’ predictions to the contrary.”
Andreas Krieg (Al Jazeera): “Fragile states will be pushed into chaos and anarchy, and there is a realistic chance that some regimes will not survive Covid-19 as mass dissidence towards the end of mass mortality will bring hundreds of thousands to the street to overthrow regimes whose legitimacy will be undermined by their inability to manage the crisis.”
Meehan Crist (New York Times): “Our response to this health crisis will shape the climate crisis for decades to come. The efforts to revive economic activity---the stimulus plans, bailouts and back-to-work programs being developed now---will help determine the shape of our economies and our lives for the foreseeable future, and they will have effects on carbon emissions that reverberate across the planet for thousands of years.”
Stephen M. Walt (Foreign Policy): “In short, Covid-19 will create a world that is less open, less prosperous and less free. It did not have to be this way, but the combination of deadly virus, inadequate planning and incompetent leadership has placed humanity on a new and worrisome path.”
Kevin Drum (Mother Jones): “I’m going to go out on a limb here: I don’t think much of anything will be changed forever and I wish people would stop saying so based on two whole weeks of practicing isolation and social distancing.”
What’s Cookin’?
While all of the above make valid points, The Flying Pie’s opinion is closer to that of Harry Grabar and Kevin Drum. Indisputably, however, the airline industry is in dire straits, which will alter travel dramatically for some time. Music and sports venues will operate with far fewer attendees, at least until a vaccine is available, which could take far longer than the current optimistic projections contend. Amusement parks will add all the acreage they can to allow for more spacing of consumers. In as much trouble as anyone, vast numbers of independent restaurants will probably disappear.
The fast food joints will have the best of it. A large percentage of their customers already prefer the drive-up lanes as it is. Prior to the pandemic, you might see a half-dozen people inside any given McDonald’s while an endless string of vehicles stretches around the building. If these places make any changes, they will probably increase the number of drive-thru windows to speed up service.
Most healthy restaurant chains will survive. The prosperous ones have the business figured out, they’ll simply suck it up, space their tables and wait it out. The smaller independent restaurants are in trouble. Knowledgeable evaluators see as many as 75% of the indies failing to weather the storm. Most observers feel that the CARE Act’s Paycheck Protection Program will not provide sufficient loan coverage to keep these places afloat. Available capital will likely flow more readily toward larger businesses, further marginalizing restaurants without comfy investors or those without large followings. But then there are the exceptions.
Antonio’s primarily Italian restaurant in nearby Micanopy falls into an interesting nether category. The place is in the middle of nowhere and does not have deep reserves, making it a likely candidate for the scrap pile. What it does have, however, is exceptional food and a clever owner/chef, a native of Naples, Italy, who knows his stuff. Antonio’s has acquired a significant following of locals, many of them well-heeled, who live within a half hour of the place. For these folks, Antonio’s is the only game in town and they have made a point of supporting the eatery through thick and thin, stopping by regularly to pick up prepared meals or occasionally even having them delivered. A solid base, an excellent product and an affable environment will carry an entity a long way, even in perilous times. To survive the current maelstrom, independependent restaurants may have to elevate their game, use some imagination, enhance their product and add a few frills. It can be done. Wily restaurateurs, your hungry plethora of potential customers is eagerly awaiting. Only you can save them from the moribund reality of Olive Garden. Get cookin’.
Close The Door, They’re Coming In The Windows
The Covid-19 massacre wouldn’t be a proper major cataclysm if it didn’t roust a few of our favorite people, the colander-wearing conspiracy theorists and the gleefully misinformed. To get the ball rolling, Youtuber David Icke claimed that the eventual coronavirus vaccine will contain “nanotechnology microchips” which would allow humans to be controlled. He didn’t say by who, but you can bet it’s the ubiquitous them. But what more can they make us do? They’ve already got us listening to rap music, going to soccer games and eating nachos with cheese, what outrages are left?
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiolgy advises that Covid-19 arrived on Earth by way of a fireball from space which landed in China last October. I mean, come on, that’s just too much of a coincidence, right? Singer Keri Hill thinks that’s utter balderdash because it’s obvious the new 5G phone towers are the cause of the disease. Don’t worry, though, she’s only got 4.2 million followers.
A popular theory of unknown origin (suspects include the American Cocaine Dealers Association) posits that a healthy dose of coke will knock the stuffings out of the coronavirus. Or maybe you just won’t care, either way is good. This advisory gained so much traction in Paris that the French government was forced to make televised denials. “Okay, it’s the methamphetamine then,” replied the original source.
Over in India, more than 200 people somehow became convinced that drinking cow urine would protect against Covid-19. The chummy group imbibed the stuff while posing next to a caricature of the coronavirus and singing Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem of India. So far, no one has come down with the virus but party invitations to members of the group have plummeted.
We Told You So!
America’s wacky survivalists, often ridiculed for their bomb-shelter inclinations, are laughing up their sleeves at the rest of the country. One of them, James Wesley Rawles, was willing to talk to reporters, but not much. “I’m not at liberty to say what state I live in,” he told MarketWatch by internet phone. “Just say I live in the inland Northwest more than two hours from any decent shopping. We could lock our gate and say goodbye to the world for two or three years and get along just fine.” Oh, come on, John Wesley. Those videotapes of Duck Dynasty would get old in no time.
Jim Cobb says “I was a prepper long before that term came into being. Like, since I was 16 years old.” Jim has helpfully written Preppers’ Long-Term Survival Guide and Urban Emergency Survival Plan in case you need a little help. He says he’s not counting but sales are up.
“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” says Doc Montana, a survivalist who refuses to share his real name. “A lot of urban people aren’t prepared for a disaster. They don’t even know what to do when the buses are late.”
While most survivalists prefer the anonymity of Doc and James Wesley, Cobb uses his true name and lives in a mainstream environment in Wisconsin, where he works as a disaster preparedness consultant and a writer. “I’m not an end-of-the-world kind of guy,” he maintains. “It isn’t a case of having to batten down the hatches because the zombies are going to get us. Preparedness is just common sense. Be prepared for whatever life throws at you.”
Rawles contends he and other preppers noticed the commodities markets were flashing danger signals about China long before Wall Street paid attention. “We started raising alarms about this in early January,” he says. The commodities markets essentially fell flat. Oil slumped, copper plunged, the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks global shipping, went south. We all got ready for a Black Swan Event.” The latter is a term coined by author Nassim Taleb to describe major sudden unpredictable shocks to the system. Rawles says he is keeping his money in platinum, silver and U.S. nickels, which he believes will be valuable because of their base metal content.
Most preppers speak their own language, which favors acronyms. There is TEOTWAWKI, which is actually pronounced as a word (teo-twaw-ki), which stands for The End Of The World As We Know It. WROL means Without The Rule Of Law. GOOD means Get Out Of Dodge. And SHTF refers to the moment when Shit Hits The Fan.
The fellers all either live in or have a place to go in the “American Redoubt,” a vague area of the northwest covering Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Eastern Oregon and Washington. The term was coined by Rawles and describes a political migration to mountain states, a place of refuge for libertarian, conservative survivalists. Cobb says it’s common sense to be prepared. “You wait too long, you get shut out. Then you’re in a jam. What’s the harm in being prepared.”
Well yeah, Jim, but what if a disaster doesn’t strike and you’re stuck with 200 boxes of cornflakes? “Hey, that’s okay!” Cobb beams. “Then you don’t have to go shopping for awhile.”
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
