Today I am going to address more than one issue. It's Monday and I feel like being a bit more radical than usual.
Many of the news bulletins and info-graphs compare the COVID-19 pandemic to the 1920's Spanish Flu breakout. These pandemics have two things in common. Both were caused by viruses and both were pandemics that killed people. That's where the similarities end.
The main reason why the two can't be compared is because of technology. Yes, there was a massive cover-up of COVID-19 (History will tell how much of a cover-up there was) and information didn't come out until many people had already succumbed to the virus, but when it came out, the information literally spanned the globe in seconds. Not so with the Spanish Flu. Treatment protocols and quarantines could be put in place within days. That was definitely not the case with the Spanish Flu. The end result is that many more people died from the Spanish Flu that are likely to die from COVID-19.
THAT DOES NOT MEAN THIS VIRUS IS NOT SERIOUS!
Why do I say that? Because China shut down. The Chinese Communist Party won't shut down anything unless not doing so proves to be a real threat to their society and economy. So if the Chinese Government reasoned that COVID-19 is a serious enough issue, the rest of the world will do very well to sit up and take very careful notice.
The other issue is that I see many African governments pandering to China, and until this morning, I was actually wondering why they didn't chase off these warmongering barbarians as they should have. Then I realized that China effectively OWNS Africa. They bought governments by sponsoring lavish lifestyles and large civil constructions in return for massive loans, the repayments that the countries can't afford any more. (Due to aforementioned lavish lifestyles, perhaps?) The economics are therefore pretty simple, actually. Call up the loan and if the debtor can't pay, attach their property. THAT should scare people more than anything else!
China has the military capacity to back themselves up, if it comes down to that. No other single country could defeat their strength right now. And that's also a big problem.
Were there prophets that foretold of this? Yes, there actually were! And people took their words as the fiction that they couched them in.
Tom Clancy saw this happening. Only in his case, it was a weaponized Ebola strain, in a book that Hollywood won't touch because the narrative hits too close to home. He also foretold of massive Chinese military invasions in one of the subsequent stories. Unlikely, maybe at the time, but definitely no longer impossible.
I can only pray that the events that one of my favorite writers foretold so long ago do not come to pass.