Practice Run

 

I got my second dose of COVID vaccine the other day (Moderna), and within 24 hours, The Beneficiary got her first one (Pfizer).

It's beginning to look like we may live through this annoying kindergarten practice run of The End Times if we can hang on another month without doing something stupid. 

What, you thought this was a real thing? Pfft.  

Remember when the Black Plague shitcanned upwards of half of Europe (and probably Asia, too, but stats are harder to come by)?  

Do you know why it finally (mostly) went away that time around? It wasn't mutation or vaccine or technology. It was because the density of people literally thinned out so much that it couldn't maintain itself. In other words, it killed so many hosts so quickly that the availability fell below its effective transmission and infection capability. 

The odds are pretty fair that some of us will live long enough to see another version of a REAL plague involving some novel cross-over viral variant which, given our current global spread capabilities, could well drop our worldwide population to below-sustainable (i.e., "extinction") levels within months. Or less.  

On the up side, the good news for the "Save The Earth" crew is that this extermination will affect the earth not a whit. If earth has noticed the entire history of ALL life on its surface at all, it's probably as a mild rash, and extinction level events that it doesn't notice at all are one of the most consistent features of the universe.

The thing we have going for us at the moment was that this light little thump upside the head from Nature got our attention enough to figure out how to quickly use our technology to mitigate it.

Will that be enough to hold off The End for awhile?

I dunno.

It certainly it won't be enough over the long term, keeping in mind that the human race's entire existence to date is barely a strobe flash in deep history. There's no particular reason to think we're gonna manage to hang on to another zero-length blip of even 100,000 years in a vaguely recognizable form, or, for that matter, at all.

But who knows? Not me. I suspect that for some reason I care less than most do that we, even as a race, are not anywhere near immortal, nor are we even remotely likely to ever be.

(shrug) That also has zero impact on how it will go.

All I can tell you is that in this exact moment, we're another step closer to me being able to hold my great-granddaughter for hours while she sleeps on my chest.

Which modest outcome is pretty much all I hope of eternity for me, thanks.