Omicron Shows the Danger of our Fragile Society

I read an article from the Associated Press today which outlines how our system is collapsing because so many people are out sick with COVID-19. It’s not just hospitals and airlines that are overwhelmed but pharmacies, police, fire, EMS, and schools. Mass transit is reducing schedules, trash pickup is behind, the TSA is closing security lines, and plenty of restaurants and small business are getting hit as well.

Another article talked about the slowdown in meat-packing plants due to illness, shortages of food inspectors, fears that there will be an egg shortage, and the lack of employees on farms and at grocery stores to restock shelves.

Let me put this another way: The illness of 5 million people, not all of whom are in the workforce, is crippling our country.

A Prepper’s Perspective

I guess an economist might consider that good news. It means we are efficient and don’t have too many workers.

Now, put on your prepper hat and think about what that means. It means it’s pretty easy to shut things down, to stress our first responders to the point that they are delayed or unavailable, and to overflow our hospitals. Next, think about a mass casualty event that does the same thing: overflows hospitals and stressed our first responders.

It shows you that there are nowhere near enough pilots and aircrews, just as there are not enough truck drivers.

My thinking is this shows our vulnerabilities. We learned the hard way that our supply chain had little spare capacity. Now we see that our service industries are in the same position: walking a fine line between normal and chaos. That fine line is stretching. I would say it is just shy of the breaking point. One more large-scale stressor will cause it to break, and then life as we know it changes, possibly forever.

Timing

This would be the time for Russia to invade the Ukraine. This would be the time for China to attack Taiwan, when we are nonfunctional, deficient, when our largest cities and industries are struggling to remain operational. What if they struck now, when on top of this, our president is weakened by repeated losses both in Congress and in the courts, when his approval rating is low, and his mental aptitude in doubt.

Notice how few reports there are about Omicron and our military. Are 5 percent of their pilots sick? Or is it 10 or 15 percent? No one knows. What about the mechanics, the ground crew, the cargo masters and weapons technicians? We have heard of one naval ship sidelined because 100 percent of the crew had COVID. How many similar situations have been kept quiet because the ships are at sea rather than in a port?

We can only hope the threat of Omicron tearing through the opposition, on top of our promised retaliation, gives them pause. It would be just like this disease to strike just at the moment when you need every able-bodied person.

This is why we Prep

These unknowns are why I prep. When a known event is coming, it is easy to prepare. For example, when we know there is a winter storm coming, I stay home, bring in firewood, fill up on gasoline, and recharge our batteries. It’s the disasters that catch you by surprise you need to prepare for before anyone knows they are coming. You could say it is the disaster no one expects or could predict, the one that catches us by surprise, that we should prepare for. How? Be preparing for anything. Our goal should be to survive during the aftermath of any disaster, catastrophe, natural or man-made, local, regional, or global.

Maybe you prep to survive a nuclear war or an EMP. Maybe you prep for an economic collapse. Whatever the reason, take a few extra steps and prep for anything and everything. It won’t cost that much more and it may just save your life.