I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

I've just discovered that murder hornets are a thing. Didn't realise before probably because it's a US thing and not an Australian thing. But... really... I can't help thinking of the plagues of Egypt. The count is rising...

• Fire
• Plague (aka pandemic)
• Insect pests (murder hornets, not locusts)

Ah, looks like I'm not the only one to make the connection. I like this take on it.

Thing is, a lot of the stuff going on now is a case of "what goes around, comes around".

• The bushfires in Australia in January: global warming. Which is man-made.
• Covid19: forget the ridiculous rumour that it was made in a lab; this is, like Ebola, like Swine Flu, like Bird Flu, like Mad Cow Disease... a disease that jumped from animals to humans. (See Americapox: the missing plague for a more in-depth discussion about what conditions are required to create plagues). The practice, in China, of having "wet markets" (public markets where live animals are sold and slaughtered at the market) makes the likelihood of animal-to-human disease-jumping higher. Which means it isn't terribly surprising that China has been the source of more than one dangerous disease in recent history.
• What is happening in the USA now... there's a whole lot of karma coming home to roost. Lack of public health care; the attitude of shoot-first-and-don't-ask-anything (from the gun lobby AND from the government); the glorification of individual rights to the detriment of community safety; and the pernicious racism (which is leading to protest marches all over the world, which is going to pretty much guarantee a second wave of Covid19 spread).

The strangeness of a global pandemic is that it isn't the Apocalypse that the extremist preppers/survivalists signed up for; it isn't the Apocalypse that SciFi writers wrote about. Instead of rugged macho individualists murdering their neighbours with impunity (in the name of self-defence), we have people staying at home making sourdough bread. It is a feminine Apocalypse: solved by kindness, cooperation, and baking. We've had the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror(ism)", but trying to frame this as a "war" is doomed to failure. At least, framing it as a modern war is. World War II had the Blitz, and it is more that kind of spirit that we need; endurance, cooperation, holding fast, and making do. And, indeed, there are many who are showing that kind of spirit: let us not forget that.