2024: The Year We Find Out

Co-working on the wane, co-collapsing on the rise

Due to unforeseen circumstances my ability to spend an eighth year in a row skipping New Year's Eve revelries here in Melbourne were effectively thwarted, all but forcing me to head back to the dying co-working space I currently reside at, crack open the bottle of faux-champagne that's been sitting in the fridge for nearly a year, and in a slightly inebriated state put down some initial words for one of those "predictions for the upcoming year" posts (while 400,000 people whooped it up just outside my window).

"Dying co-working space", you may be wondering?

Yes, having little choice but to spend the past several years in a big city (far away from the soil for far too long), in mid-2019 I joined what was arguably Melbourne's premier co-working space (Framework, as I don't to that WeWork / The Commons / Creative Cubes corporate nonsense), a place where I fortuitously spent the entirety of Melbourne's six SARS-CoV-2 lockdowns over the span of 262 days. Following Framework's closure at the end of 2021 (not due to SARS-CoV-2 issues but rather due to the landlord selling to a new tenant who forced us to vacate), I was left with little choice but to relocate to another independent co-working space here in Melbourne. However, and in case you weren't aware, independent co-working has taken a massive hit thanks to SARS-CoV-2 knock-on effects.

To make a long-story short, and not to delve into the whole "working from home" thing, stalling "economies" have all but forced large companies that occupy floors in skyscrapers to downsize to the likes of WeWork (which itself is collapsing, or rather, claiming bankruptcy). Meanwhile, since much of the work for freelancers (who largely occupied the independent co-working spaces) has been drying up due to the aforementioned knock-on effects, the fact that these freelancers purchased desks, chairs, monitors, etc. for their homes during lockdowns makes a co-working desk the easiest expense to cut back on. In effect, independent co-working spaces have largely been hollowed out as nobody's been downsizing to them but rather downsizing away from them, and so while corporate co-working spaces have managed to somewhat scrape by, the independent ones are more often than not co-collapsing (adios Neighbourhood, adios Juno Studio, etc.).

Which brings me to the co-working space I'm currently at. I can't say I completely dislike the virtual emptiness of the place (we've gone from 30+ people down to 3, simultaneously downsizing the space we occupy), seeing how I'm the only person I know that continues to take SARS-CoV-2 seriously. Rather than having to wear an N95 respirator around a dozen or so people (as I don't wear those largely useless blue surgical masks), I can instead safely sip away on a chai tea at my desk sans respirator. Because while I wear said N95 virtually everywhere I go, have had the maximum five shots I've been eligible for, have a window right next to me cracked wide open at all times so I have fresh air constantly wafting over me, and then compliment all that with a large HEPA filter sitting a few feet away from me, I'm pretty much as Davos-safe as it gets.

I shouldn't need to point out that I'm one of the exceptions to the rule when it comes to taking precautions towards this ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a fact readily seen via generally being the only person I see in stores, on trams, etc., masked up (again, with a proper respirator). In other words, and aside from the few holdouts, the vast majority of us are "fucking around", and there's a good chance that later this year we're going to collectively "find out".

How is it that we're "fucking around"? For starters, this SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has blatantly revealed the sheer aversion the vast majority of us have towards making even the slightest adjustment to our lives and lifestyles in order to ward off the possibility of calamity – be it to society, others, or even our own individual lives. Regardless of whether this has been a collective failure of individuals en masse, a failure of government, a failure of thought leaders, a failure of the media, a failure of Instagram influencers, or a mixture of the preceding, the fact remains that whoever the fault lies with we've ultimately utterly failed this "test" that SARS-CoV-2 has bequeathed upon us. Yes, humanity may very well be a social species whereby individuals predominantly take their cues from the examples of leaders, but that doesn't change the fact that whatever the mechanism be, this pandemic has (so far, at least) revealed the current incarnation of our species (hell-bent on instant gratification) to be an utter failure when it comes to rising to the occasion.

How have we failed? Well, having predominantly succumbed to the "vax and relax" mantra we predominantly don't wear respirators (in shops, on public transit, in hospitals, etc.), we've predominantly stopped getting vaccinated (with vaccines whose benefits rapidly wane after four to six months and in which promises about being updated "in mere weeks" for new variants have proven to be completely illusory), we predominantly haven't cleaned the air (with broad-based HEPA filtration, or even just opening windows), we've skimped on the funding of next-gen vaccines, we've kowtowed to the whims of the business-as-usual chambers of commerce (which has sought to do away with virtually all restrictions precautions so everybody can pretend it's 2019 again), and so rather than accept that we may have to make some material sacrifices for a while longer we've instead given in to normalisation and denial.

Having effectively "fucked around" aplenty, how might it be then that we end up "finding out"? There's several ways this could occur, some of the more relevant ones ranging from the drawn out undramatic outcomes to the more rapid-pace dramatic ones. Undramatically there's the death-by-a-thousand-cuts route, whereby repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections (according to CDC SARS-CoV-2 wastewater data the US is currently experiencing [non-paywall screen capture here] its second-largest surge of the pandemic) ultimately result in increasing numbers of people succumbing to long COVID (while the current JN.1 wave in the US may be "mild", 10%-33% of mild cases result in long COVID of which generally last for a year), while delayed long-term effects (such as cardiovascular problems) later emerge in increasing quantities and similarly pick us off one by one, cumulatively leading our civilisation towards a state of decimation.

While a state of decimation due to SARS-CoV-2 is extremely unlikely thanks to (poorly funded) next-gen vaccines expected sometime in the next few years, it is nonetheless all but certain that we'll see dramatic increases of SARS-CoV-2-induced dementia, cardiovascular problems, and all the rest of it (which will likely be added to in coming years and decades with unknown long-term effects that we're inherently currently unaware of).

Dramatically speaking, it's theoretically possible that SARS-CoV-2 could in one way or another pick up a few mutations (be it via within-host evolution [through the persistent infection of an immunocompromised patient], recombination, ping pong zoonosis, or evolution in a different direction within what is still called Omicron) that results in its 1% - 2% case-fatality ratio (CFR) jumping to a CFR approaching that which the previous coronavirus the world dealt with, that being the 36% - 39% CFR that Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) has resulted in over the past decade.

But having entered what some have coined the "Pandemicene", there's no reason to not believe that were humanity to once again experience extreme levels of pandemic-related problems later this year that said pandemic-related problems would have something to do with the emergence of an entirely different virus. And thanks to an entirely different kind of "fucking around" than what was mentioned above of which humanity has been increasingly undertaking for several decades, this is where the virus whose nickname yours truly coined some 15 years ago comes in to play.

The Monoculture Flu

I won't try and explain here what is meant by "the Monoculture Flu", seeing how I've already done so at greater length elsewhere. That "elsewhere" would be the unpublished manuscript whose name this blog gets its name from, and seeing how I believe that said Monoculture Flu is going to emerge later this year I've decided to not let that chapter go to waste and so will imminently reproduce it here on From Filmers to Farmers.

In the meantime, I will at least say that what I've coined as the Monoculture Flu is none other than the H5N1 strain of bird flu (which has been ravaging wildlife across the globe over the past couple of years), a virus that I've been sporadically tweeting about with the hashtag #MonocultureFlu for nearly two years now and which I briefly alluded to on the r/collapse subreddit prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. As I replied to one individual stating that his "money is on an engineered super virus pandemic" (in regards to the question "What would 'nuclear Armageddon' look like in your city?"), I clarified with the following.

Otherwise, if you feel so inclined you can see some of the tweets in the thread I've been adding to over on Twitter.

It should go without saying that suggesting that H5N1 (which is said to have a CFR of over 50%) is going to emerge in September of this year is not only going out on an absurdly precise limb but is utterly asinine and apt to be notoriously wrong (and not just because H5N1 isn't the only flu subtype considered to be a pandemic threat, there also currently being H3N8, H9N2, H7N9 in poultry and H2N2 in wild birds). Nonetheless, and taking into account all that we've seen in the four years since 34-year-old Dr. Li Wenliang tried warning colleagues in the final days of 2019 that seven patients in the Wuhan hospital where he worked were infected with a coronavirus (only to be paid a visit by police and told to stop), you can be rest assured that yours truly will be making relevant preparations and taking necessary precautions. (For starters, that most certainly means that yours truly won't be sticking around for the "fireworks" that will erupt upon Melbourne's seventh lockdown of this nascent Pandemicene.)

That's all that'll be said about the Monoculture Flu for now (aside from the fact that it'd in all likelihood make SARS-CoV-2 look like a walk in the park), with us now moving on to the "silver lining" that can be expected to emerge from an H5N1 pandemic.

The (tainted) silver lining

Those aware that energy is the currency of life and that fossil fuels are the lifeblood of industrial civilisation are likely also aware that while conventional supplies of oil peaked in 2005, overall conventional and unconventional supplies of oil peaked in late-2018. While an outcrop of that knowledge informs us that while supply and demand resulted in a barrel of oil continuously increasing in price (all the way to $147 by July 2008) and thus precipitating the global financial crisis, it may very well be that the emergence of the economic-deadening effects (and thus curtailment of oil usage) of this SARS-CoV-2 pandemic averted supply and demand issues once again pushing the price of a barrel of oil to ever-higher prices (and ultimately to its modern day equivalent of July 2008's $147), in turn averting what would very likely well have been another global financial crisis (of which no further supplies of unconventional oil [shale, deep sea, tar sands] could rescue industrial civilisation from since that option had already been tapped).

That all being so, while the sputtering Chinese economy and recent supply cuts by OPEC+ (non-paywall link here) would suggest that the world isn't in any danger of butting up against another (lesser than 2018's) peak of oil supplies of which an imminent H5N1 pandemic could effectively avert, the (tainted) "silver lining" of an H5N1 pandemic could very well emerge in another form.

SARS-CoV-2's death toll is officially said to be seven million people, but more likely resides in the tens of millions (possibly 27.4m people, as per The Economist, to go along with the millions of other people that have become disabled). With a public that's all but completely bought into the "pandemic fatigue" hoax (that being a much better usage of the word "hoax" than how all the scientifically illiterate anti-vaxxers and the like use it), there's a good chance that an H5N1 pandemic, with a significantly higher CFR than SARS-CoV-2, could conceivably kill more than a hundred million people, possibly even hundreds of millions of people.

(We already know that the CFR is much higher when an individual infected with SARS-CoV-2 is simultaneously infected with various influenza viruses, while the one documented case of an individual simultaneously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and H5N1 contracted pneumonia but fortunately survived. That being so, we also know that infection with SARS-CoV-2 weakens and wears down the immune system [aka "immune dysregulation", which can last roughly a year in the infected], although we have no idea how a global population broadly and repeatedly infected with SARS-CoV-2 would react to being broadly infected with H5N1.)

Suffice to say, the deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions of people (to go along with the millions more maimed) would likely result in a significant demolishment of supply chains, of the availability of goods and services (including food supplies), of overall economic activity, etc.

More to the point, an appreciable crash of the global economy (to go along with a decrease in the amount of consuming humans) would significantly knock back demand on oil (otherwise used to power all that economic activity), thus precluding the kind of situation whereby financial claims could no longer be used to paper over previous financial claims (due to an inability to grow the global economy any further, as 2018's overall peak in oil supplies guarantees will be coming sooner than later). In effect, an imminent H5N1-induced global economic crash would simultaneously stave off the inevitable situation whereby large financial institutions are no longer deemed to be "too big to fail" but rather "too big to save", and so ward off things like haircuts/bail-ins (as were experienced in Cyprus in 2015) that would very likely be on the menu for countries all across the world.

In other words, the (tainted) silver lining of an imminent H5N1 pandemic could be to inadvertently push back our day of biophysical reckoning, providing humanity with a wake up call as well as the opportunity to amend the ponzionomic as well as ecologically disastrous behaviours we find ourselves enmeshed within.

But that's all a hypothetical upon a hypothetical, getting way too far ahead of things. So I'll close this post off at that, while suggesting that you be on the lookout for the soon-to-be-dropping post on the (imminent?) Monoculture Flu.

Sounds of the Pandemicene, with Fanfare Ciocărlia

Although I certainly don't recommend that people "fuck around" with a "vaxed and relaxed" attitude by sipping away on refreshments while sitting indoors at café's and the like (while huffing away on all that SARS-CoV-2), if you must patronize a café then I suggest patronizing them by sitting and sipping away outdoors (with your respirator on when doing your ordering and such indoors). Moreover, if you're going to partake in all that, and supposing you have any say with what they've got playing over the speakers, then you might as well see if they can play the best "café" song out there. If you don't know what song that is, here's Fanfare Ciocărlia doing their take of... "Moliendo Café".

Fanfare Ciocărlia – Moliendo Café

0:00

/147.093333

1×

"Moliendo Café" can be found on the album "Iag Bari", available on Bandcamp or wherever else you purchase and/or stream music from.